The air inside the chamber hits different: colder, but with this weird warm-metal smell, like blood right after a storm. The hatch behind me sighs shut and it feels final, like someone just swallowed.
Through the thick glass I can still see them frozen in red flashes: Mara standing like she's holding the whole building up with her spine, Sato gripping his rifle so hard his knuckles went white ages ago, Rey looking like he's praying without words, and Kwan grinning the way little kids do on rollercoasters right before they puke.
The pin is just… hanging there, three feet off the pedestal, lazy as smoke. It's bone and crystal and something that hurts to look at directly, like staring at the sun through a pinhole. The red inside it isn't glowing; it's deciding.
My hands already know exactly how far away it is. Like they've been waiting their whole life for this yardstick.
"Ryo," Mara's voice crackles in my ear, calm but thin, "talk to me."
"Yeah," I whisper. "I'm hungry."
I take one step.
The hum crawls inside my ribs and starts playing my bones like piano keys. Goosebumps race up my arms. The pin drifts the last little bit and settles into my palm like it's coming home after a fight.
Nothing explodes. It just clicks.
And then the floor falls out from under my brain.
I'm nowhere.
Not dark, not empty—just packed tight with something that has weight but no edges. Threads of brighter black stitch through it. Everything here has direction. Every want is an arrow. Every hurt is a slope.
Something enormous notices me.
Not a mind. More like a whole crowd breathing at once.
A thin feeler brushes me—curious, ready to snap back. Scout. It tastes the shape of me and asks, real polite:
—name?—
Behind it something the size of a city leans in. Harrower. The space around it bends to fit it because fighting would cost too much.
Farther back, something mountain-huge and quiet watches like a hole learning how to wear a face.
I try to say Ryo and the word just flops over, too small for the room.
—vector?— the big one asks, voice rolling downhill.
I think about the smell of instant ramen and rainy bus stops and the sound of a fridge humming at 2 a.m. That's the arrow I fire back.
The mountain shifts, interested.
—kin— it decides.
The word slams into me like cold water. Not yes, not no—just trying me on for size.
No, I think, hard, like slamming a door.
It doesn't get mad. It just measures.
—tool— the scout chirps, excited.
—mouth— the harrower rumbles, already bored of me, eyeing the building like takeout.
Then something else slices across everything—sharp, clean, machined.
It's been waiting the whole time. It isn't a creature. It's a command wearing creature clothes.
It shapes itself into one word I can actually carry:
—OPEN—
The pin burns white-hot in my real hand and the word tries to crawl down my arm like a key turning itself.
My body jerks like someone yanked a puppet string.
Then I'm slammed back into my skin.
Back in the chamber, sweat cools on my neck so fast it stings. The hum moved house—it's living under my ribs now, purring.
Everything has little ghost arrows on it now. I can see what people's next half-second before they do.
Mara: braced, ready to hold a line.
Sato: shield first, ask later.
Rey: open every door if it saves someone.
Kwan: know know know know.
And under the floor, something is knitting itself a throat out of concrete and rebar.
"They've got ranks," I say, surprised my voice still works. "Scouts, rippers, and something way back that thinks it's god. They want to turn the outside inside. They looked at me and said 'family.'"
Sato's rifle dips like it forgot what it was for.
"Can you use that?" Mara asks.
"I can see what everything wants," I say. "Right now that thing downstairs wants to wear the lab like a glove."
"How do we stop a glove?" Rey mutters.
"Close the fingers," Kwan whispers, eyes shining.
"Break the wrist," Sato grunts.
"Or just don't be the hand," I hear myself say.
The word OPEN scratches under my skin like poison ivy.
"Ryo," Mara says, soft but sharp enough to cut fog, "you're still in there. Say your name out loud. Make it stick."
The mountain tugs at the syllables. Ryo feels like a dandelion seed in a hurricane.
"Ryo," I force out.
It stays this time. Barely.
Alarms drop half an octave, like the building just exhaled. Down below, metal stops screaming for a second.
Then the floor splits.
Not breaks—splits, clean as if the concrete got a paper cut. Something long and plated starts pushing through like toothpaste made of knives and nightmares. Each segment locks into place with a wet click. Where a face should be there's just deeper shadow.
It steps into the lab.
The floor hates it on contact.
It should charge the guns. Should.
Instead it turns, finds me through thirty centimeters of armored glass, and kneels.
The whole map screams. Threads snap tight. Far away, the mountain pauses like a chess player who just saw a new move.
"It's waiting for orders," I say.
Mara's voice is almost a whisper. "Then choose which orders it gets.
I walk to the glass. The pin in my hand starts singing in the same key as my pulse.
"Don't you dare open that door," Mara warns.
"I don't have to," I say.
I lift the pin like a conductor's baton.
The harrower bows until its forehead almost kisses the floor.
Another memory starts peeling away—apple shampoo, someone humming off-key while washing dishes. I feel it sliding.
I look straight at the thing and think the clearest thought I have left:
Go home.
The creature tilts, confused for half a heartbeat—like a dog that heard its name in a foreign language—then starts folding in on itself. Plates slide, joints unhook, red light gutters out. It shrinks, flattens, and slips back through the cut in the world like smoke pulled into a vacuum.
The cut zips shut behind it.
Silence so complete I hear Rey's knees knock together.
The pin cools in my hand. The hum under my ribs curls up and goes to sleep, satisfied.
Mara lets out a breath that shakes at the edges. "You just told a nightmare to fuck off and it listened."
"Pretty much."
The laugh in the kitchen takes one more step down the hallway and I still can't catch it.
The PA crackles back to life. "Anomaly neutralized. Medics to gallery two."
"Medics can chill," Mara says into her mic. She hits the inner hatch release. "Slow approach."
The door opens. The air smells like burnt wiring and relief.
Up close she's got a fresh cut on her cheek, thin and perfect, already thinking about becoming a scar. She looks at me like I'm a bomb that just chose not to go off.
"What did you see in there?" she asks.
"A family reunion I didn't want an invite to."
Kwan edges closer like a stray hoping for scraps. "It called you—"
"Kin. Yeah. I heard."
Mara's earpiece chirps. She listens, jaw tightening. "Copy. Ito out."
She looks at me. "Higher-ups want you upstairs. Like, yesterday. Escort's already in the elevator."
"Cool," I say. "How many doors between here and fresh air?"
"Too many for running, not enough for hiding." She tilts her head. "Can you read their intentions?"
I close my eyes for half a second. The stairwell lights up with arrows—polite, fast, armed.
"They want me alive and quiet."
"And you?"
I weigh the pin in my palm. The cat behind my ribs stretches, hopeful.
"I want them to trip on their own shoelaces."
Mara actually smiles—small, tired, razor-sharp. "Good. We're on the same page."
She spins to the others. "Positions. Kwan, try to exist less. Rey, locks three and five. Sato, with me. Ryo—"
"I'm right behind you."
"If you're about to do something stupid, give me a heads-up so I can write it up as tactics."
The lights steady for one heartbeat.
Then the elevator down the hall dings, cheerful as a doorbell in a horror movie.
The doors start sliding open.
I roll the pin between my fingers like a coin.
"Let's go introduce them to the family," I say.
Mara chambers a round that was already chambered. "After you, kid."