The air shifted the moment Gabriel’s boots touched the ground.

It wasn’t wind. There was no breeze at all, only pressure, like stepping into a sealed room that hadn’t been opened in years. The temperature didn’t drop, but the cold clung to his skin anyway, seeping through the seams of his suit like the memory of something lost. The soil underfoot was damp but brittle, cracking around his soles as if it had been drained of something essential and then forgotten. Every step felt like trespassing.

The static still clung to the air, sharp and faintly bitter, like the land had been scorched and rewired into something just barely inhabitable. Gabriel’s visor dimmed slightly in response to the ambient interference. He tapped the side panel once, and the display blinked back into focus.

His chest tightened, not from exertion, but something deeper. Like the zone recognized him. Like it had been waiting.

Ahead, Leonardo moved like he’d done this a hundred times before, calm, precise, but never careless. His steps were smooth, armor absorbing each impact with barely a whisper. The light catch of his breath in the comms line was the only sound that confirmed he was still human beneath the plating.

Gabriel watched him with a mix of admiration and distance. Leonardo made the impossible look routine, and that only made Gabriel feel more out of place.

Kael brought up the rear, his profile outlined in flickering HUD light. His gauntlet screen projected faint blue arcs, mapping terrain inconsistencies and energy patterns in real time. He didn’t speak, not out of disinterest, but out of habit. Kael’s silence was the type that came from always listening for something worse.

Gabriel kept his eyes on the scanner. The readings were slippery today, oscillating too quickly between safe and unstable. His sync ring blinked a half-second behind schedule, then corrected itself with a sharp pulse at the base of his wrist. It left a faint sting, like a misfired nerve.

“We’re inside the outer perimeter,” he murmured. “Pulse signatures are fragmented. Either this zone is phasing… or something’s interfering.”

Leonardo didn’t look back. “Keep logging it. The terrain’s too still.”

Too still was putting it mildly. They moved in a loose triangle formation, navigating through what had once been a city sector. The bones of civilization remained, twisted lampposts, shattered barricades, signs rusted to nonsense, but they’d been claimed by something else now. The buildings leaned at odd angles, like they were listening to a sound no one else could hear. Rebar jutted out of cracked walls like ribs through paper skin, and every shadow cast by their path stretched long and sharp in directions that didn’t match the dead sky above them.

The black mist hung over it all, thin but constant. It didn’t drift. It lingered. Gabriel’s suit filtered most of the contaminants, but a scent still crept in, burned copper, ozone, and something sour beneath. A scent that didn’t belong in nature.

Leonardo raised one fist and clenched it once.

Halt.

Gabriel stopped instantly.

Ahead, a wide stairwell dipped into a sunken subway entrance, half-swallowed by earth and metal. Cracks ran like veins down the concrete. Part of the ceiling had caved in, and vines, thorned, gray as ash, climbed up through the gaps in long, snaking loops. The old sign above the entrance had long since broken, but faded paint still marked the wall in smeared red letters: ZONE B7: STAY DEAD.

Gabriel’s stomach twisted. He didn’t want to think about what that meant.

Leonardo tapped a panel on his wristplate. A click. Then... nothing.

A two-second delay.

Finally, a faint hum buzzed through the air, and the mounted bulb on his forearm flared to life with a dim, flickering glow.

Gabriel noted the delay immediately and tapped it into his log. Field interference confirmed. A visible delay meant active energy disruption, like the air around them was trying to argue with the concept of light.

Kael stepped forward, gaze narrowing. “Still not enough to fry hardware. But it’s thick. Thicker than the scan read from the train.”

Leonardo gave a single nod. “We go slow. Mark anything that shifts.”

The descent into the subway was slow, careful. Each bootstep echoed off stone. Debris littered the stairwell, glass shards, bent signage, and wrappers petrified in place. The turnstiles were frozen mid-motion, locked in place by rust and whatever force had shattered this space.

Gabriel reached out to balance himself on the edge of the wall.

And froze.

There it was, his reflection.

In the fragmented window of an abandoned ticket booth. It stared back at him, but it was too still. Too centered. The head tilt, the eyes, it mimicked him a beat too late.

Then it was gone.

Not faded.

Gone.

Like it had never existed. But his body still remembered, the chill crawling up his spine, like a hand grazing the back of his neck.

