The surface was never a destination.
It was an infection.
When Carmarie stepped onto the ascending platform, she did not feel as though she were being lifted toward the world—she felt summoned. The metal beneath her boots locked in stages, each mechanical click echoing through her chest as if the base itself were counting her pulse. Pressure shifted inside her helmet. The air grew thinner, colder, heavier all at once. The lights dimmed like pupils closing.
The city waited above them.
Not quietly.
Not gently.
It waited like something wounded that had learned patience.
Behind her, Unit Ten aligned in silence. Every movement was mechanical, drilled into muscle and reflex, into the kind of obedience that survived even when will did not. Idris sealed his visor with a single clean motion. Faerun cracked his knuckles as if reminding himself that he still possessed fingers. Lindra recalibrated her rifle without looking up. Riven muttered a curse half-disguised as breath. Siren stood unnaturally still.
Carmarie did not speak.
Something inside her had already begun whispering.
The platform shuddered.
Locks disengaged.
The shield peeled back.
And light poured in like a wound being reopened.
The surface unfolded above them not as skyline, but as collapse. Towers leaned into one another like broken witnesses. Streets split in directions geometry refused to justify. Vehicles lay melted into walls, glass congealed like frozen tears. The air shimmered with something neither smoke nor fog. The sky had no color left to remember itself in.
Command's voice descended down into the hollow just ahead of gravity:
"Unit Ten, proceed.Primary objective: reconnaissance.Secondary objective: containment.Return alive."
A lie disguised as protocol.
The platform dropped.
Wind clawed at Carmarie's armor. Sound fractured around her as gravity seized her body and hurled her toward the city like an offering.
She hit hard—rolled—rose—
her rifle already in position.
Dust exploded upward at her landing, thick and ancient. The taste of rust invaded her mouth. The others landed around her in staggered rhythm: Idris ahead, Faerun to the left, Lindra pivoting to flank, Riven coughing behind, Siren touching down without sound.
The city breathed.
Not metaphorically.
Literally.
Currents of air slithered between buildings like something exhaling through broken teeth.
Carmarie raised a hand.
"Visual check."
"All green," Faerun confirmed.
"Still intact," Riven added with a nervous laugh.
"Six heartbeats," Lindra murmured. "Measure time in those now."
Carmarie stepped forward.
And the city noticed.
Not with eyes.
With recognition.
A pressure bloomed behind her temples. The air changed, thickened. The taste of dust deepened into something darker. A sensation spread through her bones like static.
Then—
a voice inside her skull.
Cold. Clear. Unmistakable.
"You are not alone."
She did not stop walking.
She did not turn.
She did not flinch.
Mikel.She did not speak his name.
When were you ever?" she thought.
The reply slid into her mind like ice down her spine.
"Since the day you stopped believing silence meant safety."
Her muscles tightened.
"What do you see?"
She expected words.
Instead—she received instability.
Territorial distortions.Buried signals.Silent energy lines threading beneath the street like veins.
"Listening systems," Mikel said. "Below the ruins."
"Listening to what?"
"To you."
Her breath caught.
Her gaze dropped.
The pavement beneath her boots was twisted and cracked, but ordinary at first glance.
And utterly wrong the moment she felt it.
Everything beneath their feet was alive.
Faerun stiffened.
"Movement."
The shadows across the street thickened.
Separated.
Stood up.
The city unpeeled its memories.
Bodies—almost human.
Limbs bent wrong.
Faces unfinished.
Eyes too many or absent.
Flesh scarred by architecture, bone fused into metal.
The first creature moved without walking.
It slid.
Its body following rules the world no longer obeyed.
Siren whispered, her voice shriveling:
"…What are they?"
Riven swallowed.
"Whatever we buried."
The creature drifted closer.
Carmarie raised her rifle.
Faerun fired.
The round passed through one body…and struck something screaming behind it that did not exist.
The creature did not slow.
Did not falter.
Riven fired twice.
Bullets settled inside flesh that did not respond to damage.
Lindra cursed.
"Fall back!"
Siren screamed—and collapsed.
Something wrapped around her ankle and yanked.
Carmarie reacted.
Three shots.
The tendril burst like soaked fabric.
Siren shrieked as Idris dragged her backward.
The city craned forward.
More shapes emerged from the walls.
The windows.
The cracks in the sky.
The world exhaled filth.
Mikel's voice sharpened.
"They do not respond to weapons.
They respond to intention."
Carmarie hesitated.
Then lowered her rifle.
Idris screamed:
"What are you doing?!"
She did not answer.
She stepped forward.
The city inhaled.
A creature lunged.
Its face split open in a dozen useless mouths.
Carmarie raised her hand.
Not to strike.
To remember.
The world stuttered.
The creature froze.
Shuddered.
Then collapsed inward like a dying thought.
