The elevator made no sound as it descended below Helstalgia. It didn't seem to move at all—no hum, no creak.
Milo stood with his back against the wall, eyes glued to the screen as the floor count passed negatives that shouldn't exist. Floors this deep didn't show up in any records he'd ever seen.
Veyla didn't move, not even to blink it seemed. Arms crossed and face unreadable, as if she were taking the same daily, mundane elevator ride.
The walls were lined with rusted carbon plates. Each one occasionally flickered out of existence, hinting at a digital skin that masked whatever this place used to be. Whatever it was, they weren't meant to know.
The numbers ticked past -26, -27, -28… and the tension in Milo's body grew. No HUD signal. No minimap updates. This place was off the grid and possibly even erased from all archives and AI memory.
Milo shifted slightly, checking the charge on his blaster—still plenty of power. Gunfights weren't his thing, but if it came to that, he wouldn't miss.
Veyla didn't look at him when she spoke. "Holster that before it decides for you."
He didn't answer as he slid his blaster into place at his side.
The elevator kept descending, and Milo thought to himself: This is truly Hel's basement.
They passed -35 when Milo finally spoke.
"How deep does this thing go? We started at the third subfloor."
Veyla didn't answer at first. Her eyes remained fixed ahead, watching the floor readout as if it owed her something and was about to settle that debt.
Eventually, she answered, "Deep enough to bury things the system doesn't want found."
Her tone was flat. Devoid of feeling. Flux Jackal higher-ups always made truth sound like a policy being read out to grunts.
Milo shifted again, letting the silence stretch. "Do you know what's down here?"
"Yes. We helped put it here," Veyla replied bluntly.
She wasn't being poetic. Milo knew that look in her eye: it implied she'd been deeper into this zone than most were willing to go. Even helped dig the hole.
They passed -39.
A streak of light flared along the edge of the shaft, visible through the wall seams, as if something was pacing them. The elevator jolted. It was barely more than a shudder, but it was enough to make Milo's fingers hover near his blaster.
"Relax. I need you sharp. Not shaky," Veyla said without looking. Her tone was dry, worn thin by his constant fidgeting.
The elevator doors opened with a soft hiss that seemed too gentle for the harsh environment that they'd arrived in.
Stale air pressed into the elevator when the doors opened, like the room had been sealed for decades. The space beyond was silent, except for the distant hum of cybernetic machinery. The walls were smooth, curved steel reinforced with impact shielding, the kind used in vault-class blacksites. No lights flickered. No dust stirred. It was clean, locked in time.
In the centre sat a recessed pedestal that stood about waist-high. No retinal scanner or biometric pad greeted them. There was only an old-school keypad paired with a glowing holographic diagnostics lens attached to the pedestal.
Veyla stepped out, scanned the room once, and stopped. Silence.
She made no move toward the pedestal. Didn't pull out any tools. Didn't speak.
Milo looked at her, then at the pedestal, then back. "Right," he muttered. "I'm not here to watch your six—I'm the key."
She stared at him in response.
He knelt down to open the almost invisible panel located on the side of the pedestal and connected his handheld device. The diagnostics lens blinked and displayed a window of code. The data streaming into his HUD showed a system two generations out of date, buried beneath layers of old-school security traps and nested failsafes
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Whatever this was, someone didn't want it opened. Ever.
The second layer fell. Then the third. The pedestal then split open with a sharp hiss, revealing a containment rack.
A data fragment hovered in the centre, not quite touching the cradle beneath it. It pulsed a low, cold blue as if it was breathing just beneath the surface. Its edges caught the light, giving a crystal-like appearance, but it looked neither grown nor carved.
This was not meant to be found, let alone touched.
ACCESS GRANTED
PROJECT METAVORE - DATA FRAGMENT 07
STATUS: Unstable
NOTE: Asset flagged for purge
Override unlocked
Milo reached for it but then stopped himself. Under the rack, partly hidden within the housing, was something else—a small data drive wedged into the side of the containment rack.
He could see it clearly and examined it for a second. No label. No formatting, only a faint pulse of blue in the centre of its casing.
It didn't fit with the rest of this.
But it had been concealed here for a reason.
Out of the corner of his eye, Milo noticed that Veyla wasn't paying attention. He didn't move right away. Only stared.
The data fragment sat cold and inert in the containment rack.
Veyla still hadn't looked. She was too busy scanning the diagnostics feed, lips pressed thin.
Milo blinked, hesitating just long enough to question what he was doing, then reached down and grabbed both items, slid them into his pocket and entered his inventory. They were his.
Without waiting and with a practiced motion, he activated a skill buried deep in his Flux Jackals loadout.
SKILL: Mock Data Shell Game
DESCRIPTION: Creates a temporary replica of a physical object.
90-second duration.
Appearance only.
A visual copy of the fragment materialized in his hand. He tucked it back into the rack and stood.
"Got it," he said, turning toward Veyla. "It's all yours."
She glanced over at him, nodded once, and stepped forward to pull out the fragment from its containment. The replica looked identical in her hand, but what she carried was essentially a hollow shell of the real item.
Two seconds later, the lights flickered.
SYSTEM ALERT: Shell override detected
USER: Milo - Access Violation
Unauthorized extraction detected
Fragment breach protocol triggered
Milo's vision stuttered, then he screamed.
The fragment pulsed in his inventory twice, then exploded with static across his neural interface. His stats jittered: Dexterity and Charisma zeroed out, inventory readings scrambled.
His skull felt like it had cracked open. Something was crawling through him; his metadata, his memory, his name.
"Milo!" Veyla snapped. Her voice cut through the distortion. "What the fuck did you do?"
He couldn't answer.
The decoy fizzled in her hand, collapsing into digital ash that scattered on the floor like pixel dust.
Then the room shifted.
The containment rack groaned and hissed. On the empty rack where it initially sat, the original fragment began to rebuild itself. Piece by piece, tendrils of cyan neon light and code wove together the shape of what had been stolen.
Milo's heart pounded as he watched. The data fragment was coming back.
The AI was returning the core to its proper place.
From the far walls, the lights dimmed, and the AI whispered through the system—soft, synthetic and impossibly cold.
"Extraction is not the same as escape."
Milo forced his hand to move.
Veyla moved first.
She lunged—not at him, but towards the pedestal. Aiming for whatever the AI was pulling back into the containment rack.
Milo pivoted, his instincts took over, and he activated Slipstride.
He ghosted past her, boots barely touching the hard ground. By the time she turned, he was already at the elevator.
"Milo!" she called, voice cutting as sharp as a wire. "This isn't just some op. You don't get to decide what happens next."
As he stepped inside, still dizzy from the neural spike, one hand gripping the data drive in his pocket like it might vanish.
As the door closed, Veyla didn't chase.
She looked at the rebuilt data fragment in her hand. The real prize. The reason she brought him.
Her voice was quiet—more thought than threat.
"If this is what I caught you with…"
She tilted her head, just slightly.
"...what slipped through?"
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