The silence had weight now. Not the quiet of a tactical pause or a momentary ceasefire, but something deeper—denser. The kind of silence that filled a space only after something permanent had been torn from it.

The crew moved like ghosts through the collapsed tunnels of Strata 2, past rust-bitten scaffolding and broken signage half-swallowed by overgrowth. Rane led with her head low, eyes flicking between her surroundings and the small holo-map flickering against her wrist. Every so often it would sputter and distort—static interference from deeper infrastructure or something more deliberate. It didn’t matter. No one spoke.

Eren walked slightly behind her, his gait a little off since twisting his ankle during the last skirmish. He hadn’t complained. No one had—not since Juno. Not since the screams. Not since the blood.

Sil had barely looked at anyone since. She kept to the rear, her fingers dancing across her datapad, scanning for environmental threats with an intensity that felt more like avoidance. If Korrin noticed, he didn’t say a thing. He just moved like he always did—steady, quiet, commanding with his silence. But even he seemed to carry more weight in his steps.

They stopped near an old maintenance hall, its door partially ajar, red hazard glyphs painted in peeling strokes on the bulkhead. Rane hesitated before stepping inside, brushing past dangling wiring and shattered tubing. The air was thick with dust and a chemical rot that made her stomach turn.

“Ten minutes,” Korrin muttered. “Then we move.”

They made camp in silence. Eren adjusted the shoulder strap on his medkit and knelt to check the tension on Rane’s wounded leg—she’d taken shrapnel during the descent. She winced, but didn’t pull away.

“You should’ve let me take a look earlier,” he said gently.

She gave him a weak smirk. “Didn’t feel it until now.”

“That’s not a badge of honor.”

“No,” she agreed, “but it keeps me upright.”

Sil didn’t sit. She remained standing near the cracked wall, eyes glowing faintly in the dim from her tech visor, watching faint scanner readings scroll across the screen.

“Anything?” Korrin asked from his post by the door.

“Movement. But it’s distant. Might be decay—might not.”

“Of course it’s not,” Rane muttered, exhaling hard.

The fire that had sparked between them all—on the surface, back when this was just another recon op—had dimmed. What had replaced it was something rawer, more intimate. Shared grief, tempered by duty. They’d lost one of their own. And down here, in a labyrinth that refused to make sense, time passed differently.

That night, after rations were silently eaten and the perimeter set, Rane sat apart from the others. Her fingers absently traced the edge of Juno’s dog tag—burnt and dented, the chain looped through her belt now. She thought about Juno’s laugh, the way it would echo like thunder in these tight halls. The way she’d lifted rubble like it weighed nothing. The way she’d stood between Rane and the thing that tore through the door.

Korrin approached her but didn’t speak. He just sat beside her and looked forward, sharing the silence.

“She saved me,” Rane finally said.

“I know.”

“She shouldn’t have had to.”

Korrin looked at her then. “That’s not how this works. We all signed up for the unknown. She just paid sooner.”

Rane nodded slowly, but it didn’t feel like enough.

Across the hall, Sil whispered into her visor, her fingers hesitating as she stared at a blinking indicator. Her jaw tightened. She tapped in a series of commands, and the screen went blank. She turned away before anyone noticed.

Tomorrow, they'd move deeper. The static was growing thicker. The air staler. They were nearing the place Sil had marked as the heart of the interference—an unmarked zone just past the halfway point of Strata 2.

But for now, they sat among the bones of the past, listening to the slow drip of condensation and the whisper of ash moving through cracks in the concrete.

And beneath it all, the Protocol waited.