The path down wasn't just steep anymore—it was crushing them.
Every step the Ghostline team took rang out in those narrow, black-as-night corridors, their boots hitting smooth volcanic rock that had never seen daylight. The air had gotten thicker over the past hour, squeezing into their lungs like a slow-moving vise. Nobody was talking anymore. Hell, even breathing felt like work.
Tern Vale coughed, breaking the quiet. "Oxygen's tanking fast. We're down to sixty-five percent of what we'd get on the surface."
Kaelin Vorr stopped and pressed his hand against the tunnel wall. "We're bleeding too much oxygen. Time to break out the tanks."
Sera Lin didn't say a word as she cracked open one of the sealed cases and grabbed the first of three Ashari-made respirators. Small but powerful—each one good for twenty-four hours of clean air when everything else went to hell.
They passed them around. Clicks and hisses echoed through the corridor as valves opened and masks clicked into place. The relief hit immediately—cold, clean air rushed into their lungs, pushing back against the crushing weight of the deep.
Micah fiddled with his mask and glanced at the tracking data on his wrist. The screen cast a dim glow in the darkness. "Seven hundred ninety-eight meters. That's nearly twice the safe depth for anyone from the surface."
"Welcome to the ass-end of the world," Nyra Tal muttered, scanning ahead with her optics. "And we're still heading down."
These tunnels weren't just deep—they were wrong. At first, the descent had felt like some carved-out ravine, maybe leftover from geothermal activity. But now? Now it was obvious someone had built this place.
The walls were too perfect. The angles too clean.
Liera Vossel, keeping watch at the rear, spoke quietly. "These aren't natural. We're inside some kind of structure now. Could be Omniraith work. Could be older."
Harka Slen, who'd been silent up until now, tapped the sensor on his chest. "Magnetic field's going haywire. Interference patterns... like we're walking through layers of shielding."
"It's a maze," Varn Roath growled, scowling at their surroundings. "Not a tunnel. A damn trap."
But they kept moving.
Sometimes the ceiling dropped so low they had to duck-walk, with ASC-4 Blitzfire and ASC-9 Warden Pike compressing their frames just to squeeze through. The route twisted tighter, doubled back on itself, split into forked paths that rejoined without any rhyme or reason. No signs. No markers. Just cold stone and mounting tension.
For almost an hour, the team navigated the twisting maze, their movements careful, voices kept low, energy reserves watched like hawks. Kaelin logged every turn in his wrist terminal, but even he was starting to frown deeper as the pathways spiraled further into the earth.
"This was designed to mess with your head," he finally said. "They don't want anyone finding their way back once they're inside."
"We're not going back," Micah replied.
Then—just like that—the walls disappeared.
They stepped into a hollow so massive their helmet lights couldn't even reach the other side. A dome-shaped space with a ceiling lost in darkness, walls curving gently outward and away. The ground was flat, covered in hexagonal tiles that looked like polished metal but felt like cooled stone under their boots.
Everyone froze.
No words. Just the sound of filtered breathing and the quiet hum of oxygen units.
"I'm not picking up any structural boundaries," Tern said, voice filled with awe. "This space... it's enormous."
"It's a holding pen," Nyra whispered. "Or something worse."
Sera reached out to touch the nearest pillar—tall and black, carved with faint geometric patterns that looked like a mix of Ashari symbols and Thornkin life-bonds. "Feels like we're inside a heart that forgot how to beat."
Micah stepped forward, scanning the open ground. His Hollow side stirred again, restless.
That's when they spotted it.
A pair of red lights—no, not lights. Eyes.
High up. Too high. And definitely not alone.
The glow came from the far platform, where shadow blended into shadow. As their optics adjusted, the shape behind those lights took form: massive, sort of humanoid, but stretched wrong in some places, bent weird in others. Its outline flickered like it couldn't decide what it wanted to be—flesh and metal, real and not.
Sera's breath caught. "That's no drone."
Kaelin raised his weapon. "But it's definitely watching us."
The eyes didn't blink. Didn't move. Just stared.
ASC-9 Warden Pike stepped up beside Kaelin, shield ready.
Micah's voice stayed calm and low. "Don't shoot. Not yet."
Hard to tell if the thing had just noticed them or had been watching all along.
The room felt like it was holding its breath.
Then, without making a sound, the creature melted back into the darkness.
"Did it just—" Tern started.
"It's still here," Harka said, dead certain. "It's waiting."
Syrran's grip tightened on his weapon. "Then we let it wait. Until we're ready to deal with it."
