The door released with a low exhale, like it hadn't been meant to move again. Not in this age, not in this world. Cold air slipped out first, dry and weightless, untouched by rot or time. Warren felt it on his face and knew before his foot crossed the threshold: this wasn't a ruin.
This place had been sealed.
But getting here hadn't been simple.
The tunnel network that led to this point had wound like a buried spine through the forgotten undercity. Pipes veined the ceilings in crooked lines, some still dripping old condensation, others dry and cracked open like bones left in the sun. Narrow catwalks zigzagged above flooded trenches, their railings rusted to lace. At times, they'd had to crouch under low-hanging ductwork, or edge sideways through tight gaps between support pillars. Overhead, the ceiling groaned under its own weight, thick with dust and old wiring. The walls pulsed with moisture, and the constant rattle of unseen machinery echoed like distant breath.
Twists came quick, corners doubled back. Some junctions had been sealed off with emergency bulkheads, others collapsed into dead pits of rubble. Wren had traced the map like a needle following thread, recalculating every few meters, adjusting to the slant of the old city's forgotten veins.
It had taken them an hour to move the last hundred meters.
And then the final turn, one last bend through a corridor lined with broken indicator panels and sagging conduit.
Then: the door.
Warren stepped in behind her, quiet, but the shift in her breathing told him she felt it too. Her hand moved to the messenger band on her wrist, and the map projection flickered, then distorted. A visual glitch split the overlay like a torn film reel. She muttered a curse under her breath and tapped the display off.
Styll growled low and sharp.
Warren crouched beside the edge of the entryway. No rubble. No weather damage. The floor inside still held the faint outline of old rubber track lines, boot wear polished by routine. He brushed a finger across the surface. It left a clean mark.
"Old world clean," he said. "Built before all this. Whatever came after just buried it."
Wren glanced around. "Could explain the silence."
He nodded once and stepped inside.
The walls curved subtly, alloyed with some composite he didn't recognize. Light came from strips embedded in the ceiling, emergency-grade, still functional, drawing power from something buried deeper. The glow wasn't white or blue. It was warm, amber, steady. It cast everything in a muted gold that made the silence thicker.
They moved with care.
The corridor narrowed and widened unpredictably, like the architecture had been folded in on itself and forced to hold shape. Thick cables slithered through overhead slots and bulged behind wall seams. Some conduits had burst open, revealing coiled guts of fiber and copper. Metal grating covered parts of the floor, shifting slightly underfoot with a hollow groan. Vent shafts ran overhead, and every ten steps, they had to duck under low-hanging pipe brackets that loomed like rusted vertebrae.
Condensation clung to corners. The air smelled filtered but stale. Some unseen current hummed softly beneath it all, like old machines still breathing somewhere far below.
Ten meters in, her map glitched sideways. Her current location doubled, then rotated a few degrees before snapping back. She paused, staring at it.
She rotated the map manually: seven degrees counterclockwise.
The lines aligned.
Not just roughly. Perfectly. Grid to grid. Vault to node.
"It wasn't wrong," she whispered. "It was twisted."
"Not by damage," Warren said. "By design."
He froze the map mid-rotation. Studied the new route overlay. What had once appeared collapsed now formed a perfect corridor chain. Routes they'd dismissed as dead suddenly curved into new alignment. The pattern was too clean. Too intentional.
He activated Examine on the wall beside them.
Material: Composite alloy
Durability: High
Stability: Excellent
Weight: Unknown
Grip: Smooth
Fatigue Resistance: Non-relevant
Sound Signature: Dampened
Modification History: None
Origin: Unknown design
Notes: "Secure transit lattice housing."
He did acknowledge the note. It didn't feel like the usual System rot. No marketing fluff. Just information. And that, somehow, was worse.
"They built it to be lost," he said. "Unless you remembered how they saw the world."
Wren didn't say anything. She just stopped moving, head slightly tilted, like she'd heard a sound she wasn't supposed to.
Styll froze too. Her whole body went stiff, muscles locking tight under her fur. She didn't twitch. She didn't blink. Even her tail went still, low and pressed against the floor like it wanted to disappear into the ground.
Warren raised a hand and closed his fist.
