Simon activated the silencers in his legs, ensuring that each step he took was utterly soundless as he moved down the corridor. The water brushed against his body, swirling around him in slow currents. The entire site was still submerged, yet now, moving through it in silence, it felt eerily surreal.

  The st time he had walked this corridor, every inch of it had been covered in structure gel—tendrils and tumor-like growths creeping along the walls like living veins. But now, the space was bare. Just cold, unfeeling metal. No organic traces of WAU’s corruption. No pulsing growths. Just emptiness.

  His ceramic bde inched out from the compartment in his left forearm, sliding into position with a barely audible click. Ready. Just in case.

  His right forearm shifted silently, the EMP barrel extending into pce. His sensors remained active, scanning the area for any anomaly, any disturbance.

  He was almost through. The corridor ahead led into the server room. But just as he was about to step through the broken doorway, movement flickered in his peripheral vision. Something small scurried from one side of the room to the other.

  Simon whipped his EMP gun up, ready to fire.

  He froze. Still as a statue, he waited. Seconds stretched into eternity. But nothing happened.

  His sensors logged the anomaly and repyed the captured footage. A video pyed in his HUD.

  'A spider? ' he thought, narrowing his focus.

  The recording dispyed a small, grey, arachnoid-like creature, its four segmented legs moving with unsettling precision. Its body was sleek, its form almost mechanical. A cluster of luminous, bluish-green eyes shone from its head, flickering for a brief moment before it disappeared into the shadows.

  The structure gel along Simon’s frame reacted instinctively, hardening in preparation for an attack. If something lunged at him, it wouldn’t do much damage. His body was stronger now. Reinforced. But still, the sight of the spider set him on edge.

  The server racks still blinked with faint lights—evidence of lingering power. He found a terminal embedded in the wall and pced his hand on it. Structure gel crept from his palm, tendrils of dark liquid threading into the device like a growing root system.

  His batteries started charging instantly.

  A brief surge of warmth spread through his frame as energy refilled his reserves. The process was quick, efficient. As soon as he was fully recharged, Simon withdrew from the connection and continued on his way.

  He passed through a room filled with abandoned b equipment, climbed a short staircase, and finally reached what used to be the decompression chamber. The doors remained open, their mechanical locks disabled long ago.

  Simon stepped outside.

  He found himself in a narrow underwater ravine. Towering stone walls rose on either side, stretching several meters high. The passage was barely wide enough for two people to walk side by side. The darkness was near-total, swallowing everything.

  Carefully, he moved forward. Just a few dozen meters, and he would reach the cargo tunnel.

  Then he stopped.

  His cameras focused ahead, adjusting to capture a better view of something just beyond the natural rock formations.

  "What’s that?" he murmured.

  A spiral. A towering, bck spiral stood just a few meters ahead, its coils twisting upward like an unnatural monument. Simon remembered this area—there had once been a hydrothermal vent there. But now, instead of a bubbling fissure in the ocean floor, this strange formation had taken its pce.

  It looked… natural. Almost. But the texture was all wrong.

  Metal-like ptes stacked on one another, interlocking like the scales of a fish. The deeper he analyzed it, the more unsettling the details became. It wasn’t formed by natural processes. It had been built.

  Simon steeled himself.

  "Come on, Simon. You can do this," he muttered, willing himself to step forward.

  His sensors pulsed, scanning the structure as he approached. No heat signature. No movement. No immediate danger. Yet something felt wrong.

  Then the realization hit him.

  The spiral was made of structure gel.

  Simon’s mind raced. Someone—or something—had gathered all the structure gel they could find and had started building with it. But that didn’t make sense. Only an AI could manipute structure gel in this way, bending it to a purpose beyond its original function.

  'Is there another AI present? Had something else taken control of the remnants WAU had left behind? Is WAU somehow still alive?'

  Simon’s thoughts spiraled as he recalled the mechanical spider. Was it reted to this? Was it a worker, an extension of something rger? A fragment of WAU trying to rebuild itself? Or was it something new—something entirely unknown?

  Whatever the answer was, Simon was no longer alone down here.

  And he was sure it wasn't a good thing.

  The whiskers behind Simon’s helmet twitched.

  Something was coming. Something big.

  It was approaching from above the ravine, just behind him.

  Simon didn’t hesitate. He activated his cloaking system and pressed himself tightly against the ravine wall, moving in slow, measured steps. He waited, barely breathing—an old reflex that no longer mattered but still clung to him.

