The passage Cipher led us into was narrower, more claustrophobic than the wide aqueduct bypass or the musical cavern. Ancient, smoothed rock gave way to rougher-hewn walls showing clear signs of excavation, interspersed with crumbling brickwork supports likely added centuries after the initial tunneling.
The air felt heavy, carrying the damp chill of deep earth and a sharp, mineral tang – iron, maybe copper, leaching from the surrounding strata. The only light came from our suit lamps and handhelds, casting sharp, dancing shadows that exaggerated every crack and crevice.
Cipher's warning about Apex Predator spoor and spatial warping hung in the air, prickling at the back of my neck. "Optimal vigilance," they'd said. Easy for a walking sensor suite to say but harder when your own internal sensors felt like they were picking up signals from alternate, slightly horrifying dimensions.
We hadn't gone fifty feet when Anya, walking point behind Cipher, stopped abruptly, holding up a hand. Her flashlight beam pinned something on the tunnel floor near the wall.
It wasn't subtle. A large, jagged shard of the same obsidian-like material we'd found in the junction lay discarded against the rock. But this piece was huge! It was easily the size of my torso, thick and slightly curved. It looked like a piece of shed plating, snapped off cleanly along one edge, fractured raggedly along the other.
"Crawler," Anya breathed, her voice tight. She swept her light along the walls nearby. More evidence became visible: deep, gouged scratches in the rock, mirroring the ones back at the junction, but fresher looking here, bits of pulverized stone still clinging to the edges. This wasn't just a hunting ground... this felt like a major thoroughfare for the creature.
Leo edged forward cautiously, his earlier fear momentarily overshadowed by intense curiosity. He knelt near the plating shard, careful not to touch it, examining the texture. "The structure… it's layered," he murmured, pointing. "Like compressed silicate fibers embedded in a chitinous matrix. See the slight iridescence?"
He looked up, eyes wide behind his smudged glasses. "Based on the curvature and thickness… the creature that shed this… it's immense. Easily larger than the Probability Drive." His assessment hung in the air, heavy and terrifying. Larger than our mobile armored blockhouse. Down here.
Cipher turned slightly, their cyan lenses focusing on the shard. "Analysis consistent with previous sample," the filtered voice stated. "Estimated shedding event occurred within the last three standard cycles. Moderate probability of originator remaining within local sector." Three cycles. Days, maybe? Recent. Far too recent.
My gaze flicked nervously between the shard, the gouges on the wall, and Cipher's impassive mask. Did they know this specific piece was here? Did their route deliberately bring us past it? A warning? Or just… data collection? The lack of any discernible reaction beyond factual analysis continued to gnaw at me.
"Okay," Anya said, her voice low and urgent. "Stealth protocols mandatory. Minimize noise, stay off loose debris. Light discipline is narrow beams only. Move slow, move quiet." She glanced back at me. "Ren, keep up. No falling behind."
I nodded mutely, forcing my exhausted legs to obey. The knowledge that something that massive had passed through here so recently made every shadow seem deeper, every distant drip potentially the footfall of a subterranean behemoth.
We continued onward, the pace slowing, every step deliberate. My own breathing sounded thunderous in the near silence. The air grew colder still, the mineral tang replaced by a stale, lifeless scent, like air that hadn't circulated in centuries.
Then, I felt it. A sudden, lurching disorientation. The solid rock floor beneath my boots seemed to tilt for a fraction of a second, a wave of vertigo slamming into me. My vision shimmered, the narrow tunnel walls momentarily warping, stretching like taffy before snapping back into place. The entire event lasted barely a second, maybe less.
I stumbled, catching myself against the rough wall, a startled grunt escaping before I could stifle it.
"Ren?" Anya whispered back sharply, pausing.
"Fine," I forced out, my voice tight, heart hammering from the sudden spatial lurch. "Just… uneven ground." It wasn't a complete lie, the ground felt uneven, even if it wasn't visually warped anymore. But I knew what it was. A spatial distortion. Minor, fleeting, exactly what Cipher had warned about. But did they warn because it was a general hazard, or because they knew this specific spot was unstable?
The [ERR: SYNC_FAILURE_7G] code flared brightly in my peripheral vision, overlaid on the rough rock texture, as if the reality hiccup itself had triggered it. I squeezed my eyes shut for a second, trying to force down the rising nausea and the fresh wave of paranoia. Opening them, the code faded slightly, but the background static felt denser, more insistent.
I pushed myself off the wall, forcing myself forward. Keep up. Don't be the weak link. My job wasn't analysis or combat, it was simply endurance right now. And enduring felt like running uphill against a firewall made of corrupted data and bad code.
Cipher, several paces ahead, hadn't even paused during my stumble or the brief spatial warp. Had they not felt it? Or was their own internal stabilization system simply that advanced? Or maybe, the chilling thought occurred, they had registered it, registered my reaction, logged it away as another data point on the 'Runtime Exception Handler's' degrading performance.
We pressed on, deeper into Sector 6-Delta. The tunnel began to show more signs of pre-Crash infrastructure with rusted pipes bolted to the walls, conduits carrying long-dead cables, occasional faded hazard symbols warning of radiation or high voltage, rendered meaningless by time and decay.
Every scrape of a boot, every dislodged pebble, felt amplified in the oppressive silence, each sound potentially attracting the attention of the colossal creature whose territory we were trespassing through. The constant vigilance was exhausting, layering onto the physical and mental fatigue I already felt.
Anya kept scanning ahead, her movements economical and precise. Leo watched her back, his golf club held ready, though against something the size he described, it felt like bringing a toothpick to a tank fight. Cipher glided silently at the front, an enigma wrapped in darkness, leading us deeper into the heart of the danger.
My focus narrowed to the simple act of putting one foot in front of the other, fighting the dizziness, ignoring the flickering code, pushing down the paranoia. We had miles, or maybe just meters felt like miles, to go, through territory belonging to a monster, heading towards a facility likely filled with more monsters, all to retrieve parts for a broken machine.
Just another Tuesday in the Glitchscape. And the sun hadn't even metaphorically come up yet.