Location: Seoul Undergrid – 9:03 AM
The gates slammed shut behind them with the groaning sound of finality, echoing off the corroded metal walls like a tomb sealing itself.
It was no longer early.
They had been running, bleeding, fighting for almost two hours.
And it wasn't over.
Aiko stumbled forward through the stench of rust and machine oil, her breathing ragged. The deeper they went, the colder it became—like the world had inverted itself and they'd fallen into a place where the sun had never existed.
"This… this is where light ends," she muttered, brushing her hand against the concrete wall. It came back wet. Not with water. Something thicker.
Behind her, Ryoji limped—dragging his left leg, thigh soaked in blood, jaw clenched. He didn't complain. He never did.
Miura reloaded silently, eyes on the shadows. Her pulse rifle hissed with residual heat. She was out of disruptor grenades. Her hands were trembling—but she kept moving.
From above, the rumble of the world faded into silence.
Then, the whispering started again.
Not voices.
Frequencies.
The undergrid was alive with the ghosts of systems long dead—Division Zero's buried backbone, half-functioning servers humming behind crumbling walls.
"Keisuke," Ryoji rasped into the comm. "Talk to me."
Static.
Then:
"You're in Zone 5 now. Closest stable exit is 2.4 klicks east—along what used to be the maintenance artery. But I've got movement two layers below. Not Black Division. Something… else."
"Define 'else,'" Miura snapped.
A pause.
"…Something untagged."
They froze.
Aiko closed her eyes—and the Seal pulsed beneath her skin again, warning her.
Something was coming.
Something that didn't belong.
Location: Depths of Zone 5 – 9:21 AM
The undergrid stretched before them like a vast, forgotten canyon, the air thick with the scent of decay and oil. Rusted pipes snaked above, dripping something too thick to be water, pooling in jagged puddles on the ground. Flickering lights cast long, distorted shadows that shifted with each step.
"This place is a ghost town," Miura muttered, voice low and strained as they advanced.
"Not quite," Ryoji said, scanning the darkened path ahead. "A ghost town still has people. This place is a graveyard."
His words seemed to hang in the air as if the undergrid itself were listening.
Aiko couldn't shake the feeling that they weren't alone. The Seal on her arm burned faintly, a constant reminder that something far greater than their enemies lurked beneath the surface of this city. The power inside her was reacting—her instincts were on edge. They had passed through security sectors long forgotten by Division Zero. They were beyond the map now.
"Keisuke… any updates?" Miura asked, a hint of frustration in her voice. Her weapon was lowered, but her eyes darted to every corner, every shadow.
Keisuke's voice crackled through their comms. "Nothing from the outer layers yet. But there's something wrong with your path. You've activated the secondary grid… the one the higher-ups didn't even know about."
"More ghosts?" Ryoji asked, his voice cold.
"Worse," Keisuke answered grimly. "Something ancient. Part of the original grid, part of the things Division Zero tried to erase… some of them didn't stay dead."
Aiko's pulse quickened. The Seal on her arm pulsed, harder now, and she could feel the faint tremor of something beneath her feet—a shift in the very ground itself.
"Do we go back?" Miura asked, her grip tightening around her rifle.
"Negative," Ryoji said, voice harsh. "We keep moving. We don't have time to wait for ghosts. Division Zero will be on us soon enough."
Location: The Abandoned Chamber – 9:42 AM
They entered an enormous chamber, its ceilings high, the air thick with dust and the scent of decay. The remnants of old tech lay scattered, half-buried under crumbled stone and rusted machinery. In the center, a massive reactor core, still faintly humming, cast a sickly blue glow over everything.
Aiko stopped in her tracks.
"What is this place?" she whispered, her voice echoing off the walls.
"It's one of the original project sites," Keisuke's voice answered through the comms, filtered by static. "Division Zero's first attempts to manipulate the undergrid. This is where the real experiments began."
The ground shook again.
Aiko's breath caught in her throat.
Ryoji's face hardened. "That's not just the reactor. Something's down here."
From the depths of the chamber, a low growl echoed. It wasn't human. It wasn't anything they'd ever heard before.
And then it came.
A flash of metal and sinew. It leapt from the darkness with impossible speed—faster than the Alpha. It was a creature, part man, part machine. Its limbs were twisted, blackened with cybernetic enhancements. Its face, what little of it could be seen, was stretched and scarred—its eyes glowing with the same red circuitry that had marked the Alpha.
Ryoji acted without thinking.
He lunged forward, slamming into the creature's side with all his remaining strength. His knife slid into the thing's ribs, but it barely flinched. Instead, it retaliated with a savage swipe of its talon-like claws.
Ryoji twisted, barely evading the strike as the beast spun and aimed for Miura.
"Move!" Ryoji shouted, rolling to his feet, pain shooting through his chest.
Miura was already in motion, pulling the trigger of her pulse rifle. The shots exploded in the air, each round tearing into the creature's flesh—yet it still advanced, unrelenting.
Aiko's Seal flared.
Time slowed—just for an instant—but it was enough. Aiko closed the distance with the creature, her movements sharp, calculating. Her fist slammed into its chest, knocking it back. Her hand reached into her coat, pulling out a blade—a sleek, black combat knife.
She struck—right where the heart should have been.
The creature's shriek of agony rang through the chamber as its eyes flashed with brief recognition. For a moment, Aiko saw something behind those eyes—humanity, buried beneath layers of technology and pain.
It died in her arms.
She let it fall.
Location: The Junction – 10:05 AM
The survivors stood in silence, breathing hard as the echoes of the fight died down. Blood soaked the floor—Ryoji's, Aiko's, and the creature's. But there was no time for mourning.
Keisuke's voice came through, urgent: "You're close. The tunnel's just ahead. But..."
"But?" Miura asked, wiping the blood from her cheek.
"You've triggered something in the grid. They're coming. All of them."
Ryoji's eyes narrowed. He knew who "they" were. Division Zero's Black Division wasn't the only force in play. The real war was just beginning.
As they neared the junction, the hum of the reactor grew louder, almost deafening. Their footsteps echoed against the metal. And then they saw it—the tunnel entrance, bathed in the cold, unnatural light of the reactor.
Aiko glanced back once more—at the broken creatures they had slain, at the bloodstained path they had carved through the undergrid.
"Are we sure about this?" Miura asked, voice trembling despite her best efforts.
Ryoji didn't hesitate. "We've come this far. We finish this."
But the moment they stepped into the tunnel, the ground trembled again—this time, with purpose.
The walls shuddered, the ceiling cracked.
And from the depths of the undergrid, something stirred.
To be continued in Chapter 78....