  If it was the worm monster, he couldn’t afford to let it spot him. That thing could burrow through metal like it was paper.

  Then it appeared.

  The worm monster.

  Its massive, segmented body moved fluidly through the water, circling the strange bck spiral before coming to a halt.

  Simon’s sensors focused on the creature, tracking every movement. Its long, coiling tentacles wrapped around the spire, gripping it tightly. Then, inexplicably, the monster became utterly still—like a statue, suspended in the deep.

  Simon narrowed his vision, analyzing the temperature readings. Something was happening. A reaction.

  The heat signature between the creature and the spiral was growing. Both of them—massive, alien in form—were retively cold, yet...

  The point of contact between them was heating up, like an unseen pulse passing between them.

  Then, as suddenly as it had come, the creature released the spire, unwinding its tentacles and gliding silently into the abyss. It rose above the ravine and vanished.

  Simon waited. One minute. Then another. He had deactivated his cloaking system to conserve power, but he remained still, his processors running countless scenarios in the background.

  Finally, convinced that he was alone, he stepped away from the ravine wall and approached the spiral.

  He stared at it for a few moments before reaching out and pressing his hand against its surface.

  A sharp, tingling sensation pricked his fingers.

  'This thing is charging me,' he realized. Energy was coursing through the spire, faint but undeniable.

  He withdrew his hand, piecing it together. 'The spire is using the heat from the hydrothermal vent to generate electricity.'

  Simon stepped back. Whatever was happening here, he wasn’t eager to find out more.

  As he continued his path, he encountered another one.

  A second spire, identical to the first.

  But this time, he wasn’t alone.

  Dozens of spider-like creatures, identical to the one he had seen scurrying at Site Alpha, clung to its surface. Their four segmented legs gripped the structure with eerie stillness, their bluish-green eyes flickering faintly in the deep.

  Simon instinctively tensed but moved carefully, activating his cloaking system again. Between his silenced steps and near-invisibility, there was no way they could detect him.

  He moved around them, slipping unnoticed past their silent vigil.

  The ravine ended in a narrow stone tunnel. Crawling through the tight space, Simon finally emerged into the cargo tunnel.

  The tunnel was intact—its lights still flickering weakly, cutting thin beams through the water. For the first time in a while, he felt some relief. But he wasn’t safe yet.

  His gaze flicked upward, focusing on the ceiling.

  Only a wire mesh separated the tunnel from the outside abyss.

  If the worm spotted him now, the mesh wouldn’t stop it. Not even for a second.

  Simon moved quickly but carefully, keeping his sensors attuned to any sign of movement. His cloaking system was draining energy fast, but he didn’t dare deactivate it yet. Not here.

  Finally, he reached the decompression chamber at the end of the tunnel.

  He gazed up ahead at the tunnel. The passage connected directly to Phi, but a ndslide had blocked most of it. He was gd he hadn’t chosen to dig through—it would have made too much noise. Noise that would have surely attracted the worm monster.

  He pced his hand on the control panel. The door behind him sealed shut. A moment ter, the water began to drain.

  For the first time in what felt like hours, Simon allowed himself to rex.

  His shoulders rolled, his frame loosening slightly as the pressure equalized. Then the door before him slid open.

  He was officially inside Site Tau.

  He stepped into the equipment room. To his right, he saw rge storage cabinets that had once housed deep-sea power suits—just like the one he used to wear.

  His gaze drifted to the farthest locker on the right.

  It was filled with hardened structure gel. Metal bits jutted out from its mass, now solid as stone.

  To his left, near the corner, sat the freight lift—the same one he had used to bring the ARK down from the upper level. The memories of that moment flickered through his mind. The hope. The desperation. The finality of it all.

  He turned away and moved toward the exit, stepping through the door as it slid open.

  A dder led upward.

  Climbing, Simon took in his surroundings. Large portions of the walls were covered in hardened structure gel, its dark veins creeping along the metal.

  At the top, he stepped into the common area of Tau.

  The rectangur room looked almost exactly as it had when Simon first set foot inside.

  In the center sat a rge, rectangur table, cluttered with remnants of the past. Empty ration packs, opened cans licked clean of any trace of food, pstic bottles, and dry-food boxes y scattered across the surface, abandoned long ago. Two pairs of headphones rested tangled in the mess, alongside a few small computer cameras coated in dust. Everything in the room reeked of desperation—of people who had clung to survival, rationing their st meals, clinging to life even as the end crept closer and closer.

