The corridor swallowed them in silence, illuminated only by thin, cold strips of blue LED embedded into the walls.
Each step they took echoed faintly against the metallic floor, the air thick with the scent of rust and something older—something forgotten.
Irfan Shah moved ahead, his prosthetic eye scanning, mapping every inch of the passage in real time.
Beside him, Aina Farisha advanced cautiously, her hand never straying far from the compact blade tucked at her hip.
They had crossed a threshold — not just physically, but into a world hidden from the public eye.
A world carefully constructed, meticulously erased from history.
After several minutes, the corridor widened into a larger chamber.
Rows of abandoned consoles lined the walls, covered in a fine film of dust.
Large glass tanks, cracked and empty, stood silently at the edges of the room like forgotten sentinels.
Above them, faded letters were still visible on the cracked wall:
PHALANX BIO-RESEARCH UNIT 02
Irfan's chest tightened.
"A lab," he breathed.
An abandoned laboratory, buried beneath the city, hidden from every map, every record.
Aina moved towards one of the consoles, brushing dust off the surface.
The screen remained dark, lifeless.
"Power's down," she said, frowning.
Irfan tapped the side of his prosthetic, activating an energy pulse scan.
"Backup generators detected… further down the passage. About 80 meters."
His voice was calm, but his heart raced.
He didn't know whether reactivating the systems would help them — or alert whoever once ran this place.
But they needed answers.
"We need to see what they were working on," Aina said, reading his thoughts.
They moved quickly but quietly, past broken equipment and shattered glass.
The deeper they went, the more signs of chaos they found — overturned desks, claw marks etched into metal panels, and remnants of scorched flooring.
Something had gone wrong here.
Very wrong.
Finally, they reached a secondary control room.
A compact generator unit sat at the center, half-buried in debris.
Irfan knelt, inspecting the device.
It was old, but salvageable.
"Give me a minute," he said.
Aina stood guard, flashlight sweeping the dark corners while Irfan connected his portable power inverter to the generator's terminals.
Sparks crackled as he forced a reboot.
The lights flickered.
Somewhere deeper in the facility, machinery groaned to life after years of dormancy.
The floor vibrated faintly beneath their feet.
The lab was waking up.
"Come on, come on," Irfan muttered under his breath as consoles along the main chamber lit up with a sickly, flickering glow.
The tanks now revealed their contents more clearly—residue of organic matter clinging to the cracked glass.
Aina swallowed hard.
She wasn't easily rattled, but the thought of what had once been inside those tanks made her skin crawl.
Returning to the main chamber, Irfan hurried to the nearest active console.
LUCIA interfaced with it almost instantly, displaying a decrypted menu across Irfan's vision.
He scrolled quickly through project logs.
File names flashed by:
SUBJECT X: STAGE 2
NEURAL LINK EXPERIMENTATION
NANITE BIO-MERGE TRIAL 17
Irfan's fingers hesitated over the last file.
Something in his gut twisted.
With a deep breath, he opened it.
Fragments of video clips played:
Blurred figures strapped to tables.
Screaming.
Surgeons in black suits monitoring readings on glowing panels.
Nanobots injected directly into brain tissue.
Subjects thrashing violently before falling ominously still.
Aina, peering over his shoulder, muttered, "They were testing… control. Cognitive hijacking."
Irfan's stomach churned.
PHALANX had been trying to fuse alien tech into human minds — not to heal, not to empower — but to control.
Mindless weapons in human skin.
And based on the dates of the logs, they had been doing this for years.
Suddenly, LUCIA's voice broke the thick silence.
"Warning: Motion detected. Multiple signatures approaching from eastern passage."
Aina cursed under her breath.
"We've been here too long."
Irfan disconnected the drive from the console, clutching it tightly.
"We have what we need. Move!"
They darted back into the corridor.
Behind them, heavy footsteps pounded closer — precise, coordinated.
Professional.
As they ran, the blue LED strips along the walls flickered violently, as if the very facility was rejecting their presence.
The passage split ahead.
Left, towards an unknown stairwell leading deeper underground.
Right, towards a maintenance shaft, barely wide enough for a person.
"Right!" Aina shouted, making a snap decision.
They squeezed into the maintenance shaft just as shadowy figures in black tactical gear stormed into the main hall.
Irfan pressed his back against the cool steel, heart hammering against his ribs.
Through a narrow vent slit, he caught a glimpse of the pursuers:
Visors blacked out, no insignia, no identifying marks.
PHALANX agents.
Real.
Deadly.
Aina leaned close, whispering:
"We need a new plan. They're not going to stop."
Irfan nodded grimly.
This wasn't just about uncovering secrets anymore.
Now it was survival.
And somewhere ahead, hidden deeper in the forgotten labyrinths beneath the city, lay the real answers.
The ones that might cost them everything.