The introductions had been made. The territorial posturing had, for the moment, subsided into a simmering truce. The diner was quiet now, other than the rhythmic hum of the refrigerator compressors and the occasional snap of the settling foundation.
Raina sat in the booth nearest the kitchen, the vinyl squeaking slightly as she shifted her weight. She looked at the group assembled before her. Marcus, leaning against the counter with a rag in his hand, looked tired but relieved that the building was still standing. Eira stood by the jukebox like a sentinel, her arms crossed over her chest, watching Raina with the suspicious intensity of a cat watching a new dog. Liri, examined her fingernails with feigned disinterest, though her emerald eyes flicked toward Raina every few seconds. Pearl, was spinning on a barstool, as she hummed a melody that sounded suspiciously like a funeral dirge.
Nix, the creature Marcus had mentioned—the Glimmuck—was nowhere to be seen. Raina had been told he was likely scavenging in the attic or sleeping in a cupboard, but his absence left a small, unaccounted-for variable in her mental threat assessment.
Raina took a breath. The air in the diner smelled of old grease, lemon cleaner, and the faint, ozone-heavy scent of static electricity. It was a smell she associated with high-voltage server rooms, not restaurants.
"I need to see it," Raina said. Her voice cut through the ambient noise, clear and authoritative.
Marcus stopped wiping the counter. He frowned, deep lines etching into his forehead.
"Tonight?" Marcus asked. "You just got here. You drove four hours through the desert. Maybe you should eat a burger, get some sleep, and we can tackle the basement in the morning when the sun is up."
Raina shook her head. The movement caused a lock of her deep red hair to fall over her eye. She brushed it back with a quick, efficient motion.
"I won't sleep," Raina stated simply. "Not with the floor vibrating like this. My inner ear is already compensating for the frequency, but it is annoying. It feels like living on top of a subway line that runs too shallow."
She reached for the heavy, black duffel bag she had dropped on the bench seat beside her. The zipper let out a loud, rasping hiss as she pulled it open.
The girls leaned in. Curiosity, it seemed, was stronger than their desire to appear aloof.
Raina reached into the bag. Her hands moved with the practiced dexterity of a surgeon or a bomb technician. She did not rummage. She knew exactly where every item lived.
First, she pulled out a flashlight. It was not a household torch. It was a SureFire Hellfighter, a tactical illuminator with a beveled strike bezel and a body machined from aerospace-grade aluminum. It was heavy, black, and scarred from use in environments far more hostile than a Texas diner. She set it on the table with a solid thud.
Next came the lasers. She produced two handheld units, each about the size of a remote control but thicker, encased in rubberized, shock-absorbent grips.
"Spectroscopic lasers," Raina explained, answering the unspoken question in Eira's eyes. "One red. One green. They are modified to detect particulate density in the air. If there is a gas leak, or a shift in air pressure, or... something else... the beam will refract."
"Magic detection sticks," Liri murmured, sounding unimpressed but secretly intrigued.
"Physics detection sticks," Raina corrected without looking up.
Finally, she withdrew the camera. It was a blocky, ugly piece of equipment that looked like it had been built in the 1980s but upgraded with modern optics. The lens was oversized, reflecting a purple hue under the diner lights. It had no branding, just a serial number stenciled in white paint on the side.
"Ultra-spectrum," Raina said, patting the casing. "It sees heat. It sees radiation. It sees ultraviolet. If there is a crack in the foundation that is leaking radon, or if there is a heat signature coming from deep earth, this will find it."
She stood up. She clipped the flashlight to her belt. She shoved the lasers into the deep cargo pockets of her tactical pants. She slung the camera around her neck, the heavy strap settling comfortably against her collarbone.
"Show me the access point," Raina commanded.
Marcus sighed. He tossed the rag into the sink. He knew that tone. It was the tone Raina used when she had decided on a course of action and no amount of logic or pleading would sway her. She was in mission mode.
"It's in the pantry," Marcus said. "Behind the dry goods."
He walked out from behind the counter. Raina followed him, her boots making a sharp, purposeful sound on the tile. The girls, moving as a single unit of supernatural curiosity, trailed behind them.
The pantry was a narrow, claustrophobic room located off the back of the kitchen. It smelled of flour, dried spices, and dust. Metal shelving units lined the walls, floor to ceiling, packed with large cans of tomatoes, bags of rice, and boxes of napkins.
Marcus walked to the far wall. He grabbed the side of a heavy, industrial shelving unit loaded with fifty-pound sacks of flour.
"Give me a hand," Marcus grunted.