Gabriel yanked his hand back like the glass had burned him. His pulse hammered in his throat. It took a second too long to remember how to breathe.

Leonardo turned toward him, instinct already kicking in. “Gabriel?”

He straightened his spine. “Just dizzy. I’m fine.”

It came out steadier than he expected.

Leonardo didn’t push. He stepped a little closer instead, shifting into Gabriel’s peripheral space, not hovering, but present. A barrier if needed. Not a demand.

Gabriel nodded faintly. Logged the event.

But in his head, the words were simpler. Blunter.

It wasn’t dizziness.

It was me.

They paused beneath the overhang of what had once been a metro map, now just a melted plaque of plastic and rust, twisted beyond legibility. Flakes of old paint clung to the edges, warped symbols buried under grime and corrosion.

Gabriel sat on the edge of a crumbled bench, drawing his knees up slightly to rest the tablet against his legs. His suit creaked faintly as he shifted, the only sound competing with the faint, unnatural buzz in the air. The quiet here was oppressive, not from silence, but from the absence of anything alive. Even the fog pressing against the fractured glass felt like it was waiting.

He tapped through the last readings, trying to anchor himself in data. His fingers moved automatically, but his mind drifted. The readings were unsteady again, drifting outside expected ranges by small but persistent degrees. Whatever made this place wrong wasn’t in plain sight, but it was pressing from all sides.

Kael paused a few steps ahead, gaze fixed on a warped section of wall overtaken by curling metal and thorned vines. The surface pulsed faintly, like it was reacting to their presence, breathing, maybe, or simply distorting.

“Zone curve’s distorting again,” he said. “I’ll sweep the flank and mark the weak points. Stay on comms.”

He glanced at Gabriel, then Leonardo. “Keep visual if you move.”

Then, without waiting for agreement, he turned and disappeared into the haze, his silhouette swallowed by the static-heavy air. His steps were muffled, like the ground was trying to keep quiet.

Gabriel didn’t protest, Kael had clearance. In places like this, recalibration could override formation rules. Still, watching him vanish into the mist triggered something tight in Gabriel’s chest. The further they moved into the Hollow, the thinner the rules felt.

Leonardo didn’t sit. He paced for a few moments, slow and deliberate, checking his sync band and keeping one eye on the entrance Kael had disappeared through. When he finally dropped into a crouch across from Gabriel, arms resting on his knees, his movements were contained, coiled, like he was holding something in.

Gabriel watched him for a beat. The usual smirk wasn’t there. His expression was quiet, steady, focused in a way that felt out of place for someone usually so confident.

“You’re calm,” Gabriel said, the words slipping out before he could stop them. He wasn’t sure if it made him feel better or more on edge.

Leonardo let out a breath that wasn’t quite a laugh. “I save the theatrics for when they matter. Hollow zones don’t care if you act tough.”

Gabriel gave a slight nod. “Yeah. That tracks.”

The silence that followed wasn’t awkward, but it was full.

Gabriel pulled out his journal, worn at the corners and soft where the leather had folded over time. He flipped through familiar sketches and scribbled theories until he reached a blank page. He stared at it like it might tell him what to write.

It didn’t.

He set the stylus down and rubbed at the bridge of his nose.

Leonardo shifted closer, not enough to crowd, but enough to share the space. He didn’t look over Gabriel’s shoulder. He didn’t ask questions. Just sat there, letting the air settle.

“You think too much,” he said eventually. It wasn’t a criticism.

Gabriel gave him a side glance, faintly amused. “Comes with the job.”

Leonardo tilted his head slightly. “Yeah, but you carry it like armor. Makes me wonder if it’s heavier than the field gear.”

Gabriel exhaled. “Depends on the day.”

Their elbows brushed when Gabriel adjusted his seat again. He didn’t jerk away, just moved enough to be aware of the contact without breaking it entirely.

Leonardo reached for his gear bag and pulled out something small, Gabriel’s secondary scanner. It must’ve slipped free during their descent.

He held it out without a word.

Gabriel reached for it... and their fingers met.

The touch was brief. But it wasn’t empty.

A jolt ran up Gabriel’s arm, sharp but not painful, more like recognition. Emotional feedback, just strong enough to punch through the fog of tension. He stiffened and pulled back before it could root deeper.

