Mateo threw his shoulder against the heavy oak door. The hinges, untouched for nearly a century, let out a sound like a whale’s death groan, and the door grudgingly gave way. They practically tumbled inside and stopped dead, completely disoriented.

  The gravity inside the building’s closed circuit had gone "off the rails," just as the Colonel had predicted. The vector of attraction snapped into alignment with the floor of the room itself, completely ignoring the fact that the entire Barolo building was hanging upside down in the void. Their stomachs did a sickening, somersaulting flip.

  — “Holy shit...” Nico rasped, clutching his bruised side and leaning against the doorframe. “I’m actually gonna puke. Right on all this history.”

  — “Breathe through your nose, pibe,” Cobra said, holding his elbow, though her own face was the color of wet ash. “Don’t look at the corners; the space is warping there. Keep your eyes on the center of the room.”

  They were in a spacious hall that looked like a time capsule sealed in the 1930s. The air was a sarcophagus of dead memories, tasting of dry dust and ancient ink.

  The fshlight beams cut through the gloom, revealing endless rows of tall mahogany cabinets packed with leather-bound ledgers. Along the walls stood gss dispy cases with brass instruments that shimmered dully. But the most terrifying part was the floor. Or rather, those who were on it.

  They weren't skeletons in the usual sense. They were empty, withered husks. At a massive oak desk in the center, figures in tattered gray uniforms and white coats were frozen in deep leather chairs. Their bodies had long since turned into parchment stretched tight over bone, but their poses remained frighteningly natural: one was frozen with a pen in hand over a yellowed sheet; another still clutched a bone-white telephone receiver pressed to a non-existent ear. On one of the uniforms, Mateo noticed a tarnished swastika badge embedded in the shriveled fabric—a symbol of the old world that had tried to colonize this hell.

  — “They didn't leave,” Elena whispered, her light sweeping over the Nazi armband on one of the mummies. “They stayed here until the very end, guarding what they couldn't carry away.”

  — “The Ahnenerbe Library,” Mateo said, approaching the nearest shelf. As an engineer, he trusted facts. He ran his finger over the spines of the books. The gold embossing had faded but was still legible: Goethe, Nietzsche, the works of Bvatsky, technical specifications... “Nazi engineers sat here, underground, while up on the surface, builders were raising the Obelisk. While the whole world thought they were just building a city.”

  — “Were they looking for Shambha?” Nico smirked, eyeing an officer’s dagger on the desk. “And they found the deepest shithole in the world instead.”

  — “No, Nico. They weren't looking for myths. They were looking for structure.” Mateo approached the central desk. Carefully, afraid of damaging the fragile paper, he brushed away a yer of gray dust from a rge sheet of drafting paper. “Get over here. Look at this.”

  The group gathered around the table. Leo stood next to his father. His bck hand trembled visibly, the skin pulsing to an invisible rhythm, as if the blueprints on the table were leaking radiation. On the desk y a map of 1930s Buenos Aires. But it was a strange, "inside-out" map. The city streets were marked only with faint dotted lines. The main elements were thick bck lines interwoven into a complex network. They resembled a circutory system or a web of exposed nerves. All these arteries converged at a single point.

  — “Look at the vertical cross-section,” Mateo’s voice shook. “At the intersection of the lines stands the Obelisk on 9 de Julio. But on the diagram, it’s not drawn as an architectural monument. It’s drawn as a giant, hollow needle plunging deep underground—dozens of times deeper than any foundation. The needle pierced something massive, beled in Latin as Corpus (The Body).”

  — “Buenos Aires isn't just a city,” Mateo whispered, the terrible engineering truth he had suspected finally gaining visual proof. “It’s a plug. The Obelisk is a hypodermic needle injected directly into the main nerve center of a giant living Being, sleeping beneath the entire continent.”

  “PROJECT OMEGA,” Elena read, picking up a folder nearby. It bore the imperial eagle and a stamp: Geheime Kommandosache—Top Secret. She opened it, and the pages crunched piteously. “Dr. Gross’s Report, 1936... The subject is showing residual activity. Vibrations are intensifying. We have begun injecting a sedative solution through the Needle channel. The subway concrete sarcophagus is stabilized...”

  — “They found IT even back then,” Mateo said, flipping through the pages, his engineer’s brain soaking in the diagrams Elias Gross called "zero-point energy." “To them, it wasn't just a 'source,' but a perpetual motion machine, a waveguide for vacuum fluctuations they could pump indefinitely. They wanted to use the Corpus as a colossal RTG to power their ambitions, but the Being started to wake up.”

  The earthquakes, the sinkholes, the disappearance of entire blocks... That’s why they built all this—the Obelisk, the Barolo, Lines A and E. It’s not urban architecture, damn it. It’s acupuncture. Forced blocking of the pnet’s nerve centers so "IT" doesn't wake up and shake us all off like lice.

  ELENA'S CONFESSIONMateo spun around to face his wife. In the silence of the office, his voice cracked like a whip: “Elena. You knew about this 'Corpus.' You knew the Obelisk was leaking radiation even when we lived in the upper sector. You didn't lead us here by memory; you followed a protocol. Where did you get those keys?”

