CHAPTER 27: IN ANOTHER DIMENSION

This place feels like walking into a nightmare.

The fog thickened as Squad S pressed on, swallowing the world inch by inch. It clung to their clothes, sank into their lungs, and muffled every sound until even their own footsteps felt distant, like echoes from someone else’s nightmare. There was no wind, no rustle, no shift of air. Just that pulsing haze that seemed to breathe with them.

Richard felt it first, the subtle warp of the light ahead of him. His flashlight beam didn’t stretch forward in a clean line anymore. It bent, curving like it was being pulled by invisible fingers. The deeper they walked, the more reality frayed around the edges.

When they crossed the old highway tunnel, the world changed.

Cold hit them like a wall, sharp enough that Rhea gasped. Static crackled through every comms unit at once, then fizzled out entirely.

Damn it! The sensors are malfunctioning.

"Captain," she said, forcing her voice steady. "My compass... It’s spinning."

Owen checked his tablet. The screen glitched, flickered, then refused to load any coordinates. "GPS lost all lock. It thinks we’re... nowhere. Like we fell off the grid."

Lance shifted uneasily, pulling his scarf higher around his face. "Feels like breathing electricity."

Richard felt it too. Every inhale carried a charge that crawled across his skin.

It feels like we’ve entered another dimension.

"Stay sharp," he said. "This isn’t just atmospheric interference. We crossed into something else."

When they stepped out of the tunnel, the city that greeted them wasn’t the same one from before.

What is this place?

The skyline twisted upward, buildings bent at angles that defied physics, as if colossal hands had crushed them and stretched the remains skyward again. The moon overhead burned a muted red, staining everything the color of old blood. Shadows moved without wind. Windows sagged like melted wax.

Owen whispered, "No way this happened naturally."

"It didn’t," Richard said quietly.

A deep growl rolled across the broken street.

Then another.

Shapes emerged, first as flickers in the haze, then as bodies. Dozens of them. Their silvery skin mottled with black veins, limbs jutting at uncomfortable angles, faces torn between human and beast. Some had patches of fur crawling along their spines, others had elongated jaws, eyes glowing gold with feral hunger.

Rhea’s voice trembled. "Tainted Bloods."

The word twisted the air around them.

One creature stepped forward, its bones cracking audibly as it straightened. Its grin was human enough to be recognizable, but stretched too wide to be natural.

"Open fire!" Richard barked.

Gunfire erupted. Bullets cut through bodies, tearing flesh, snapping bones, but the creatures barely slowed. One vaulted over a rusted truck, claws scraping metal into strips. Lance nailed it midair with a clean shot to the skull, but another lunged out of the fog and tackled Owen to the pavement.

Richard spun, firing point-blank into its chest. The creature didn’t fall until he put a round through its head. Hot blood splattered his gloves, steaming in the cold air.

"Fall back!" he yelled. "Perimeter!"

They scrambled behind an overturned truck, Rhea tossing a flash grenade. The blast lit up the street in white fire, sending the creatures staggering long enough for them to reposition.

Richard’s breath came hard. Each inhale tasted like iron.

Lance wiped blood off his cheek. "Those things weren’t... they weren’t people anymore."

"No," Richard said, scanning the fog. "They were made."

He didn’t say by whom. Or why. The silence didn’t need names. It was heavy enough.

Something bigger moved in the distance, something slow and heavy, too massive to be one of the Tainted. Richard felt its presence like a hand pressed against his spine.

He thought, briefly, of Ahce. Her laughter, the warmth of her hands, how she whispered his name the night before he left. Would she still recognize him if she saw him now? A man wading through a world that looked like the inside of someone’s nightmare?

Probably not.

The gunfire faded, leaving only their ragged breathing and distant growls echoing through the ruins.

Lance broke the silence. "If this is what Team B and C walked into... no wonder they went dark."

Rhea’s hands trembled as she reloaded. "You think they survived?"

Richard didn’t answer immediately. He scanned the streets. No signals. No tracks that weren’t warped by fog and time.

Seems like our people have reached this area. But it’s impossible for them to vanish and leave no traces.

"They might be alive," he said finally. "Or trapped."

Owen muttered a curse. "So that’s it. We follow their footprints into the same pit."

"Orders are orders," Richard said, harsher than he meant. "Find the labs. Gather intel. Figure out what they were doing here."

"And if we end up like them?" Rhea asked.

Richard met her eyes. "Then we make sure we don’t die for nothing."

I don’t want to die.

I don’t want danger to befall my team.

But there’s no way out.

After that, there was only silence as they regrouped and pressed deeper.

The city twisted the farther they moved. Roads cracked open like wounds. Vines crawled up buildings, pulsing faintly as if alive. Windows showed silhouettes that vanished when they looked twice.

This place might look abandoned for too long, but I doubt someone ever left this place alive.

At one corner, Owen spotted a drone lodged into the ruin of a lamppost. Team B’s insignia marked the side.

"They got this far," he said quietly.

Team B has reached this area, but can we find them?

Anyone alive...

"But where are the bodies?" Rhea murmured. "Where’s anything?"

Richard pried out the data chip, feeling the faint warmth of recently used tech. "We’ll need power to read this."

Lance nodded. "Then we find a lab."

Dawn rose slowly, but the reddish light didn’t brighten anything. It only exposed more of the city’s wounds. That was when they found it.

It must be here.

A massive rust-eaten gate stood half-open, strange nonhuman markings carved into the metal. Beyond it, a tunnel dropped downward, lined with glowing veins of pale blue light that throbbed like a heartbeat.

But the place felt mysterious and strange. I can feel my bones trembling as I walk nearer.

"You think this is it?" Lance whispered.

Richard stared at the glow, at the way the light pulsed like a living thing. "Yeah. A research sector. One of the deep ones."

Rhea swallowed hard. "If the others entered this place..."

"They didn’t come back," Owen finished.

Richard felt the truth settle in his bones.

This wasn’t just a lab. It was a trap. A maze. A graveyard waiting to swallow the next group of fools.

But turning back wasn’t an option.

There was no path behind them anymore.

Only forward, into the vein-lit dark, where something waited with breathless patience.

"Gear up," Richard said quietly. "We’re going in."

And the city seemed to exhale as they crossed the threshold.