"So, how does this Reaktor work?"
"What?"
Lovegrove's mind was adrift, buried under the weight of his own thoughts. He blinked, the phantom light in his hollow eyes flickering as he pulled himself back to the present.
Adrien repeated the question, leaning in. "How does it work? I mean, you're the foremost expert on the Devonians. You've had millennia to study their secrets as a ghost."
Lovegrove let out a long, thready sigh—a sound like dry autumn leaves scraping across stone. "I am knowledgeable, yes—more than most. But while eternity allows a man to observe many things, it does not grant omniscience. Still, I will tell you what I can."
Adrien leaned forward, a spark of eagerness catching in his chest, as he watched the old spirit intently, waiting for the NPC to share his knowledge.
"Have you heard of the Living Fluid Theory?" Lovegrove asked, his voice dropping to a gravelly whisper.
"No."
"It was theorised after we unearthed the remnants of the Devonians and the empires that fell alongside them. Energy flows through this planet like blood through veins. The Devonians found a way to bleed the earth. By binding their metallurgy with forgotten runes, they forged the Reaktor to siphon that pulse." Lovegrove's expression darkened, the spectral lines on his face tightening. "As for the exact mechanics of how it tames that force? My understanding is shallow."
Adrien felt a sudden chill. "I just hope the damn thing doesn't blow up."
"If it does, look on the bright side," Lovegrove murmured, a dry, rattling chuckle vibrating in his throat. "You can join me. We can haunt these ruins together."
The memory vanished, dissolving into the freezing, suffocating reality of the present.
Adrien's heart hammered against his ribs like a trapped bird. He was wedged high above the corridor floor, his spine pressed painfully against the jagged, cracked ceiling. His hands and boots braced desperately against the opposing rock faces, his muscles trembling violently from the strain. Every instinct screamed at him to slip, to let go, to breathe.
But he couldn't, as beneath him lay a group of nightmarish arachnids—nesting in the shadows. The air was thick with the foul stench and clicking sound of shifting mandibles. One wrong move, one dropped bead of sweat, and he would plunge straight into the twitching mass.
Adrien caught sight of Lovegrove poking his torso through the solid wall. The spirit raised a hand, signalling that the coast was clear, and gave a faint thumbs-up. A heavy wave of relief washed over Adrien.
'The room is empty, he thought, his muscles burning fiercely. Thank god. I can't hang like this for another second. My arms are completely spent.'
Using every ounce of his remaining strength, he edged toward the doorway. He let his body drop from the ceiling, but before gravity could drag him to the floor, his fingers snapped around the upper casing of the doorframe. Drawing his legs up tightly, he used the momentum to swing himself cleanly through the opening, landing softly on the other side.
Lovegrove gave a slow, impressed nod, silently commending Adrien's desperate acrobatics. But fate, it seemed, had other plans.
Inside the main chamber, Vera's countdown finally hit the mark. She slammed her hand down onto the activation button. Under normal circumstances, a few blinking lights would have gone unnoticed. Instead, a massive klaxon suddenly tore through the air, its wail deafening.
With all the subtlety of a rogue bull in a china shop, the siren shattered the ancient silence of the ruins. It was an unmistakable dinner bell, announcing to every monstrous creature in the depths exactly where the intruders were hiding.
"You absolute piece of garbage!" Adrien roared in fury at the blaring speaker. "When this is over, I am smashing you to pieces!"
There was no time to waste, and as the first scratching sounds echoed from the corridor, Adrien threw his entire weight against the heavy control room door. It moved with an agonisingly slow, metallic groan. Gritting his teeth, he managed to slam it shut and throw the latch just as the first heavy bodies began to thud violently against the other side.
Adrien bolted across the room toward a heavy cast-iron wheel, gripping the cold metal and throwing his weight into it. It barely budged.
'Ugh, I wish someone had thought to grease these gears,' he grumbled internally, his boots skidding against the stone floor. 'I have a laundry list of complaints for the sadist who designed this place.'
He threw his shoulder into the wheel. Slowly, reluctantly, a rusted gauge needle began to crawl upward. The moment it ticked past the red threshold, Adrien let go, lunged across the floor to a nearby console, and violently twisted a dial. Without missing a beat, he sprinted back to the wheel, hauling on it once more. He repeated the frantic sequence twice more, his breath catching in his throat, before finally smashing his palm down onto a primary toggle switch.