  Elena froze. She slowly pced the folder on the desk and looked Mateo straight in the eyes. There was no guilt in her gaze—only a heavy, age-old weariness.

  — “You thought the story of Dr. Elias Gross was an urban legend?” she asked quietly. “The genius who created the Double to hide from the world... His research didn't disappear. Director Kai’s Institute, where I worked before you came into my life, was built on these bones. They found a way to graft fragments of the Substrate’s 'bck blood' into a human embryo. It was called Project Synchronization.”

  — “What are you talking about?” Mateo took a step toward her.

  — “In the reports that nded on Kai’s desk, our son was listed as Specimen-Alpha. Kai knew the Obelisk was a temporary measure. He needed a living conductor capable of not just blocking the Substrate, but controlling its rage. We weren't a family to them, Mateo; we were a farm for growing the perfect resonance.” Elena’s voice broke. “I fled the Institute so they wouldn't turn Leo into part of that cursed 'Needle'.”

  — “But you’re in Sigma, Elena!” Mateo nearly shouted, his voice echoing off the gss cases. “You work for the very people you ran from! You put on their uniform, you took their weapons... What the hell do you call that—'running far'?”

  Elena smirked bitterly, and in the fshlight’s glow, her face looked carved from the same cold granite as the Barolo walls.

  — “It’s called 'hiding in the lion’s mouth,' Mateo. The Institute and Sigma are different heads of the same hydra. Kai’s scientists look for 'Specimens' in bs, while Sigma’s goons clear out those who interfere with the drilling. I knew if I just vanished, they’d track us in a week through traffic, through groceries, through cameras. But if I became part of their punitive system, if I wrote the reports on 'failed searches' in our sector myself—we’d be safe.”

  She stepped toward him, and Mateo saw in her eyes not repentance, but the cold calcution of a professional.

  While the adults studied the papers in horror, Leo slowly walked over to a far shelf.

  In a lead holder stood a massive gss cylinder. Inside, in an absolute vacuum, floated a thick substance glowing with a ghostly blue light. Leo touched the gss with his transformed bck palm. The liquid inside instantly boiled. It swirled into a violent spiral, reaching for the boy's fingers through the thick quartz gss.

  — “Leo?” Cobra called out, noticing the strange glow. “What did you find there?”

  The boy didn't turn around. His face in the cylinder's reflection was contorted with pain.

  — “It’s not just minerals...” he said softly, and that frightening double echo returned to his voice. “It’s his extract. His blood. He’s in pain. He’s starving, and that’s why he’s waking up.”

  Mateo snapped the Nazi folder shut and turned to his wife.

  — “Elena. Enough riddles. What does 'he’s starving' mean? What is that crap in the vial? You’ve read these reports before. How do you know all this?”

  Elena froze. She slowly lowered her rifle and looked her husband in the eyes.

  — “You thought the thousands of missing people in the past were just victims of the regime?” her voice became hard, almost metallic. “Director Kai’s Institute didn't just study the Abyss. They fed it. They dumped people into the Substrate: 'system errors,' twins, the unwanted. They used human biomaterial as living batteries to keep this monster in a deep coma. The Obelisk was just the needle through which they injected this 'sedative'.”

  Mateo turned pale, feeling nausea rise in his throat.

  — “But times have changed,” Elena smirked bitterly. “In the 21st century, you can't just dispose of thousands of people in shafts. The flow of 'batteries' ran dry. The monster is critically low on energy for a peaceful existence. He’s coming out of the coma, Mateo. The sinkholes, the earthquakes... The beast is tearing at its bonds in agony.”

  — “If he’s waking up, why don’t they destroy him?” Nico asked hoarsely, backing away from the table.

  — “Because they need him!” Elena pointed at the boiling blue cylinder. “The Corporation doesn't want to kill him; they want to milk him. They’re pumping this substance out of the Substrate. In logistics, I saw this biomaterial going into deep, closed sectors. There are rumors the Corporation is building—or has already built—a super-biocomputer. Something colossal, running on the neural connections of the Substrate itself. I don't know the details; that’s Directorate level. But I know one thing: for that computer to work, they need to harness the original.”

  She turned to Leo, and her voice trembled.

  — “Since they can't feed the monster with crowds anymore, they need someone the Abyss 'knows.' A perfect biological conductor. In Kai’s archives, our son was listed as Specimen-Alpha. The Corporation wanted to turn Leo into a living colr for this monster. A controller to make the beast obey while they suck the juice out of him for their supercomputer.”

  Mateo looked at his son’s bck hand, which was emitting a faint glow, and the puzzle in his head snapped together with a deafening crunch.

  — “You worked in their logistics...” the engineer whispered. “You pushed papers.”

  — “I was a system glitch in their supply chain!” Elena snapped, stepping toward him. “I wrote off their scanners and equipment as junk; I sent search teams to the wrong sectors. I put on the Sigma uniform and worked for the Corporation only to lead their hounds away from our home. I hid Leo under their noses for five years!”

  Suddenly, the office walls shuddered. Lime dust rained from the ceiling. A booming, rolling impact came from somewhere above—from the direction of the shaft.

