Chapter 66: Deeper.
『"Dig in a little deeper..."』
The descent into Level One felt like entering a throat.
The stairwell was narrow, claustrophobic, walls pressing in from both sides as they moved single-file down corroded metal steps.
It reeked of decay and something else, something sweet and sickly that made Amara’s stomach turn and her throat close reflexively.
They moved in a tight formation through the darkness. The walls were covered in something that looked disturbingly organic.
Black tendrils spread across concrete and steel like veins through diseased flesh, pulsing with rhythmic movement that suggested respiration.
The corruption wasn’t just coating the surfaces, it was transforming them, breaking down artificial materials and replacing them with something else entirely.
"What the hell is that?" Hiro whispered, his voice echoing strangely in the confined space.
"Corruption," Yelena answered quietly from the rear guard position. "The spawn are transforming environment. They make it more... hospitable for themselves. More like home."
"That’s absolutely disgusting," Sophia muttered, carefully avoiding touching the walls as they descended. "Like walking through someone’s intestines."
"Could you not with the imagery?" Hiro asked. "I was doing okay until you said that."
The corruption grew thicker with every step down, black tendrils covering every surface now, pulsing with something that looked disturbingly like breathing, expanding and contracting in slow rhythm.
Amara led with Angel’s Bane manifested, the black blade’s faint glow, another source of light besides Maya’s lantern. Each step that echoed was swallowed almost immediately by oppressive silence.
"I do not care for this," Hiro whispered from behind Sophia.
"Oh joy, another thing you don’t care for," Sophia replied plainly.
Amara almost smiled as she walked. Hiro’s nervous chatter was both annoying and comforting. As long as he was talking, complaining, or making terrible jokes, they were still okay. The day Hiro went silent was the day they should truly worry.
Then the stairwell opened into Level Two proper, and all humor died.
The platform was smaller than Level One, older, more decrepit even before the corruption. This had been one of Tokyo’s abandoned stations, scheduled for demolition before the Malice attack made it irrelevant.
Now it was something else entirely.
Amara took point, her muscles tensed. Each step felt like descending deeper into something alive, something aware.
The corruption here was complete. Tiles that had once covered the floor were entirely engulfed, replaced by pulsing black organic material that rippled like water when they stepped on it.
Support pillars were warped beyond recognition, metal twisted into weird shapes.
And the smell. God, the smell was exponentially worse here. Rot and sweetness and something chemical that made Amara’s eyes water.
"This is fucked," Raj whispered.
"Nothing about this is right," Ethan added.
"Spreading faster than projections indicated," Maya murmured, her lantern casting long shadows. "This level should’ve been clear according to our scans."
"Scans were wrong," Yelena said flatly, her blades already drawn. "Something is accelerating corruption process."
Raj manifested his full breastplate that covered his shoulder as well and pounded both fists together. "We pushing through or falling back?"
"We push," Amara decided, though her stomach twisted with anxiety. "Objective’s still Level Three. We can’t turn back every time things look bad."
"Famous last words," Hiro muttered, but he fell into formation anyway.
They moved deeper into Level Two, past abandoned ticket booths and vending machines that had long since stopped working. The corruption here had transformed everything.
What had once been a functioning subway station now looked like the inside of some massive organism. Walls breathed, floor pulsed like it was alive, and the air itself felt thick and resistant.
Sophia stopped suddenly, her right hand went to the side of her helmet-covered head. "Wait. Something’s—"
Before she could finish, the floor erupted.
Spawns burst from beneath corroded tile, scores of them, moving with coordinated precision that was nothing like the chaotic swarm outside.
These were different. Faster, more solid, and their forms more defined. Within seconds, hundreds of them filled the space.
"Fall back to chokepoint!" Maya commanded. Her lantern flared as golden light flashed in a wave that forced the spawns to retreat momentarily. "That corridor, now!"
They retreated, backing toward a narrow maintenance corridor that would limit the spawn’s numerical advantage and Amara cut down three more as they fell back.
Raj grabbed one spawn and used it as a battering ram against five others and Dante’s spirit weapon screamed out a chord that shattered several spawns in one sonic blast.