Raina stepped forward, but Eira beat her to it. The alpha Elf didn't bother to find a grip. She simply placed one hand on the metal upright and shoved. The entire unit, which must have weighed three hundred pounds, slid across the concrete floor with a screech of metal on stone that set Raina's teeth on edge.
Eira dusted her hands off and looked at Raina with a smug expression.
"Strong," Raina acknowledged with a nod. "Inefficient leverage, but effective application of force."
Eira frowned, trying to decide if she had been complimented or insulted.
Behind the shelf, the floor was different. The tile ended, replaced by a slab of rough, unfinished concrete. In the center of the slab was a heavy, circular iron hatch. It looked less like a door to a basement and more like the airlock of a submarine or the entrance to a Cold War bunker.
There were no hinges. Just a recessed wheel in the center.
"This isn't standard code," Raina observed. She knelt, her fingers tracing the rim of the hatch. "This is reinforced blast plating. Who built this place? A survivalist?"
"We don't know," Marcus said. "It was here when I bought it. The deed didn't mention a bomb shelter."
"It's not a shelter," Pearl whispered from the doorway. She was peering around Liri's silk robe. "It's a throat."
Raina looked up at the Siren. "A throat?"
"It swallows things," Pearl clarified helpfully.
Raina ignored the metaphysical commentary and gripped the wheel. It was cold and slightly greasy. She applied pressure. The wheel resisted for a moment, groaning with the friction of rusted threads, before it gave way. She spun it counter-clockwise. The mechanism clanked loudly, a deep, heavy sound that echoed downward.
With a final grunt of effort, Raina lifted the hatch. It was incredibly heavy, balanced on a hidden counterweight system that whined as it rose.
A draft of air rushed up from the hole.
Raina recoiled slightly. The air was not just stale basement air. It was cold. Bone-chillingly cold. And it smelled... ancient. It carried the scent of wet limestone, crushed minerals, and something sharp and metallic, like the taste of a battery on the tongue.
She clicked on her flashlight. The beam cut through the gloom, revealing a vertical shaft lined with corrugated steel. It was about four feet in diameter. Bolted to the side was a steel ladder that disappeared into the darkness below.
"Not stairs," Raina noted. She shone the light down. The beam faded before it hit the bottom. "A vertical drop. Mine shaft construction. Corrugated lining to prevent collapse. This goes deep."
"We call it the Tube," Marcus said. He was standing close to her now, peering over the edge. "It goes down about thirty feet. Then it opens up into a series of chambers. We mostly stay in the upper chamber. The crawlspace... that's further back."
Raina adjusted the camera strap around her neck. She checked the security of the flashlight on her belt.
"I'm going first," Raina said.
"I should go," Marcus argued. "I know the layout."
"I have the sensors," Raina countered. "I need to take readings of the air quality before we disturb the environment with our body heat and breathing. You follow. Keep the gallery..." she gestured to the girls, "...up here."
"Unlikely," Eira said, stepping forward. "If the Commander descends into the dark, the shield-bearer follows."
"And I am curious about the humidity," Liri added, smoothing her robe. "My skin is feeling quite dry. Perhaps the moisture down there is restorative."
Raina looked at Marcus. He shrugged, a gesture of helpless surrender.
"Welcome to my life," Marcus said.
Raina turned back to the hole. She sat on the edge of the concrete, her legs dangling into the abyss. She gripped the top rung of the ladder. It was freezing cold, sucking the heat right out of her palms.
"Okay," Raina said. "Maintain noise discipline. I want to hear if anything is moving down there besides us."
She swung her body into the shaft.
The descent was claustrophobic. The corrugated steel walls were close enough to brush against her shoulders. The sound of her boots hitting the metal rungs was deafening in the confined space. Clang. Clang. Clang.
As she descended, the temperature dropped rapidly. It was at least twenty degrees cooler than the pantry above. The air grew heavy, thick with moisture that wasn't quite humidity. It felt denser, harder to breathe.
Raina paused at the ten-foot mark. She pulled one of the lasers from her pocket. She thumbed the switch.
A fan of green light spread out, cutting through the darkness. She watched the beam interact with the air. Dust motes danced in the light, swirling in complex eddies.
"What do you see?" Marcus called down. His voice echoed, sounding distorted and tinny in the tube.
"Air currents," Raina replied softly. "Updrafts. Something is pushing air up from below. Ventilators? Or thermal displacement?"
"Or breathing," Pearl's voice drifted down.
Raina ignored the comment and continued her descent.
Twenty feet. Thirty feet.
Her boots finally touched something solid. It wasn't concrete. It felt like packed earth, or perhaps stone.