Everything stopped.
Then came the sound: slow, heavy, scraping. Not echo. Not shuffle. It had weight to it. Purpose. Something big was dragging itself across old alloy like it had done it a thousand times before. Not rushing. Not searching. Just moving the way it always had.
The pressure in the air changed. Not enough to be wind. Just a presence. Like gravity remembered something.
And then it came into view. Not with suddenness. Not like a charge or a reveal. It simply arrived, stepped into the corridor with the calm certainty of something that had never once been prey.
Its body was plated in bone, but not in any natural way. The segments weren't symmetrical. They curved and layered like coral that had learned how to walk. The armor looked grown, not built. Like the world had built it piece by piece in the dark.
Its arms were too long, knuckles dragging just above the ground. The claws were heavy and flat, more like chisels than talons. They left shallow grooves in the dust with every step. Its spine curled into a thick, segmented tail that moved on its own. No muscle memory. Just instinct. At the tip: a bulb of fused bone, pitted and cracked like it had been used more than once.
It didn't lurch. It didn't tremble. Every step came slow and even, like it was marking time.
Its ribs flared outward into a shape that might have once been protective. Its shoulders rose high with overlapping plates, scarred and chipped but unbroken. From its jaw, two tusk-like horns curled forward, blunt but dense. Built to break through more than walls.
But its eyes. Its eyes moved.
Not like human eyes. Not like anything made for seeing. They streamed.
Lines of data slid across them in a steady, crawling rhythm. No flicker. No pulse. Just an unbroken scroll, like someone was watching a system console update behind its gaze. The information wasn't being read. It was being remembered.
Warren had heard the name before. Whispers passed in broken campfires. Warnings left scratched in old scav runes. Stories from scouts who never came back, or came back and never spoke again.
Data Daemon.
And now it was here.
Watching them.
Warren didn't move. He didn't breathe. His pulse stayed calm by force, not comfort.
Wren spotted it a heartbeat later. Her breath caught. Not with fear, but recognition. That kind of wrong you felt in your teeth.
It didn't step forward. It didn't lift its arms. It didn't shift its weight.
It just stood there.
Something in the air around it felt paused. Like the tunnel wasn't built to host it. Like the world hadn't accounted for this.
Styll didn't growl. She didn't blink. Her body trembled just slightly, muscles locked.
They stayed that way for a long time.
No one moved.
No one spoke.
It eventually moved on.
Eventually, Wren whispered, "Why didn't it come for us?"
Warren didn't look away. "I don't know."
She shook her head slowly. "It saw us."
He nodded, eyes still fixed on it. "Yeah. It chose not to."
Then, quieter: "They're not supposed to choose."
They moved after that, slower. More deliberate. Three alternate turns, each tighter than the last. The walls all looked the same, curved and alloyed, the metal warm with age and grime. Pipes wove in and out of the overhead seams like veins, pulsing softly with residual warmth. Some lines still vibrated faintly with pressure. Others hissed now and then with decaying breath. They ducked under sagging conduit straps and stepped over collapsed sensor braces that jutted from the floor like broken teeth.
Eventually, they came to a dome-roofed chamber. The space breathed stillness. Every sound they made was swallowed instantly.
At the far end stood a sealed bulkhead, larger than the one before. Etched in old-script, the lettering nearly erased by rust. Warren stared at it for a long moment. The language didn't register. Not translation error. Not encryption. Just too old. Too buried. Might as well have been gibberish.
He approached it slowly. No keypad. No signal prompt. Just a slotted panel set at chest height.
He touched it with his bare fingers.
A faint pulse. Not a beep. Not a glow. Just pressure. Like something released a breath in return.
Steam drifted out in a tight line, and the door edged open a quarter meter. Just enough to mark intent.
Wren stepped forward, eyes scanning the frame.
The door held. Didn't move again.
She turned to him. "Did you trigger it?"
Warren shook his head. "Didn't even breathe on it."
They both stared at the seam.
"Sensor?" Wren asked.
"Maybe. But it opened before you moved. No delay. Nothing to read," he said.
They stood there a moment longer.
"It just opened," Warren said. "Could've been a timer. Could've been a message."
