The fall didn't end with a thud. It ended with a splash that felt wrong.
Jake hit the surface of the underground lake. The liquid didn't part like water. It shattered like glass, breaking into perfectly square geometric chunks before liquefying again around him.
He gasped, sucking in air that tasted like ozone and copper.
"Sound off!" Jake yelled. His voice didn't echo. The sound just died instantly, swallowed by the walls.
"Alive!" Taranov sputtered nearby. The big bodyguard was thrashing in the black fluid, holding his minigun above his head.
"I am functioning," Yuri's voice came from the darkness.
"My leg!" Menzhinsky screamed. "I can't feel my leg!"
"You can't feel it because it isn't rendered yet," Yuri corrected calmly. "Wait for the texture pop-in."
Jake swam toward a concrete ledge. The water felt heavy, like mercury. He dragged himself up onto the rough, grey surface.
He pulled a flare from his belt and cracked it.
Red light flooded the cavern.
They weren't in a cave. They were in a tunnel. But it wasn't built by human hands.
The walls were perfectly smooth, featureless grey planes. There was no dirt, no moisture, no cracks. It looked like the default box of a level design program before the artist adds the details.
"Look at the ceiling," Oppenheimer whispered, shivering as he climbed out of the water.
Jake looked up.
There was no ceiling. Just a grid of bright green lines stretching into infinity against a black void.
"Wireframe," Jake realized. "We're under the map."
"Where are the Cleaners?" Valentina asked, wringing out her flight suit. She checked her pistol. It was covered in the black slime.
"They cannot pathfind here," Yuri said. He was standing perfectly dry on the shore. The water seemed to have repelled off his suit. "This is a null space. It does not exist in the official directory."
Jake tried to stand up, but his right arm seized with agony.
He gritted his teeth and looked at his hand. The hand that had held the Root Access crystal.
It wasn't bleeding. It was flickering.
The skin was transparent in places, revealing not bone or muscle, but glowing blue code scrolling rapidly beneath the surface.
"It hurts," Jake hissed, clutching his wrist.
"You accessed the Admin privileges," Oppenheimer said, staring at the glitching limb with morbid fascination. "You're not an Admin, Jake. You're a User. The system is rejecting the command."
"It's corruption," Yuri stated. "If it reaches your heart, your file will become unreadable."
"Can we fix it?" Taranov asked, stepping closer.
"No," Jake said, forcing his arm down. The pain was like liquid fire, but he shoved it into the back of his mind. "We keep moving."
He pointed down the tunnel. Two perfectly straight steel rails ran along the grey floor, vanishing into the dark.
"Metro-2," Jake said. "It exists."
"It's not a metro," Valentina said, kneeling by the tracks. "Look at the rails. They aren't steel. They're light."
She touched the rail. Her finger passed through it. A soft hum vibrated through the floor.
"It's a data bus," Oppenheimer realized. "It's not for moving people. It's for moving assets between servers."
"Then let's find a vehicle," Jake said.
They began to walk.
The silence was heavy. It wasn't peaceful. It was the silence of a turned-off television. It felt waiting.
Menzhinsky limped in the back. His leg had finally "loaded" in, but he was still favoring it.
"I hear something," the spy chief whispered.
Jake stopped. He held up a fist.
Click. Click. Scrape.
It sounded like claws on chalkboard.
"Rats?" Taranov whispered, raising the minigun.
"Not rats," Yuri said. His eyes narrowed. "Scavengers."
"What's a Scavenger?"
"When a file is deleted," Yuri explained, "it leaves fragments. Junk data. Sometimes, the junk coalesces. It gets hungry."
The darkness ahead shifted.
Two eyes opened. They weren't eyes. They were jagged, red triangles floating in the air.
Then a mouth opened. It was a mess of sharp white lines, sketching a jaw that unhinged too wide.
A creature stepped into the flare light.
It looked like a wolf drawn by an angry child. Spiky, unfinished, vibrating with erratic energy. Its body was a chaotic scribble of black charcoal lines.
"It's hideous," Menzhinsky whimpered.
The Scribble Wolf let out a sound that wasn't a growl. It was a burst of static noise.
KZZZZT!
Then it charged.
"Fire!" Jake yelled.
Taranov squeezed the trigger. The minigun roared.
The bullets hit the creature. But instead of blood, numbers flew out. * -10 HP. -10 HP.*
The creature didn't slow down. It leaped, passing through the stream of lead.
"Physics immunity!" Taranov shouted. "It's not working!"
The wolf slammed into Taranov.
It didn't bite him. It erased his armor. Where its jaws clamped down, the metal chest plate turned into grey dust.
"Get it off!" Taranov smashed the creature with the butt of his gun.
The gun clipped through the wolf's head.
"Use the crystal!" Valentina screamed at Jake.
"No!" Jake yelled. "My arm is already rotting! If I use it again, I lose the hand!"
He looked around. He needed a weapon that wasn't physical. Something that followed the logic of this place.
