They’d gone down here before, dozens of them, maybe hundreds. None came back. What they left behind were fragments: a bootprint, a scorched wall, a whisper of breath caught in faulty recordings.
She wasn’t like them, not just because she was the last, but because she wasn’t here for glory. She came for the truth, the thing beneath the metal and mist, the story no one wanted told.
As she stepped forward, the drone began to move. Not to block her path, but to guide it. The old machine didn’t threaten, as if it had waited a long time for someone willing to listen. The tiny floating machine shifted its angle, scanning her. Then it turned and drifted down the corridor, slow and deliberate, as if retracing a ritual.
She followed, pulse steady, breath shallow. Somewhere ahead, metal groaned. Whatever lay beyond wasn’t waiting. It was waking.