Entering the Hanoi Vault

The tunnel beneath Hanoi’s Old Quarter reeked of rust and damp concrete, its walls slick with algae that glowed faintly under Bintang’s flashlight. A relic of the Cold War, the vault’s entrance was disguised as a collapsed sewer line, its steel door long since pried open by scavengers—or so intel claimed. But as the team descended, the air grew colder, humming with the static of dormant machinery. Bintang’s boots crunched over shattered glass vials labeled in faded Vietnamese, while Eka trailed her fingers along a wall of severed fiberoptic cables, her brow furrowed.

“Sealed, not destroyed,” Bintang muttered, pausing at a blast door marked with a dragon emblem, its scales chipped but still snarling. “Why lock a tomb instead of burning it?”