Matilda's route didn't smell of river. It was rather a mix of concrete, damp earth, and something Rex clearly disliked.
The dog moved with his nose low, but his pace was uneven. Sometimes he pulled forward. Sometimes he stopped completely, as if the trail had been cut away beneath him.
The passage remained crude for the first several dozen meters.
Broken stone scattered around. Packed soil clamped on their sides. Walls were torn; from the marks, they could tell it was from someone's hand.
However, just as Matilda took another step forward, her surroundings suddenly changed.
Dmitri and the rest slowed down.
"Fairy, what's wrong?" Bar asked first.
"Take a look around," Matilda didn't bother to explain. She closed her eyes and released her senses.
The passageway wasn't as dark to her eyes, nor to her mind. The walls seemed to have widened several steps behind her.
The ground beneath her boots felt more refined than the undulating path she had crossed tens of seconds earlier.
The only thing that didn't change was the stale air. But even then, Matilda felt a slight peculiarity present within it.
Bar placed his palm against the wall. "Smooth. Did they use sand paper for this?"
Dmitri crouched beside Rex. The dog sniffed once, moved forward, circled around, then stopped again.
"Something must have been cut off here," Dmitri said. "Not entirely gone, just broken."
Echo One-Two looked behind them. "The passage widened too."
Matilda opened her eyes. "You've seen it. Any guesses?"
"That Engineer could probably answer this," Bar replied. "But he's not with us now."
"Then let's set this matter aside," Matilda nodded. "Mark it. We'll get back to this later."
Bar scribbled on the wall and called it a mark.
Matilda gestured forward. The team moved on.
They went further along the smooth, widened passage. Dmitri counted their steps, now reaching almost two hundred meters.
Suspicion arose within his mind.
How come nobody noticed this long underground path? Are the SAS Agents this formidable?
A short emergency exit was one thing. A tunnel like this that spanned for several hundreds of meters was another.
Two hundred meters underground required preparation.
The time it took was a lot.
The labor it required was monumental.
And the risk was nothing short of enormous. Just the disturbance alone would have spooked anyone nearby.
And if this passage had existed before the collapse, then someone should have found it.
Patrolling security. Utility workers scurrying around. City surveyors that scanned underground.
Unless, a sharp glint escaped Dmitri's eyes, ...it was made to avoid being found.
His eyes moved along the wall.
A team of veterans.Can it explain this?
Dmitri recalled Johannes' cell. Their team was composed of superhumans too, yet what they had shown so far felt tame compared to this.
Then again, veterans could explain the discipline and output. Still, they could not explain the ground itself.
Just as his mind wandered, he noticed that Rex faintly let out a whine once more.
It was almost the same distance from the last spot.
Rex acts up approximately every ten meters. Is he telling me something we don't know?
His curiosity washed away when Matilda suddenly said.
"This is too much for an extraction path."
Bar glanced at her, sharing the same idea. "Any thoughts, Fairy?"
"If all they needed was an escape route, they could have gone shorter."
Everyone understood her meaning.
RFT-3, Matilda took a deep breath. Just how mysterious are you?
"These agents do run deep," Bar joked.
"No matter how deep it is," Matilda furrowed her brows. "We'll still search for them."
The passage changed again after they traversed another fifty meters. Under the earth was exposed old concrete.
The team halted their advance. This revelation was too abrupt.
Matilda stepped forward, lightly scraping off dirt that was stuck on the concrete wall.
She placed her palm flatly on the surface, closed her eyes, before releasing her senses once more.
Her ears picked up faint signs of something flowing on the other side.
Water trickled from the damp ceiling, falling into the decrepit ground.
Her fingers suddenly curled. As she picked up more signals, a shocking revelation hit her.
Corpses. Not one, but many.
One. Three. No, five?
Five bodies. Maybe more, half-submerged in dirty water while the rest lay on broken concrete.
These aren't humans, Matilda's brows tightened. Monsters. Should have been the one the Commander encountered several months ago.
Their limbs felt wrong. Too long and thin. The kind of thing that would have crawled rather than walked.
Sewer infected.
Old memory surged from the back of her mind. The Commander's reports had mentioned creatures like these before.
Crawlers. Creepers. Their name did not matter much, but they favored drainage lines and underground routes.
"Fairy?" Bar asked.
Everyone worried about her prolonged silence. However, Matilda did not answer immediately.
Her palm, now curling slightly, remained on the wall.
There had been a fight on the other side. That much was a certainty.
Yet no human body lay among them.
Scattered weapons? None. Not even a shell casing, or powder remained.
Fresh blood? Only the blood of the monsters painted the concrete.
Only a superhuman can handle this fight cleanly, Matilda pressed harder.
Her fingers slowly moved across the concrete. This was the part that bothered her the most.
If the agents were superhumans, and they had broken through this wall, then there should have been scars.
Small cracks. Large gaps. Uneven patches. Or any seam where the concrete should have been forced open and then repaired.
Matilda found nothing. The wall remained old, damp, and strangely intact.
"Fairy," Bar reached out once more. "What did you find?"
Matilda took a deep breath, retreating her senses. She opened her eyes and stared at the intact wall in front of her.
"Bodies."
Bar's expression sharpened. "Were they humans?"
"No. Sewer-type infected."
Dmitri looked at the wall. "On the other side?"
"Yes."
"How did they die?"
"Brutally. No spent casing. Not even a chipped weapon part."
Everyone frowned. Silence enveloped the scene.
"Perhaps a coincidence?" Bar pondered. "This wall's too complete. They shouldn't have gone here."
Matilda glanced at him. "That is what I want to believe."
Dmitri silently agreed. If it was such a coincidence, how come this part of the sewer had corpses placed so perfectly at the same time?
But if they didn't come here, who can explain those battered corpses of sewer monsters on the other side?
Internal conflict? He quickly rejected such an idea. These thing's hadn't show any cannibalistic behavior.
Not yet. And if that was the case, then no corpse would have remained.
Unable to find any answer from his mind, Dmitri's eyes darted to Rex.
He didn't look at the wall. Instead, he focused on the ground beneath it.
He trotted, arriving beside the bewildered Matilda. She noticed the dog and moved aside, wondering what this creature was up to.
Rex's nose was pressed to the floor, not the wall. Then he scratched several times.
The soldiers leaned closer.
Had this dog solved the mystery?
Unfortunately, its paws only revealed more sections of the concrete wall—intact as the rest.
Matilda shook her head and stood up, pacing slowly around the area.
After a moment of contemplation, she said. "Mark this wall."
Bar looked at her. "Light scratch?"
"Don't spook anything on the other side."
"No problem."
The team withdrew from the wall, choosing not to force this route without the Engineer, or further orders from the Commander.
Just as the echo of their footsteps faintly vanished—
Beyond the wall, two figures stood in the sewer gloom, watching the concrete as if it could see them back.
One of them looked at the other and leaned over.
"RFT-4 entry point update. Anonymous pursuers detected."