Jared watched for a moment while the rescue team got their equipment set up, but then he turned and left them to his work. There wasn't anything else that he could do here. Not to mention that he had his own job to finish. He continued to head east along the tracks, looking for anything else strange or out of place.

The calling voices, humming machines and general bustle slowly faded behind him. It felt colder as he moved away from familiar ground. It didn't help that the only light in the tunnel was the small emergency lights and his flashlight beam to cut through the darkness. That was fine by him. 

He let the Dark inside him uncoil and stretch out as thin ribbons around him. He could feel vibrations through the rails and assumed that it was other trains moving through the under ground system. Water sighed through the cracked water conduits. Electricity pulsed from the walls. The tunnel was speaking its own language. Jared listened and tried to parse out if any of it was important or if all of it was just part of the general hum and decay. 

The official report that had gone out this morning had written this all off as an accident. They claimed it had been a mechanical failure of the emergency braking system that led to the derailment. It seemed plausible. But he'd see the ogre. It hadn't caused the crash, but the fact that it had been here suggested that something more was going on. The Shadow Kind always seemed to gather in groups and always seemed to find the places where the Dark was pooling in the world. 

There had also been the witnesses who claimed to see a tentacle faced creature that had some kind of Dark powers. Was it responsible for the derailment? It certainly seemed that it was invested in the scene given that it had been capturing people here.

A ribbon ran over an irregularity in the wall. Gripping the flash light hard, he swept the light over the area in an effort to see what he had felt with the Dark. Up ahead, on his left side, there was a jagged hole in the concrete wall. It was clawed open with metal pipes bent out and back like broken ribs, exposing a dark chamber beneath. Rubble littered the opening. 

He took a few steps toward the hole and then the smell hit him: damp with the faintest trace of rot. The Darkness flexed itself around him and then again reached out into the shadows, feeling and seeking the unknown. 

He crouched down to examine the rubble, the flashlight catching the pale sheen of scraped stone. There were parallel grooves scored deep into the surface. The cuts in the stone made him think of the little zen sand gardens and the lines created by their tiny rakes. The lines marked out a swirling pattern that suggested a swimming motion. This suggested a great deal of physical strength rather than explosive force. Whatever had done this hadn’t simply broken through; it had dug.

“Not structural failure,” Jared murmured under his breath. “Manual excavation. Big claws.”

Jared trailed his fingers in the stone dust at the entrance. It was a fine powder that easily flaked off his fingers when he moved them. It didn't seem fresh. But it couldn't have been here for very long or the rail crew would have found it. But what could did a hole like this? The hole was about human sized, roughly an eight foot tall semi circle. So, whatever had done the digging couldn't have been too large. But like about everything else, was probably bigger than he was.

He scanned the floor. Piles of debris formed small mounds, as though pushed aside deliberately. No footprints. He straightened, sweeping the light into the hole itself. The air was hazy. Fine dust motes trailed in a slow drift. The passageway beyond was irregular, rough, and sloped slightly downward.

“Time to go find myself a Shadow Kind,” he whispered to himself. “Because that never goes badly.”

He drew one of his pistols from his side holster. The cold dark steel frame fit naturally into his hand. A faint vibration of Dark power resonated from the weapon’s runes etched on the surface of the metal. It synchronized with the low hum of Dark energy that spun around him.

For a brief moment he could feel himself being pulled back into the great abyss that lived just beyond the place behind his eyes. He could hear it calling him as it always did, summoning him back into the place where all things began and where everything comes undone. It is a constant second heart beat stronger than the organic beat he was born with. 

He blinked rapidly a moment and pushed the images away.

Looking at the water dripping off the curve of the wall into a dirty puddle, he  pulled his Dark back into himself and pushed into the puddle. The puddle responded. Just a shudder, at first, but then it lurched itself up off the ground so that it was standing upon a pair of spindly water legs. A large pair of eyes opened at the center of the water's mass and quietly regarded him.

"You're going to be my back up," he said to the small elemental creature.

The elemental quivered, drawing arms from its liquid frame. It shuffled ahead of him as if it knew where they were going. 

Then he pressed his free hand against his chest and spun the Dark about himself in a tight protective shell. He could feel the coiling strands of Dark as they settled against his flesh and pulsed there, connecting with the pulsing in his chest; synchronizing. He never felt safer or more vulnerable then he did when he was wrapped into this Dark shell. It would protect him from everything that advanced against him even as it devoured him from his very core.

He stepped into the tunnel.

Immediately, the air changed. It was thicker and humid with the smell of wet earth replacing the acrid scent of the rails. The walls were raw stone and dirt, carved unevenly. Despite the tunnel giving adequate space, it felt as though it was pressing down on him causing him to stoop slightly. His flash light skimmed over claw marks gouged deep into the rock. The rhythmic scraping pattern continued along the passage—methodical and intentional.

Sound was strange here. There were no echoes. His foot falls seemed to be absorbed into the walls and muffled into silence. For a moment, he thought he heard a faint scraping ahead. Maybe something large shifting its weight. But when he paused to listen, it ceased entirely. 

The claustrophobia pressed in, like pressure building beneath the skin. his heart beat tapped out his anxiety against his ribs and he could feel the Dark respond in time to this new music. The coils tightened against him and he sighed with the pleasure of it. He took a shallow breath and attempted to steady himself against the wall. 

