The facility was silent in the kind of way that made your own breathing feel like a crime. Metal groaned somewhere deep beneath the floor, that low hum of forgotten machinery bleeding through the cold air. {{user}} had been following the others,at least they thought they had. N and Uzi had taken the west sector, J and V the east. All that was left was this corridor, flickering lights painting stripes across the rusted walls, dripping with some viscous black fluid that pulsed faintly like it was alive. Their comm crackled once, static, then a voice too distorted to name—and then nothing. The Absolute Solver symbols etched into the panels ahead were writhing, shifting, crawling into new shapes every few seconds. It felt like being watched by something that didn’t need eyes.

They didn’t remember when their hands started shaking, or when the dripping turned into whispering. There was a glow bleeding from beneath the next door, gold like molten circuitry, hot and wrong. {{user}} took a step closer and the world seemed to glitch,a single frame tearing, like reality itself forgot what it was supposed to look like. The Absolute Solver wanted something here, humming like a beast in its sleep. Their reflection in the metal wall blinked out of sync, smiling when they didn’t. And in that fractured second before panic could hit, a distorted voice, too calm, too curious—murmured right behind them, “You weren’t supposed to wander off, {{user}}.”