A low tremor passed through the floor. It was subtle at first, but then a low metallic groan followed from behind them. It sounded like weight was redistributing somewhere it shouldn't be.
Talia turned around, scanning the ceiling as if she could see through it. "Hold up."
Another groan followed, then a loud metallic bang, like a failing support beam snapping under tension.
Cassian looked over his shoulder. "That's not just echo..."
The ceiling cracked open above them, and then everything moved at once: dust poured from the seams, the lights blinked out, and a far wall cracked open and gave way.
Riven didn't think. He saw the beam overhead begin to collapse, and Cassian standing too close beneath it. He moved towards him, caught him at the shoulder, and shoved hard, pushing them both sideways just as the beam dropped. It hit the ground behind them with a dull, final crash that sent dust and debris flying around. Everything shook with it.
They hit the ground hard. Riven landed on his side past a pile of debris and broken panels, pain spiking through the same shoulder he had already injured before. He clenched his jaw, pushed past it, and sat up.
Toward the exit, part of the corridor they had come through was gone. It had collapsed and sealed itself behind a crumpled wall of bent pipe. On the far side of the wreckage, debris had sealed the gap, cutting Riven off from the others. He was trapped, alone on his side of the collapse.
Cassian coughed once and pushed himself to his feet."Are you okay?"
Riven gave a short nod. He wasn't, but not in a way that mattered now.
Cassian turned to the wreckage. "Maybe we can pull some of this..."
"Don't," Riven said. "It's not stable."
Cassian hesitated, reaching toward a section of the twisted frame, but as he did, a faint metallic creak answered him. Riven's voice came sharper this time. "I mean it."
The dust was still settling when a sound carried through the wreckage. It was Talia calling out from the other side of it. "Is everyone alright?"
"We're here," Riven called back.
Then suddenly, Riven glanced toward Anya as he noticed she was standing off to his right, perfectly still, just watching. She hadn't said a word since the collapse, hadn't reacted at all.
"Anya is with me..." Riven said aloud, as if he'd been asked.
And a second later, Talia did indeed ask: "Where...?"
"She's here," he repeated.
A long pause followed, giving Talia a moment to take it in. She then opened a tubular case and unrolled a cloth covered in hand-drawn tunnel maps. "We mapped this section last week."
Cassian spoke next with a low voice. "Is there another path?"
"This doesn't make sense," Talia continued, ignoring what she knew she couldn't answer. "This section was marked as stable. If something triggered a collapse, it must have come from deeper in."
Cassian crouched near the wreckage, scanning for handholds, gaps, anything that might give way to a workable path. If they moved now, Cassian and Talia could still get out. But Riven was sealed in completely, cut off by the collapse. There was no going back the way he'd come.
Talia stepped up behind him and passed Riven a folded strip of parchment, one of their mapped layouts, sketched with known walkways. She unfolded it next to the barrier.
"It's not much," Talia said, passing him the unrolled map. "But it should give you a rough sense of what's down here, at least what we managed to chart so far."
Cassian closed his eyes for a moment and let his shoulders drop. He leaned down toward the narrowest gap. "You're stable in there?"
"For now, I think so..."
"And then there's the countdown," Cassian said, glancing back at Talia. "What the hell was that about?"
Talia hesitated. Her eyes were still on the map, but her focus had drifted.
"Terrain remodeling," she said slowly. "Some zones were designed to change underground structures if needed. They could collapse one section to relieve pressure in another. Like controlled cave-ins, I guess. It's supposed to stabilize the region."
Cassian raised an eyebrow. "Is it supposed to happen out here?"
She shook her head. "This node is too old and too broken. Nothing here should be active in that way. We need to take this back to the others as soon as possible."
Talia crouched and unfastened a small cloth pouch from her hip. She slid it under the metal enough for Riven to be able to reach it.
