Damian’s shoulders slump with visible relief at your nod, though his hands remain trembling as they clutch at his chest.
“Thank you,” he breathes, his voice soft but laden with tension. He meets your gaze, and smiles. “I know I don’t deserve your trust,” he continues, his voice wavering slightly. “But that thing—it’s growing. It’s evolving. If we don’t destroy it, there won’t be anything left. Of me, of you… of anyone.”
He gestures toward the faint, pulsing blue glow emanating from a corridor ahead–you hadn’t noticed it before, and can only blink. It feels… alive, thrumming faintly, like the heartbeat of some colossal, unseen creature calling you deeper into the abyss.
“Follow me,” Damian says, his tone grave. “I’ll take you there.”
Nodding, you gladly follow your would-be guide. The two of you descend deeper into the facility, the air growing colder and heavier with each step. The faint hum in the walls intensifies, vibrating through the rusted walkways and dormant machinery that line the path. The oppressive atmosphere presses down on you, the weight of the unknown sinking into your chest like an anchor.
As you move through dimly lit corridors, Damian’s voice cuts through the silence, hesitant but purposeful.
“You… you really have no idea what this place is, do you?” He glances back at you, astonished by your calm demeanor, then seems to recall your likely status as an outsider. Adjusting his torn and crooked tie with a nervous hand, he presses on. “This is… well, as I said, the Solarus Research Institute.”
You tilt your head slightly, raising a brow, silently urging him to continue.
“This… isn’t just some lab,” Damian says, his words quickening as if trying to articulate the enormity of what he’s about to explain. “It’s not a think-tank or a research hub. This is, where the very fabric of reality is probed and bent. We’re not tinkering with atoms or sequencing DNA—we’re breaching dimensions. Parallel worlds, alternate realities… places where the rules of physics don’t work the way they do here.”
He glances at you, searching for any reaction, but your expression remains neutral, unyielding—not giving away the complete stupor within your brain. The notes you’d found were one thing, written on paper—but hearing this man actually say aloud, confirming the truth of what was going on down here, made it all the more hard to believe, even with what you’d seen—and experienced—this night. All you wanted was a walk, and here you are… walking, into the gaping jaws of some crazy laboratory ripped out of some crazy sci-fi novel.
Spurred on by your silence, he continues.
“For decades, the S.R.I. has been on the cutting edge of transdimensional studies. Wormholes, quantum singularities, exotic particles—you name it. This place is more than a facility; it’s humanity’s frontier, our attempt to understand what lies beyond our universe. And… we found things.” His voice falters, but he forces himself to go on. “Technologies, resources, even beings—things that challenge everything we thought we understood about existence.”
Damian places a hand on the cold, rusted wall, as though grounding himself. His voice drops to a near whisper, reverent and fearful. “But then… we—or, should I say—the old guard—found the Blackstone.” He pauses, the name lingering in the air like a curse.
“It’s not just some rock,” he says finally. “It was found in a dimension we didn’t even think could exist—a realm outside our calculations, beyond our understanding. The Blackstone is… a nexus, a source of exotic particles and decaying quantum fields. It warps reality—time, space, even life itself. You’ve seen the results, haven’t you? The transformation…” He trails off, his voice trembling—and it takes another second for him to remember you’re, quite frankly, long past the stage of ‘seeing.’
Damian clears his throat. “The higher-ups thought it was the key to everything: power, progress, evolution. But its effects defy every law of science we know. It doesn’t just break rules—it makes them. And now…” He swallows hard. “Now, we’re staring into the abyss, and the abyss is staring back.”
As you press on, the corridors narrow, and the flickering lights give way to a thick darkness—broken only by a faint, pulsing glow. Fussing under his labcoat, you see Damian retrieve something—a flashlight. He fidgets with its side, and flicks it on, shining a path before you both.
The way forward, eventually, takes you into a corridor made of reinforced glass. You glance to the side, your sharp vision catching a glimpse of a vast underground cavern beyond the transparent walls.
Save for the distant, eerie blue light glowing faint and far within its depths – the endless expanse is shrouded in impenetrable blackness, the likes of which even your sharp eyes can’t seem to pierce.
Damian pauses briefly as he notices your halting movement, his eyes following yours to the cavern.
“That light…” he mutters, his voice barely audible, “it’s part of the Blackstone’s influence. It’s spreading…” He doesn’t linger, pressing forward with renewed urgency. You follow briskly.
Finally, you reach a corridor that seems different from the others—pristine yet foreboding, its walls lined with dormant machinery and faintly glowing conduits. Damian stops before a set of heavy, reinforced doors, his hand hovering over a control panel which sparks to life at his approach.
He hesitates, then looks back at you.
“The Blackstone is further beyond... If we’re going to end this, we have to do it together.”
Ever-silent, you fix on the dim blue glow seeping through the edges of the door. Damian takes a deep breath, steeling himself, and presses his hand to the control panel. With a low, resonant hum, the doors begin to slide open, revealing the dark depths of the chamber beyond.
He steps forward, sound echoing all around you – the beam of the flashlight parting the abyss — as he turns to beckon you further.