The light was a violent, beautiful thing.
It hummed, a low, steady thrum from the salvaged floodlight that was a world away from the dying flicker of their phones. It scoured the tunnel, bleaching the rust-stained concrete to a stark, sterile white and throwing their shadows, long and distorted, against the damp walls. It was safety. It was a weapon. And it was a beacon.
For a long moment, nobody moved. They stood in the circle of harsh, clean light, the sounds of their own ragged breaths slowly evening out. The chittering from the darkness was gone. The immediate threat had vanished, scurrying away from the sudden, artificial sun. Leo's head throbbed, a dull, persistent ache that was becoming an unwelcome friend. He could taste old blood in the back of his throat. He'd pushed his Minor Edit skill again, and the system had collected its tax.
Chloe was the first to break the quiet, her voice a low, shaky thing. "Did… did we just win?"
"We survived," Maya corrected, her voice flat. She was already moving, her knives a blur as she wiped them clean on a rag from her pack. She didn't look relieved. She looked wary, her gaze sweeping the edges of their circle of light, where the oppressive darkness pressed in. "There's a difference."
Ben, however, was in heaven. He scrambled back to the wall, his face alight with a manic, triumphant glee. "It worked! The interface is stable!" He had his tablet plugged into the [Corrupted Security Core], which was now tethered to the building's main power and fiber lines with a messy tangle of stripped wires and alligator clips. The tablet's screen glowed, lines of diagnostic text scrolling rapidly. "Look, look! Power draw is consistent. I can charge our phones. The light is stable. And the network… Leo, the network is active."
This was it. The reason they'd risked a stop. Information. Power. A chance to be more than just rats in a maze.
"Get the light secured," Maya ordered, her voice cutting through Ben's excitement. "Point it down the tunnel, the way we came. We need a rear guard."
Ben, fumbling with his wires, managed to prop the floodlight up, aiming its powerful beam back down the long, concrete tube. The darkness didn't so much retreat as it seemed to curdle at the edge of the light, a wall of impenetrable black. Now they could see the path behind them, a hundred feet of empty, glistening catwalk. It felt safer. It wasn't.
While Ben worked, his muttering a constant stream of technical jargon, Chloe sat down heavily on the catwalk, her back against the wall. She closed her eyes, her face pale in the harsh light.
"You okay?" Leo asked, his voice rough.
"My skill," she murmured, not opening her eyes. "When that… that thing… was behind me. Before I hit it. I knew what it was going to do."
Leo frowned. "What do you mean?"
"I didn't see it. I just… I knew. A feeling. 'It's going to lunge at my left.' That's what my brain said. So I swung the bag there." She finally opened her eyes, and fear and understanding warred there. "Read Intent. It's not about reading minds. It's… it's like a threat assessment. I can feel what a hostile wants to do a half-second before they do it." Her voice dropped to a whisper. "Leo… that's terrifying."
He didn't know what to say. He just nodded. Another piece of the System's sick logic falling into place. She wasn't a social engineer anymore. She was a pre-cog. A combat analyst. The System was reforging them, turning their old-world skills into weapons.
Plink… plink… plink…
The water he'd released was still dripping, a slow, steady rhythm now that the torrent had subsided. The sound, which had been their salvation, was now just an irritating reminder of their vulnerability.
"Okay… okay, I'm in," Ben breathed. His tablet screen flickered, the scrolling text replaced by a series of blue boxes and login prompts. It was the building's old security interface. An ancient, clunky piece of software Leo recognized from a dozen tedious work orders. "The system is… it's a ghost. Most of the cameras are dead, no power. But the ones on the emergency grid… they're still active. I can see…"
His voice trailed off. He tapped the screen. An image appeared, grainy and flickering. A hallway. Empty. He tapped again. An office. A disaster, but empty. Again. A stairwell. Empty.
Then he found one that wasn't.
"Oh god," Chloe whispered, leaning in to see.
It was a view of the fifth floor. The corporate gym. A wide, open space filled with treadmills and weight machines. And people. At least twenty of them, huddled in the center of the room. They had built a barricade of treadmills and yoga mats. A pathetic defense. And on the other side of the glass walls of the gym, pressing in, was a sea of goblins. Not just a handful. Dozens. Maybe a hundred. They weren't attacking. They were just… watching. Waiting.
And among them was a new shape. A tall, gaunt figure in the tattered remains of a security guard's uniform. It stood there, its posture unnaturally still. And floating above its head was a nameplate Leo had never seen before.
[Goblin Taskmaster Lv. 10]
"It's organizing them," Maya said, her voice a low growl. She was looking over their shoulders, her eyes narrowed, her tactical mind processing the scene. "That's why they're not just swarming. It's a leader."
They watched, mesmerized and horrified, as the Taskmaster raised a long, bony arm and pointed. The goblins surged forward, crashing against the glass walls of the gym in a wave of green flesh and rusty weapons. The glass cracked, then shattered. The screaming started.
Ben frantically tapped the screen, switching to another camera. Then another. But it was all the same. Glimpses of a massacre.
He finally switched the screen off, plunging them back into the singular glare of their own floodlight. The quiet in the tunnel was deafening, filled only by the phantom screams from the screen.
They were alive. They were safe in their little bubble of light. And twenty people, three floors above them, were being torn apart.
Leo felt a familiar, sickening lurch in his gut. He thought of the journal in his pocket. The story of another group of survivors who had hidden, who had waited.
"We can't just sit here," Chloe said, her voice thick.
"We can't help them," Maya countered, her voice cold and hard as the concrete around them. "They're dead already. Going up there is suicide. There are too many."
"But we could do something! We have to…" Chloe's voice broke.
Dripping water counted the seconds. Plink… plink… plink. Each drop was a second. A life. Leo looked from Chloe's horrified, pleading face, to Maya's grim, pragmatic mask, to Ben's terrified expression.
His theory. An idle process gets purged. It wasn't just a theory anymore. It was a death sentence. For the people in the gym. And eventually, for them.
"She's right," Leo said, his voice quiet. "We can't save them." He saw the look of betrayal on Chloe's face. "But we can't stay here either." He looked up, his gaze meeting Maya's. "We have to keep moving. The tunnels are still the objective. But now… now we know what's waiting for us if we go back up."
He didn't have to say it. They all understood. The building wasn't just infested. It was occupied. An army was gathering. And they were trapped in the basement of the barracks.