Only On Paper

13 - The Stranger

The large, empty space opens up before us.

Vario is the first through the door, and I bring up our flank again. I'm about to step through the huge doorway into the maw of the caves beyond, when something makes me stop in my tracks. It's hard to explain, but it feels like the subliminal whispering has come back, but the voice sounds different, somehow. I look back down the open door and see Hayes's leg disappearing far down the way; they haven't noticed I'm not with them.

Suddenly, I see movement in my peripheral. Whatever it is, I feel compelled to chase it. I turn hard left on my heel and leave the others without a second thought. I clear the smaller stone archway, and see movement again to my right. As I turn quickly, I barely catch sight of something moving upwards and into a small alcove in the stone slabs above and behind me. I jump hard up into the roomy outcropping and scan the area, hoping to catch sight of something. It doesn't seem like anything is in here, which perplexes me even more. I'm certain I saw something come up here.

Wait, I see an exit in the room that is not the way I came in. It looks like on the far left wall, there's a few slabs of stone that did not fit together perfectly, and there's a sizable amount of room for someone to squeeze through. Naturally, I immediately crouch into it. When it opens up all I can see are...

Caves. So many caves and tunnels. Its truly intimidating how vast the network is. I am actually stricken with vertigo as I stand, surveying the huge open space. It washes over me, leaving me feeling like the world is upside-down and if I move my feet for a second, I will fall into the almost non-visible ceiling of this place. I close my eyes and let the feeling consume me for ten seconds before I open them again. As soon as I do, the feeling is gone and I am simply a man standing alone in this underground pantheon of caves.

I look around to try and spot movement but I see nothing. I hold for a few moments before giving in that this is just a proverbial needle-in-a-haystack. There's no way I can continue to chase shadows when I already abandoned my team. Too many combinations of possible hiding places here, I admit, and I turn to leave the way I came. When I turn around, all I see is solid rock. My path does not lead backward, apparently. As I stare at the unmoving piece of stone that now shuts me out of the only area I am familiar with, I hear that cryptic whispering. Now the whispering seems to seep from the cave walls all around me. It's as loud as a shout, yet I hear almost nothing at all. It seems to fill the very air around me, echoing through my subconscious.

There's movement again and my head swivels quickly to track it. I am sure I saw whatever it is move down a tunnel to my three o'clock mid, four o'clock low. I sprint and dive into the cave system, tumbling for a few moments before coming to a halt against a jagged piece of black tourmaline. I stand up, shake off the dull pain and continue at a sprint down the long tunnel, whispers following me the entire way. Before too much longer, the tunnel opens up on my right. I slide to a stop, and peer in. The room seems to glow with a soft green light, the kind of light you would see omitting from the beautiful chemical reaction in a spirit bloom pod.

As I step in to the cave, the whispering stops abruptly, and the eerie, dead silence that follows makes me want to disappear into my own skin and never come out. I slowly walk further in, hand on my sidearm. The green glow seems to be brightest on the eastern wall, and I see something scrawled across it's face. It almost looks like writing, but as I get closer it... shifts somehow. Parts of it disappear completely, other pieces flow in as if they're currently being written, and some parts are not even legible. It looks as though a fair-sized diatribe had been written on this wall, but the forces of the Vault are warping it.

The longer I stare at it, the more it changes, and the more I begin to understand... and fear.