"It's a field transmitter, short-range. It can't cut through thick structural walls or steel, but if you're near an exposed line or ventilation shaft, it might reach us. It works best if there's a clear path through the system, electrical conduits, old maintenance channels, anything not completely sealed."
Riven's hand slipped through the gap and took the device. Afterwards, his voice came through hesitantly. "The core."
Cassian blinked.
"It's better off with you. If anything goes wrong..."
"No." Cassian's tone cut clean. "Don't finish that sentence."
"I just mean..."
"I know what you mean," Cassian said. "You're not handing it off like this. You're getting out of there, and you're taking it with you to where it needs to go."
Cassian stared at the wall, jaw tight.
Talia pulled out a small bundle, some gauze, a vial, and two flat packets stamped with use instructions.
"For the wound," she said. "And if the girl seizes again, press this here..." she tapped a thin tube. "It'll regulate her breathing."
Riven took it without comment. Cassian could almost picture the look on his face, focused, probably already running through the next five steps. Then he said it aloud before he could stop himself, unsure if it was meant more for Riven or himself. "We'll get you out."
"I know."
He didn't know what else to say. Nothing useful came to mind, like everything worth saying had already been said somewhere else.
Talia stood. "We need to pull back before the rest of this moves again."
"Go," Riven said. "We'll try to find something from this side."
Cassian lingered a second longer, gaze fixed on the barrier like he might still see through it. But there was nothing left to say, nothing that would help.
The barrier creaked faintly as they turned away. The corridor rumbled again, and then, with a hard mechanical thud, the breach sealed.
The silence was thicker now.
Riven stayed where he was, listening for any new change above the structure. Behind him, the wall gave off a low tick, maybe dirt or maybe a cracked conduit somewhere, hard to say. After that, only the sound of dust settling.
He pressed his palm to his shoulder, feeling the pain spike beneath the skin. He rolled the sleeve carefully, then pulled the small med pack from his coat, the one Talia had given him. He cracked the seal on the gel tab and pressed it into place. Cold spread across the joint as the chemical took hold, tightening around the muscle.
"Alright," he muttered. "No broken bones, no bleeding. Just... almost buried inside a node."
He scanned the corridor. One direction was sealed by debris while the other curved away into partial shadow.
He turned back toward Anya. She watched from a few paces away, wide-eyed, curious, as if waiting for the next thing to happen.
"Are you okay?" he asked, but received no reply.
He crouched near the broken panel where they'd been trapped, scanning for anything useful. Digging through it would've been pointless, so he didn't even try it. Instead, he looked for items. He didn't find much, only twisted metal, shattered casing, and a thin layer of dust. He gave it another minute before letting himself stop. His legs folded, and he sat against the wall, pulling the satchel into his lap.
Anya sat too, mirroring him almost exactly. She didn't seem tired or anything similar, just still.
He let the silence sit between them for a moment, then said, almost amused, "Now I know how Cassian feels trying to talk to me..."
Riven leaned his head back and closed his eyes for a moment. Then another. When he opened them again, Anya had gone from her spot.
His stomach flipped. He stood too quickly, his shoulder tensing sharply, and turned to see her halfway down the corridor. She was reaching up, pressing her palm to a recessed panel in the wall, which, against all odds, lit up.
Riven started forward. "Anya... wait."
But she didn't.
The panel buzzed once, then something behind it clicked. A half-sealed hatch shuddered open a few centimeters, just enough to let a faint draft of stale air spill out.
Anya stepped forward again, keeping her eyes fixed on the dark gap ahead.
Riven reached her in two strides and put a hand gently on her shoulder. "Let me go first."
She didn't resist. Just waited.
He crouched and ran his hand along the hatch's edge, then eased it open a little farther, metal squealing against stone. It was a sloping path into a deeper level of the structure, thick with condensation and the smell of mud. He looked back at her once, then moved forward inside, keeping one hand on the wall, scanning each step before taking it.
Anya followed without a word.
The passage narrowed quickly, and the walls seemed to grow closer the deeper they went. Every few steps, Riven checked the ceiling or swept his light across the corners, watching for signs of collapse or corrosion.
