Jaxon shook Thalyn’s shoulder with the same no-nonsense force as a battlefield wake-up call. “Time,” he said, voice a gravelly whisper that cut through the dregs of sleep.
The others stirred with muffled curses and the rustle of sleeping bags. Korr blinked at her, eyes wide and bleary, hair jutting out at improbable angles like he’d been electrocuted. “Already?”
“It’s enough,” Jaxon said, hefting his pack. “On your feet.”
Thalyn stood, packed her mat and crossed to the locked door. The interface ghosted into her mind, and she felt Arvie do her magic.
The lock gave a soft chime and slid open. Thalyn smirked faintly, stepping aside for Jaxon, but he gestured for her to lead.
“Scout ahead,” he murmured.
She slipped out into the corridor.
The air was foul, heavy with metallic fumes that clung to her tongue. She tugged her breather mask back on and moved in a low crouch down the tunnel. Its walls gleamed wetly in the dim light, the distant glow of a chamber ahead leaking around the corners.
As she reached the edge, she froze.
The tunnel opened into a mining gallery. Ghouls clawed at the walls with crude tools, flinching at every clang of metal on stone. Overseeing them was a security droid, carapace dulled with age, sensor arrays sweeping the chamber with mechanical sweeps.
“Closer,” Arvie chimed.
Thalyn frowned but obeyed, creeping forward.
“Closer.”
She swore silently. The droid’s optics passed over her hiding place once, twice. No alarm.
“Good,” Arvie purred. “Now stop.”
Thalyn froze.
“You’re covered now. It won’t mind you,” Arvie said. “Might even take a bullet for you, if it came to that.”12Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ3bgkT94Zrw
Thalyn’s eyes widened.
“Told you,” Arvie added smugly. “I can boss the tin cans around.”
The ghouls’ ragged breaths had turned sharp, nervous. Thalyn backed slowly into the shaft and reached for the sphere. She’d used it enough times now that the connection came naturally. Her will folded over the artifact like a hand on a throttle. The fear aura winked out.
The ghouls quieted, casting confused glances at one another.
Thalyn slipped through the gallery, close enough to smell their sour stink, and eased into the next tunnel. Once clear, she opened a neural link.
# Commander, it’s clear. There’s a droid and ghouls, but they won’t bother us.
A pause, then Jaxon’s dry reply: # Won’t bother us?
She gave the briefest explanation.
When the group arrived, Korr gawked at the droid. “How…”
“Another perk of having a chatterbox in my head,” Thalyn said, brushing past him.
The tunnels became a maze, forks and intersecting shafts stretching endlessly. At each junction, her mental map lit with ghostly threads of possible routes, and she chose the brightest, leading them deeper.
Occasionally the tunnels opened into vast chambers filled with more ghouls and their droid overseers. They avoided these, doubling back to quieter passages.
At the final fork before their destination, one shaft glowed faintly with light.
“Wait here,” Thalyn whispered.
She crept forward, weight on the balls of her feet, and stopped at the edge of an office. An old guard dozed beside a lift, chin tucked behind the seal of his mask. Through the glass wall, she could see the chamber’s operator slouched at a console, screens flickering around him like restless souls.
She called the others, then touched the door panel. Arvie’s presence sharpened in her mind, threads of glyphs unraveling like spider silk.
“Easy,” Arvie boasted. “Go.”
The door slid open. Thalyn crossed the space in three steps and pressed the nerve points at the operator’s neck. He collapsed silently.
Behind her, Jaxon dispatched the guard just as cleanly. He dragged the body in and stripped away the mask.
Thalyn turned to the controls, scanning the archaic interface until she found the lift command. A deep rumble shook the shaft as the platform moved.
They crowded in when it arrived, weapons ready, though the car was empty.
“We’re at the bottom,” Thalyn said, reading the ghosted levels in her mind. “Above us are some mine levels, then a guard house.”
“Slums level, probably,” Jaxon said. “Hopefully the guards care more about gangs at the front door than us coming up from the mine.”
The lift began its long ascent. Filters hummed to life, scrubbing the air until it was clean enough to remove their masks.
When the doors opened, they stepped into an empty corridor.
“Three exits,” Jaxon said.
Korr swept his scanner over the doors. “Storeroom. Big hall. Small chamber.”
They tried the storeroom first, dust and rust. The small chamber proved to be the base of a stairwell, which they climbed to the next door.
Barracks. Two guards inside, asleep. Thalyn and Jaxon dispatched them without a sound.
Up another level. Two doors this time.
“Storeroom,” Korr said, “and an office. Office is occupied. Storeroom’s… sealed tight. Miasma traces.”
“Storeroom,” Jaxon said. They put on the masks again.
Arvie went to work. The lock fought back, but finally surrendered with a soft hiss. They slipped inside and sealed the door.
The air was thick. Rusted crates and broken machinery lined the walls, skeletal remains scattered near the far end. A broken crate revealed the crumbling hole in the wall, spilling the cold breath of the Nether inside.
Thalyn activated the sphere’s aura. Snarls and scrabbling retreated into the fog.
They climbed through the breach into a narrow cavern. Thalyn’s map showed a potential entrance into the city not too far ahead.
The path led them to another collapsed wall and into the back of a derelict house. Bones littered the main hall, dry and brittle as old parchment.
Korr looked around. “We could make this a base.”
“Here?” Elara asked.
He dug into his pack and produced an Elder relic wrapped in rags. “This will clean the air. I think.”
They cleared the bones into the infested cavern, then sealed the door. Korr handed the artifact to Thalyn.
“Your turn,” he said.
She closed her eyes and reached into the relic’s dormant systems. Something shifted inside her head.
“Permission to take it from here?” Arvie asked.
Thalyn granted.
The artifact leapt to life, spinning in the air as if caught in an unseen gyre. The miasma was drawn into its vents, sucked from the chamber in swirling currents. Cracks in the wall let more in, but Jaxon patched them with quick-expanding foam until the air lightened, sharp and clean as the ruins’ command center.
They removed their masks.
The artifact dropped to the floor with a dull clang and went dormant.
Jaxon checked the front door. “Locked tight. We’re secure.” He turned back to the group. “We’ve found our headquarters.”
They unpacked. The women claimed one side chamber, the men the other.
In the main hall, they ate in silence, the simple act of chewing in clean air almost a luxury.
The others drifted to their rooms, and the house settled into silence.
Thalyn leaned against the wall, eyes half-closed, savoring the moment. The air was breathable, and the walls felt like they might hold. Home again, if only for a while.
Sleep came quickly.
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