Flash pulled the heavy door just far enough to let a thin red beam from his headlamp slip through the narrow gap.
At first,nothing.
Only darkness, thick as ink.
"Fuck…" Bruno exhaled almost soundlessly.
"This isn't a technical hub."
Flash didn't answer.
He was already slipping inside, moving silently like a shadow long accustomed to leaving no trace.
Ethan followed and immediately felt the change.
The floor was clean.
Not sterile like an operating room, but meticulously wiped. Narrow boot prints repeated in the same path, as though someone had walked the exact same route dozens of times.
Beside them,wider streaks left by wheels of a cart or gurney. Worn trails in the dust, like paths in a long-inhabited forest.
"Lights," Flash said shortly.
The red beams extinguished simultaneously.
Cold white flared,headlamps switched to main mode.
The chamber opened before them abruptly.
The ceiling vanished upward into shadows the light couldn't reach. Along the walls ran old metal shelving,some empty, some piled with plastic crates bearing faded, nearly illegible markings.
The floor wasn't filthy, just covered in a thin but fresh layer of dust that still held the clear imprints of recent movement.
Bruno gave a low, almost admiring whistle:
"Forty by sixty, you said?"
"This place could bury a football field."
"And still have room for bleachers."
"Quiet," Flash responded automatically, though the irritation was gone from his voice.
Just habit.
Ethan moved forward slowly, stepping carefully, as though afraid of something.
Layers of dust mixed with tracks that shouldn't be here.
He stopped.
"Someone worked here recently."
Flash was beside him in an instant. He crouched, ran a finger across the floor; the pad came away gray.
"A week.
Two at most."
The radio crackled with Gideon's voice.
"Confirmed.
According to power logs… someone hooked up an external power source here recently.
Power spikes."
"Someone dragged a generator down here. Or several."
Bruno frowned, brows knitting beneath the filter:
"So someone came down into these damn catacombs, hauled in a generator, cables, equipment… turned it all on…"
"And then left?" Flash finished.
"Or moved it," Ethan said quietly.
They pressed on.
In the center of the hall stood a row of old lab tables. The metal had darkened with age, but there was almost no rust.
On one of them,a glass surface crisscrossed with fine scratches, as though something had been dragged across it without care.
Ethan stopped abruptly, as though he'd hit an invisible wall.
"Hold."
He leaned down.
On the glass, thin, almost invisible smears. Dried. Dark brown with a faint rusty edge.
"Blood," he said evenly.
Flash immediately pulled out a small matte-black portable scanner with a blue indicator light.
He pressed it to the stain.
The screen blinked.
Pause.
"Human," Flash said.
And fell silent.
"And?" Bruno tensed.
"Modified."
Gideon exhaled over the radio; the sound was almost a sob:
"So we were right about something…"
Ethan clenched his fists.
"Right about what?"
"This isn't just experiments on donors," Gideon's voice grew quieter but harder.
"It's an intermediate stage. Before what you saw in the container."
"Maria might be one of the carriers."
Bruno gave a nervous snort:
"So they were making ground meat here."
"And serving the finished dish up in the mansion."
Flash didn't reply.
His gaze had already slid to the far wall.
There was a door.
A code panel beside it worn from frequent use, center buttons faded from the most-used digits.
"This isn't catacombs anymore," Flash said quietly.
"This is someone's working office."
Gideon responded instantly:
"Give me access."
Flash activated the camera feed to Gideon with a few taps on his headlamp.
"Camera… yes, I see it."
"Shit."
"What?" Ethan asked, stepping closer.
"There was a terminal here with archives.
They removed it very recently, but…"
Pause.
Rapid keystrokes on the other end.
"They didn't wipe the data completely.
There are remnants,log fragments.
Someone was in a hurry."
Bruno grinned.
"Remnants,we love those."
Flash laid his palm on the cold surface of the new door.
The metal was still faintly warm,just enough to know someone had been here recently.
"Maria wanted us to see this," he said quietly.
Ethan stepped right up beside him.
Shoulder to shoulder.
"Or wanted us to understand she wasn't the first."
Flash looked at him.
"And won't be the last."
"If we stop."
Silence fell over the chamber like a heavy blanket.
Somewhere deep in the catacombs, very far away, a single drop of water fell. A lonely, distinct sound.
Flash nodded.
"Okay.
We work fast and careful."
Bruno shifted his grip on the sledgehammer.
"And if something comes crawling out?"
Flash smirked.
"Then we stop being careful."
Ethan took a deep breath through the filter.
And stepped toward the door first.
The door opened with a dull, viscous creak; the metal groaned as though it didn't want to let them into this final refuge, as though it knew there would be no way back after this.
Flash stepped through first,silent, as always.
Ethan right behind him, breathing steady but heart pounding like it wanted to break free of his chest.
Bruno covered the rear, sledgehammer resting in his hand like an extension of his arm.
The room wasn't a laboratory.
It was a shelter,real, lived-in, full of people.