The duct’s metal walls radiated heat, causing sweat to soak the shirt under Ollie’s armour as he crawled. Other than Rachel, everyone else looked to be as miserable as him in this crawl space.

“Keep moving,” Ollie said back over his shoulder.

Behind him, Kyle cursed as his shoulder caught on a seam in the metal. “These ducts weren’t built for people our size.”

“No shit. It’s not for crawling,” Clyde muttered.

Ollie kept crawling. The only choice of direction they had to crawl was straight. This duct hadn’t given any signs of a fork yet.

“What’s the plan?” Lily asked.

Ollie stopped, looking back at them. “We keep moving and get back to Protection sector. That’s the only plan.”

The duct creaked around them. Heavy thumping could be felt from above, causing low vibrations to travel through the whole vent.

“Keep going,” Rachel said.

Ollie nodded. He pulled out his phone and tapped the push-to-talk button. “Erin, we’re in the ducts. Which way do we go?”

Static crackled before Erin’s voice came through. “Proceed straight for fifty paces. Then take the leftward path. Up ahead, you shall encounter a grill that offers passage downward to a civilian corridor. From there, take the right and you will find a junction at the very end.”

“Got it,” Ollie pocketed the phone and glanced back at the others. “You heard her. Straight, then left.”

“Civilian corridor sounds promising,” Clyde said. “Might actually be able to stand up.”

Rachel pushed forward. “Let’s go.”

Ollie led them through the ducts until they hit a fork at the end. This would’ve been 50 paces. At this distance, the metal walls had cooled down drastically that it was almost freezing.

Continuing to crawl through the left path, after several more paces, the duct narrowed even further. The twins made a unified grumble, but didn’t bother uttering their annoyances. In a couple more minutes, light poked out from the duct’s floor up ahead.

“I see light,” Lily called from the back.

Ollie saw it too. Sure enough, a faint glow filtered through a grill about twenty feet ahead. He picked up his pace.

When he reached the grill, he peered through. Below was a corridor with smooth metal walls. The floor looked to be about ten feet down.

“How do we get down?” Kyle asked.

Ollie crawled further, allowing Kyle get closer to the grill. “Break it down.”

Though Ollie didn’t have to say that as Kyle had already grabbed his dagger and struck at the grill’s railings, opening it for all of them to go through.

“Way ahead of you, boss man,” Kyle said.

“I’ll go first.” Ollie swung his legs through the hole and dropped down. Prudence drawn, aiming left and right. No signs of hostiles. He looked up and waved them down.

Kyle dropped down next, then Clyde. Lily followed, landing with a soft thud and immediately checking both ways with her Desert Eagles drawn. Rachel came last, dropping silently beside Ollie.

Examining the corridor more clearly, both directions stretched into darkness, where only a single strip of light at the centre counted as any form of lighting. Both sides of the metal walls were etched with the same intricate patterns they had already seen throughout the tomb, though these ones seemed to be dead as they didn’t have a pulse.

“Go right. That’s what Erin said,” Ollie said. “Into formation.”

Lily took point, taking space up ahead, Rachel right behind her. Ollie and the twins followed closely. The corridor curved gently left and then right. Throughout their walk, there were no doors, no windows, or any signs of life for now.

“This place gives me the creeps,” Kyle said. “Too quiet.”

“Quiet is good,” Clyde said. “Quiet means nothing’s trying to kill us.”

Lily held up her hand, stopping them. “Junction ahead.”

The corridor opened into a four-way intersection. Each path looked identical. Same metal walls and the strip of light spread out to all 3 directions.

Ollie pulled out his phone again. “Erin, we’re at the junction. Which way now?”

“Turn right at the junction,” Erin’s voice crackled through. “However, you must prepare for combat. Unmoving hostiles block your path. From the surveillance instrument readings, they appear to be in some form of dormant state. They are egg-like structures, though the imagery remains unclear. Report what you observe upon encounter.”

“Egg-like?” Kyle said. “What the hell does that mean? Like chicken eggs but bigger? Or some alien spawn shit?”

“The readings are imprecise,” Erin said. “Visual confirmation is required.”

“Why can’t we just go a different way? If there’s hostiles, even dormant ones, why walk straight into them?” Kyle asked.