He didn't believe it. But saying it helped.
They moved beyond the chamber and into the deeper stretch of the transit spine. The walls grew narrower, but the structure held. At last, the map Wren carried began to align perfectly with what they saw. For once, their eyes and the system agreed. Corridors came where expected. Angles traced as predicted. It wasn't guesswork anymore. It was something older than memory, now walking again.
At a junction shaped like a crooked Y, Warren raised a hand. Stillness.
Styll froze on cue.
Wren followed without a word.
Warren tilted his head upward.
Boots. Not the careless stomp of scavengers. Not the regimented rhythm of enforcers. Just enough weight. Just enough pause.
He motioned right. A maintenance stairwell spiraled up behind a loose grate. It hadn't been used in hundreds of years, but the metal still held. The kind of route made for emergency techs and inspectors, long erased from civilian access. They moved slow. Quiet. Every step sounded like a breath being held.
At the top, they entered a narrow catwalk with a vaulted ceiling overhead. Metal grating underfoot flexed with every step. Wren crouched low and pressed her weight forward, avoiding the worst of the creaks.
Below, the main corridor stretched out in measured ruin.
And it was occupied.
Six figures, moving tight. Synchronized. They fanned out with formation. Not instinct. Not desperation. Training.
Their gear didn't belong to scav gangs. No mismatched armor. No frayed seals or patch-taped joints. The suits were clean. Matte. Built for function. Tactical without flair.
Warren studied them in silence.
They didn't sweep high. Didn't glance up. They moved with the calm of people who believed the space belonged to them.
Below, voices cut up through the frame of the walkway. Faint, but sharp.
"…confirmed track ends at Node Delta. We push to Sector V and collapse the tunnel behind us."
"Orders are hold and deny. Vault access is priority. Anything that moves near a seam, you kill it."
The voices were calm. Not bored, but not rushed either. They spoke like people used to being obeyed.
Warren didn't move. His breath stayed low. Every detail mattered now.
One of the figures stopped beside a junction and knelt. He placed a compact device against the wall. It beeped once, silently, and he stood. No words exchanged. No gestures. Just a task performed and forgotten. Another moved to a side panel and checked a vent seal with gloved fingers. The group wasn't just moving through. They were maintaining.
A long strip of the corridor had been marked with faint tape. Dark. Hard to see unless the light hit right. It ran down the center, through the muck and ash, and disappeared under the next arch.
Warren narrowed his eyes. That line wasn't for navigation. It was for denial. Controlled collapse, maybe. Mine placement. Or something worse.
The tallest one, had a different walk. Not faster. Heavier. His boots didn't echo. Too much padding. That meant recent manufacture. Not scavenger reuse.
He reached a corner junction, pulled something from his hip, and slotted it into a wall recess. The metal hummed faintly.
Wren leaned close. Voice barely more than breath.
"Not scav. Not raider."
Warren nodded. He kept watching. "Too clean for scav. Too rough for enforcers. Something in between."
One of them coughed. Not sick. Just clearing dust. Another elbowed him sharply in the side, a silent reprimand. The cougher nodded once and resumed formation. Discipline. Not camaraderie.
Warren shifted slightly to get a better angle. Their lances weren't standard. Not hand lances. Shorter. Cleaner. Flash-dampened and barrel-weighted. Designed for tight quarters.
A few bore wrist-mounted lights, but they kept them off. One had a small blade at his shoulder, a garotte. Curved and notched. Good for hooking through soft joints. The same man carried what looked like a garrote in a loop near his belt clasp.
"Hit squad," Warren muttered. "Not a recon team."
Wren didn't answer. Her eyes were narrowed, fingers light on the edge of the catwalk. She was watching the way they moved. Not just the gear, but the rhythm.
They didn't rush. They didn't dawdle. Their pace was consistent and sharp.
"They're trained for something more than this," she whispered. "Not local. Not anyone from down here."
Warren didn't answer right away. His eyes stayed locked on the squad's vanishing forms.