Nobody spoke after that.
Weapons up, nerves stretched tight, they spread out slowly—getting ready for whatever the deep was about to throw at them.
Because something was definitely down here.
And it knew who they were.
The red eyes came back.
No sound. No warning. Just sudden, blazing crimson—closer this time, floating down from the far end of the massive chamber like a ghost with weight.
Micah raised his hand, signaling everyone to hold their position. Nobody moved. Even Blitzfire froze mid-step, optics locked on the figure emerging from the dark.
It wasn't a drone.
The thing stood over three meters tall, humanoid in the most messed-up way possible. Its limbs were all wrong—too long, bent at weird angles, covered in metal that looked like it had grown instead of being built. Wires snaked through what might have been muscle, and bits of what could once have been human flesh moved under exposed panels.
It wasn't assembled.
It was created.
Half its face was covered by a cracked mask—Ashari design—but one eye blazed red and wild while the other was just... gone. The voice that wheezed from its speaker sounded broken, like it had been pieced together from dying memories.
"...Micah..."
Everyone tensed. Weapons came up. The creature didn't even flinch.
It tilted its head slowly, servos groaning like old bones.
"I remember you... not you exactly... the one who carried you..."
Micah stepped forward, his breath catching. "You knew her? My mother?"
The creature twitched—like the name hit some buried switch. "She cried in this place. Said it was wrong. Said you must never... never come down here."
"Tell me more," Micah pushed. "Tell me who she was. What she did."
"No." The word came out hard and sharp—like a slap. "Too much light in your eyes. You'll burn this place. You'll kill what's left."
Without another word, it launched itself forward.
Not like a drone.
Not like anything they'd ever fought.
It didn't charge—it flowed, lurching sideways with impossible speed, using walls, shadows, and gravity itself like weapons. Its claws were fused bone and alloy, its movement chaotic but deadly precise.
Blitzfire moved to intercept.
Too slow.
The creature vaulted over the Ascendant unit with an unnatural twist, slamming into Syrran Drehl and sending him sliding across the floor in a shower of sparks. Only his armor saved him from being torn apart.
"Flank it!" Kaelin shouted.
Varn Roath bellowed and swung his war-club, but the thing melted back into the darkness. It didn't fight like a machine. It hunted like something that remembered being alive.
From above, Liera Vossel let an arrow fly—perfect shot.
The creature twisted mid-air, letting the arrow scrape across its shoulder. It bled something black and bubbling, but didn't even slow down.
Sera was dragging Tern to safety when the creature spun around, its voice echoing through the chamber like memory stretched too thin.
"She tried to stop him. But he... he made us anyway. Took our names. Took our thoughts. Left us with this."
Micah ducked under a sweeping claw and rolled behind cover. His Hollow side surged again, picking up that familiar resonance—the same experimental signature that had been haunting every room since Gamma Prime.
This wasn't just a failed experiment.
It was a guardian.
Kaelin landed a shot to its leg, making it stumble, and yelled, "Micah—what the hell is this thing?"
"I don't know!" Micah shouted back, dodging another strike. "But it remembers her. Which means it remembers me."
The creature drove its claws into the wall, ripping out a chunk of alloy and hurling it like a spear. Blitzfire caught it mid-flight, redirecting it with a plasma burst.
Still, the team was losing ground. They weren't fighting a drone. They were fighting a ghost—part guardian, part nightmare, part trauma given form.
"Drop it!" Syrran yelled, firing a plasma lance.
"No," Micah said suddenly, eyes locked on the creature. "Don't kill it."
"What?"
"I'm taking it alive."
He sprinted across the chamber as Kaelin shouted in disbelief, "Are you out of your mind?!"
But Micah didn't hesitate. He pulled out a net launcher—high-density stasis web cobbled together from ASC gear—and fired it at the creature mid-leap.
The web hit. Electricity crackled.
The monster howled—not in pain, but in fury—and crashed to the ground, thrashing.
Micah didn't blink.
"I need answers," he said, stepping forward as Blitzfire moved in to lock down the creature with kinetic restraints.
The red eye flickered. "You... are the echo..."
Then it went dark—whether unconscious or retreating into itself, nobody could tell.
The silence that followed was deafening.
Sera knelt beside it, checking for vitals. "Still breathing. Sort of."
Micah stared down at the monstrous, broken thing.
"It remembers something," he whispered. "Maybe more than I do."
Kaelin crossed his arms. "So what now?"
Micah didn't look away.
"Now... we make it talk."