We sprint through the new tunnel, a very narrow one filled with phosphorescent moss, Neo's hand clamped around my wrist. The rumbling's getting quieter, and soon it disappears altogether.
"We made it out guys," I say, turning around and realizing there is absolutely no one behind me. "Uh."
Neo releases my hand and catches his breath.
"They couldn't have gone far," he pants, leaning against the tunnel wall. "I'm sure we'll meet them again soon."
"At least we're together," I grin. "You think the others made it?"
"Hope so. Krim's tough as nails, Elemental is Elemental, Luc's too angry to die."
"True, he'd probably punch Death in the face if it came for him."
We walk through the tunnel, surrounded by the bright green glow, and momentarily I think I forget we're in the Facility.
"Crazy, huh?" I smirk. "Three weeks ago we were practically nobodies, and now we're surviving cave-ins and fighting monsters."
"Speak for yourself, I was always destined for greatness."
"Yeah? What were you studying again?"
"Comedy."
"Exactly."
"Hey, comedic tact builds empires."
"Only thing funny 'bout you is that face. Besides, look where it got you. Miles underground with glowing mould, psycho friends and zero connection to the Prisma Stream."
"Honestly could be worse, at least the mould matches your eyes."
"The fuck's that meant to mean? Creepy sonuvabitch. You're crazy."
"Maybe, but you'd be bored without me, and probably dead, too."
"Well, I'm glad you're still here."
"What, you gettin' sentimental on me now?"
"Oh piss off. Do you think I'm serious? Every time you say something, you jinx it."
"That's just not true," Neo protests. "What, are we gonna walk headfirst into a trap set by a psycho kill-"
I grab his shoulder and yank him back, a millisecond before he walks headfirst into the trap in front of him.
We've come out into a place where the tunnel splits off into a couple tributaries, heading in different directions - and the 'clearing' before them is shadowy and dark, deprived of moss. It's only because of the moss behind us that I was able to catch sight of the network of strings that criss-cross this whole place, reflecting the blue light in glistening wires stretching into the shadows.
"You were sayin'?" I ask.
"That's not even my fault."
"Anyone here!?" I call into the dark. "We ain't gonna kill you on sight so hellooooo?"
Something moves in the shadows, circling us, and we back up into the moss tunnel.
"It's gotta be a human, right?"
"It might be a giant flying spider's nest," Neo mutters, before I can stop him.
I flinch.
Then it comes tearing out of the shadows, a monster. Or rather, a human. A slim, agile, flexible, crazy-looking human with long, dirty, pale pink hair. She can't be any older than me, but the knives spinning in her fingers look plenty sharp.
Don't look down on me though. My reaction speed's come up several-fold after drinking that pale viper elixir.
I block the attack, and she disappears into the shadows, flittering back and forth.
"I can see her!" Neo exclaims, and jumps into the dark.
I hear two people cry out, scuffling, craping of stone against stone, and then suddenly the two of them bundle back out into the light of the moss tunnel.
We get a good look at the girl in front of us.
She has wide, wary, fiery orange-red eyes, and her pale pink hair falls down around her shoulders. There's dried blood, scrapes and grit all over her, and she looks exhausted. Did she survive here all this time alone? But what hits me the most is her face. It's not her eyes, or how pretty she is, or the ugly slash on her face.
"L…" I catch myself.
If I were to say her name out loud I'd be dead.
Because I know her. I've seen her before. She's a ghost, she's a remnant of my past life, my past life of bliss and peace, free of suffering.
She's seen it too, and he eyes widen with realization. The knife clatters from her hands.
"You… you?" her voice hits me like a gunshot.
And then for a heartbeat, I'm not there anymore. I'm in a classroom, a large, quiet classroom, with high, neon ceilings, whirring robot lab assistants, and white light. The sound of pens scratching and tapping into projector panels. A girl sitting three rows ahead, tucking pale pink hair behind her ear, always hovering somewhere around the top three in the class.
Then it's gone, torn away, and I'm back in the cold, dark, damp cave. She's still in front of me, knife at her feet, eyes wide, breathing raggedly and suffering from bad malnutrition.
"You were-" I start, but my throat locks.
If I start, I won't be able to come back. It'd make that world real again, just when I'd started to come to terms with the fact it wasn't.
