The door did not yield to her.
The Fox pressed her palm against the cold metal door, tracing seams, looking for hidden panels, access ports, anything that suggested it could still be opened by human hands. Her terminal flickered to life, projecting thin lines of light that crawled over the surface, probing, listening.
Nothing.
The door was sealed Not locked, not broken. Sealed, as if the world itself had decided that what lay beyond it was not meant to be reached anymore.
She stepped back, rifle slung low, mind already shifting through contingencies. Explosives were out of the question. Noise would echo forever down here. And with one bullet left, she couldn't afford to invite whatever listened in the deep.
She crouched, fingers brushing the red moss at the base of the door. It pulsed faintly beneath her touch, warm, responsive. The walls breathed. The Terminal breathed. The Metros were no longer just an architecture, they were an organism. And she was standing at its heart.
Then—
A voice.
[???]
"Why have you come so far down?"
It was gentle. Soft, like warm water poured over a wound. A woman's voice, calm and patient, without urgency or threat. It slipped into her ears and did not stop there. It sank deeper, past thought, curling around something fragile in her chest.
Her muscles relaxed before she realized they had. Her breathing slowed. The sharp edge of vigilance dulled, not into carelessness, but into quiet acceptance.
It never occurred to her that the voice might be dangerous.
She turned.
The woman stood a short distance away, impossibly tall, seven feet, perhaps more. Her presence filled the terminal without displacing anything. Pale skin, almost white, radiant in a way that felt less like reflected light and more like emission. Orange markings traced her form in smooth, deliberate lines, flowing along her limbs and torso like sacred geometry etched into living stone.
Her face bore a mouth, soft, human, faintly smiling, but where her eyes should have been rose a crown-like growth, organic and luminous, branching upward in delicate arcs. It was beautiful. Not in a way that invited desire, but in a way that demanded reverence.
Where hair would have fallen, there were wings.
Frilled, layered, vast. They descended from her head and shoulders all the way to the floor, unfurling behind her like a curtain of living silk. They did not flap. They did not move with air. The followed her as though gravity were a mere suggestion to them, hovering just above the moss, brushing it without disturbing it.
She wore no clothes. She had no need for them. Golden lines outlined her body where veins might have been, glowing faintly beneath her skin, pulsing in slow, steady rhythms.
She was flawless.
Not pristine, not delicate. Complete. As if she had never been unfinished, never been waiting to become something else.
This was divinity.
This was Entropy.
The Fox felt her throat tighten. Not with fear. With awe.
Entropy tilted her head slightly, studying her, not like prey, not like a subject, but like a thought that revisited after a long time.
[Entropy]
"You stand at a door that does not open. And yet you have not turned away."
"That is... interesting."
The Fox swallowed. Her mouth felt dry, but her mind felt clear. Too clear. There was no panic, no scrambling for lies or half-truths. The answer rose to the surface of her thoughts on its own and she could do nothing to stop it from slipping through her tongue.
[Fox] "I'm here to stop him,"
The words came as if pulled upward by an invisible hand. There was no resistance in her chest, no inner voice screaming caution. It felt right to speak. Necessary.
Entropy's smile did not fade. If anything, it softened.
[Entropy]
"Him. The one who pulls at strings and calls it guidance."
"The one who wears intention like a mask."
The Fox nodded. Her fingers tightened reflexively around the rifle, but there was no threat in the motion. It was habit, not fear.
[Fox] "I won't let him have Ecstasy. Not fully. Not without consequence."
Entropy did not react. There was no flare of light, no shift in posture. She simply listened.
[Entropy]
"And yet, you did not come here for him alone."
The Fox's breath caught.
Entropy stepped closer. Each step made no sound, the moss beneath her feet untouched, uncompressed. Her presence pressed gently against the Fox's senses, like standing near a fire that did not burn.
Entropy continued.
[Entropy]
"You tell yourself a story. A story where you are a means to an end. A necessary motion. A hand that opens a path and then disappears."
Her voice was calm, almost kind.
"But beneath that story... there is another."
The Fox's jaws clenched. She wanted to deny it. The impulse rose, sharp and defensive, but it dissolved before it reached her tongue.
[Fox] "I don't help him."
Entropy's smile deepened, just a fraction.
[Entropy]
"No. You do not."
She circled the Fox slowly, wings drifting behind her like a living halo.
"You came here because something in you could not accept being a puppet. Because you planned. Because you prepared for the moment when the strings would tighten."
The Fox felt exposed, not stripped bare, but seen. Truly seen.
"You left parts of yourself behind. Not out of loss. Out of foresight. You built distance into your own body. A kindness to yourself."
The Fox's chest ached.
[Fox] "I had to,"
Entropy stopped in front of her.
[Entropy]
"Yes. You did."
There was no judgement in the word. Only acknowledgement.
"You believe you walk into uncertainty."
Entropy continued, her voice lowering.
"But you have already chosen. Long before you descended these stairs. Long before the silence."
She leaned in slightly, her crown casting delicate shadows across the Fox's face.
"You are not lost. You are simply early."
The Fox exhaled, a breath she hadn't realized she was holding. Her shoulders sagged, not in defeat, but in release.
Entropy straightened and extended a hand.
The Fox tensed, instinct finally stirring, but she did not raise the rifle. She did not step back.
Entropy's hand passed her by.
She pressed her palm against the sealed door.
There was a soft click.
No alarms. No tremors. The door slid open smoothly, as if it had been waiting for this exact moment.
Entropy withdrew her hand and turned back to the Fox, smiling.
Behind the smile, the Fox felt it, relief. Subtle, but real. Like a long-held breath finally released. As if Entropy were glad she had come. As if all this time, all these depths and layers and silence, had been endured simply for the chance to speak.
For company.
For understanding.
The Fox smiled back.
It was genuine. Unguarded. Perhaps the first she had worn in years.
[Entropy]
"Go. Do what you feel is right."
The Fox nodded. She stepped through the doorway, then paused.
She looked back one last time.
Entropy was already walking away, wings trailing behind her like falling petals, her form dissolving gently into the vastness of the Terminal. Not vanishing, simply receding, as if she had always been a part of the space and was now returning to it.
The door slid shut behind the Fox with a whisper.
And for the first time in a very long while, she did not feel alone.