The cold hit first.
Not on my skin—inside my bones.
The thing's fingers weren't just holding my ankle; they were inside it, sliding through the marrow, replacing my own muscles with something else. My vision swam. My grip on the ladder slipped.
"Don't look!" Lena's voice cut through the static in my head.
But the whisper answered her.
"Look at me, Adam."
It knew my name.
I bit down hard, forcing the sound out of my throat before it became a scream. My free foot kicked at the thing, but it didn't feel like I was hitting anything solid—just cold, wet air.
The ladder shook. Rungs rattled under my hands.
Lena glanced down once, her jaw tight. Then she hooked her spear to her belt, gripped the ladder with one arm, and dropped.
Straight past me.
My brain barely had time to process before she was hanging upside down, one hand gripping the rung near my knee, the other plunging a short blade straight into the black shimmer where the hand emerged.
The whisper became a hiss—wet, furious.
The grip on my ankle loosened, but not fully. It pulled again, harder now, trying to drag me down the shaft.
Lena didn't hesitate. She drove the blade in again, twisting this time. The thing let out a sound like metal tearing underwater, then let go.
"Climb!" she shouted.
We scrambled upward, the walls vibrating like something enormous was slamming against them from below. My hands burned from the effort, my arms screaming, but I didn't dare slow down.
Halfway to the top, the ladder bent under our combined weight with a metallic groan.
"Move!" Lena was above me now, hauling herself over the last rung into a hatch. She grabbed my wrist and yanked me through.
The hatch slammed shut behind us, cutting off the hiss.
I lay on my back, gasping, staring at the ceiling. The light here was weak, flickering from a row of half-dead overhead panels. The air was warmer, but not safe—never safe.
Lena sat cross-legged beside me, catching her breath. Blood—thick and dark—coated her blade. It didn't look human. It didn't even look alive.
"That wasn't a hunter," I managed to say.
"No," she replied flatly. "That was worse."
"What's worse than something with claws and teeth?"
Her eyes flicked to mine. "Something that doesn't need them."
Before I could press further, a new sound filtered in—a low hum, deep and steady, vibrating through the floor. It wasn't mechanical. It felt alive.
We were in a long, narrow chamber lined with broken screens and metal cabinets. At the far end, an open doorway pulsed with soft blue light.
Lena stood, spear back in her hands. "Stay close. If we're lucky, it's just an energy core still running."
"And if we're not?"
She didn't answer.
We moved toward the doorway, stepping over debris and scattered tools. My ankle still ached where the thing had grabbed me, a cold that wouldn't fade.
The hum grew louder as we reached the blue light.
We stepped through—
—and stopped.
The room was circular, walls covered in cables like veins. In the center, suspended in a glass cylinder, was a figure.
It was human. Or at least, it looked human.
A woman, pale and motionless, eyes closed. Her body was threaded with the same black strands we'd seen in the bones earlier. They pulsed faintly, feeding into the cables that ran into the walls.
The hum was coming from her.
"What is this?" I whispered.
Lena's grip tightened on her spear. "Not what. Who."
The woman's eyes opened.
They were pure white—no iris, no pupil.
The hum became a voice, layered and distorted.
"You shouldn't have come here."
The glass cracked.