It must have been just past noon.But here, time had no meaning.No sun. No shadows. No warmth.Only the eternal grayish darkness of the corridors.
The group moved slowly, cautiously, in silence.Their footsteps echoed on the dirty metal floor, cracked in places, hollowed out by years of neglect.
Since their awakening, since that wordless encounter with the man in the gray coat, no one had truly spoken.Not out of fear.But because words felt… insufficient. Useless.
The memory of the figure was burned into their minds.His vacant stare. His heavy presence. His silent departure.He had said nothing—almost nothing.But he had existed. He had proven this world wasn't a solitary nightmare.It was inhabited.But by what?
And that canteen…It had quenched their thirst.But it had also brought them back to reality.They were below. Deep below.
Subaru walked at the front, hands in his pockets, gaze lost in the flickering beams of dying neon lights.From time to time, he glanced back at the others. Without speaking.Just to check they were still following.
Behind him, Alya walked with steady steps, hands clasped behind her back.Her uniform was dusty, but she still carried that strange presence.As if even the ruins couldn't touch her.
Yuki advanced cautiously, notebook in one hand, a wrench in the other. She scribbled things down occasionally.Angles, structures, visual cues.As if she could map the incomprehensible.
Masha lagged slightly behind, almost skipping to keep up, head tilted upward.She watched the hanging cables, the vibrating pipes, the rust-stained ceiling plates.Her gaze was curious. Almost enchanted.But she didn't dare say so.
Masachika brought up the rear. Silent. Upright. Hands in his pockets.He looked everywhere, yet seemed to focus on nothing.Mostly, he listened.To the buzzing. The drips. The distant breaths.As if waiting for something to return.
They kept walking.No plan. No map.Only the feeling of being trapped in a vast, indifferent maze.And yet...Something had changed since the morning.A detail, almost imperceptible.
They weren't paralyzed anymore.They were starting to search.Not yet by strategy.But by instinct—for meaning.
They had walked for an eternity. Or maybe an hour.Time didn't flow here.It stagnated.
Eventually, they reached a room.Not like the others.It wasn't brighter, nor bigger, nor better preserved.But it had a different weight—a tangible density in the air.
The walls were higher, arched at the top, as if the space had once held people.Every other place they'd seen looked like a service corridor, a forgotten storage room, abandoned corners.But this… was different.
A control hub, maybe.A command center?A monitoring room?No one said it aloud, but the thought crossed all their minds.
At the center stood a screen.Or what was left of one.A wide monitor, encased in metal framing, cracked in places, blackened in others.It made no sound.Yet it demanded respect, like a relic from a time when things still made sense.
Desks surrounded it—overturned, broken, warped.Seats gutted, their cushions torn open like unhealed wounds.Cables dangled from the ceiling, stripped bare, covered in mold and rust.The consoles, drawers, control panels… all had been pried open, scratched, left behind.
But the chaos no longer screamed anger.Only the slow dust of a place where even human traces begin to fade.Papers dissolved by moisture.Markings erased, eaten down to the bone.Fingerprints wiped clean by the air itself.
Everything had been defiled.By time.By people.Then by forgetting.
As if the room had waited too long.And was now decaying,not from violence… but from indifference.
A massive tag, carved with a blade, stretched across one wall—an undecipherable symbol. A signature.Or a warning.
Masha approached first, her steps crunching on dry dust.She brushed her fingers along a command panel. Cold metal. No response.Yuki circled the screen slowly, scribbling in her notebook.Measurements, maybe. Useless observations.But she took them anyway.
Alya stood back, arms crossed.She scanned the room, calculating, eyes searching for blind spots or clues to the place's function.Masachika remained at the entrance.He stared at the screen, as if that black rectangle still reflected something from the past.
Subaru hesitated, then stepped forward.He laid a hand on the console, shook it slightly.Nothing.He tapped it gently with his palm.A faint buzz.
Then… a sound.Barely a whisper.A current of air—or perhaps… a breath of energy.
Yuki looked up.Her eyes locked onto a tiny green diode, lit in the corner of the console.She moved in, slipped her fingers underneath, searching for a port or a switch.
Suddenly… the screen blinked.A flash.A jolt of light.
Then… an image.Flickering. Gray.Distorted.But real.
Subaru stepped back.— "What… is that?"
Yuki didn't answer immediately.She stared at the screen.And slowly… she understood.
It wasn't a map.It was a vertical cross-section.A blueprint.
— "Come see this…"Subaru's voice cracked the silence—sharper than he meant it.But not angry. Just urgent.
One by one, the others gathered.Yuki moved to one side. Masha slid in next to her. Alya stood behind Subaru.Masachika waited a moment, then joined them.No questions. No comments.
All five stood close, shoulders almost touching, their faces lit by the flickering, dirty light of the screen.Their breath was short—not from exhaustion—but from knowing.This meant something.
The image was fuzzy.A vertical slice. A blurry schematic, like an X-ray behind broken glass.Pixels danced. The colors were sickly yellow and green.But the shape… that was clear.
A pyramid.Huge. Inhuman.A structure built toward the sky, layer after layer, like stacked cities.
— "Looks like… a giant skyscraper?" Masha whispered, wide-eyed.
But it was more than that.Not a tower. Not a city.A hive.
A world folded in on itself, stretching upward.
The words along the sides were unreadable.Not Japanese. Not Russian. Not even English.A twisted language, warped by time.
Some fragments stood out:"Hive Layer""Upper Bastion""Surface – Atmospheric limit"
But it was like reading a decaying dream.Recognizable letters. No meaning.
Yuki murmured, more to herself than the others:— "It's not our English… It's something else. A drift. Centuries. Millennia…"
Subaru stared at the bottom of the screen.His finger pointed to a dark, rotted-out area.— "That's it. That's where we are. Has to be."
The bottom of the pyramid was just noise.Broken lines. Black voids. No data.No structure.No names.No markers.Just absence.
— "We're all the way down…" Masachika said quietly.— "At the ground…" added Masha.— "Beneath the ground," corrected Yuki.
Alya said nothing.But her eyes stayed fixed on the top of the diagram—where, beyond the dead pixels, you could still make out buildings.Tall silhouettes. Domes.Almost… familiar.
— "Up there…" she said at last. "It looks like Tokyo."
And everyone understood.This world wasn't meant for them.But it had a structure.It had logic.
And they had arrived at the bottom rung.
Not another city.Not another country.A world built on verticality.
The higher you go, the clearer it gets.The lower you sink, the more it dies.
And them—They were at the very bottom.Where names vanish.Where maps fade.Where silence reigns.
Administrative silence.Final silence.The silence of the forgotten.
Subaru stepped back.He turned to the others.No words were needed.They all knew now.
This world was an endless staircase.And if they wanted to live—They had to climb.