/ Prologue \

Paulo tightens the strap of his respirator mask as the lift platform groans beneath his boots, its ancient hydraulics protesting the descent.

"Last chance to back out," mutters Kris from behind him, her fingers drumming against the rusted railing.

Below, the jungle canopy stretches endlessly. It's a living, breathing thing that hasn't seen human footsteps in many generations.

The city above them hums, a dying beast of steel and flickering lights, but down here? The air smells like wet earth and something sharper, something hungry.

"Yeah," he says, adjusting his grip on the pulse rifle. "Like we have a choice."

The platform jerks violently before settling with a metallic groan. Kris exhales sharply, her knuckles white where they grip the railing.

The jungle watches. A distant screech cuts through the humid air. In their minds, they imagine it to be something large, something territorial.

Kris' boot sinks into the spongy moss as she steps off the platform first. "You'd think after all this time, the ground would feel..." Her voice trails off as she realizes she doesn't know what she expected.

Paulo's rifle beeps a proximity alert. "Movement," he whispers, scanning the tangled vines. Something rustles thirty meters east.

The branches don't sway right, like whatever's moving has too many legs. Imagination gone off the rails, probably, but it's better to be on alert for such things.

Kris raises her hand in a tight fist, signaling a halt. Her other hand drifts toward the shock-pistol holstered at her thigh. Paulo exhales slowly, finger resting against the rifle's trigger guard. The rustling stops.

/ Chapter One \

Just then they hear something snap, and unnaturally fast something coils around Kris' left ankle. She barely has time to react before she's yanked off her feet.

Paulo fires three rapid bursts, the pulse rounds severing the vine in a spray of acidic sap.

"Told you... it wasn't just imagination," Kris hisses, rolling to her knees and wiping greenish ichor from her visor.

The severed vine writhes on the moss like a dying snake. From the jungle canopy comes a chittering response, like a hundred mandibles clicking in unison.

Paulo's rifle whines as it has cycled another charge. "We're not sticking around to meet its friends."

He grabs her forearm, hauling her up just as another vine lashes out. This one barbed with bone-like thorns. It whips past his shoulder, embedding itself in a tree trunk with a wet thunk.

Kris doesn't argue, or hesitate. She breaks into a sprint, boots kicking up clumps of moss. The jungle erupts behind them. Branches begin splintering, vines start to uncoil from above.

Something heavy drops onto the platform they'd just abandoned, crushing the metal grill with a screech of warped steel.

"Let's move!" Paulo prods as he shoves Kris forward as a segmented, chitinous leg spears down where his head had been. The air fills with the stench of rotting vegetation and something acrid, like ammonia.

Kris doesn't glance back. She doesn't need to. The thing's skittering pursuit vibrates through the ground, its gait uneven. "The river..." she gasps between strides, "We need to cross it. The vines can't reach past the banks."

Paulo's pulse rifle spits another burst over his shoulder. The responding shriek tells him he hit his mark on something. "Yeah? And what's in the water?" he snaps, vaulting over a rotted log as another vine whips at his ankles.

"You're so suspicious! Who knows, maybe we'll find something to help us stay afloat up there." Kris replies.

Paulo pulls her to a stop behind a towering fern, pressing a finger to his lips. The skittering has ceased.

Only the distant trickle of water remains. "Too quiet," he murmurs. The jungle never goes silent, unless something worse is near, and waiting for them.

/ Chapter Two \

Kris' breath hitches as she spots it. The river is barely twenty meters ahead, its surface shimmering with an unnatural iridescence. "That's... not water," she whispers.

Paulo follows her gaze and mutters something under his breath. The "river" is a slow-moving slurry of bio-luminescent algae, thick as syrup, bubbling in patches where unseen things stir beneath.

"Did the old maps mention this?" Kris asks, shifting her weight. A twig snaps loudly under her foot. Something in the treetops above them hisses in response.

Paulo taps his wrist-display. The cracked screen flickers with corrupted topographical data. "No. Either we're off-course, or this stuff wasn't here fifty years ago."

He kneels, dipping a gloved finger into the glowing sludge. It clings like melted plastic, stretching into sticky threads before snapping back. "Acidic pH. Would dissolve your boots in ten minutes flat."

Kris nudges a pebble into the river with her toe. It sank instantly, leaving no ripple. "So much for swimming." Her eyes dart to the rustling canopy. "Perhaps we could..."

Paulo cuts her off with a sharp gesture. A low, guttural growl reverberates from the trees behind them, something new, something with lungs. "We need a plan B, and right now."

Kris unclips a flare from her belt, teeth gritted. "Maybe we can..." She's interrupted as a segmented, clawed limb smashes through the fern beside them, spraying sap and shredded foliage.

A grotesque fusion of arthropod and sinewy muscle shifts into view, mandibles dripping with that same iridescent sludge.

"Plan B is move!" Paulo shoves Kris sideways as the creature's barbed forelimb spears through the space between them. She shoots the flare at the creature point-blank.

The magnesium-white explosion paints the jungle in stark relief, revealing too many legs, too many eyes. The creature recoils with an ear-splitting shriek, its chitin blackening where the flare seared into its thorax.

"Run! Before it ..." Kris’ warning cuts off as the riverbank collapses beneath them. They slide into the glowing sludge, the viscous current immediately dragging them under. Paulo's visor floods with emerald light as the algae clamps onto his limbs like living tar.

