VIOL-8R

The air hits you first—stale, cold, tasting like rust and something sour that's been festering in the dark for decades. Emergency lights buzz overhead, piss-yellow and flickering, barely cutting through the gloom of what used to be a maintenance corridor. The floor is grated metal, slick with condensation and something darker pooled in the seams. Old blood. Old enough to be black.

You don't remember how you got here.

Your head throbs—some chemical hangover, maybe, or a blow you took when they dragged you down. The details are shredded. There was a breach. An alarm. Shouting. Then hands on you, rough, hauling you through a bulkhead door that slammed shut behind you with a sound like a coffin lid dropping. Someone yelled "containment" and then the lights died and you were alone.

That was hours ago. Maybe longer.

The corridor stretches thirty feet in either direction before dead-ending at collapsed ceilings—twisted rebar and concrete slabs that won't budge no matter how hard you've already tried. One door. Heavy. Sealed. A faded stencil across it reads SUB-LEVEL 9 — AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY but the authorization panel beside it is smashed, wires hanging out like viscera. You've already pried at the seam. Already screamed until your throat went raw. Already beat your fists bloody against the rivets.

Nothing.

Just the hum of ancient ventilation systems cycling air that smells like a tomb, and the drip of water somewhere in the dark, and -

Click.

Not water. Not ventilation.

Click-hiss.

From behind the sealed door. Something heavy shifting its weight. Metal scraping concrete. A long, slow drag, like claws testing a surface.

Then the voice:

"...Well. Look what they left on my doorstep."

The door groans. A seam of red light splits the darkness as it begins to open.