The tunnel narrowed, walls slick with condensation and the faint tang of rust. My boots echoed against the uneven concrete, each step swallowed and returned by the low ceiling. Pipes overhead dripped in irregular rhythms, a metallic percussion that kept pace with my pulse.
Something caught my eye a faint scrawl on the wall, almost erased by time and grime. Curved lines, deliberate, precise. I froze. The familiar hand. Elliot.
"They're watching both of us," it read, carved hastily but unmistakably.
I crouched closer, fingertips hovering over the shallow grooves, tracing the words. My chest tightened, a mix of relief, suspicion, and something else hope, dangerous and fragile. He was alive. But why this cryptic style? Why these half-hidden signs?
A distant clatter echoed through the tunnel pipes, water, maybe a rat but my mind raced. Every shadow became a potential observer, every echo a message. Elliot wasn't just leaving breadcrumbs. He was testing me, warning me, guiding me without touching the game directly.
I whispered his name, the sound barely rising above the drip… drip… drip. "Elliot." It felt like speaking into the void, but I knew he was listening somewhere. Or at least, he wanted me to think he was.
My eyes scanned the chamber. Puddles reflected faint glimmers from the scattered light, casting shifting patterns across the walls. A crack in the concrete mirrored the scratch of Elliot's message, and I couldn't shake the feeling that the Veins themselves were pointing, nudging, leading me forward.
The longer I stared, the more the message's weight pressed against my thoughts. "They're watching both of us." Not just him, not just me. Both. Partners? Targets? Collateral? Every interpretation spiraled into a knot of possibilities.
I backed away slowly, mapping every shadow, every sound, every subtle sign as if the tunnel itself was a living thing, breathing with secrets. This wasn't just a message. It was a challenge, a tether, a promise. Elliot was inside the threads, as entangled as I was, and I would have to move carefully or get crushed.
I muttered under my breath, dry and sarcastic, a reflex more than relief: "So much for a quiet reunion." My eyes lingered on the scratch once more. Every move, every misstep, every observation mattered. He had left a trail, and I would follow it.
The tunnel swallowed my footsteps as I left, dripping water marking the path behind me. Elliot's shadow lingered longer than mine, stretching ahead, weaving me deeper into a game I couldn't yet fully see.