She stepped away from the ladder and unclipped her flashlight. She swept the beam around.
She was in a small antechamber. The walls here were not steel, but rough-hewn rock reinforced with old, rotting timber beams. It looked exactly like an abandoned mine from the turn of the century. The floor was uneven, littered with debris—old cans, scraps of wood, and unidentifiable piles of rust.
"Clear," Raina called up. "Come down."
She waited as Marcus descended, followed closely by Eira. Liri and Pearl remained at the top for the moment, their silhouettes framing the circle of light far above.
Marcus landed beside her. He looked bigger in the small space, his shoulders hunching slightly to avoid the low timber beams. Eira dropped the last few feet, landing silently despite her heavy boots.
"It feels different tonight," Marcus whispered. He was looking at the shadows in the corners.
"Different how?" Raina asked. She had the camera up to her eye now. The viewfinder glowed with a thermal overlay.
"Heavier," Marcus said. "Usually, it just feels like a basement. Tonight... it feels like a waiting room."
Raina snapped a few photos. The thermal image showed cool blues and purples for the walls, but there were strange streaks of orange and yellow running through the rock, like veins of heat.
"These heat signatures," Raina said, pointing at the wall. "They look organic. Veins. Not geological strata. Are there pipes in these walls?"
"No pipes," Marcus said. "Just dirt and rock."
Raina moved deeper into the chamber. The flashlight beam cut a cone of illumination through the suspended dust. Ahead, the antechamber narrowed into a tunnel that sloped downward. This was the entrance to the crawlspace proper.
"That's the way," Marcus said, pointing to the dark mouth of the tunnel. "The vibration comes from back there. Past the old boiler."
Raina walked toward the tunnel. The ground beneath her boots was soft, almost spongy. She shone the light at her feet.
"Moss?" she asked. "Fungus?"
"Mold," Marcus said. "We scrub it, but it comes back in hours."
Raina crouched down. She pulled out the red laser this time. She shone it into the tunnel. The red line stretched out, hitting the far wall about fifty feet away.
But the dot on the wall wasn't stable. It was shimmering. Expanding and contracting.
"Refraction," Raina muttered. She stood up, her engineer's mind racing. "The air density in that tunnel is fluctuating. Rapidly. Like a heat mEirage on a highway, but it's cold down here."
She turned to Marcus. Her face was illuminated by the backscatter of the flashlight. She looked excited, the thrill of the discovery masking any fear.
"There is an energy field down there," Raina said. "A massive one. It's ionizing the air. That's why you feel the vibration. It's not the earth shaking, Marcus. It's the air pressure cycling."
"Can you fix it?" Eira asked, looking at the dark tunnel with her hand on an imaginary sword hilt.
"I don't know if I can fix it," Raina said, bringing the camera up again. "I don't even know what it is yet. But I'm going to get a picture of it."
"Be careful," Marcus warned. "The last time we went back there, the shadows tried to grab my ankle."
Raina looked at him. She saw he wasn't joking. She nodded slowly.
"Shadows are just light obstructed by mass," Raina said, though her voice lacked its usual scientific certainty. "If something grabs me, you shoot it."
"With what?" Marcus asked. "I didn't bring my gun."
Raina smirked. She reached to the small of her back and pulled a compact SIG Sauer P365 from her waistband. She handed it to him, handle first.
"Good thing I did," she said.
Marcus took the gun. The weight of it was familiar, comforting. He checked the chamber. Loaded.
"Show off," Marcus muttered.
"Professional," Raina corrected.
She turned back to the tunnel. The darkness seemed to pulse, matching the rhythm of the vibration that was now rattling the flashlight in her hand.
"Okay," Raina whispered. "Let's see what you're hiding."
She took the first step into the sloping tunnel. The air grew instantly colder, and the smell of ozone became so strong it tasted like she was licking a 9-volt battery.
Above them, at the top of the shaft, Liri's voice floated down, echoing weirdly against the metal walls.
"The water is rising," she nervously called out. "I can smell the tide."
Raina paused. She looked at the dry, dusty floor of the tunnel.
"There's no water down here," Raina said to Marcus.
Marcus looked at the damp walls, at the strange, vein-like heat signatures, and at the woman he had once loved standing on the precipice of the unknown.
"Not yet," Marcus said grimly. "But give it a minute."
Raina adjusted her grip on the camera. She took a deep breath, filling her lungs with the strange, energized air. She stepped forward, descending deeper into the throat of the Slipgate, with the marine and the Valkyrie close behind. The darkness swallowed the light of her flashlight, hungry for more.
The investigation had begun.