He knew the signs. These weren't local mercs or half-starved scav contracts. And they didn't move like Zone enforcers either. Their gear was better. Their posture tighter. They didn't talk unless it was to give instructions, and no one second-guessed a command. Whoever they were, they didn't come from down here.
maybe from the Wilds. Not from the Yellow zones. And definitely not from any scav route he'd crossed.
It didn't mean they were from the Green Zone.
But it didn't mean they weren't either.
Warren frowned. "Whoever they are, they were sent. This isn't freelance."
Wren kept watching the hatch they disappeared through. Her voice was low. "You think they're guarding the Vault?"
"Could be," he said. "Or trying to reach it before someone else does."
She turned her head slightly toward him. "Like us."
He didn't argue.
Below, the one in the rear paused. He was younger. Shorter. But still composed. He tapped something into his wrist unit, then looked up. Briefly. Just a flick of the eyes.
Warren went still.
The man didn't look again. He kept walking.
"Could've been a flicker," Wren said.
"Could've been a tell," Warren answered.
Styll didn't move. Her body had become part of Warren's shadow. She didn't need to be told what this was.
The squad vanished through a double-hinged hatch at the far end of the corridor. Two of them scanned it first. No sound when it opened. No codes. Just clean movement.
Then they were gone.
The corridor narrowed into a service throat, a tight bend with ribbed conduits running along both sides. Wren moved ahead, quick but not quiet. Her shoulder clipped a valve and it let out a wet hiss. Warren stayed close, truncheon loose in his hand, eyes scanning every overhead pipe.
The ceiling gave a low groan.
Not metal strain. Not echo.
Weight.
He opened his mouth to warn her, but something dropped.
It landed on Wren hard, claws raking across her back as it slammed her down into a spill of grease and grit. Her scream was muffled by concrete. She thrashed on instinct. One elbow connected. The other missed. Her foot kicked out. Struck a wall. Her breath came back as a cough.
Styll shrieked inside the coat.
Warren lunged. He swung blind and fast. The first hit caught the thing mid-twist. Long limbs. Bent spine. Twitching from the impact. A Leaper. No pause. No growl. Just motion and violence.
Wren scrambled out from under it, but slipped on her own blood. Her boot caught on exposed cable, spun her sideways, and she hit the wall shoulder-first with a crunch.
The Broken turned and pounced again.
Warren met it mid-leap. The impact knocked both of them into a crumpled bin, sending old tools and a corroded canister skittering across the floor. Warren shoved up with his shoulder and jammed the truncheon into its chest. It snarled. Didn't slow.
Another shape hit the corridor.
Wren screamed as claws nicked her leg. She kicked out, caught only air, then grabbed a chunk of paneling from the floor and threw it without looking. It hit something. A crack. Then a thud.
She tried to rise, slipped again. Her hip hit the floor. She dragged herself back by the edge of a vent.
Warren smashed the truncheon down, but the Leaper on him twisted too fast and the hit glanced off its shoulder. The movement wasn't instinct, it was chaos. The kind that didn't learn or react, just lashed out on pure static impulse.
The third landed behind them. Claws scraping, limbs bending at odd angles. It twitched like it didn't know which of them to kill first.
Wren charged it. Not with a plan. Just rage.
She slammed into it shoulder-first. They hit the wall together. Her elbow jammed into its ribs. Its claws found her arm. She headbutted it hard. Stars burst in her vision.
It shrieked. Static.
She screamed back.
They fell together, knees and fists and teeth. It bit her forearm. She bit back. Her face hit the floor. She grabbed whatever was near, a pipe bracket, and smashed it into the side of its jaw.
Warren kicked the first one away and slipped on a puddle of fluid. He hit the ground hard. Lost the truncheon. Rolled left. Right. Didn't know where it went.
Styll launched. A streak of fur and claws. She landed on the new one's face, shrieking like static, tearing at its eyes.
It ran backward blind, slammed into a conduit, but she held.
Wren crawled forward. Every joint burned. She picked up a strip of shattered paneling. Tried to stab. Dropped it. Grabbed it again.
Warren wrestled with the second Leaper. They rolled over blood and rust. Its knee jammed into his stomach. He clawed at its face. It sank teeth into his collar. He screamed.
Wren finally drove the pipe through something.
It convulsed.
She screamed too.