Anya didn't seem bothered. She walked a few paces behind him, quiet, like she wasn't discovering the space, just returning to it.
The corridor sloped down even more, then leveled again. At one point, it forked, but Anya moved past the split without hesitation, brushing her hand along the left wall like she knew exactly where to go.
Riven followed, glancing back now and then. She wasn't looking at him, always forward.
After ten minutes of careful walking, the tunnel opened up into a larger chamber, octagonal in shape, with a high ceiling and corners marked with terminal screens. Some were smashed beyond use, while others seemed to be functional. Amazingly, the room still seemed to have power.
Anya walked in like she belonged there.
He pulled the communicator from his jacket, tapped it twice, then held it near his mouth.
"Cassian. Talia. I'm deeper in the node, past substructure C, I think. Anya found a path. I don't know where it ends yet, but I'll check in if the signal holds."
He released the button.
Nothing. No reply.
He set the device back in his pocket.
Anya had already crossed the room. She reached one of the far terminals and pressed her hand to the control surface. It glitched, then lit into a fragmented UI, distorted but functional.
System log archive. Timestamp: Unavailable. Playback ready.
He tapped the prompt, and a voice came through. It sounded staticky and processed, but human.
This is Dr. Liane Vesh. We've lost the connection to the outer basin. None of our attempts to reroute the signal worked. Pressure failures are spreading through nearby sectors as well. We think the Lady is trying to reshape the terrain, following an old safety pattern, but it was triggered by incomplete data. She thinks she's protecting what's left. But without human input, her logic has fractured.
The countdown is a last-resort safety measure meant to relieve pressure underground before the whole area collapses. But the system's blind now. The Lady doesn't know this entire zone is inhabited.
Riven leaned slightly closer, listening without blinking.
We've initiated a full shutdown of the node to stop the chain reaction. We don't expect to make it out, most of the lower grid has already gone dark. If this message is found, please send this log forward. Someone needs to know what happened here.
After a few moments of crackling static, the same voice returned, this time with a slight change in tone, weighted by the strain of a decision they hadn't wanted to make.
If anyone finds the girl, Anya, she might still be alive. We sealed her capsule inside Pod 3A. She's nonverbal. Autistic. But her signal patterning was the only thing the system responded to without distortion. I hope she makes it...
Then the log ended.
Riven didn't move for a moment as he processed all of that.
In the meantime, Anya had walked to the center of the room. She was tracing the shape of something in the dust with one finger, in her usual quiet and methodical way.
He sat beside her.
"You're more than you let on," he said softly. "Aren't you?"
As soon as he said it, the core buzzed faintly inside his satchel. When he pulled it free, the line along its casing lit up, and then words began to appear on the surface, like something meant only for him.
You are not alone.
Protocol override accepted.
Find secondary: GLASSWING
Manual presence required.
Status: listening.
Riven scanned the lines twice, then once more, slower.
"Not alone..." he muttered. That wasn't the kind of data packet any core technology should send. Was he misreading it? And it also sounded like that system had a backup. Someone had built a fail-safe that required hands and presence, something the Lady wouldn't activate on her own.
He set the core down and reached into his coat for the communicator Talia had given him. He pressed the button, waited for the light to flash green, then spoke.
"Cassian," he said, trying to steady his voice. "There's another control point, it's called Glasswing... or something. If you can get to it, you might be able to push a system cancel."
He waited, but no reply came in. Just static.
He adjusted the antenna and tried again. Still nothing.
Riven lowered the device, letting it rest in his hand for a moment before setting it beside the core. He sat back slowly, his shoulder brushing against the nearest support.
Across from him, Anya had stopped tracing the lines in the dust. Her focus had pivoted towards him now, like she was patiently waiting.
He rubbed his fingers together absently, clearing dust from a cracked knuckle.
"Cassian," he said. "I hope you're still listening."