My hand tightened instinctively on my multi-tool as I stepped across the threshold into the shimmering temporal distortion. The boundary felt… wrong. Not solid, not liquid, but like pushing through a membrane of staticky, vibrating air that tasted faintly of ozone and burnt pennies. The high-pitched whine intensified, drilling directly into my skull, bypassing my ears entirely, resonating in my teeth like a dentist's drill gone rogue.
The world dissolved.
Not into darkness, but into a kaleidoscope of impossible colors and fragmented sensations, like a broken TV cycling through channels too fast to comprehend. For a fraction of a second, maybe less, maybe an eternity, time fractured, bleeding into itself. I felt an overwhelming sensation of cold, colder than the Undercroft's damp chill, a bone-deep, soul-level frost that made my teeth ache. Simultaneously, a phantom warmth, like unexpected sunlight on skin, brushed my face. It was an utterly alien sensation down here, a phantom reminder of a world that felt increasingly distant.
A cacophony of sounds assaulted me: snippets of laughter in a language I didn't recognize, echoing alongside the sharp ping of a specific error chime from my old office desktop, the sound bizarrely comforting and terrifying at once, a Pavlovian trigger for existential dread.
Then, a single, vivid image flashed behind my eyes – not a memory I recognized, not a hallucination I could dismiss, but something else. A brief, subliminal glimpse of hands: slender, pale hands, turning a delicate, silver locket in the light, opening it to reveal… nothing. Just an empty, shadowed space where a picture should be. The feeling associated with it was overwhelming loss, poignant and sharp, cutting through the static of my corrupted mind with unnerving clarity, entirely disconnected from my own experiences.
Whose memory was THAT? And why did it feel so… important?
Just as abruptly as it began, it ended. I stumbled forward, spat out from the distortion like a bad byte, my boots hitting solid, damp rock on the other side.
My knees buckled. I gasped, leaning heavily against the tunnel wall, head spinning violently. Vertigo slammed into me like a physical blow. The metallic taste in my mouth was stronger, thicker. A warm trickle ran from my nose, swiping at it confirmed it was blood. Minor nosebleed. Great. Add that to the list of cognitive damage symptoms.
"Whoa there, Debugger!" Anya steadied me with a hand on my arm, her grip surprisingly strong. "Easy. Deep breaths." Her own face was pale, a slight sheen of sweat on her brow despite the chill air. The transit hadn't been pleasant for her either.
Leo looked similarly green around the gills, leaning against the opposite wall. "Felt like… like being inside-out for a second," he mumbled, rubbing his temples.
Cipher, predictably, stood perfectly still, cyan lenses impassive, seemingly unaffected. "Temporal displacement nominal," the filtered voice stated. "Residual disorientation is a common physiological response. Recommend brief stabilization period before proceeding."
Stabilization sounded fantastic. Right now, stabilizing felt like trying to nail jelly to a wall. The visual static behind my eyes had coalesced into a new, unwelcome pattern. Instead of random noise, I kept seeing a specific string of characters – [ERR: SYNC_FAILURE_7G] – flickering phantom-like over surfaces, superimposed on Anya's face, on the tunnel walls, vanishing when I tried to focus on it. It wasn't just random hallucination, it felt targeted, specific. Like a persistent pop-up ad from hell, directly related to the SOS signal I'd found. Was the temporal jump somehow… exacerbating a connection? Or was my damaged brain just latching onto the last significant piece of anomalous data I'd processed?
I didn't mention the recurring error code. Explaining visual hallucinations probably wouldn't boost team confidence right now. Just focused on breathing, trying to push down the nausea and the relentless throb behind my eyes.
"Any… anomalies?" I asked, forcing the words out, my voice sounding distant even to myself. "Anything different on this side?"
Leo, recovering faster, immediately started scanning our surroundings, his attention latching onto details. "The… the drip," he said slowly, pointing towards a spot on the ceiling where water had been steadily dripping before we entered the distortion. "It stopped. Completely dry there now. But," he shifted his gaze slightly further down the tunnel, "there's a new drip over there. Different spot, slightly different rhythm."
Anya frowned, playing her light on both spots. "Could be coincidence. Watercourses shift down here."
"Maybe," Leo conceded, "but look at this too." He indicated a small pile of rubble near the wall, just past where Cipher stood. "That specific piece of rebar, the bent one on top? I noticed it just before we went through because it reminded me of a faulty truss design. It was lying flat. Now it's tilted upwards slightly. Nothing significant fell on it, the dust pattern is undisturbed otherwise."
Subtle. Tiny. But impossible according to linear time and cause-and-effect. We hadn't just passed through the distortion, we'd emerged into a reality that was fractionally different. Maybe by minutes? Seconds? Enough for a water drip to shift, for a piece of rebar to settle differently. Enough to make my skin crawl.
Cipher tilted their head slightly, their lenses perhaps focusing on the rebar Leo indicated. "Minor environmental variance noted," their voice was flat, offering no explanation or concern. "Within acceptable deviation parameters for localized temporal instability. Does not affect optimal path."
"Right," Anya muttered, clearly unnerved despite Cipher's nonchalance. "Acceptable deviation." She checked her scanner again. "Energy readings here are stable, though. Whatever caused the distortion seems localized behind us." She looked back towards the shimmering ripple, now maybe twenty feet away. "Good. Let's put some distance between us and that temporal migraine-machine."
She took point again, moving deeper into the winding, water-worn passage. Leo fell in behind her, casting one last look at the tilted rebar. I followed, trying to ignore the persistent [ERR: SYNC_FAILURE_7G] flickering at the edge of my vision like a taunting ghost. My SP remained stubbornly at [SP: 1/80 ERROR]. The brief, jarring transit hadn't magically reset anything.
The tunnel continued its meandering path. Cipher remained silent, occasionally pausing to indicate a loose patch of rock or a fissure leading nowhere, guiding us with minimalist efficiency. Leo kept pointing out subtle details like changes in rock strata, old drill marks, ventilation shafts long since collapsed. Anya remained focused, alert, navigating the path Cipher indicated but clearly double-checking against her own knowledge or instincts.
And me? I focused on walking. Focused on breathing. Focused on not mentioning the error code stubbornly refusing to leave my vision. Focused on the cold certainty that whatever waited for us back at the maintenance junction, or further down these tunnels, I was going to be facing it with a brain that felt increasingly like it was running on corrupted drivers and sheer, desperate willpower. Assistance required? Damn right it was. But trusting Cipher, this walking enigma who knew too much and felt too little, felt like swapping one critical error for another, potentially fatal one.