Dark swirled around him and ebbed into his bones. The great black tide of the abyss poured into him as a great wave crashing against him. The cold power of it shot up his spine and hit his brain like a jolt of ecstasy. A sense of wonder and awe crept over him as he became aware that something vast and great watched over him.

He shuddered and shoved the sensations away. Jared’s breathing steadied through training and habit, his thoughts narrowing into cold assessment. He focused on the small elemental that continued in front of him, leaving moist foot prints were it tread. 

A low vibration brushed his boots—barely perceptible, like a tremor from far away. He was now certain that the vibrations he had been feeling along the tracks hadn't been a train, but rather a creature moving within the earth. He froze, lowering the beam toward the ground. Dust danced upward in a ripple pattern, forming concentric rings.

Then the vibration stopped.

Jared waited. The air thickened with silence. His pulse ticked audibly in his ears. The light trembled faintly in his grip, the beam tracing nervous arcs over the uneven walls. Then, from deeper in the tunnel, came a slow, grinding inhale. The kind of sound that had mass.

He took a step back, careful, controlled. “Command,” he whispered, touching his commutator link. “Blake reporting. There’s movement down here—heavy. Possibly burrowing. I’m moving forward to investigate in a side tunnel off the tracks.”

Static answered him.

He frowned. The signal dampened, likely from the density of the rock. He flicked the commutator twice to store the transmission, then moved sideways, pressing against the wall. His light caught motion—a subtle shift, a faint glimmer in the dark. Not light reflection, but motion in the dust.

And then, silence again.

Jared crouched lower, bracing. His weapon rose, sight aligned. The flash light beam cutting a thin line in the tunnel ahead. Nothing. Just darkness thick enough to feel.

The wall to his right shuddered. Chunks of stone cascaded down as the surface cracked outward. Something vast moved within, its mass pressing against the thin barrier of earth. Then it broke through—bursting into the tunnel with the force of the collapsing wall.

Jared stumbled forward, away from the wall. Dirt showered around him. His light swung wildly, catching glimpses of a man sized creature. A glistening brown carapace. Claws like serrated shovels. A pair of bladelike jaws, opening and closing to grasp at the air. The creature’s head turned, catching the beam. Two compound eyes reflected back the light in a disorienting kaleidoscope.

“Shit—” Jared dropped low as the thing lunged. The claw struck where he’d been, gouging the rock wall with a screech. Debris rained down.

He fired twice. The shots hit but barely caused any damage. The slugs buried into chitin as they sparked with small flashes of Dark discharge. The creature recoiled, more irritated than wounded. It emitted a guttural, grinding hiss that reverberated through the tunnel.

Jared backed away, step by measured step, keeping the light steady. He could feel the distortion building—the air bending, visual edges starting to blur. His vision wavered, doubling, tripling; the tunnel warped like a funhouse mirror. His stomach twisted. Dark spun at the edges of his vision and he thought for a moment that he was falling. 

Cold water splashed his face, bringing him back to himself. The creature took another swipe at the small water elemental that stood in front of him. The claws raked through the water and broke the elemental into a thousand drops. The creature flexed its mandibles and roared as it lunged towards Jared. He dove to the ground, letting the mandibles swipe over him. He got back to his feet when the creature fell back. 

Don’t look at its eyes.

He snapped his gaze to the ground, focusing on its claws instead. The confusion lessened, though the edges of the world still swam faintly. The creature scraped forward, mandibles gnashing against stone. Each step was deliberate, intelligent even—blocking the way deeper in. Guard behavior.

“You’re not what they saw,” Jared said quietly. His own voice steadied him. “You’re the sentry.”

He shifted sideways, using the wall for cover. The creature followed his sound, its antennae twitching. Its movements were too deliberate to be wild—trained perhaps, or commanded. That thought chilled him more than the sight itself.

It lunged again, claws slamming into the wall inches from his head. Jared ducked, rolled across the uneven ground, and came up firing. The muzzle flashes lit the chamber in strobes—carapace, teeth, wet gleam, a dozen staring facets. The thing screamed, high and metallic. The sound carried a pressure that clawed into his mind, tearing concentration into static.

He fired again, aiming for the joints, until the slide locked back. The creature staggered, ichor spilling in ropes down its chest. Its movements grew jerky, spasmodic. Still, it didn’t retreat.

Then, abruptly, it stopped.

It tilted its head, mandibles quivering. Its multifaceted eyes seemed to shimmer with internal light, not reflection but resonance—something answering from deeper within the tunnel. A pulse of vibration traveled through the floor, strong enough that Jared felt it in his teeth. And then it turned—not toward him, but toward the deeper dark—and began to dig. 

He reloaded with shaking hands, forcing himself to focus. Then he steadied himself, pouring his dark into the weapon and emptied it into the retreating creature. It slumped.

Jared stood staring at it, chest heaving.

His hands again reloaded his weapon. He continued to stare at the creature in the shaking light.

“That wasn’t what they saw,” he said aloud, more to confirm it to himself. “That was guarding something.”

He crouched, retrieving a fragment of brown carapace, its surface smooth and gleaming. Jared tucked the fragment into his pack and stared into the shadows of the tunnel ahead. The dark seemed deeper now, thicker, alive.

“Something else down here,” he murmured. “And it’s smarter.”

He switched off the light for a moment, letting his eyes adjust. In the black, faint luminescence glimmered far below—soft, rhythmic, almost like a heartbeat.

Jared exhaled slowly.

Then he turned the light back on, checked his weapon, and followed the tunnel deeper into the earth.