I have to leave it behind.
She recognizes me, I can tell, and then for a short time it's just me and her, looking at each other. Then her lips part into a tiny smile.
"G… good to see you…"
I get what she's trying to ask, and say, "Call me Sword."
"Nyx," she manages.
Then she sways on her feet and collapses.
"Woah!" Neo gasps as he catches her. "What was all that about."
The ground feels like it's tilting. I can smell the rain, tea, home. For the first time since waking up down here, I feel like I remember that I used to belong somewhere.
But that can't do. I am me, and Reid Russel is dead and gone.
I am Sword.
***
Luckily, this time, it doesn't take several days to reunite with the others, we just go through a couple more tunnels and by chance we meet them camping out in a larger cave.
"Who's that?" Krim has asked, nodding at the girl who I'm carrying on my back.
"…a new member of our group," I decide.
Krim raises an eyebrow, but lets it slide.
"I'll trust your judgement. Put her down with Jora, she's in a pretty shitty condition."
Everyone's alive, but that doesn't mean we're unscathed.
Artee, Ronin and Kino all have bad injuries that have stacked up from being constantly on the run from Airo's group, and are finally getting some rest. Mist's injured and bleeding through her bandages, but besides the slash in her abdomen and cut hands, she's just exhausted. Krim's largely unhurt save for a few scratches, and Luc's bleeding from several places after his fight with 002 Avoma, but he's fine cuz he's Luc. Dread's arm was impaled through and through, so Jora thinks we might have to cauterize it, and Leon's got a couple of cuts from JJQ. Last of all, our top player, Elemental.
"It won't be a problem for long," he says, from where he's leaned himself against the wall. "We hunted a couple cave beetles since you can apparently make a healing tonic out of them, and with this chrona-filled air it'll repair itself quickly."
'It' was his near-shattered ribcage from fighting with Airo. 001 had really done a number on him even though they'd only fought for thirty-ish seconds.
"Is he that skilled?" I ask.
"Well… let's see. Depends how you want to define 'skilled'. There are many skilled guys here like Krim, Leon and Artee. Then, there are those who are just plain weird, like Luc, freaks of nature."
"So where'd Airo fall?"
He thinks for a minute.
"He's… different. It's difficult to say. When I fought him, at first all I thought was, 'he's fast, and he's strong'. But then, somehow, he got past my defence before I could even see it."
"Seriously?"
"Yeah, he's really not human. I wonder what he did before this Facility to become like that…" Elemental muses.
I look at him, wondering if he's really asking himself that right now. I want to ask that question too, you know. What did Elemental do before this to get that skilled at fighting? Why is Krim so good at fighting? Why is Luc so comfortable with killing and fighting? I'm not stupid to assume everyone was a nobody in their past life, no matter how they tell me they were.
Elemental sighs and closes his eyes.
"I'll be able to walk again soon. Give me, twenty minutes?"
Look at this guy. A second ago he was calling someone inhuman.
"What if Airo finds us in twenty one?" Neo asks.
"Then we all die."
Great. Love the optimism.
The air is still for once. Just the drip of water, just the sound of everyone breathing. It should be peaceful, but it isn't. This is the Facility. It goads you into thinking it's over then splits hell on your head. It waits for you to let your guard down. There's no calm before the storm, we're always in the middle of it.
It feels staged. Too quiet. Too perfect. My skin crawls.
"We should be on guard," I say.
"We all are," Leon confirms. "It's just that some of us might not have enough fight left to do anything."
Mist sits up.
"Do you… hear that?"
I freeze.
A sound, a tiny one. Like someone dragging their finger across stone, slow and deliberate.
"Water?" I ask.
Luc stands immediately, eye narrowing.
"That ain't water, dumbass. That's someone."
Krim's expression darkens instantly.
"No way Airo tracked us here…"
Dread tries pushing himself upright and winces as his arm twitches. Leon readies his dual hatchets, Artee staggers to his feet despite blood soaking his side. Everyone's edge.
The sounds stops. Silence.
A stone rolls across the floor. I don't even think.
"GET BACK!!"
Something screeches through the air, almost boring a hole through my head, and impales Ronin through the shoulder behind me, blasting him off his feet and pinning him to the wall.
