The silence inside the bunker was suffocating. Rho steadied his breath, scanning the narrow hallway stretching before them. The dim emergency lights flickered, casting elongated shadows against the metal walls. The structure was ancient, yet the air inside felt... alive.
Garran secured the door behind them, his cybernetic eye adjusting to the low light. "This place wasn't built for shelter," he muttered. "It's something else."
Liyara's fingers danced over her gauntlet, hacking into the bunker's systems. "It's not responding to standard decryption," she said. "This technology predates everything in the database."
Kael pressed a hand against the wall, feeling a faint hum beneath his fingertips. "We weren't the first ones to run from the Death Wave," he said. "Someone else tried to escape it here."
"And did they succeed?" Liyara asked, not looking up.
A distant, rhythmic noise pulsed through the corridor. A whispering vibration, like a heartbeat, growing steadily louder.
No one spoke.
Then the lights surged bright, and the bunker came alive. Consoles blinked on, displaying streams of unknown data. The doors at the far end of the corridor hissed open. Cold, sterile air poured through, carrying with it a single sound-
Footsteps.
Someone, or something, was waiting for them inside.
Rho's grip tightened around his rifle.
"Weapons ready," he ordered. "We move forward."
And with that, they stepped into the unknown.