He took the scanner with a tighter grip than needed, avoiding Leonardo’s eyes.

“Don’t… do that,” he said. It wasn’t a warning. More like a reflex.

Leonardo didn’t apologize. He didn’t move away, either. His voice, when it came, was low and clear.

“I won’t,” he said. “Not unless you ask.”

It was the absence of teasing that hit hardest. No heat, no flirt. Just honesty.

Gabriel looked down at the blank page again, then closed the journal slowly, setting it beside him. He placed both hands flat on his knees, fingers steady now.

They stayed like that for another minute. Close, but not touching. Breathing in the heavy, wrong-tinted air.

The fog pressed faintly against the station glass.

Somewhere deeper in the walls, something creaked, a slow groan, like metal adjusting to pressure. Or something bigger, getting ready to shift.

Kael reappeared through the haze, steps nearly soundless on the patchy, uneven ground. A faint vibration lingered in the air as he moved, low and constant, like a hum just beneath the threshold of hearing. Gabriel spotted him first. The sharpness in Kael’s movements was subtle, but it was there: controlled tension, a narrowed gaze, a hand hovering near the dial on his gauntlet.

He stopped a few meters from the others and adjusted something on his wristplate before speaking.

“One of the ruins is shifting,” he said, voice flat but edged with something firmer than before. “West of the perimeter. Looks stable from above, but the foundation moved. Roughly forty centimeters.”

Leonardo’s head turned immediately. “Earthquake?”

“No tremor. Nothing seismic,” Kael replied. “No pressure feedback or faultline movement. The structure’s reacting to something. It moved, without warning and without sound. I marked the location. If it shifts again, we’ll need to recalibrate terrain syncs manually.”

Gabriel was already tapping into his log, fingers moving to input the anomaly report.

Then a sharp burst of static cracked through his comm.

He froze.

A voice followed.

“Turn back.”

It wasn’t distorted. It wasn’t garbled. It was clean—precise.

It was his voice.

Same pitch. Same cadence. Like listening to a recording of something he hadn’t yet said.

Gabriel stiffened. His fingers hovered above the tablet screen, unmoving. His chest tightened as the echo of the words faded, leaving only the ambient hum of their equipment.

He looked up quickly, Leonardo was already scanning the far side of the clearing, focused. Kael was typing into his gauntlet, face unreadable.

Neither had reacted.

No confusion. No hesitation.

They hadn’t heard it.

Maybe it was a trick of the zone. Maybe it was him. But the certainty in the voice, his voice, cut too clean to dismiss.

Gabriel tapped the side of his comm, checking for faults or signals. Nothing. The channel was clear. No logs. No audio returns. The HUD on his wristplate was green across the board.

No anomalies.

But he knew what he’d heard.

He stood still for a moment longer, heart thudding like a drumbeat against a locked door. No voice came again. Just the faint buzz of systems syncing and Leonardo’s boots crunching over the soft gravel.

“Just Hollow interference,” Gabriel muttered, low and clipped. He didn’t believe it. Not really. But it was the easiest lie to reach for.

Leonardo glanced back, mild concern flickering in his eyes, but Gabriel was already lowering his gaze, pretending to scan his tablet.

He didn’t want questions. He didn’t want attention. Not now.

He logged the structural anomaly first. Then, before closing the file, he opened a private channel and created a secondary, encrypted entry. One that wouldn’t auto-sync with the team database.

He locked the file with a fingerprint override and tucked the tablet into his side pouch. His fingers lingered at the edge of the flap, thumb brushing over the strap in small circles before he forced himself to pull away.

A flicker of motion caught his attention.

To his left, in the warped panel of shattered glass wedged between rusted metal beams, he saw his reflection again.

But it didn’t match him.

His head had turned slightly, just enough to track Kael, but the reflection had stayed still. Then, half a second later, it moved to catch up.

Not just a delay in the light.

A delay in something else.

Gabriel’s stomach dropped. He blinked, hard, and it was gone. Just his own image again, warped by the broken surface.

He looked away quickly. The wind picked up, barely. But it didn’t bring real cold.

Gabriel still felt colder.

Not from the air.

From the certainty growing now: something in the Hollow wasn’t just watching.

It was mimicking.

And it had chosen his voice first.