They descended into the tunnel with weapons raised, boots tapping out soft, hollow echoes along the concrete floor. The farther they moved, the heavier the air became. Rust, mold, and old machinery thickened the atmosphere, but beneath those familiar scents lurked something stranger. Metallic. Sharp. Like blood left to dry but never quite dead.
Richard felt it scratch at the back of his throat, settling there like a warning. The tunnel widened without warning, opening into a sprawling underground complex that looked centuries older than the city above it.
Row after row of glass chambers stretched along the walls, some shattered inward as if something had clawed its way out, others still intact, machinery humming faintly with an eerie kind of life. The liquid inside them glowed in shades of sickly blue and green, casting shifting reflections across the grim concrete.
