Signal in the Dark

The Vault groaned—a low, guttural rumble that shivered through the rusted bulkhead, its ancient frame shifting like a living system waking from a long hibernation. Tremors pulsed beneath Liam Cross's boots, syncing with the thud of his pulse, dust swirling in the dim emergency lighting—motes catching in his throat as he exhaled, a ragged breath scraping raw against the silence. The air carried a charge, electric and faint, prickling at the edges of his perception like a system booting up mid-failure—half-crashing, half-reviving. His ribs throbbed from the Warden's graze, a sharp sting beneath his scuffed vest, but his grip on Shadowfang stayed iron-tight, knuckles whitening as he leaned against the wall—steadying, not collapsing.

The fight's adrenaline lingered, a buzz he couldn't shake, but his system refused to settle—humming unease through his nerves in a quiet loop. Then it spiked, cold and stark—a whisper weaving into his thoughts, not a pop-up:

*[Signature Sync Detected – Unknown Uplink Initiated]*

Liam's breath hitched, eyes narrowing. "Son of a—" The Warden wasn't dead. Buried under steel and stone from their last fight—glitched, struggling—its mechanical whine still echoed in his skull, a ghost signal clawing at his runtime like corrupted code rewriting itself.

Across the chamber, Elise worked the rusted console—fingers ghosting over keys with a precision too smooth, too practiced, like she'd debugged this rig a hundred times before. Her glow flickered in sharp bursts—blue-green light pulsing as she parsed garbled data streams flickering across cracked screens, static spitting in faint arcs. The looping distress call crackled again—broken, distorted, clawing through noise like a signal fighting to breathe:

"—Bravo—repeat—under attack—coordinates—"

Liam pressed a hand to his temple, wincing as the Vault's pulse thrummed underfoot—rhythmic, deliberate, a heartbeat he couldn't unhear. His coder brain kicked in hard, piecing it: a distress beacon, hijacked, tangled in the Vault's guts. "That signal's not Resistance, is it?" he rasped, voice rough with dust and tension.

Elise didn't look up—her fingers stilled for a half-second, glow dimming, then resuming with a quiet hum. "Not entirely," she said, voice low, steady—carrying a weight she didn't unpack.

"Meaning?" His tone sharpened, suspicion and exhaustion tangling—ribs stinging, head buzzing with Vault echoes and Warden whispers.

Silence stretched—dust motes hung in the flickering light, the hum of failing systems threading the air like a background process on loop. Then—a sharp pulse, deep and electric, jolted the chamber like a mainframe snapping awake. The moment Liam took a step closer, the Vault responded. A shift—subtle but unmistakable. Steel plates adjusted, the passage behind them sealed itself an inch tighter, and the screens flickered faster, as if acknowledging him. No, not them—*him*.

Liam's grip on Shadowfang tightened, blade humming faintly in sync with his frayed nerves. "That's not normal," he muttered, boots scuffing grit as he stepped closer—dust rising, eyes scanning the glyphs flaring along the walls. Dim blue-green sequences—structured, deliberate—too clean to be random noise. His system stirred, deciphering fragmented glyphs into his thoughts like a half-cracked cipher:

*[Cycle 77 Terminated – Memory Echo Preservation: Active]*

*[Awakening Subject: Discontinued – Retention Protocol Engaged]*

Cold, metallic air seeped from the new passage, laced with a synthetic tang—wrong, deeper than temp or pressure, like stepping through a reality still compiling, its code half-formed. Screens jutted from the walls—rusted frames sparking faintly, flickering between static and something half-visible. A recording looped—shadowy figures glitching in and out, their forms fractured by data corruption. A voice crackled—distorted, looping like a busted audio file:

"—Another failure. Subject lost to divergence. Recompiling—"

The feed reset—same figure, same fractured words, over and over, a subroutine stuck in memory. Liam stilled—breath catching, dust stinging his lungs—Shadowfang's hum synced with his pulse—steady, waiting, like it knew there was no turning back. A chill scraped up his spine, cold and sudden, threading through his ribs like a bad input. He hesitated—not out of fear, but because something in the recording clawed at his runtime, something too familiar. *Divergence. Recompiling.* The words weren't new. They lived somewhere in the gaps of his memory—scattered data points he couldn't parse, a broken log he'd never been able to reconstruct. But now, here, the Vault was feeding it back to him. Like it knew.

His system pulsed—not an alert, but a whisper, a presence brushing his runtime:

*[Unresolved Data Detected – Cross-Referencing System Logs]*

Elise's stance shifted—subtle but sharp—fingers curling tighter against her cloak, glow steady but her posture hardening, like a subroutine locking under strain. Liam caught it—recognition, buried deep, flaring for a split second before she smothered it. Her glow pulsed once—deliberate, a tick of unease—then steadied, but her gaze locked on the new passage, jaw tight. She knew this—knew the figure, the message, something—and it hit her harder than she'd ever let slip.

"What is this?" Liam muttered, stepping closer to the screen, voice low—half-coder, half-survivor, Shadowfang steady. The looped voice gnawed at him—failure, divergence, recompiling—echoes of the Genesis Protocol's roots, maybe, or the Vault's dark history.

The screen glitched—another loop:

"—Memory preservation engaged—awaiting new host—"

Elise finally spoke—voice lower, tighter, carrying an edge she hadn't shown before. "It's not just the Resistance." She gestured at the feed, glow steady but piercing. "Vault data—old echoes tangled with the signal." Her glow flickered again—brief, sharp—then dimmed, like she'd caught herself revealing too much. "Deeper than you think," she said, voice even, but her glow pulsed—a fraction too sharp, too controlled, redirecting before he could press.

If he turned back now, would the Vault just let him go? Or would it close the loop—seal the exit, overwrite his choice, like he'd never been here at all?

Another pulse—the walls trembled, glyphs flaring brighter. That eerie mechanical whine slithered from the depths—sharper, uneven, spiked with a distorted screech, like corrupted code frying a circuit board, threading dread into every breath.

"Yeah," Liam exhaled, sharp and bitter. "Figures."

He stepped forward—boots scuffing damp floor, Shadowfang steady, dust swirling as the Vault's walls shifted—not just revealing a path, but unfolding like they had already decided for him. Glyphs flared, guiding them deeper into the dark.

No exit. Only the next layer—and the echoes waiting within.