  The room had ten sliding doors: the one behind him, three to his right, two ahead, and three to his left. To his immediate right, near the freight lift, was a door leading to the upper level.

  Simon’s gaze lingered on the walls, the ceiling, even the floor. Hardened veins of structure gel covered nearly every surface, dark and lifeless, protruding in unnatural, bulbous growths. The creeping corruption that once pulsed with an eerie, sickly glow had been drained of its power. It was hollow now—fossilized remnants of WAU’s long reach.

  His eyes flickered to a familiar sight—one of the WAU’s sphincter-like growths, fused into the side of the freight lift. This one, like the others, had solidified into uselessness. Empty.

  Simon took a slow step forward. His mind drifted to the corpse on the upper level.

  'I should check her body.'

  The thought passed through him like an obligation, yet there was no urgency in his movements. His gaze shifted toward the mainframe embedded in the wall. He stepped closer, pressing his hand against its surface. Instantly, the structure gel in his fingers reacted, tendrils extending and threading into the system. Data unraveled before his mind’s eye, fragmented lines of corrupted logs and degraded files spilling across his vision like the st, dying remnants of a fading signal.

  At the same time he charged his batteries.

  Simon flicked through the station’s systems, searching for any active feeds. He found the st few functioning cameras, their grainy, low-light footage flickering to life.

  His fingers twitched. Synthetic muscles tensed.

  "He’s still alive."

  The words left his speaker, barely more than a whisper.

  The realization settled over him like a weight. He had to deal with it. He had to end it. What was all the work he had put into his body for, if all he did was run away like he always had? The thought felt foolish, but deep down, he knew he needed to prove himself—to grow beyond the frightened man he once was.

  The thing in this station was still here.

  Still moving.

  Still waiting.

  Simon’s mind was already racing with possibilities, strategies. There was no avoiding it. If he was going to navigate Tau, he needed to be ready.

  But first, knowing that it was still alive gave him a reason to check another pce—the rooms to his right.

  "Ah, the smell," Simon muttered in disgust as his sensors registered the overwhelming stench of decay. The st time he had been here, his old body hadn't been capable of detecting scent. Now, with his upgraded sensory input, he almost regretted that he could.

  He stepped inside the cramped, simple room. A few drawers, a locker, and a shelf lined the walls, their surfaces coated in dust and grime. Large portions of the walls and floor were encased in hardened structure gel, its dark veins sprawling like the fossilized remains of something once alive.

  Simon’s gaze shifted to the two small beds on either side of the room—and to what y upon them.

  To his right rested the remains of a former crew member of Pathos-II, now encased in what resembled a pted cocoon. The grotesque mass was the size of a man, its shell-like armor fused into an unrecognizable shape. At first gnce, there was no way to determine if this thing had ever been human, but the unmistakable signs were there—a single arm and a leg dangled limply from the side, poking through the gaps where the ptes interlocked. A tragic, twisted mockery of what WAU had once considered preservation.

  His gaze then moved to the left.

  There, sprawled motionless, was another corpse—or what remained of one. A blood-stained rag covered its body, but protruding from beneath it were three tendrils, each ending in small, lifeless cameras. The body had fused with the structure gel coating the wall.

  Simon remembered the first time he set foot inside this room. Back then, the corpse beneath the bnket had moved. The cameras had twitched, scanning, watching—aware.

  Now, it was silent.

  Dead—or at least, in the process of dying.

  Simon stepped forward, reaching out with his hand. The structure gel in his fingertips extended, tendrils weaving into the husk, siphoning away the st, lingering traces of energy. The body trembled for a fraction of a second before stiffening completely. The tendrils shrank, their st function extinguished. The once-moving corpse was now nothing more than an empty shell.

  He turned to the cocoon on the right and did the same.

  Then, he stepped into the next room.

  The room was empty.

  Simon walked to the bed at the far end and stood over it.

  "There should have been a body here," he murmured to himself.

  Something wasn’t right.

  He moved to the next room.

  'Here, there should have been two bodies'.

  One that had been reanimated by WAU, and another that had remained untouched. A still, preserved corpse.

  But now, there was nothing.

  A chill ran down Simon’s spine.

  Something had taken them.