"AAAAAAAAAAAAGHHH!!!" his guttural scream bounces of the walls as the team scatters.
A spear of sort. A strange, chitinous, spear.
Not thrown, but shot.
"Cro-crossbow!?" Neo whispers, ducking down as Krim and Elemental rush to get Ronin off the wall, who's already passing out.
Leon shakes his head slowly. "That came from below."
"What do you mean below?" I ask.
Luc steps towards the ledge at the far side of the cavern. The ground is uneven there - rock slopes down into black nothingness. A hole, like a tunnel opening. Something moves inside it.
Mist swears under her breath.
"That's not Airo. That's not human."
The ground vibrates and a shower of rocks fall from the ceiling. Twice. Three times.
"Earthquake?" Kino whimpers.
Then the entire cavern wall on the far side buckles and bulges with a deafening cracking noise, as though something's slamming into to it from the other side.
Elemental's eyes widen.
"No, it's tunnelling."
Another CC? No, CC's don't fire those javelin-like projectiles. That can only mean one thing. One creature on Erisen has that characteristic and we all know it.
"Oh god," Leon mutters, backing away. "Anastasia help us."
Artee's face goes pale.
"We need to move, right now."
The entire rock face explodes and something bursts through the rock.
Spiculavermis Tyrannus.
Shards of rock spray like shrapnel, and a massive skull of jagged bone plates bursts through, jaw yawning wide like a huge vacuum. It's breath hits us in a heatwave.
"THORN-CASTER!!" Mist screams.
The Tyrant of the Deep, Thorn-Caster Wyrm. Rated as a disaster in Erisen's files, an apex predator with no known enemies.
The wyrm's throat pules, and then it fires.
A bone spike the length of my whole body detonates the ground where Krim had been standing a second ago, and a second one embeds itself in the ceiling. A third scrapes against Luc's side. The cavern roof begins to collapse.
Its mandibles snap blindly in the dark as it pulls itself through into the cave, a huge, bony serpentine body, stretching far back into the rock. Luc grabs me and yanks me down as a chunk of stone the size of my torso flies overhead. Krim kicks Artee down behind a boulder, Jora's screaming. Neo yells.
"It's gonna collapse, MOVE!!"
He scoops up Nyx, who's still unconscious, and runs. The creature lashes out again, and cracks spiderweb across every inch of the cave.
We run towards the only tunnel not blocked - the one behind us, sloping downwards, wet and shining.
Artee coughs as we pound towards it.
"Where does that lead!!"
"No idea!" I yell.
"No choice!" Leon screams, and we dive headfirst into the tunnel.
Behind us, the creature slams into the cavern again, firing off bone spikes and writhing around, trying to force it's huge frame into the small cave. The ceiling collapses, dust and rock explodes outwards, and the entrance we came from is sealed instantly.
The slope is slippery and it's impossible to find a foothold.
"HANG ON TO SOMETHING!!" Luc bellows unhelpfully.
Then the floor drops under my ass and we slide down a slick slope, screaming, tumbling, hitting stones and water and each other until suddenly ice-cold water swallows me whole.
Instantly my body goes numb, but thankfully the pale viper venom kicks in and I surface, choking. The cold gets to my legs in seconds and I sink, but beside me Luc grabs my collar and hauls me up, treading water.
"D-d-don't let go," I say, spitting out the metallic water.
"Like hell I will," he grits, panting.
He swims us over to an outcrop of rock and hauls us up. I get a good look at where we are, and my eyes, accustomed to the dark, make out the shapes. We're in a vast cavern, filled with water, black, still and silent water. Mist sputters somewhere behind, Krim drags Artee from the surface, groaning, and Leon swims with one arm while holding Leon with the other.
The water ripples around us, and as I sit there, teeth chattering and body stinging, Luc dives back in like the inhuman thing he is and drags the others out, squidging us on these few rocks poking out of the water.
We breath heavily in unison for a few moments, water dripping of us, sopping wet.
"Guys," Jora whispers, voice trembling. "Where are we…?"
Elemental's breathing is ragged, lying on his back and barely conscious.
"The… lower… tunnel system…?"
Leon nods.
"The what?" I ask.
He swallows.
"The flood sector."
Silence. Far in the dark water, something shifts and a ripple rings out.