“This is the only route that leads directly to the civilian transit hub,” Erin said. “Should you prefer an alternative, you may traverse the surface corridors. The journey to Protection Sector would require approximately eighty-seven days on foot. Your current provisions consist of three days’ worth of nutritional bricks. I do not consider this a sound strategy.”

Kyle opened his mouth again, probably to argue about the math or complain about the food situation, but Ollie cut him off.

“Copy that. We’ll proceed with the plan.”

Kyle spun around to face him. “Are you serious? We’re going to walk straight into a nest of whatever-the-fuck eggs because the ice queen says so?”

“I don’t like this any more than you do,” Ollie said. “But there’s no way we can walk to the sector. Think about it – three months of hiking through this place? We’d run out of food in three days, and that’s assuming we don’t run into more of those flesh bags or worse shit along the way.”

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“Exactly,” Kyle said. “Three months gives us plenty of time to figure out another route. We’ve already survived this place before meeting her. We can find more of those bricks somewhere while trekking.”

“Or we die horribly because we’re starving and can’t fight back when something attacks us,” Ollie said. “The longer we stay out here, the more chances we’ll meet those things we just fought. And frankly, I’m not taking any chances. No one is dying on my watch.”

Kyle’s fist clenched, thinking of what to say. Clyde nudged him, shaking his head, which seemed to have calmed him down.

“Look,” Ollie said, looking directly into Kyle’s eyes, “I get it. Walking into a room full of eggs sounds a lot like a movie about a group dying to those eggs because something comes out of them and eats their face. But we know they’re dormant. As long as we don’t fuck up and touch shit like those guys in movies, we’re good.”

“Plus,” Clyde spoke up, “87 days is a long time for things to go wrong. Erin might be a cold bitch, but she knows this place better than we do. If she says this is the best route, I believe her.”

Kyle looked between Ollie, Rachel, then Lily. None of them were thrilled about Erin’s plans, that’s a given considering she’s a complete prick. However, they got nothing else to go by.

“Fine,” Kyle sighed.

Ollie turned to Lily. “You’re up front. Same formation as before.”

The group looked to the right. Each one had their guns ready while Rachel clenched her knuckle guards. They walked through the corridor that stretched ahead. It looked like the same corridor as any other, with its etched metal walls. Soon enough, the strip of light faded as they walked further, turning the corridor pitch black the more they walked forward.

“Rachel, light it up,” Ollie called from behind her.

Rachel moved forward, closer to Lily’s position. She raised her hand up and it glowed with a soft white light that lit up the whole corridor.

“Everyone else, move up closer to the front. We continue while sticking closer,” Ollie said.

Lily nodded and continued down the hallway. They now walked through the corridor in single file.

As they rounded another slight bend, they saw the fleshy growths on the walls and floor they had seen in the Core Chamber. The growth here was much thicker. Stepping on the fleshy floor made a wet slapping sound that made Ollie take a step back.

“Rachel,” Ollie said, “burn us a path.”

Rachel’s feet engulfed in flames, burning a radius around her. The stench of burnt meat filled the air, and everyone pinched their noses.

“Fucking disgusting,” Kyle said.

They continued forward along the burnt path left behind. When the tip of Rachel’s light touched a fleshy mass up ahead, the group stopped dead.

“What the fuck is that?” Kyle whispered.

On the walls and ceiling were bulbous masses of flesh pods with translucent sacs filled with unknown fluid. The pods themselves had eerie shapes of humans that could only be legs and hands. Some sacs even had hair at the top of their sacs. Inside those sacs were humanoid creatures in fetal position. A couple of them carried what looked like flesh pounds but in a more infantile version that had yet to be amalgamated with twisted technology. Another one was just an ordinary looking human except for the wing-like bulge that was growing on its back.

Beyond the first couple of pods, a larger sac appeared by the wall that reached from the floor all the way to the ceiling. This one contained a more mature flesh pound that already had its helmet grafted onto its head. Its hands were missing, cleanly sliced off by something, and only a metal pipe looked to be jammed right up into where its hands should’ve been.

“Those are definitely people… humans, right?” Lily asked, voice trembling.

“Not anymore,” Clyde said.

Ollie pulled out his phone and aimed the camera at the nearest sac. He recorded a slow pan across the chamber, capturing as many of the embryonic pods as possible before sending the footage to Erin.

He opened the walkie app. “Erin, we found your eggs. Whatever they’re doing here, looks like they’re incubating a bunch of their soldiers. Why did you want this footage?”

