The Veins swallowed me before I could even decide whether I wanted in. Concrete walls slick with moisture, pipes twisting overhead like veins feeding some enormous, sleeping beast. The air was heavy, smelling of rust, ozone, and something I didn't want to name. Somewhere beneath it all, machinery hummed low, constant, alive.
"Fantastic," I muttered, shoulders stiff, sarcasm barely masking unease. "Welcome to my guided tour of doom. Wet walls, hums, and suspicious shadows. All the fun of city plumbing, none of the charm."
I stepped carefully, boots echoing in the tunnel. Thrum… drip… the city whispered in its own language. Every vibration through the concrete floor, every metallic echo in the walls, felt like a countdown. I tried not to imagine eyes tracking me from the darkness beyond sight. Not for long.
A flicker of movement caught the corner of my eye. Too fast to be a rat. Too deliberate to be coincidence. Shadow shifted, vanished. Footsteps? Not mine. Someone or something was already here. Watching. Waiting. Judging.
I ran a hand along the damp wall. Maps, markers, small scratches in the concrete subtle enough to be missed, obvious enough to be a breadcrumb for someone paying attention. Someone like me.
"This place doesn't just live," I muttered under my breath, teeth clenched. "It circulates. Every tunnel, every corridor, every wet puddle… a vein, pumping the Syndicate's reach straight into my lungs."
The deeper I went, the tighter the air seemed to get. Pipes rattled somewhere above, and a faint metallic hum vibrated through my boots. I noted the sound mentally could be machinery. Could be surveillance. Could be nothing. Nothing here was ever nothing.
Shadows pooled ahead, forming shapes that shifted with the weak overhead lights. Footsteps that weren't mine, marks that weren't casual, whispers too faint to catch but impossible to ignore. Dylan's inner checklist clicked over: Observe. Note. Question. Survive. Assume betrayal at every turn.
I crouched near a junction, eyeing a faded mark on the wall. Subtle, hurried scratches someone had been here, left a message in the dark, vanished. Elliot's style? Or another player entirely? Impossible to know. Paranoia tasted like copper on my tongue.
I moved again, boots splashing in shallow puddles, careful not to make too much noise. The Veins were alive. Breathing. Counting. Waiting. And me? I was just another thing in the bloodstream, being measured for something I couldn't yet name.
At the far end, a corridor opened into a larger chamber. Pipes hummed louder here, vibrating in time with some unseen pulse. The tunnel stretched into darkness beyond. Someone or something was waiting. Not for me yet, but soon.
I pulled the black slip from my pocket, fingers tightening around it. The invitation hadn't changed. The Veins themselves hadn't changed. And neither had the lesson I was learning with every careful step: observe, calculate, survive. One misstep, and the city wouldn't just punish it would erase.
I muttered to the tunnels, to the shadows, to the city itself: "Alright, Veins… show me what you're really hiding. I'm listening."