Bobby took a hesitant step forward, crossing an invisible line. One moment, his boots crunched on the spongy, corrupted ground littered with the sizzling remains of the Not-Wolves. The next, silence.
Clean, absolute silence.
He was standing on a floor smooth and dark as polished obsidian, reflecting the sickly green lantern light with a disconcerting lack of distortion. The oppressive, pulsing presence of the previous tunnel vanished, replaced by an air so still and neutral it felt like the inside of a vacuum-sealed bag. No more dripping water or distant groans of shifting earth, not even the faint hum of background wrongness. Just… nothing.
It was cleaner than any truck stop restroom he'd ever entered, cleaner than a hospital operating room. An unnatural, sterile clean that felt fundamentally wrong down here in the guts of a collapsing town.
He ran a gloved hand along the nearest wall. It curved upward in a perfect, seamless arc, cool and smooth under his touch. No grime or cracks, no hastily scrawled warnings from previous lost souls. It felt like it had been extruded from some giant, cosmic machine moments ago.
He tapped the wall with the jagged edge of his License Plate Sword. Ting. A clear, sharp, almost musical note rang out, surprisingly loud in the stillness. Solid. Perfect. Unblemished.
Behind him, Rigg hadn't moved past the threshold. The kid stood framed in the opening to the pulsing, corrupted tunnel they'd just left, looking like a mouse considering whether the sterile cleanness of the trap was worth the cheese. His knuckles were bone-white on his rebar spear, his breathing shallow.
"This ain't fracture growth," Rigg repeated, his voice barely a whisper, cracking with fear. "Fractures… they rot things. Twist 'em. Make 'em bleed weird. They don't… they don't build. Not like this. This is shaped. Deliberate."
Bobby glanced back, noting the genuine terror in the kid's eyes. This wasn't just fear of the dark or monsters anymore. This was fear of something fundamentally breaking the rules of his world. "You said people never came this deep," Bobby prompted.
Rigg shook his head violently, ragged hair falling into his eyes. "Never! Old Man Hemlock, he spent his life down here, mapping everything, marking the deep shafts. His maps… they show solid rock here. Miles of it. This path didn't exist yesterday! It's like…" He trailed off, swallowing hard. "Like the tunnels are deciding where they wanna go now."
Betsy's presence, a constant low thrumming warmth tied intrinsically to his soul, seemed to focus, her usual flirty static replaced by a low, concentrated hum in his mind.
"He's not wrong, sugar," her mental voice was quieter, more intense than usual. "The geometry here… it's too precise, too clean. It adheres to mathematical principles, but feels… sterile. Like something studied blueprints for 'hallway' and 'room' but missed the part about wear and tear, about purpose. It's mimicking function without understanding form."
Bobby grunted. Intentional weirdness was usually worse than accidental weirdness. He turned his attention back to the center of the unnervingly perfect chamber.
Standing there, smack in the middle of the polished floor, was a pillar.
It wasn't grand or imposing. Just a simple column of dull grey metal, maybe four feet high, mostly cylindrical but with flattened sides, making it look vaguely hexagonal if you squinted.
It doesn't seems to have any purpose and just… stood there. Like a misplaced piece of forgotten industrial equipment.
A very faint hum emanated from it, lower and steadier than the pulsing heartbeat of the previous tunnel. And that smell… hot metal, like brakes after a hard stop, sharp ozone, and… cut grass? That last part made no damn sense at all. Where the hell would cut grass come from down here?
Viewer01: Pillar of mysterious exposition?
Viewer02: Touch it Bobby
He circled it warily, keeping his distance, sword held low and ready. He prodded the air near it with the tip. Nothing. He scanned the surface again. Smooth, featureless metal. No obvious power source, no connections to the floor or ceiling. It just was.
"Anyone ordered a weird lawn ornament?" He drawled, trying to cut the tension with sarcasm, mostly for his own benefit.
Right on cue, the blue glow of the Echo Layer flickered at the edge of his vision.
[UNREGISTERED DEVICE DETECTED]
[ENERGY SIGNATURE: UNFAMILIAR. NON-STANDARD WAVEFORM.]
[CROSS-REFERENCING ALL KNOWN GAIATHORNE AND ANCHOR SCHEMATICS… NEGATIVE.]
[ANALYZING ENERGY OUTPUT… LOW LEVEL, NON-ANCHOR, NON-PRIMORDIAL VARIANT.]
[SOURCE UNKNOWN. NATURE UNKNOWN.]
[RECOMMENDATION: MAINTAIN SAFE DISTANCE. DO NOT INTERACT WITHOUT AUTHORIZED COUNTER-MEASURES OR—]
The text abruptly dissolved, letters stretching and distorting into meaningless static before snapping off entirely.