Eventually, they reached the corridor which was barely wide enough for two people to fight side-by-side, and suddenly the tactical advantage became crystal clear.
The spawn could only come at them two or three at a time now, funneled into a killing field. And Yelena went to work.
Her twin blades sang death in the confined space as she moved with the kind of graceful motion that made Amara wonder if she was a gymnast or ballerina before her awakening.
It was both beautiful and frightening to look at. Slashes flowed seemlessly as dodges became counter attacks. Every strike was perfect, opening space for the next.
Within two minutes, the corridor was filled with dissolving spawn remains, the black residue coating every surface for a moment before dissipating.
Within five minutes, silence returned, broken only by harsh breathing and the occasional drip of corruption from the ceiling.
They stood in the aftermath, breathing hard, covered in black residue that smelled like burning plastic and sulfur.
"Everyone intact?" Maya asked, already checking them over.
"Define intact," Hiro panted, leaning against the corridor wall for support. Then he jerked away immediately when the surface pulsed under his hand. "Ugh!" He lifted his arm as sticky black liquid dripped down. "I’m covered in spawn goo!"
"I’m good," Raj said, though his voice was strained. His regeneration was already working on cuts and bruises, but she could see it was costing him.
Sophia had her eyes closed, breathing slowly. "Give me a second."
And Amara checked herself. A few cuts, nothing serious. Her ribs ached from where she’d taken a hit, but it was nothing she hadn’t experienced before. "I’m okay."
Ethan’s shields had dematerialized, and he was staring at his hands. "Did anyone else notice they were more organized? The spawn. They weren’t just swarming."
"I noticed," Yelena said grimly, cleaning her blades. "They’re evolving faster than anticipated."
"That’s not supposed to be possible," Maya’s expression had gone dark. "Spawns are like wraiths, barely sentient. They shouldn’t be capable of such."
"Unless something’s controlling them," Dante offered, leaning against Requiem like a walking stick. Even he looked tired, and Dante never looked tired. "Something that’s been watching how we fight."
"By something, you mean the core entity," Amara said quietly. By her side, Sophia stared at the ground, a frustrated look on her face.
Raj rubbed the back of his neck nervously. "At the risk of sounding like a broken record, do we turn back?"
"No." Amara’s grip tightened on Angel’s Bane. "We’re close. Level Three is right below us. We destroy the core before it can spawn more of these things."
"Agreed," Maya said after a moment. "But we proceed with extreme caution. No more charging into open spaces. We use corridors, maintain defensive positions, and we do NOT separate. Clear?"
"Crystal," they chorused, then moved forward, leaving the corridor of death behind.
***
Meanwhile, thousands of kilometers away at the Institute’s Sun branch command center, an alarm began to sound.
Unlike the general alert, this was for something specific. Something that made the duty officer’s blood run cold when she saw the readings.
"Director!" she called out with urgency. "Sir, we have a situation!"
Director Hale was at her station in seconds. "Report."
"The rifts, sir." Her hands flew across holographic controls, pulling up a global map that showed dimensional weak points. "Beijing and London. They’re... they’re gone."
The map displayed what had been six active rifts. But where Beijing and London’s rifts should have been, there was nothing. Just empty space where warnings had blazed minutes ago.
"Gone?" Hale leaned in, studying the data with sharp eyes. "Define ’gone.’ Closed? Collapsed? Relocated?"
"Just... vanished, sir. They were there on the last scan, and now they’re not." The officer pulled up temporal comparison data. "And sir, there were no earthquakes. No seismic activity at all."
That made Hale go very still.
The rifts were supposed to remain open for another two months minimum, based on previous patterns.
They only closed prematurely when a Malice descended through them, and Malice manifestations always created massive seismic events. As seen with Tokyo.
"If they closed without earthquakes," another technician said slowly, horror dawning on his face, "that means the Malices must have made their descent in an incomplete state."
Director Hale’s jaw clenched. "Why would two Malices prematurely make their descent two months ahead of schedule?
Which begged the question. If they were no longer in Beijing and London anymore, where were they?