  THE END OF THE ROADMateo felt the vibration through the soles of his boots: it wasn't a cave-in; it was the detonation of a shaped charge.

  — “Explosion,” Elena said, instantly raising her rifle and checking the chamber. “They blew the central bridge in the City of Exiles. Sigma is already in the building. They know we’re in the Archive.”

  — “The Colonel...” Cobra lowered her eyes, gripping her knife handle so hard her knuckles turned white. “He didn't just buy us time. He gave everything he had left for us. He’s gone.”

  — “We have to go. Now!” Mateo cut in, suppressing the lump in his throat.

  He frantically swept his fshlight beam over the nautical charts on the table until he hit a blue line running from the base of the Barolo down into the abyss itself. There, in the margins of the map, was a handwritten note in German: “Der letzte Anкерptz” (The Last Anchorage).

  — “Sector U,” he read, his eyes widening. “Unterseeboot.”

  — “You’re kidding me?” Nico ughed nervously, rubbing his face. “You’re telling me the Nazis brought a submarine here? In pieces, like a Lego set?”

  — “No,” Mateo shook his head, remembering the geological sections. “The Substrate is full of natural caverns. Underground rivers flowing into the Atntic. They sailed it in here under its own power back in the forties. It was their Doomsday vault. A ship capable of traveling through the pnet's veins straight to the ocean.”

  — “Where’s the entrance?” Elena slung her bag of documents over her back. In the corridor outside, the thud of heavy boots and the crackle of radios were already audible.

  Leo walked over to the wall where an old nautical chart of the South Atntic hung. He ripped it off in one sharp motion, revealing cold, unpainted metal. Behind the yellowed paper was a massive steel wheel-hatch, like the ones on warships. The metal was covered in a yer of green oxidation, but above it, a white letter "U" and a swastika stamp were clearly embossed.

  — “Through there,” Leo pointed to the hatch. “The water is close. I can smell it. Salt, iodine, and cold iron.”

  Mateo threw his weight against the hatch wheel. The veins in his neck bulged; his face turned purple. The metal didn't budge, seized by decades of neglect.

  — “It’s jammed!” he wheezed. “The rust has fused the metal!”

  — “Let me!” Nico pushed him aside and struck the wheel with his rebar, using it as a lever. The metal responded only with a dull, mocking ring that set their teeth on edge.

  — “Step back.”

  Leo approached the hatch. He pced his bck, pulsing palm directly onto the center of the wheel. Bck threads, like living capilries, slid from his fingers, penetrating the microscopic gaps in the rusted mechanism. Mateo saw the metal beneath his son’s hand begin to clear, as if being scrubbed clean by time itself.

  — “ábrete (Open),” he whispered.

  A sound followed that made everyone’s teeth ache—the screech of metal changing its structure on a molecur level. Rust fell away as orange dust. The lock inside clicked with the sound of a cannon shot. The wheel turned on its own, hissing as it released a vacuum a century old. The air from the room was hungrily sucked inside.

  The hatch swung open. A bst of damp, icy air hit their faces. It didn't smell like archive dust, but like salt, iodine, and deep, dark water. And something else—something ancient and decayed. A tomb-like chill wafted from the darkness of the passage.

  — “There’s no dder,” Mateo shined his light down. The spiral staircase had colpsed decades ago, turning into a heap of rusted steps at the bottom. Only a smooth, sloping discharge pipe remained, angling down at forty-five degrees into the viscous darkness. It was covered in a slippery yer of bck moss.

  — “Great,” Nico ughed nervously, peering into the abyss. “The Third Reich’s water park. Who’s going first to test the slide?”

  From above, a heavy ram struck the Archive door they had braced with the antique desk. The wood groaned; the desk legs slid across the parquet. Red ser sights appeared in the cracks. Sigma was at the threshold. One more hit and the desk would flip.

  — “Everyone down!” Elena commanded, firing short bursts toward the door. “Move! Jump!”

  Nico pinched his nose, closed his eyes, and jumped into the pipe first. Cobra followed, letting out a short, sharp cry that was instantly swallowed by the dark. Leo looked at his father. There was no fear in his eyes, only a strange, otherworldly calm.

  — “We won't crash, Dad. The water will take us. It will recognize us,” he said calmly and stepped into the void.

  Elena and Mateo gnced at each other. The Archive door finally shattered into splinters, and bck-helmeted figures appeared in the doorway.

  — “Jump!” Mateo yelled, shoving his wife into the maw of the pipe and diving in after her.

  In that same second, assault rifle fire peppered the room, shattering the gss cylinder of blue lithium, which spilled across the floor like the blood of a monster.

  They flew in absolute darkness, sliding along the wet slime of the pipe, reaching a terrifying speed. Inertia pinned them to the walls. Mateo felt the world around him disintegrating, leaving only this endless descent down into the pnet's womb. Ahead, at the very end of the tunnel, cold steel shimmered.

  They were flying toward the underground ocean, where in the icy water, the rusted legacy of those who wanted to survive the end of the world but stayed here forever awaited. The steel shark “U” was waiting for its new passengers.