Warren threw his weight sideways, slammed the thing into a control box. Sparks flew. He grabbed an old socket wrench from the floor and smashed it into the Leaper's hand. Again. Again.
It let go.
He drove his elbow into its jaw. His arm went numb.
The third staggered toward Wren. She threw a bucket at it. Missed. It slipped on the spilled blood and crashed into the wall.
Warren found his truncheon. Grabbed it. Swung once. Hit pipe. Again. Hit flesh.
Styll dropped off the one she'd blinded. Landed between it and Warren. She growled, back arched.
Wren kicked at the one near her feet. It caught her leg. She screamed. She kicked again. Harder. Bone cracked. It let go.
She stood. Stumbled. Grabbed a shard of rebar.
It lunged.
She hit it in the throat.
It kept coming.
She screamed, dropped the bar, wrapped both hands around its skull, and slammed it into the floor.
Once.
Twice.
It twitched.
She collapsed. Her hands slipped on the floor, wet with blood and grit. She didn't fall gracefully. She hit shoulder-first and rolled to her side, curling around the ache like it might keep her alive.
Warren limped toward the last one. His knee buckled, steadied, then buckled again. The Leaper was crawling now. One arm useless, legs twisted under it like a discarded doll. It didn't hiss. Didn't screech. It just dragged forward as if nothing had changed.
He raised the truncheon.
The creature looked up at him. Its eyes, cracked and leaking black fluid, didn't blink. Not in fear. Just in recognition.
He brought it down.
Once. The skull dented.
Twice. The bones caved.
A third time, out of instinct. Not need.
Then he dropped beside Wren. He didn't sit. He collapsed, body folding in on itself with no ceremony, no choice. His truncheon rolled across the floor, out of reach. He didn't go after it.
His breath came in short, wet gasps. Something in his side felt wrong. Not sharp. Just wrong.
Styll stood between them, tiny frame arched, fur slicked with gore. Her eyes didn't blink. She made a sound in her throat, low and steady. A warning to anything else that might come.
Neither of them could stand. Not yet. Their limbs felt like sacks of lead, twitching with pain and half-fired nerves.
The corridor stank of blood, oil, piss, and static. The scent had weight to it. It clung to the back of their throats. Thick. Real.
Wren's arm was bleeding. Not deep. But ugly. She watched it without seeing. Just breathing. Just being.
Warren shifted once. Groaned. Not pain. Just the sound a body makes when it's deciding whether to move again.
Nothing else moved.
Not the lights. Not the walls. Not the air.
The fight hadn't ended so much as collapsed in on itself.
They stayed that way for a long time.
They stood there, both breathing like they'd run miles. Blood smeared their arms, their boots, the floor.
Warren looked over at Wren.
"Didn't think you'd go for the jaw," he said.
"I didn't think you'd let me get hit," she shot back, then grinned through the sweat.
He didn't smile. Not exactly.
"You're not fighters," he said.
"No. But we fight for each other."
He nodded, glanced at Styll. "She does too."
He crouched beside the nearest corpse, already cooling. No hesitation. His knife came out clean and fast. He cut at the base of the neck, fingers moving slow and deliberate, careful and practiced.
He sliced it open by feel. One fragment. He wrapped it in cloth.
Second body. Same approach. No pause for blood, no distraction for wounds. Just a clean angle and practiced movement. Fragment came out without struggle. Wrapped in cloth. No commentary.
Third corpse was twisted under the bulk of collapsed conduit. Warren adjusted his grip, braced a knee, and cut through the neck channel in one line. Third fragment.
He didn't study them. Didn't react.
He wrapped them and moved.
He passed the bundle to Wren.
"Three," he said. "We'll get you a chip."
She blinked. "What?"
"You'll need it," he said. "Class shards need six. This is a start."
Wren looked at the fragments, then at him.
"Thought you didn't want me chipped."
"I don't," he said. "But I don't want you dead more."
Warren stood. "Class shards need six. This is three. We'll get the rest."
Wren looked at the fragments again. Then closed her fingers around them.
"Okay."
But Warren made a mental note:
Leapers.
Too fast. Too quiet. No warning.
And next time, they'd need to be faster.