The phone crackled, and Erin’s voice came through. “Knowledge of thy enemy begets victory over them. These are growth chambers, not eggs as I mistakenly referred to them. The abominations utilize a fusion of biological processes and mechanical augmentation to create their soldiers. The membrane acts as both incubator and programming interface.”

Ollie watched the living thing inside it breathe in and out slowly. Its hands twitched as if it was having a dream. Even if they were humans, they could no longer be saved nor was he willing to. “So they’re factories. Making more soldiers.”

“Precisely,” Erin replied. “The flesh is a medium for their technology. They implant control mechanisms into living tissue, creating semi-autonomous units capable of following complex directives.”

Rachel stepped closer to Ollie and whispered, “Can they see us?”

“Negative,” Erin said. “Those in the incubation process possess no sensory awareness. However, caution is advised. The chambers may be monitored remotely by control units elsewhere in the Tomb.”

“Is there any other way around? This place gives me the creeps,” Ollie asked.

“This remains the most direct route to the transit hub,” Erin said. “The growth chambers pose minimal threat in their current state. Proceed through with haste.”

The line went dead.

“I hate it when she does that,” Kyle flipped off the phone. “Just like damn asshole #1.”

Ollie put away his phone. “You heard her. We need to keep moving.”

Rachel nodded, taking point this time. The flames around her feet burnt a path through the fleshy growths, giving them at least something to step on that wasn’t the disgusting meat. She moved slowly between the pods, careful not to brush against any of them. Lily followed just behind her, along with Ollie and the twins bringing up the rear.

They passed the first row of pods. One of the bulging veins that connected from the floor to the pod burnt off as Rachel walked through it, causing the baby like object inside the embryo to twitch as if it was suffocating.

Pause.

Everyone stopped moving. No one dared to move. For a full half minute, the baby looked like it was trying to breathe until it went limp, no longer breathing. Rachel continued moving, still burning through the fleshy floor.

Another pod reacted, but this time, they didn’t bother pausing. This one had clear wings that had already formed on its back. The state of its body was more like a teenager rather than the adolescent one that only had a bulge on its back.

Rachel suddenly stopped, holding up her hand. “Look at that.”

Her eyes pointed to the massive pod that reached floor to ceiling, but this one was much wider than the flesh pound’s embryo pod. It contained a body inside, elongated with two extra limbs for a human that looked to be sewn under her arms; the body was clearly female in anatomy—the only female specimen they’d found so far in this whole embryo sac corridor. The head was oddly shaped. Two goat like horns jutted out from its forehead. Metal plates were grafted onto its torso, arms, and legs. Its nails bore black metal of the same texture as the monstrosity they had faced in the power plant.

“What the hell is that thing?” Ollie blurted out the question, not expecting any answer.

“I don’t want to find out,” Lily said. “Let’s keep going.”

The skirted around the pod, moving to the unoccupied other side of the corridor. Ollie looked the specimen up and down as he passed it. It was breathing, slowly and peacefully. If this was as strong as the monster in the power plant, he could easily kill it now. Though shooting it in the head while its asleep didn’t guarantee a quick kill with these techno hybrid freaks.

The corridor narrowed as they went deeper. Pods on the walls made the group squeeze through some areas, soaking their armour in a putrid fluid none of them wanted to figure out what it could be.

They were nearing what appeared to be the far end of the chamber when a pod directly in their path began to pulse. It was one of the medium-sized ones, containing what looked like a winged human. Its eyes were open, staring blankly through the membrane, though its pupils didn’t seem to react to light.

“Go around it,” Ollie said.

Rachel diverted her path, moving to the right of the pod. The others followed, keeping their distance. As they passed, the pod seemed to increase the rate at which it pulsed. The winged human’s empty eyes seemed to contract slightly the moment Rachel got close enough with her light. No movement though. Nothing that seemed to signal that the thing inside was alert.

They picked up their pace, no longer trying to move silently. The far end of the chamber was now visible. Rachel’s flames brightened as she increased her pace, lighting up more of the pod-filled room.

After passing the last pod, everyone let out a collective sigh of relief. The fleshy growths also started to thin around this area, meaning this was probably the last bout until the transit hub that Erin talked about.

“Keep moving,” Ollie said. “Straight ahead should be where the civilian transit hub is.”

Source: Webnovel.com, updated by NovelKeep