[ERROR]
[SYSTEM INTEGRITY COMPROMISED]
[QUERY FAILED – EXTERNAL INTERFERENCE DETECTED]
The normally crisp blue HUD wavered violently, lines of arcane code bleeding into Earth-style readouts, colors glitching like a dying monitor.
"Bobby!" Betsy's voice lost all its calm analysis, snapping with pure, undiluted alarm. "That thing's actively disrupting the Echo Layer feed! It's not just passive interference – it's pushing back! Get away from it! NOW!"
He reacted instantly, already moving backward before her warning fully registered. That system error felt bad. He planted his good leg, ready to shove off—
And hit an invisible wall.
Not a physical barrier, but a sudden, crushing pressure increase that slammed into him from all sides. The air thickened instantly, becoming dense, heavy, like trying to breathe molasses. His ears screamed with the pressure change. Movement became sluggish, each twitch requiring immense effort.
His vision exploded.
First, blinding white light that bleached all thought. Then, just as quickly, it collapsed inward, replaced by a swirling vortex of impossible color. A shade that resonated somewhere between sound and taste, a piercing violet that felt sharp, a burning orange that hummed like a bass string. It bypassed his eyes entirely, searing itself directly onto his brain.
A flood of his own memories, ripped loose and slammed back into his consciousness at impossible speed.
It felt like his entire life, especially the last few insane days, was being scanned and cataloged by the impassive metal pillar.
His vision greyed out, not from pressure, but from sheer sensory overload. A wave of vertigo hit him hard. He gasped, stumbling backward, hands flying to his temples as if he could physically hold the fragmented memories back.
He felt Betsy flare within him, a surge of protective energy, not directed at the pillar, but forming a buffer around his mind, trying to shield him from the intensity of his own life flashing before his eyes.
The flood stopped as suddenly as it began.
His knees gave out. He hit the polished floor hard, caught only partially by Rigg who yelped and scrambled to help him up.
Bobby coughed, gasping for air, the phantom smells of diesel and ozone still clinging to his senses. His head throbbed, not with pain, but with the residual echo of too much sensory at the same time.
"Sweet Mother Mary of the transmission rebuild…" Betsy breathed in his mind, her own presence feeling slightly ruffled, like she'd had to brace for impact. "That wasn't an attack, Bobby. That was… a scan. A deep scan. It was reading you – your memories, your experiences, your point of origin. Like… like it was trying to understand what the hell you are by looking at where you've been."
His gear felt warm, a low, steady heat from Betsy's protective surge dissipating slowly. He looked at the pillar. It was silent again, the hum faded, the smell gone. Just an inert lump of metal in the center of the room. As if its curiosity had been satisfied, or its scan completed.
"Mister? You okay?" Rigg asked again, helping him stagger to his feet. "You just… you spaced out. Hard."
Bobby shook his head, trying to clear the last fragments of memory – the taste of coffee, the smell of rain. "Yeah," he managed, his voice hoarse. "Just… felt like my whole damn life flashed before my eyes. Didn't know I had that much life." He spat on the floor, the gesture feeling futile against the sterile perfection.
Viewer01: Memory scan? By a pillar?
Viewer02: Yo what about privacy? That's messed up.
Viewer03: Wonder what it's gonna DO with those memories...
"Okay," Bobby said, straightening up. "Plan B. We find another way out. Any way but back towards that… thing."
He turned, Rigg already nodding in agreement, both of them instinctively moving away from the pillar, back towards the only entrance they knew, hoping against hope it was still there.
They reached the threshold—
SCHLICK-THUMP.
With a whisper of shifting stone, a sound too soft and final for its weight, the entrance back to the corrupted tunnel closed.
Not a door sliding shut. The stone itself flowed, seamlessly sealing the opening, leaving behind only smooth, unbroken, polished wall. No longer any hint that there had ever been an opening there at all.
Bobby stared, touched the smooth, cool stone where the escape route had been.
Rigg made a small, despairing sound beside him.
The Echo Layer, stable again now that the pillar was quiescent, flickered back into existence, displaying a calm, clear message:
[ENVIRONMENTAL ADAPTATION COMPLETE]
[PATH PARAMETERS UPDATED BASED ON ANOMALY DATA]
[DESIGNATED PATH FORWARD CONFIRMED]
[RETURN VECTOR NULLIFIED]
[TURNING BACK IS NO LONGER AN OPTION]
Bobby read the words, a muscle twitching in his jaw.
He looked down the only path left – the sterile, humming tunnel leading deeper into whatever architectural nightmare this place was cooking up. He felt a familiar surge of stubborn anger rise in his chest – the same feeling he got when dispatch tried to change his route mid-haul without asking.
He hefted the Door Shield, adjusted the grip on his Sword, the metal finally cool against his palm.
"Right," he muttered grimly, the sound flat in the dead air. "Guess we're takin' the scenic route." He glared at the impassive stone wall that had trapped them, then down the waiting tunnel. "Next time I'm pickin' the path. And it better damn well have an exit sign."