Something was different about the heat down here.
This wasn't the usual warmth you'd get from geothermal spots or volcanic air.
No, this felt manufactured—like it was coming right up through the metal joints in the floor, beating like a heart that wouldn't quit.
The further the Ghostline team went into these obsidian tunnels, the more Micah could feel it vibrating under his feet.
The path got tighter as they went down, those obsidian walls squeezing in with sharp, precise angles.
Way too clean. Way too straight. Kaelin picked up on it first.
"We're not walking through anything natural anymore," he said, pressing his hand against the blackened wall. "Someone carved this out."
Syrran Drehl's hand drifted toward his weapon. "Maybe an old mining operation."
"Could be anything," Tern Vale called from behind them. "But look at these lines..." He ran his finger along a groove cut into the floor with surgical precision. "This is Ashari work. Old school stuff, from before the drift. Someone was here way before us."
Micah kept quiet. His eyes had gone ice-cold, locked on that faint shimmer up ahead.
The tunnel suddenly opened up into this massive round chamber with a domed ceiling, all wrapped in darkness.
The first thing that hit them was cold air—bone dry and sterile.
The walls were packed with these arcane and mechanical seal-glyphs, all dead now, but they started glowing faintly when they sensed the team's bio-signatures.
Right in the middle of the room sat this spire made of alloy and bone.
Kaelin stepped up, weapon ready. "There it is," he muttered. "Some kind of node setup."
Sera Lin looked pale as paper. "It's not running. But it's not exactly sleeping either."
The second they got closer, the floor lit up ring by ring—like it was responding to them.
Then ASC-4 Blitzfire just stopped dead. Its limbs locked up, scanners went haywire.
Micah threw up his hand. "Everyone stop moving."
That's when the whole chamber flipped on them.
Light flooded the space without warning—smooth and controlled, almost like surgery lighting.
Hidden projectors in the walls fired up and threw this digital illusion of a spotless lab right over everything.
The stone just melted away into polished metal.
Desks appeared. Consoles. Chambers. And right in the center... this tall synthetic thing that looked just like the Core Nexus itself.
"It's a simulation," Tern breathed. "They're showing us a memory."
"Or testing us," Nyra Tal said, her hand hovering over her sidearm.
Voices started echoing through the illusion—scientists arguing back and forth, data streams overlapping, talk about integration metrics and compatibility problems.
Sera pointed at a console flickering inside the projection. "It's fake."
Micah's gut twisted. "They built this whole thing to copy the Core Nexus."
Kaelin walked around the spire. "To fool us."
Then something moved on the far wall. A panel slid back, showing this massive vault door—all shimmery and locked tight. The word "NEXUS" blazed across it.
Syrran took a step toward it. "Maybe this one's real."
But Micah shook his head. "No. It's too shiny. Too obvious."
Harka Slen finally spoke up. "Bait."
That's when the walls started humming.
Red light spilled everywhere, and the projection started glitching—static flickering to show the cold reality underneath.
"It's a trap," Kaelin snapped.
"Drones coming in," Liera's voice crackled from above. "Right over you. Something set off their motion sensors."
Micah backed away from the node, jaw tight. "Everyone out. This isn't the Core."
"But it's connected to it," Sera said, watching the fake Nexus dissolve.
"Yeah," Micah said quietly. "But this isn't the heart. It's just the skin."
The team turned and ran for the corridor.
Behind them, mechanical servos whined to life.
Wall compartments opened up, and drone units that had been sleeping for who knows how long started waking up—their bodies slick with coolant, eyes flashing red.
Their limbs scraped across the floor as they unfolded, cutting off the exits.
"Blitzfire!" Kaelin yelled. "Up front!"
ASC-4 roared to life and blasted forward with a plasma pulse, clearing a gap through the incoming wall of drones.
The air screamed with heat.
"Warden Pike—cover our backs!" Kaelin barked.
ASC-9 raised its massive shield and threw up a kinetic barrier behind them, deflecting an explosive barrage.
Micah turned to Tern. "Lock down that gate behind us. Seal this place off."
"On it!" Tern slammed a splice unit into the wall. "Cracking their encryption—fifty percent—seventy—got it!"
The bulkhead slammed shut behind them just as the chamber exploded with sound and fire.
The tunnel went quiet again.
They walked without talking for a while—going down, always down, each breath tasting like ash and bitter metal.
Finally they stopped in this hollow chamber carved out by old lava flows. Tern dropped to one knee, catching his breath. The others checked their weapons and patched up their wounds.
"I've seen plenty of things built to kill people," Kaelin said, wiping sweat from his face. "But that was built to mess with their heads."
Sera knelt by a jagged rock formation. "What if this whole area's loaded with fake trails? Decoys?"