Thuk... Thuk.. Thuk. Thud. Thud.
The small auxiliary generator coughed, shuddered, and roared to an uneven life. A few auxiliary bulbs flickered weakly overhead, while a cluster of overhead relays died outright, spitting angry sparks and acrid grey smoke.
"I powered the damn thing up!" Adrien shouted over the mechanical din. "What now, Professor?"
"Quickly! You have to pump the secondary lever!" Lovegrove called back, his spectral voice cutting through the noise.
"Pump it?"
"Yes! Push and pull! Cycle the pressure!"
Adrien skated across the grit-covered floor toward the massive iron lever Lovegrove was pointing at. He grabbed the handle and hauled downward with everything he had.
It didn't move an inch.
'Of course,' he thought, bitter panic rising in his chest. 'One nightmare after another.'
Behind him, the splintering thuds and guttural screeching against the control room door grew louder, more frantic. Under normal circumstances, Adrien might have trusted solid engineering. But these ruins were ancient. The wood and metal had survived millennia, and there was no telling exactly when the structural integrity would give out completely.
With no tools and fewer choices, Adrien leapt up and grabbed the top of the handle, letting his entire body weight hang from the lever.
"What in the world are you doing, Adrien?" Lovegrove protested, his ghostly face tightening with alarm. "Stop that! You are going to snap the mechanism!"
"Then what else am I supposed to do to make this rusted piece of junk move?!" Adrien fired back, his knuckles turning white.
With a deafening, metallic shriek, the frozen joint finally yielded. A terrible grinding sound of ancient gears echoed from the floorboards. Gritting his teeth, Adrien dropped his feet back to the ground, braced his stance, and shoved the lever back upward. A sharp, burning ache shot through his shoulders, but he ignored it, forcing the mechanism through its cycle.
Vera stared hard at the crumpled instruction sheet Adrien had scribbled down under Lovegrove's frantic guidance. She had already memorised every step, yet she was utterly stuck. Her hand hovered over the console, waiting for a specific indicator to wake up. Until it did, all she could do was sit there, actively fighting the urge to look into the suffocating shadows stretching across the corners of the room.
The waiting was the worst part. It gave her mind too much room to spiral. She had no way of knowing if Adrien had actually made it to his station in time, or if he was already dead, cornered by the things lurking out there in the dark.
Suddenly, a small indicator bulb on the dashboard began to blink, casting a rhythmic amber glow across her face.
Vera sprang into action. She twisted a sequence of heavy dials and pulled a master breaker straight back. In response, a vertical column of bright green status lights flashed to life on the adjacent panel.
"Good luck to us both," she whispered to the empty room, her voice barely audible over her own racing heartbeat. "I hope we make it out of this alive."With trembling but deliberate movements, she began flipping the green toggle switches down, one by one.
This ancient terminal functioned as the primary junction box for the entire sector. By cutting the emergency power lines, she was systematically severing the link between the main Reaktor and the individual outer grids. It was a terrifying but necessary gamble; if the power grid wasn't fully isolated before the Reaktor was fully engaged, the resulting energy surge would rip through the ancient machinery and trigger a catastrophic overload.
But her success came with a horrifying caveat.
The arachnids naturally avoided the light, and for years, the faint, artificial glow of the underground city had been the only thin barrier keeping the swarm at bay. Now, as Vera cut the grid sector by sector, those defensive lights flickered and died. She was effectively rolling out a welcome mat for a ravenous horde—plunging the ruins into absolute blackness and leaving them completely defenceless.
A distant, low rumble echoed through the complex, rapidly swelling into a deafening crescendo. It was the sound of the swarm rushing into the newly darkened sectors—flooding into areas that, until just a moment ago, had been completely impassable to them.
Vera instinctively backed away from the console, her boots scraping lightly against the floorboards. She retreated until her shoulder blades hit the solid wall. Sliding down against the cold wall, she drew her knees tight to her chest. Her knuckles turned white around the grip of her firearm, her thumb resting on the safety. She positioned herself at a careful angle, her eyes darting frantically between the ventilation duct overhead and the main doorway, while still keeping the primary dashboard within her line of sight.
The darkness seemed to press against her chest, heavy and suffocating.
'Adrien, please hurry,' she thought, her breath hitching as a faint, skittering sound echoed somewhere nearby. 'I really hate the dark.'