The deeper they moved, the less the metro resembled a transit station and more an ossuary of the forgotten.
The air thickened, stale and metallic, heavy with the scent of rot and old electricity. Their flashlights carved narrow tunnels through the dark, cutting across rust-scabbed rail lines, shattered tiles, and the skeletal remains of old advertisements peeling like molted skin from the walls.
But what unsettled them most were the corpses.
Not one. Not a few.
Dozens.
Dozens of frozen bodies slumped against walls, twisted on the tracks, piled beside broken benches — all tinted with the same faint, sickly blue luminescence that crawled beneath their skin like veins filled with moonlight. The bodies weren't decomposing naturally; they looked preserved, as if caught mid-death.
Twila whispered,
"These aren't ordinary undead… right?"
Genrihk stepped closest, though even he hesitated. His breath misted in the cold air.
"No. They… they should be under a different influence than mine because i cannot control these undead corpses."
He reached toward one of them, fingers trembling slightly.
"But... Even a Revenant's call should stir something."
He didn't touch — he got close enough for a tremor to travel across his hand like static.
Nothing.
Not a twitch. Not a whisper of response. Not even spiritual residue.
Genrihk swallowed hard.
"They are dead… but not dead. Something has override them. Something stronger than the Wire— or something deeper."
Rue quietly loaded another magazine, her red eyes darting across the corpses.
"Then what the hell killed them?"
Netoshka didn't answer.
She stared at the nearest corpse — a woman whose eyes were still open, glowing faint blue, mouth frozen in a silent scream. Her fingers were broken, bent backward as if clawing at the floor before death caught her mid-motion.
Then she saw something else.
Drag marks.
Long ones, stretching from the bodies deeper into the tunnels.
As if something had pulled many of them away before stopping.
"Everyone," Netoshka said, her voice low but steady, "we move. Weapons up. Tight formation. Don't touch anything."
Zev, in human form but tense with the instinctual pull of his Lycanwolf senses, sniffed the cold air.
"There's something ahead. Something old."
"And wrong," Taran muttered.
They followed the drag marks, stepping around the blue-lit corpses. The tunnel dipped downward, sloping into an older section of the metro system where the walls looked carved instead of built, the tiles replaced by rough stone and ancient support beams. The architecture didn't match modern Erythian design.
It felt pre-existing. Pre-metro.
Almost… pre-human.
Circe's flashlight flickered, static snapping in her ears. "The interference is getting worse. Something is messing with our signals."
"Wire?" Surgien asked.
"No. Something else. Something… ambient."
The cold deepened the farther they went. Their breath fogged. Even Zopi shivered, holding onto Twila's sleeve nervously as the tunnel widened into a massive chamber.
It must have once been an intersection for multiple metro lines — a central hub — but now it felt like a graveyard cathedral.
Collapsing rails. Fallen concrete. Pools of black water reflecting their lights like oil-slick mirrors.
And in the center—
A mound.
A mound made of bodies.
Hundreds of them stacked and fused together, blue veins running through each one like a shared circulatory system, pulsing faintly in rhythmic waves.
A collective corpse.
A single mass.
Zopi gagged and covered her mouth.
"Wh… what IS that?"
Genrihk stepped forward, his voice hollow.
"I have never seen necromancy like this. This is not death. This is construction."
Then all the lights flickered.
Static buzzed through their radios.
Something moved.
A sound rippled through the chamber like stone grinding against stone — and the entire mound of bodies shifted, almost breathing, the blue light pulsing brighter.
Netoshka froze.
"Everyone back. NOW."
The mound quivered.
A wet sinew tore.
Then, a whisper.
Not from one corpse.
From all of them.
Layered voices, stacked together like broken harmonics, echoing through the chamber:
"ɴ̫́͡e͈̾̕t̢̎̾o̼̅̔… ŝ̵̱h̠̾͂k̜͘̕a͛͡…"
Twila gripped her rifle. "It— it knows your name?!"
Netoshka's pulse spiked, old DK-Ultra conditioning pressing into the edges of her senses like needles.
1… 3… 4… 5… 7… 3… 13… 24… 15… bzz.. Awaken..
Her breathing quickened.
She didn't respond to the creature — she responded to the numbers.
The mound shifted again, the blue veins pulsing harder, as if reacting to her rising adrenaline.
Taran grabbed her arm.
"Neto. Stay with us."
She blinked.
Focused.
"Right," she whispered. "We're leaving. Now. Before it wakes up."
But as they turned back toward the corridor, a thunderous crack echoed above them.
Dust rained from the ceiling.
Zev backed up.
"Incoming!"
A massive metal panel collapsed, sealing the path behind them with a deafening crash. The entire group jumped, scrambling back toward the chamber.
The mound pulsed.
Once.
Twice.
Then—
It began to rise.
Not as one creature.
But as many.
Bodies tearing themselves free from the mass, limbs unfolding like blooming flowers of bone and sinew, blue light crawling through their forms as they stepped out and reassembled into humanoid shapes.
Dozens of them.
Maybe more.
Netoshka raised her rifle.
"Formation now. Keep it Tight. No retreat."
Genrihk's eyes darkened completely, necromantic energy swirling around his hands.
"If these things won't obey death, then we'll force them back into it."
Rue bared her fangs.
"Finally. Something to shoot."
Twila steadied her breathing.
Zopi hid behind her, trembling but ready.
Taran stepped beside Netoshka, shielding her flank.
The first corpse-creature fully detached from the mound, head tilting unnaturally as bones cracked.
Its jaw opened—
Not to scream.
To whisper.
"W e h a v e b e e n w a i t i n g . . ."
Netoshka steadied her weapon.
"Waiting for what? To get put into the ground,again?. It'll be my pleasure to put you meatbags back to where you came from"
And the chamber exploded into chaos.