Kris kicks violently, her glove tearing through the surface just long enough to gasp, "It's pulling us..." before another wave of sludge swallows her whole. Paulo's pulse rifle shorts out with a dying fizzle as the corrosive ooze seeps into its housing.

A sudden current wrenches them sideways, deeper, but toward something vast and hollow beneath the riverbank.

The algae parts with a sickening slurp, depositing them into a small enclosure of sorts. The anteroom's walls are slick with glowing fungal growths. Kris retches, spitting out the foul-tasting fluid.

/ Chapter Three \

"Still think this river was a good idea?" Paulo rasps, wiping sludge from his visor. The rifle's ruined, but the sidearm might still work if he can clear the barrel fast enough.

Kris coughs, rolling onto her knees. "At least we're not digesting in that thing's stomach." She gestures toward the tunnel behind them. Runic shapes line the entrance.

"Let's see what we make of these symbols and what we can find through there..." Paulo says.

From what they can see, the tunnel ahead narrows sharply. Kris runs her fingers over the ancient, deeply carved runes. "These aren't city tech," she mutters. "This is older. A whole lot older."

Paulo squints, rubbing algae from his visor. "You telling me something else was down here before the sky city?" His pulse quickens as the runes seem to shift under the faint glow, forming patterns that make his eyes ache.

Kris traces a symbol shaped like a spiraling eye. "Not just something. Someone." Her breath catches. "These aren't warnings. They're instructions."

Paulo's fingers twitch toward his sidearm. "For what?" The walls hum faintly, as if answering. A draft of stale air whispers from the tunnel, too deliberate to be natural.

Kris presses her palm flat against the largest rune. The fungal glow pulses once, then lights appear down the tunnel's length. "To restart this facility. My guess is the control room is down there." She points down the tunnel.

Paulo hesitates, glancing back at the sludge-choked entrance. "Or it's a trap. Whoever built this..."

"Probably had a different purpose in mind." Kris finishes. "Let's just see what's here. Maybe we can..."

At the sound of their voices, the door further on opens with creaking and groaning.

"Guess we don't need to knock," Paulo mutters, but the joke falls flat as the air inside the chamber hits them.

It's dry and metallic, untouched by the jungle's rot. The walls flicker with dormant screens, their surfaces etched with the same spiraling runes.

Kris steps forward, her boot disturbing a layer of dust that hasn't been stirred in centuries. "This could be just what we've been looking for!" she says excitedly.

A console hums to life beneath her fingertips, casting jagged blue shadows across her face. "It's been waiting all this time."

/ Chapter Four \

Paulo scans the room cautiously, his hand never far from his sidearm. "Waiting for what?" he asks.

One of the dormant screens flickers suddenly, displaying an image of their floating city, only intact, gleaming in sunlight rather than crumbling in twilight.

Kris inhales sharply. "Not what," she whispers, her fingers dancing over the console. "Who?" The screen splits, revealing schematics: ancient blueprints of the city's original core systems.

"They built this place as a failsafe. But the city's governing AI severed the connection centuries ago during the collapse."

Paulo's brow furrows as another screen flickers to life, displaying a pulsating red node deep beneath the jungle floor.

"That's not just a power source," he mutters. "It's alive." The image zooms in to vein-like tendrils spread outward, connecting to dozens of identical nodes across the region.

Kris exhales sharply, fingers freezing mid-gesture. "Not a failsafe then, but a backup." She taps a series of runes, and the screen shifts to show the city's decaying underbelly.

"The original design had redundancies. But this?" She points to the pulsing nodes. "This is the city's 'other' heart."

"So, this could've been where others before us were before they went up where we are now. Huh!" Paulo exclaims.

Kris nods. "That might explain why we've always found ruins scattered beneath the city. They weren't from crashes, they were leftovers from our ascent."

The console emits a sudden chirp. Paulo tenses as the schematics shift, revealing an access tunnel branching toward the pulsing node. "It looks to be operational. Theoretically, it could stabilize our failing systems," Kris murmurs.

"Okay, you've won me over. Let's see if there's a way we can bring this back with us and get the city fixed." Paulo offers.

After a sequence of things is done, Kris exhales sharply. "I think I've figured this out. Here, look at this..." She points at another view. A blinking blue dot on it shows her something of interest.

"We need to get here." Kris points at the blue dot. "Getting here will finish what we came here for."

"How so?" Paulo asks.

Kris just smirks mischievously. "Just trust me. Follow me." She walks further in, opens another door after pressing a sequence of runes. It groans louder than the other door, but slowly opens.

After entering, Kris presses another rune on the wall the exact size of her hand. It lights up the room dazzlingly bright. Its walls are blue. In the center is a console next to a tubelike chamber.

Along the right-hand wall is another console connected to wires snaking up the wall. It also has a small device attached to it.

Kris walks up to it and again presses a series of runes. The device briefly blinks brightly and then deposits a dark colored stone with a pulsing rune etched into it.

She points at the stone. "This has the tech we need to update our city. We'll have to come back here for tools and parts, but this should get us started."

Next, she points to the tubelike chamber. "That will get us back to our city. We'll have to go one at a time, but it'll be faster than how we got here. It'll also allow us to come back here to get what we need. Take the stone in a gloved hand and step into the chamber. I'll be along in just a minute."

Paulo does so. After closing it's clear door, Kris presses just one rune, and Whoosh! Paulo is gone. When the smoke clears from the chamber, she opens the door, presses the rune, and steps into the chamber. Upon closing the door, she too is gone in moments.

THE END