The datapad in my hand flickered again. Lines of corrupted text filled the screen, one after another, each trying to load over the last.
[ACCESS OVERRIDE]
ORIGIN SEQUENCE STARTED.
WARNING: CAN'T CONTAIN IT.
I dropped it. The screen cracked.
Terry turned then, his eyes burning gold-blue in the haze. The light reflected across the cavern floor, twisting the shadows into shapes that didn't belong to either of us.
"Terry," I whispered, "what's happening?"
He opened his mouth, but the answer wasn't words.
The sound that came out of him carried power. The same tone as the pulse from the pillar. The walls responded, alive with shifting patterns.
My knees nearly gave out. The light spread, reaching the chamber ceiling, painting it in lines that matched the markings on his skin.
And through the brightness, I saw movement, silhouettes inside the light. Tall. Wrong. Like the shapes of predators frozen in time, waiting for someone to give them permission to breathe again.
I wanted to run.
I wanted to tell him everything.
But all I could do was whisper his name.
"Terry…"
The air trembled once more, and then split open with a sound like thunder.
The sound faded to a low rumble, echoing somewhere deep in the stone. My vision swam with afterimages, fractured streaks of blue and gold burning through the dark.
When my eyes finally adjusted, I saw him standing near the shattered pillar.
Terry. But not the Terry I'd known.
The air around him shimmered with heat, his breath visible in the glow. His skin bore faint traces of light running beneath the surface like molten veins. His stance was different too. His shoulders squared, head tilted slightly like he could hear something I couldn't.
He looked… older. Wilder.
And for the first time, I understood what the file had meant by manifestation.
He turned toward me, and for half a heartbeat, I caught a glimpse of the kid who used to sit on the back of a supply truck, laughing about the bad coffee and long shifts. The one who stayed late fixing broken dig sensors when everyone else went to bed. The one who believed the world could still be rebuilt, piece by piece.
That boy was still there, buried under everything this place had done to him.
I felt something twist in my chest. This wasn't supposed to happen. I wasn't supposed to feel anything for him. The mission was simple: observe, report, survive.
But somewhere between the long nights and the constant danger, between the jokes that made me forget what we were, I'd stopped being just the agent assigned to watch him.
And now I was watching him disappear.
The pillar behind him had gone silent, its light dimming as if it had poured everything it had into him. The energy still clung to the air, vibrating through my ribs. He looked back at the ruins of it, eyes distant, lost somewhere I couldn't follow.
"Terry…" I said softly.
He didn't answer right away. The glow under his skin pulsed once, fading just enough for me to see him clearly again. His expression softened. The faintest trace of a smile, weary and human.
"I'm still me," he said, as if reading my thoughts.
But even as he said it, the chamber around us responded to his voice. The walls rippled with faint light, answering him like an echo that didn't belong to this world.
I didn't know if he was trying to convince me… or himself.
———————————————————
Terry
The chamber still hummed, faint but steady, like the heartbeat of something sleeping beneath our feet. The air tasted like metal and rain. I could feel the static running through the stone, through me.
When I looked at Clara, she tried to hide it, but I could hear the tremor in her pulse. Not just fear, something else. The kind of tension you feel when a truth is pressing too close.
I wanted to ask her what she wasn't telling me. But the pull ahead was stronger.
The pillar had gone still, yet the tunnels beyond it whispered: wind, movement, the scrape of claws against rock. The sound of the howl again, closer now. It wasn't echoing anymore; it was coming toward us.
System Notice:
Something's moving.
Not sure if it's friendly.
My body reacted before thought could catch up, muscles tightening, heartbeat slowing to that steady rhythm the system always seemed to want.
I crouched, fingers brushing the wet stone. The glow under my skin pulsed in time with the tunnels' vibration. Whatever was out there felt familiar, like it shared the same frequency, the same blood.
Clara took a step closer to me. "Terry, what is it?"
I shook my head. "Don't know yet."
She glanced toward the dark passage. "Then let's go back."
I almost laughed. "Back's gone. You felt that collapse. This is the only way out."
The truth was, even if we could turn around, I wouldn't. The hum under my ribs had become a direction, a command carved into instinct.
The stone trembled again. A shape flickered in the blue haze ahead; tall, shifting, impossible to focus on. The faint scent of ash and something ancient hit the back of my throat.
Clara raised her weapon, hands shaking.
I stepped in front of her.
"Stay behind me."
She didn't argue.
The light from my veins brightened as I took another step forward. The glow bled into the darkness until the shape finally resolved. A silhouette of bone and sinew, its eyes burning with the same blue fire that lived inside me.
It looked at me. And for the first time since the collapse, I felt a spark of recognition.
System Notice:
It's like you.
But older.
The creature tilted its head, mirroring me. The same light rippled through its skin. And then it spoke, not with a mouth, but through the same pulse of energy running between us.
"Finally awake."
The word echoed in my skull, not as sound but as memory.
"Awake."
The creature didn't move closer, yet I could feel its presence pressing against my chest. A weight that wasn't heavy, just inevitable. The blue light that traced through its veins pulsed in sync with mine.
For a moment, everything else fell away. The trembling stone, the heat, even Clara's quick, uneven breathing behind me. All that existed was the quiet connection humming between us.
"Who are you?" I whispered.
The creature tilted its head again, and through the vibration I felt meaning, not words but something vast and old trying to fit into human thought.
"Not who. What remains."
The carvings on the walls glowed brighter, forming a pattern looping through the chamber like a heartbeat rendered in stone. A story carved into the bones of the earth.
"We slept below. The world forgot. You carry the signal."
The pulse in my arms answered. A deep thrum that came from my bones. Images flickered across my mind: towers of stone under a burning sky, creatures that looked almost human walking in silence toward a massive gate of light.
The same flashes I'd seen when I touched the artifact.
Clara's voice came faintly through the haze. "Terry?"
I turned to look at her, but my eyes burned with the afterglow. She took a half-step back.
"I'm fine," I said, though my voice didn't sound like mine.
The creature's gaze didn't waver. The rest unfolded inside me like a floodgate breaking open.
"The artifact woke you because you share its blood. The others were not meant to touch it. You are the fragment made whole."
The words filled my head until there was no space left for thought.
"Fragment of what?" I asked.
"Of us."
The air shuddered with the answer.
Clara's flashlight flickered. I felt her step closer behind me. "Terry, what is it saying?"
I stared into the creature's eyes. "It's not talking. It's remembering."
Another pulse. The ground rumbled. And suddenly, I wasn't sure if it was my memories I was seeing anymore.
For a heartbeat, I saw Mason, trapped somewhere deeper, light reflecting off metal and blood. Then the image vanished as quickly as it came.
My chest tightened. The connection snapped back to silence.
System Notice:
Mason's alive.
Not far.
"Mason," I breathed.
The creature stepped aside, clearing a narrow path of light through the tunnel beyond.
"Find him. The others will follow."
And then it began to fade, its form dissolving into the same blue haze that had once surrounded me.
I didn't need the System to tell me what to do.
I was already moving.