CHAPTER 187: CHAPTER 187: FILES IN THE DARK

The crimson lights still pulsed in rhythmic circles overhead, and the alarms hadn’t ceased. The chamber reeked of ozone and burning metal, the remnants of dismantled sentinels lying in mangled heaps around Lin’s feet. The server screens crackled, streams of code wiping themselves clean as failsafes devoured everything Keller hadn’t managed to steal.

Lin stood in the wreckage, chest rising and falling like a man trying to anchor himself in reality. His side burned from the cut, warm blood dampening his shirt, but that wasn’t what twisted his insides.

It was the fragments of words Keller had thrown into the air.

Files on you, Lin.

Not on the guardian, not on Min-joon, not on weapons. On him.

Jin’s voice lingered like smoke curling into his skull.

"I told you. You’re not free. You’re not special. You’re just another experiment."

Lin exhaled slowly, jaw tightening. His eyes, sharp yet clouded by something heavier than fatigue, shifted to Keller.

"What exactly did you see?" His voice was calm, but the weight behind it pressed down like a blade.

Keller pocketed the drive, his shoulders tense. He didn’t answer immediately. Instead, he wiped sweat from his brow and glanced at the ruined chamber door where sparks still flickered. "Not here. We don’t have the luxury of a heart-to-heart while this place screams murder at us."

Lin’s eyes narrowed. "Answer me."

The sharpness in his tone made Min-joon flinch. The boy, still trembling, stepped back until his shoulders brushed against the humming server pillar. His eyes darted from Lin to Keller, sensing the tension curling between them.

Keller finally met Lin’s gaze. "I don’t know everything. Just enough to know you were listed. Not just listed—flagged. That’s all I can say without us getting gutted in the next five minutes."

Lin’s fists flexed. He wanted to push, to demand every shred of information Keller had glimpsed. But the sound of distant clanking—the heavy steps of another wave of constructs—reminded him that this wasn’t the place.

He inhaled sharply through his nose and turned away. "Fine. But when we get out of here, you’ll tell me everything."

Keller gave a tight nod. "Deal. Now move."

The three of them pushed forward through a secondary exit that opened on the other side of the chamber. The door resisted for a moment, hydraulics groaning, before Lin forced it open with brute strength. The corridor beyond was narrower, darker. The crimson glow of the alarms stretched down its length like veins of blood threading into shadow.

Min-joon hesitated at the threshold. His breathing was shallow, panic bubbling just beneath his skin. "Why... why would they have files on him? On Lin?" His voice cracked. "What does that even mean?"

Neither Lin nor Keller answered.

The silence was worse than any truth.

They moved fast. The corridor twisted downward like a spiral, each step echoing off cold steel. The deeper they went, the more the air shifted—thicker, colder, humming with a strange resonance that made Lin’s skin prickle.

Halfway down, Keller slowed, pulling a compact device from his jacket. A handheld scanner. Its screen flickered with streams of static before stabilizing, showing faint readings of energy below them.

Keller frowned. "This doesn’t make sense. The power signatures here aren’t just running defense systems. There’s something bigger drawing energy beneath us."

Min-joon whispered, "Bigger than that guardian?"

"Much bigger," Keller muttered.

Lin’s eyes narrowed. "Then that’s where we’re going."

"Do you ever think of not running headfirst into nightmares?" Keller asked, voice dry.

Lin didn’t answer. He just kept walking.

The corridor finally opened into a wide platform that overlooked an abyss. The platform itself was circular, lined with railings that seemed almost decorative given the drop beyond. The abyss stretched downward farther than the eye could follow, filled with machinery that churned and groaned like the insides of a mechanical beast. Massive pistons moved in rhythm, conduits pulsed with streams of light, and somewhere below, something breathed.

It wasn’t human breathing.

It was deeper, resonant, almost alive.

Min-joon’s knees buckled, and Keller instinctively grabbed him before he collapsed. The boy’s voice shook. "What the hell is this place?"

Lin stepped forward to the railing, his eyes narrowing at the abyss. His heartbeat pounded in his ears, syncing with the strange rhythm of the machine below.

Jin’s whisper slid back in, silky and venomous.

"You feel it, don’t you? Like a pulse that matches your own. You’re tied to this place, Lin. You always were."

Lin gripped the railing so hard it groaned under his strength. His breath came heavy, his control slipping. He wanted to scream at the voice, to tear it out of himself, but that would mean giving it more attention than he could afford.

Keller was still scanning, his frown deepening. "This... this isn’t a facility anymore. It’s something else. A machine built around a... core. And whatever’s down there—it’s not dormant. It’s active."

Min-joon whimpered. "We should leave. Please, we should leave."

"No," Lin said quietly, his voice resolute. "We end this."

Keller turned, incredulous. "End it? Do you even know what it is?"

Lin didn’t answer. His eyes stayed locked on the abyss.

Then the platform shuddered.

A groan echoed up from the depths, metal grinding against metal, and the entire chamber trembled. Crimson lights flared brighter, alarms screaming louder. From the abyss below, panels began to shift and peel back, exposing something vast and alive beneath the machinery.

Keller cursed under his breath. "Oh, hell."

The first thing they saw was an eye.

A massive, mechanical eye, its iris rotating open with a sound like grinding gears. Crimson light burned from its core, bathing the entire platform in its glow. It wasn’t just a machine. It was something in-between, flesh fused with metal, an abomination designed to watch and wait.

Min-joon screamed.

The eye focused on them.

Lin’s pulse thundered in his ears. His hands trembled against the railing, but not from fear. From recognition.

Somewhere deep in his memory—or maybe not his memory at all—he had seen that eye before. Not here. Not in this body. But in fragments, in flashes of Jin’s broken past.

Keller’s scanner screeched with distorted readings, the device sparking in his hand before dying completely. "It’s... impossible. This isn’t defense. This is the core. This whole place is feeding it."

The eye dilated, and a voice—not mechanical, not human, but both at once—rumbled from the depths.

"Designation: Lin."

The word reverberated like a hammer to the skull.

Lin staggered, his breath catching. His name. Spoken not by a person, but by the abyss itself.

Min-joon clutched at Keller, sobbing. "It knows him! It knows him! What does that mean?"

The crimson glow pulsed brighter, filling the chamber.

Jin’s laughter erupted inside Lin’s skull, no longer a whisper but a roar.

"Now you see. Now you understand. You were never outside this machine. You were always a part of it."

Lin dropped to his knees, clutching his head as the voice and the machine seemed to merge, drowning his thoughts. His veins burned like fire, his vision fracturing between the abyss and flashes of experiments, needles, and cold metal tables.

Keller grabbed him, shaking his shoulder. "Lin! Stay with me! Fight it!"

But Lin’s eyes had already shifted—flickers of crimson bleeding into his irises.

The abyss wasn’t just looking at him.

It was calling him home.