The transport pod hissed to a halt in the middle of nowhere.
Dry wind swept across the ground, kicking up ash-like dust. The landscape was skeletal—no towers, no data poles, no surveillance drones. Only cracked earth, wild brush, and silence that hadn't been touched by code in decades.
The pod's inner lights blinked once and died.
Vyomika stepped out first, scanning. Her HUD reported: [No Biometric Grid Detected. Edge of Recognized Civic Zone.]
She turned to Riva.
> "This isn't a residential area."
Riva stepped out slowly, eyes flicking around nervously. "I know."
Vyomika waited.
> "Uncle's house... it's beyond the grid," Riva explained. "These transports—they're not mapped to places that don't exist on the registry anymore."
She looked around and pointed east, beyond a ridge.
> "It's not far. But we'll have to go on foot."
Vyomika didn't protest. There was logic in it. An off-grid location would mean less chance of interception. Less chance of Nexatech satellites detecting their signatures. She nodded once.
They walked.
For a long time, neither spoke. The air grew heavier with each step—not from pollution, but from something more abstract: like forgotten air, like time that had congealed in place. The ruins around them weren't labeled. Not on any archive. They belonged to a time when corporations still fought with bullets, not bots.
Finally, Vyomika broke the silence.
> "Do you actually know the way?"
Riva hesitated. Her foot dragged for a second before she answered.
> "I was here once. A long time ago. I remember parts of it. Not everything."
Vyomika's eyes narrowed, but she said nothing.
They walked another kilometer.
Then Riva stopped.
There—half-buried in dirt and time—was an arch of stone and steel. A tunnel entrance, cracked and overgrown, yet still pulsing faintly with underground energy.
Riva gasped, her voice suddenly alive.
> "That's it! That's the way!"
She ran ahead, pulling vines and dirt away from the edges. The tunnel breathed faintly—an ancient exhale from a machine world buried beneath human memory.
Vyomika scanned the entrance.
> Substructure: Unknown. Depth: Variable. Active Thermal Signature Detected. Warning: No Map Data. No Exit Projection.
And yet… it was calling them.
Vyomika looked at Riva, who was already halfway inside.
She stepped in after her.
Behind them, the world of known paths collapsed. And ahead—through layers of earth, alloy, and forgotten war corridors—waited something that wasn't built by men.
It was waiting to be seen.
The tunnel sloped downward. Subtle at first, then sharper—unnaturally sharp.
Vyomika noticed it in her internal gyroscopic readings. Her feet adjusted, recalibrated for balance, but the air changed too—thicker, ionized, carrying faint traces of ozone and something older. It wasn't just a path of escape anymore. It was becoming... something else.
> "We should've reached surface conduits by now," Vyomika muttered, more to her sensors than to Riva.
Riva didn't respond. Her breathing was shallow, but her steps steady. She was watching the walls now—walls that shimmered faintly, not with the rust of decay, but with embedded filaments, almost biological in texture. There were no maps for this sector. Not even in Nexatech's internal black archives.
They had entered a zone the city had forgotten.
Or was forced to forget.
After another hundred meters, the tunnel opened.
Not into open air, but into a descending spiral—a corkscrew stair embedded in a perfect circular shaft, impossibly smooth and untouched by time.
Vyomika paused.
> "Not man-made," she said. "Or at least... not just man."
Her sensors pulsed against the stairwell's electromagnetic signature. No alarms. No guidance. Just silence.
> "You still want to go back?" she asked Riva.
Riva looked up at her—and shook her head.
> "No. Whatever this is... it's not hunting us."
That was true. This place didn't feel like a trap.
It felt like an invitation.
They descended.
The air changed again. Not colder. Not warmer. Just denser—as if time itself thickened the deeper they went. Vyomika's systems began to pick up strange frequencies—low, undulating patterns outside normal comms range. Patterns with rhythm. Not random. Almost like... breathing.
And then the tunnel ended.
And the chamber opened.
And the Aatm Stambh stood before them, waiting.