Not screaming.
Not fighting.
Relieved.
Faerun stared.
"Carm—"
She walked again.
More creatures recoiled.
Not in fear.
In recognition.
Mikel whispered:
"You are not killing them.
You are reminding them."
"Of what?" she breathed.
"Of being human."
The city convulsed.
Something deep beneath them shifted.
The earth groaned like a sleeper finally turning.
"Move," Mikel snapped.
"Where?!"
"Nowhere is safe.
But staying is death."
The ground tore open.
Not collapsing—
Opening.
The street cracked into a wound.
Darkness surged upward like a swallowing mouth.
Riven vanished without sound.
Faerun screamed his name.
The ground yawned again.
Siren slipped.
Idris caught her.
Carmarie lunged for Idris.
The city roared.
And then—
down.
They fell.
Not into earth.
Into absence.
The surface closed above them without noise.
And forgot.
They struck something that was not solid.
Not rock.
Not floor.
Not air.
A world that offered resistance only to erase it again.
Carmarie hit sideways, rolled, struck rubble that felt disturbingly warm.
Her visor cracked.
Light blinked out.
Darkness rushed in like fluid.
The place beneath them breathed.
She gasped.
Coughed.
The air tasted like rot and hospitals.
Like endings.
"Mikel," she whispered.
No reply.
Panic tried to climb her ribs.
She pushed herself upright.
Pain arrived.
Bright and merciless.
The beam from her cracked flashlight ignited the dark.
And revealed the city's insides.
They had not fallen beneath it.
They had fallen into it.
The walls curved not like stone—
but like ribs.
Veins pulsed through the architecture.
Pipes throbbed faintly, beating like hearts half-remembered.
The air hummed as though thick with unshed speech.
"Idris?" she whispered.
A pause.
Then:
"…Carmarie."
Relief stabbed her.
She moved toward him.
Found him leaning against something that felt disturbingly organic.
Blood streaked one side of his face.
But he breathed.
Siren stumbled out of the dark minutes later.
White.
Shaking.
Alive.
Riven and Faerun did not return.
Their names hung unanswered.
The city did not acknowledge questions.
They walked.
Silently.
As if sound itself might wake something bigger.
The corridors twisted on geometry that seemed allergic to logic. Some curved upward into nothing. Others opened flat and wide like throats waiting to eat prayers.
Every step echoed twice.
Once as a sound.
Once as if the city were rehearsing their movements.
Siren whispered:
"I feel like the walls are watching."
Idris shook his head.
"They are listening."
Carmarie stayed quiet.
Because she felt something worse.
The absence in her head.
"Mikel," she thought.
Still nothing.
They entered a chamber so wide the flashlight failed to reach its edges.
The floor was glass-smooth.
Black.
Light died in it.
Something moved beneath its surface.
Immense.
Slow.
Like dreams beneath ice.
Siren sobbed.
"Carm… look…"
The walls were embedded with bodies.
Human.
Frozen.
Hands stretched outward.
Faces trapped mid-moment.
Mouths open.
Not screaming.
Paused between remembering how.
Idris swallowed.
"Generation One…"
Carmarie approached one.
Touched its face.
The chamber collapsed inward.
Her vision imploded.
White consumed her.
The world folded into itself.
And Mikel returned—
not gently—
as flood.
Her skull filled with images.
Children in restraints.
Machines humming through bone.
Names erased.
Bodies archived as data.
Then his voice burned across her consciousness:
"You touched the archive."
She choked.
"Where were you?!"
His presence surged like a shield and storm intertwined.
"I was always here.
You were the one too far away to hear."
Her vision snapped back.
Idris knelt beside her.
"You collapsed."
The truth clawed up her throat.
"He's here," she whispered.
They stared.
"Who?" Siren asked.
Carmarie didn't answer her.
She looked at the city.
"At him."
Mikel spoke through her:
"This place is not a ruin.
It is a coffin built from regret."
Something moved under the floor.
The bodies embedded in the walls glowed.
Faint.
Blue.
They began to shift.
Eyes flickered open.
One by one.
They stepped free—not in flesh, not in bone—
but memory wearing shape.
Dozens.
Hundreds.
They did not attack.
They knelt.
The city bowed with them.
Carmarie stood.
Her knees shook.
Her heart pounded like prophecy.
"Why… are they watching me?"
Mikel whispered:
"They remember you.
From before you forgot."
The ground opened again.
Slow.
Gentle.
A staircase revealed itself.
Leading downward.
Into something older than fear.
Mikel spoke her name not as sound.
As belonging.
"If you go down there—you won't come back whole."
Carmarie took the first step.
Then the next.
Idris followed.
Siren followed.
The city closed above them.
Like a mouth.
Carmarie descended toward the place where Mikel had ended.
And something else began.