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But I don’t think so. This is something else. The rhythm is wrong. The noise is too regular. I edge forward, until the blue light from my pendant grazes the floor ahead. There, half-hidden by the lip of a broken pipe, is a human body—Authority uniform, face gone and replaced by a mask of black moss. The arms are bent backward, fingers curled around a metal canister.

Kang moves in, quick and silent, eyes never leaving the corpse. He nudges the canister free with his boot, then backs away. The body doesn’t react. I crouch and study the hand. The fingers are burned, the nails scorched clean. Whatever killed him, it wasn’t quick.

Behind me, Kang hisses, “Don’t touch anything.”

I ignore him. The blue glow picks out a sequence of numbers tattooed on the inside of the dead man’s wrist: 18-06-Beta. The same as the code I remembered from the lab.

I shiver.

Kang is right at my shoulder. “This was a warning,” he says. “Don’t fuck around in here.”

I stand, wiping my hands on my pants. “We need to move.” He gives me a look of pure, exhausted disbelief, but then we move on.

The corridor now slopes down, the air getting colder, wetter. The walls weep with condensation, and the blue of my pendant reflects in every droplet, multiplying the light a hundredfold. We pass through a hatch, and the world changes: the moss is gone, replaced by veins of black fungus, the EM buzz so strong it rattles my teeth.

This is the heart of the Complex.

We’re halfway across when Kang stops dead. His head tilts, just a fraction, and I hear it too: the soft, deliberate scrape of something big moving up ahead. Not Ghoul, not human. Something in between. He grabs my arm, hauls me back into the shadow of a doorway. His hand is warm and rough on my skin, but the look in his eyes is pure algorithm—scanning, calculating, waiting for the right moment.

The noise gets closer, then passes us, slow and heavy. For a split second, I see it: a creature, hunched, arms too long, skin marbled with old scars and new wounds. Its eyes are sewn shut with wire, and its mouth gapes open, drooling a line of thick, black saliva that sizzles on the ground. It moves like it’s carrying the weight of the whole building on its back.

I don’t breathe.

Kang waits, then pushes me forward. We skirt the corridor, staying pressed to the cold, slick wall. The thing doesn’t look back. It just shuffles on, groaning. We make it another twenty meters before he stops again. This time, he pins me with both hands, body flat to mine, breath hot in my ear.

“Listen,” he says, voice barely there.

I do.

Behind us, the moans have stopped. But up ahead, I hear something new—a faint, electrical whine, rising in pitch. The Spheres. I nod. He lets go, but not all the way. His fingers linger at my waist, the touch neither threatening nor gentle, just necessary.

We move as one, edging around the next bend.

There, at the end of the corridor, is a door marked with the Authority’s sigil—black triangle, blue nucleus. The whine is louder now, and the blue of my pendant glows so bright it washes out all other color.

Kang turns to me. “This is it,” he says. “Whatever you remember, now’s the time.”

I swallow, feeling the old panic rise in my throat. But I step forward, hand outstretched.

The door is cold, humming. I press the Sphere fragment to the panel, and it lights up, white-hot. There is a click, then a hiss, and the door slides open. Inside, the air is clean, almost sterile. The walls are lined with Spheres, each one pulsing in time with my own heartbeat. At the far end, a bank of monitors flickers with static.

We step inside together.

Kang shuts the door behind us, then rounds on me, eyes wild. “Now,” he says, “tell me who you are.” I look at my hands, at the blue glow, at the world that is somehow mine and not mine.

I open my mouth to answer, but then the alarm sounds—high, shrill, deafening. The room flashes red, and the floor drops out from under us. Kang grabs me, his body a shield, and we tumble into the dark together. Somewhere above, something howls. And I remember, just for an instant, the feeling of falling. The rest is noise.

Falling is nothing. It’s the landing that counts.

We slam into concrete with enough force to crack teeth, skidding across the wet floor and careening into a tangle of exposed cable. My elbow hits first, then my shoulder, then my skull. Blackness spiders through my vision. Kang lands beside me, rolls, and comes up crouched, gun drawn, body tense and scanning for targets before his brain can even finish cursing.

We’re in a tunnel—old, unfinished, the floor a mess of broken tile and rebar. The air is thicker here, wet with mist and the rotting animal tang of something very much alive. Above us, red light seeps through the cracks in the ceiling, painting everything the color of arterial blood.

A snarl. Close. Then the scrape of claws on tile.

I scramble to my feet, hands braced on the damp, cold ground. Kang grabs my shoulder, yanking me upright just as a shape blurs out of the shadows and barrels toward us. He fires—three rounds, each one a perfect, spaced double tap. The bullets punch through the thing’s chest, spraying black fluid against the wall, but it keeps coming. Only when it’s two meters away does it finally drop, skidding to a halt at my boots, jaw snapping in afterdeath.

I gasp, but Kang’s already pushing me back, voice a tight growl. “Stay behind me. Move.”