Micah finally spoke, his voice low. "Maybe. But I've got a feeling... there's still something real here."
Nyra raised an eyebrow. "Like what?"
Micah stood up, eyes narrowing toward the darkness ahead. "I think the Omniraith didn't just set a trap here. I think they're hiding something underneath it."
"What kind of something?" Varn asked.
"A door," Micah said. "Or a memory."
Everyone looked at each other.
Behind them, that decoy chamber kept humming in the silence. Ahead, the cavern seemed to breathe—slow and steady, waiting.
Micah took a step forward.
"Let's go find it."
The obsidian changed to carved stone.
Not the smooth metal and engineered surfaces from that fake Nexus chamber, but something way older—hand-carved, covered with symbols in languages that only pieces of the alliance still remembered. The tunnel got narrow, then opened up into this vaulted hallway lined with sealed doors and observation windows.
Micah slowed down, running his fingers over the symbols on the wall. The Hollow inside him stirred again, but not with urgency this time—with recognition.
"This place is older than Gamma Prime," he said, mostly to himself. "Older than the Hybrid program."
Nyra ran her hand along the other wall, noticing faint marks where something used to be mounted. "Looks like some kind of facility before it got buried. A prototype station. Maybe even part of the original Core network."
"Or something the Core rejected," Sera added quietly.
At the back, Tern Vale muttered something under his breath and scanned the air. "EM field here's all fractured—like whatever powered this place got ripped out in the middle of running."
Kaelin nodded sharply. "Which means we're walking into something that got abandoned on purpose."
They walked into a new chamber—triangular, stark, and dead quiet. The air here was dry and smelled faintly of ionized metal.
The walls were covered in cracked and flaking mirror plating, designed for reflection and watching. A single vault sat in the center, half-open, like someone had left in a hurry.
Inside were rows of dead data cores, and next to them, a narrow stasis pod—no longer running, its lights long gone.
Micah stepped forward like something was pulling him.
The others watched as he got closer to the pod, now dark and fogged up from inside. He wiped away the condensation.
Inside, there wasn't any hybrid. No machine-flesh fusion. Just bones. Ashari bones—wearing a medical gown, curled up like whoever died in there had done it quietly, in pain, or all alone.
A terminal next to it blinked weakly, still holding some charge.
Tern moved in and connected his system to the data feed. "This terminal's ancient, but... looks like the local logs are still there. Personal entries."
A shaky audio file started playing, heavy with static.
> "...entry 39. Omega Vault secured. I've erased the external connections. Voss doesn't know I copied the early hybrid notes.
He wouldn't get it—this was never supposed to be for the military. I kept Micah away from this."
Micah's breath caught in his throat.
> "He doesn't know. He can't. If he finds this, it means I screwed up."
Another voice joined the playback—calmer, deeper, male.
> "You're letting emotions cloud your judgment. The child is part of this. You said so yourself—his markers match the Hollow resonance. He could be our breakthrough."
> "No. He's our son."
The silence that followed felt heavy as lead.
Sera reached for Micah, but he didn't budge. His hand was gripping the edge of the stasis unit so tight the metal groaned under his fingers.
Kaelin stepped closer, voice soft. "Your parents..."
Micah didn't answer.
The terminal kept going, flickering into a visual log. A still image—grainy but clear. A woman with kind, tired eyes, holding a baby with a strand of dark hair across his forehead.
She smiled at the camera, not knowing this image would be one of the last things left of her.
Micah reached out and touched the edge of the display.
The others stood there in silence, not sure what to say, how to step into something so personal.
Varn Roath finally bowed his head. "Grief runs deep. It keeps us grounded."
Sera spoke quietly. "She was trying to protect you. Even from your father."
Micah nodded slowly, eyes still on the image. "And he still found a way to drag me into it."
Kaelin looked around the still, solemn room. "We bury the bones. We seal this vault. Then we keep moving."
"No," Micah said. "We leave it open."
They all turned to him.
"If someone else comes looking for answers, they should know what it cost. The real cost. Not just data. Not just failures." He looked back at the stasis unit. "She tried to stop it. That should matter."
At the doorway, Harka Slen stood guard, saying nothing. But he paused longer than usual, his face unreadable.
Outside the vault, the air felt different. Less crushing. Like something that had been trapped could finally breathe again.
Later, while the others got ready to head down toward the geothermal veins, Micah sat by himself.
In his hand was the photograph.
His mother, her quiet smile.
Him as a kid, clueless about the world he'd be born into.
His voice was soft, almost a whisper. "Was it just you? Or was he part of this too?"
No answer came.
Just the silence of memory.
And the path stretching ahead. " did you see any plot error or inconsistency from chapter 46?