The tunnel led them into silence.

  No more sparks. No more flickering debris. The floor beneath their boots was too smooth, too symmetrical—tiling that glowed faintly at their steps. And the air… no longer stale or burned. Just still.

  It felt wrong.

  Ramm stepped lightly. “This isn’t a sublevel anymore. This is… a bunker.”

  “No,” Brinn muttered. “It’s a tomb.”

  The corridor widened ahead, blooming into a chamber so massive it made the robot chamber above seem cramped. The ceiling stretched far overhead, veined with cables and pale lights that pulsed with slow, unnatural rhythm. Control consoles lined the perimeter in an almost ceremonial arc, their surfaces flickering with languages none of them recognized. A raised dais sat at the center—a hub of technology that didn’t just look advanced, it looked… designed. Purposeful.

  Atop that platform stood a man.

  Tall. Lean. White hair bound into a careful knot, streaked with silver. A long coat flowed down to polished boots, laced with glowing filament-threads. A gold visor obscured his eyes, though his posture alone spoke of someone sharp. Measured. Dangerous by intelligence alone.

  The crew hesitated.

  Then, without turning, the man tapped a control sphere on the console beside him—and the floor beneath their feet shimmered.

  Brinn growled. “Forcefield.”

  A pulse ran through them—not pain, but a jarring stillness. Muscles seized. Weapons froze. Sai reached for his dagger… and stopped mid-motion.

  Even Pepe, usually immune to such things, buzzed mid-air with a panicked flicker. “Oh no. I hate this. I hate this very much.”

  “I’m sorry for the rude welcome,” the man said, voice calm, cultured. “I didn’t know if you were salvage crews, scavengers, or one of them. Caution seemed the logical option.”

  Jarek strained against the paralysis field. “Identify yourself.”

  “I’m Doctor Veiss. Former Systems Architect of the Inner Ashalara Vaults. Former Head of Temporal Engineering. And,” he added dryly, “current unwilling guest of this facility.”

  “You’re not in charge anymore?” Ramm grunted.

  “Hardly.” Veiss tapped a control, and the field lowered. The team stumbled as sensation returned.

  Sai immediately vanished into a crouch. His daggers flicked free—though he didn’t strike. Yet.

  “I’d prefer if you didn’t kill me,” Veiss said mildly. “You’ll want my expertise in about five minutes.”

  Stolen novel; please report.

  Brinn loomed. “You built the robot above?”

  Veiss frowned. “I designed its containment protocols. Someone else activated it. Someone with access to what I thought was a sealed command shell.”

  “Who?” Sai asked.

  Veiss hesitated. “I… don’t know. That’s the problem.”

  Jarek stepped forward, eyes hard. “Start talking.”

  The scientist gestured for them to approach the dais. His hands trembled, only slightly. A man not used to company.

  “I’ve been trapped here for over a decade,” Veiss began. “Locked behind this forcefield with a partial link to the base’s systems. I can see. I can monitor. But I cannot leave.”

  “Why keep you alive?” Brinn asked.

  Veiss sighed. “Because they need my mind. My code. I helped design the layers of this vault—the traps, the weapons, the research archives. But they never told me what lay beneath. Only that it was old… and sealed for a reason.”

  He turned to Sai. “And you. You moved through that field like it meant nothing.”

  Sai’s face didn’t move. “And?”

  “You’re tethered,” Veiss said, intrigued. “Temporal reversion. You exist slightly off the spine of time. A side effect of something… buried in your bloodline, I suspect.”

  Sai said nothing. But Jarek’s eyes flicked to him, curious.

  Ramm broke the silence. “So you’re saying this place is alive?”

  “I’m saying it was meant to contain,” Veiss replied. “But those above hijacked it. Layered their systems over things they didn’t understand. I warned them. They laughed.”

  Pepe hovered near a wall console. “Then why keep you here?”

  “I kept secrets,” Veiss said simply. “And I refused to wake the things they wanted. So they walled me in. But they couldn’t kill me outright. Not yet.”

  Sai’s gaze moved slowly around the room. “What did you refuse to wake?”

  Before Veiss could answer, a low tone rang out.

  Deep. Wrong. Not a machine alert.

  Veiss turned slowly. “That console is not mine.”

  On the far side of the chamber, one of the primary gates—the massive sealed doors carved into the stone, larger even than the one they’d entered—shuddered.

  So did the one opposite it.

  Brinn’s jaw clenched. “Those weren’t open before.”

  “They shouldn’t be opening now,” Veiss said urgently, rushing back to the dais. His fingers danced across the controls. “I locked them years ago. It required triple verification. They’ve been dead silent for eleven years—”

  A horrible chime echoed through the chamber.

  Then the doors began to part.

  Not fast. Not sudden.

  Just… wide enough.

  Enough for the cold air to pour in.

  Enough to hear the scream.

  Not a roar. Not metal.

  A voice.

  Human. Almost.

  But stretched, broken, wrong.

  The kind of scream that came from a soul frayed at the edges.

  Everyone froze.

  Pepe whispered, “I officially hate this place.”

  Ramm crept closer to the edge of the dais, peering toward the widening shadows. “Uh. Should we—should we close that?”

  Jarek raised his blaster. “Can we?”

  Veiss stood motionless. His hands had stopped moving.

  “They opened from the inside,” he said quietly. “Not the control room. Not the Weavernet. The seals broke because something wanted them to.”

  Sai stepped forward, blades drawn. “What’s behind them?”

  Veiss finally looked at him.

  Not as a scientist.

  But as a man afraid.

  “I don’t know what they are. But I know what they do. They… change things. Minds. Bodies. Thought.”

  From the massive left-hand gate, a cold draft curled into the room. Not like wind. Like gravity had shifted.

  Sai instinctively stepped back.

  And from the right gate, a second scream followed. Fainter. But closer.

  Pepe’s lights dimmed as he hovered near Jarek. “No footsteps,” he said quietly.

  “No echoes.”

  “Then how are they moving?” Brinn asked.

  “They’re not walking,” Sai said.

  And all at once, the room fell still.

  The doors stopped just wide enough for a shadow to pass through.

  But nothing moved.

  Just silence.

  Waiting.

  Watching.

  And then Veiss whispered something no one wanted to hear:

  “We’re too late.”

  Doctor Veiss, a character I’ve been waiting to introduce for a long time. He’s not your average mad scientist (unless you ask Ramm), but someone layered in nuance: brilliant, cautious, and possibly more afraid of what’s coming than even our main crew is.

  big the consequences of this story will be.

  Sai’s time loop ability quietly continue weaving through the narrative—while building toward a confrontation with something older, stranger, and far less predictable than mechs and machines.

  Next chapter? The shadows walk.