CHAPTER THREE – “First Contact” (Extended)

The world beneath the surface breathed like something alive.

Rane’s boots thudded against rusted metal grating as the team descended deeper into Strata 2. Above them, the lift they’d taken to escape Strata 1’s gutted industrial sprawl had groaned to a stop, vanishing into the shadows above. Now, they walked single file down a wide corridor where every wall pulsed with decay, the air thick with the sour smell of rot and machine oil.

No sunlight. No sky. Just the cold hum of systems running on borrowed time.

“Is it just me,” Eren muttered, glancing around nervously, “or does this place feel...off?”

“That’s not just you,” Rane replied. Her voice was steady, but her fingers hovered near her weapon. “Stay sharp.”

Flickering emergency lights blinked overhead like dying stars. Moss-like fungal growths curled across the walls, feeding off old coolant leaks and battery fluid. The tunnels felt like veins—tangled, alive, whispering things just out of earshot.

Sil walked with her scanner pressed to her forearm. Her goggles pulsed faintly blue as she navigated the scanner’s UI. “Map’s glitching. System overlays are shot to hell. There’s interference everywhere down here—deliberate, I think.”

“Deliberate?” Juno echoed. “Who the hell would want to jam signals down here?”

“Someone who doesn’t want us finding a way back,” Sil said quietly.

Korrin didn’t respond. He led with his weapon raised and steady, every footstep measured. His visor caught what little light remained, flashing sharp lines across his jaw. The silence of Strata 2 pressed down harder the deeper they went—oppressive, thick, almost physical. Like the space itself was reacting to them.

Then came the first sound not made by them.

A low mechanical whirr from behind a sealed bulkhead to their right.

They all froze.

The sound didn’t repeat. But no one moved for several seconds.

“We move,” Korrin ordered. “No point standing in place.”

The next chamber they entered was wide and domed, likely a collapsed atrium or supply hangar. Half the ceiling had caved in, revealing twisted support beams and crumbling vent shafts. Rane’s eyes caught strange symbols painted along the far wall—hastily scrawled in a mixture of rust and some other, darker fluid. Letters formed but didn’t align into language.

A scavenger’s body lay beneath the mural, slumped in an unnatural position, gear stripped, bones crushed inward as though something huge had stepped on it.

Eren crouched beside the corpse, hand trembling as he reached for the ID tag. “Th-This one...this was from Bravo team. Dispatched two months ago.”

“They never came back,” Rane said.

“Now we know why,” Sil murmured.

As they moved forward, Sil paused near a control panel half-sunken into the floor. It flickered erratically, like something was still trying to boot. She kneeled, pried open the casing, and plugged in a patch cable.

The screen blinked, resolving into a log feed. Corrupted entries scrolled in bursts of static.

“—unit failure—biotech override confirmed—containment breached—hostiles possess cognitive mimicry—do not engage—MAYHEM PROTOCOL—pending... pending... pending...”

“That’s the third time we’ve seen that term,” Rane said, voice low.

“Mayhem Protocol,” Korrin repeated. “Sounds military.”

“It’s not public knowledge,” Sil said. “Not even on deep-chain. Whatever it is, Virex buried it.”

Juno stood still by a collapsed scaffold. He didn’t speak, but his eyes didn’t leave the darkness down one of the diverging corridors.

“Something moved,” he said.

The team shifted instantly, weapons raised. But nothing stirred.

Then—

From deeper inside the tunnels, something began to click. Not like footsteps. Not like machinery.

A slow, deliberate click-click-click.

“That’s not natural,” Eren whispered.

They advanced, slowly, lights sweeping the path ahead. The corridor opened into a long hallway lined with defunct machinery—half of it covered in vines of synthetic tubing that twitched gently, almost like they breathed. The ambient temperature dropped with each step. Rane could feel her breath condense against her visor’s edge.

The sound of metal scraping.

They stopped.

At the far end of the corridor, standing in perfect stillness, was something humanoid.

At first, Rane thought it might’ve been a survivor—another scavenger—but the silhouette was wrong. It was elongated, limbed like a mannequin stretched too far, head cocked at a strange angle. It stood barefoot, toes rooted to the metal. Where its chest should have been was a darkened cylinder grafted into the bone.

The team froze.

The thing didn’t move.

Juno raised his gun, breath caught in his throat. Sil’s hands were shaking.

“We back out,” Korrin said softly. “Do not run. Keep weapons up.”

They turned slowly—just as Eren’s boot knocked a broken glass vial from a nearby shelf. It shattered, sharp and loud.

The thing reacted.

Instantly.

Its head snapped toward them with a shriek of static, body jerking forward in a corrupted blur—one frame, two frames—closer each time. Not running. Glitching. Like reality couldn’t keep up with it.

“DOWN!” Korrin yelled.

Juno opened fire. The round hit the creature square in the chest, knocking it back—but it didn’t fall. Instead, it convulsed, limbs twitching, then blinked into shadow again. Gone. Just like that.

The lights flickered. The corridor went silent.

“What the hell was that?” Rane demanded.

“Stalker,” Korrin answered grimly. “First contact.”

Eren dropped to a crouch, panting. “That thing...it moved like a broken sim feed. That’s not biotech.”

“It’s something worse,” Sil said.

In the silence, a new sound began. The same clicking—but not one source. Many.

Dozens.

And getting closer.