He saw a loose glowing rail spike on the ground. It wasn't metal; it was a shard of pure code.
Jake grabbed it. It burned his palm, cold and hot at the same time.
He lunged forward.
"Hey! Ugly!"
The Scribble Wolf turned its jagged head toward Jake.
Jake didn't swing. He stabbed.
He drove the code-spike into the creature's chest.
CRITICAL ERROR.
The wolf froze. It vibrated violently, turning bright pink. Then it shattered into a thousand tiny cubes.
Taranov scrambled backward, breathing hard. His chest plate was gone, leaving his tactical undershirt exposed.
"They eat matter," Taranov gasped.
"They eat definition," Yuri corrected. "They strip the attributes off objects."
"More clicking," Menzhinsky warned. He was pointing his pistol into the dark, shaking like a leaf. "Lots more."
Dozens of red triangles opened in the shadows. A pack.
"Run!" Jake ordered.
They sprinted down the track. The grey floor seemed endless.
The sound of scratching claws grew louder behind them. The static growls merged into a deafening roar of white noise.
"There!" Valentina shouted.
Ahead, a shape loomed in the grey fog.
It was a station platform. But it wasn't unfinished like the tunnel. It was ornate. Marble pillars, chandeliers, red velvet curtains.
"It's a saved chunk," Oppenheimer wheezed, sprinting alongside them. "A piece of the old world stored in the cache!"
They vaulted onto the platform.
Sitting on the tracks was a train.
It wasn't a modern metro car. It was an armored steam locomotive, black as night, with a red star on the front. But the wheels didn't touch the rails. They hovered three inches above the glowing track.
"The Stalin Train," Jake muttered. "Of course."
"Does it work?" Taranov yelled.
The Scribble Wolves were pouring out of the tunnel darkness. They were faster than the humans. They moved in disjointed, teleporting jumps.
"Yuri, get in the cab!" Jake shoved his son toward the engine.
They scrambled up the metal ladder. The cab was hot. The firebox was glowing, but there was no coal.
"Fuel!" Valentina shouted, checking the gauges. "Pressure is zero!"
"What does it burn?" Jake opened the firebox door.
Inside, there was no grate. Just a swirling vortex of blue energy.
"It burns context," Yuri said, reading a brass plaque on the dashboard. "It requires Narrative Weight."
"What the hell does that mean?" Taranov fired a burst at the platform, trying to keep the wolves back.
"It means it runs on story!" Oppenheimer realized. "Items with history! Items that matter!"
"Give me something!" Jake yelled.
Menzhinsky patted his pockets. "I have... I have my party membership card!"
He threw it into the vortex.
The firebox flared blue. The pressure gauge twitched. The whistle let out a weak toot.
"Not enough!" Valentina slammed the throttle forward. "We need more!"
A wolf leaped onto the ladder. It snapped at Taranov's boot, dissolving the heel into pixels.
Taranov kicked it in the face.
"My gun!" Taranov roared. "It's been with me since Stalingrad!"
He ripped the minigun off its mount. He kissed the barrel.
"Sorry, Sasha," he whispered.
He threw the massive weapon into the firebox.
WHOOSH.
The blue fire roared. It turned blinding white. The engine shuddered. The pressure needle slammed into the red zone.
"That did it!" Jake shouted.
The train lurched forward.
The hover-wheels spun, gripping the magnetic field of the rails. The locomotive surged, accelerating instantly without friction.
The Scribble Wolves leaped.
One caught the railing of the tender.
Jake stepped out. His corrupted arm was throbbing, the blue code pulsing in time with the engine.
He didn't have a weapon. He just had his anger.
He kicked the wolf.
His boot connected. The glitch in his body reacted with the glitch in the wolf.
There was a flash of sparks. The wolf didn't just shatter; it was overwritten. It turned into a harmless, bouncing rubber ball.
The ball fell off the train and rolled away.
"We are clear!" Valentina shouted from the window.
The train rocketed into the darkness, leaving the platform and the pack of glitch-monsters behind.
Jake collapsed against the coal tender. He clutched his arm. The transparency had spread past his wrist. He could see the radius and ulna bones flickering in and out of existence.
"You traded health for power," Yuri said, standing over him. "Standard RPG mechanic."
"Shut up, Yuri," Jake groaned.
"Where is this train going?" Menzhinsky asked, huddled in the corner. He looked small without his fear.
Oppenheimer was looking out the front window. The tunnel walls were blurring past at impossible speeds.
"The rails follow the data stream," Oppenheimer said softly. "If the surface is the simulation... this track leads to the Hard Drive."
"The Moon?" Taranov asked, mourning his gun.
"No," Oppenheimer turned. His face was pale. "The Moon is just a terminal. This leads to the Source."
"The Source of what?"
"The Source of the Code," Oppenheimer said. "We're going to meet the Architect."
Jake looked at his glitching hand.
"Good," Jake said. "I have a complaint to file."
The ghost train screamed through the void, carrying five broken people deeper into the machine than anyone was ever meant to go.