The voice that was playing on repeat over the speakers, told Chris and Jess to head towards some tunnel, sadly all they had to go off of is the destroyed railroad tracks, and that it's the eastern one. As they were walking they later saw an entrance hub of an train network with two tunnels going through a mountain. The rail ended at what appeared to be a mashed together barricade on the left most tunnel.
While they they were contemplating advancing. Flashlights turned on from the other side of the barricade.
"Stop there!"
Chris froze, one hand raised while the other was on his pistol. Jess immediately thinking it was fellow survivors followed the order, and hooked the crowbar through her belt.
Another voice yelled out, rough and frayed, "Say the line!"
What line?" Jess shouted back.
"Sally sells seashells by the seashore!"
Chris blinked. "You're kidding." He yelled back
"Say it, both of you as clear as you can!" The guard said
Jess muttered, "Unbelievable," then raised her voice "Sally sells seashells by the seashore!"
Chris echoed it, slower but steady.
For a heartbeat, nothing. Then the nearest flashlight dipped. "Good," the man said. "Mimics can't handle tongue twisters."
The man stepped into view he was wearing a blood-stained police jacket, his weapon trembling. "Hands up. Walk in slow."
While looking at each other as if ask if they should trust the voices, Jess finally took a step forward while Chris walked in behind her. The makeshift barricade scraped open just wide enough to let them through. The screech of metal on concrete echoed for far too long.
Inside, the air thickened with diesel fumes, sweat, and smoke. Emergency lights flickered bathing the surroundings with a dim red light across the area.
The man kept his pistol low but ready. "Lieutenant Valez," he said, like reminding himself. "You're good?"
Jess nodded. "For now. I was at the train yards doing my job as maintenance crew when everything happened" Jess said, "and This is Chris."
"From?"
"Chris grumbled The Campus district. It's gone though now I'm pretty sure."
"So just like everywhere else." Valez said while gestured toward a woman waiting near the doorway in torn paramedic greens, with a light in hand.
"Mirren check 'em."
She moved with the exhaustion of someone who hadn't stopped since the world did. The light darted across their eyes and wrists. "No fractures. No burns. No change."
Valez nodded once. "Inside. Quietly."
————
The tunnel opened into a maintenance bay. Diesel fumes clung to the air under flickering red light. About twenty survivors drifted between the shadows either feeding a fire barrel hobo style, reinforcing barricades, or stripping wire for copper. No one seemed to be questioning what happened or why. Which send alarm bells ringing to Chris.
"Water's that way," Valez said. "Don't touch the fuel. East door stays watched." Chris scanned the place: overturned desks welded into walls, cots made of tarp, tools scattered like unwanted toys. The shard in his backpack stayed warm and quiet.
Near the fire, a kid asked, "You get any points for that?"A man tightening bolts on the gate hinge grunted. "One. Guess the world like door hinges now." He said with a laugh. Almost everyone that has survived has seen the blue flash of xp. Nobody understood it, only that it came after you did something of value such as killing, building, saving. The world had new rules, and they were cruelly simple.
A wiry guy in oil-stained coveralls waved Jess over. "We got lights dying. You know your way around fuses?"
"I have some experience," Jess said.
"Dev Singh," he offered, wiping his hands. "Electrical apprentice. Promotion came with the apocalypse." He followed with a wink.
Chris followed the pair not wanting to leave himself or Jess alone with those unknown. He watched them crawl under the generator panel. Sparks feathered the dark like dying fireflies. For the next hour, the tunnel became a rhythm of survival, the clank of tools on metal, tired voices arguing over voltage, the smell of burning insulation. Someone boiled canned soup over a barrel fire. A child started crying, but was scolded and then hushed with a lullaby that sounded more like a plea. A man knelt near the barricade, muttering, "Just hold 'til morning."
Jess's voice carried from the generator bay. "Dev, this line's fried."
"Then bypass it," Dev answered, sharp with fatigue.
"Already did."
"Try again, and also don't blow us up jess." Dev said
"I'll try to restrain myself."
Another spark, louder. The engine coughed, rattled, caught, died. Someone clapped once, half-hopeful."Hold on," Dev muttered. "One more adjustment."Minutes passed. The hum of the generator deepened, sputtered, then caught again.
"Try it now," Dev finally called.
Jess flipped a switch. Half the bay blinked into whiter light. A thin sigh rippled through the group real relief for the first time that night.
Dev froze a heartbeat, eyes unfocused, jaw tight. Then he blinked and managed a grin. "Breaker's good. Don't touch that conduit unless you like fireworks."
Outside the tunnel, the world was a dying furnace, but in here it was 4 am, that fragile hour when everyone believes they might actually see dawn.
Valez's voice broke the lull. "Eda, Bishop, Nolan — east barricade till dawn."
Three figures rose: Eda, shaved head gleaming in the dim light; Nolan, broad-shouldered with faded tattoos on his forearms, and finally Bishop, a younger lad, his polite smile too still for comfort. They took their positions without a word.
Mirren appeared beside Chris aiming to apply first aid to his road rash from when he was thrown by the entity within the fog. She began by taping a gauze pad around the scrape on his back that she was able to see through his torn shirt. "Lucky," she said. "If that glass had gone deeper, I'd be digging for it with a spoon."
" I've had worse," he muttered.
"Don't tempt worse. It listens."
He joined a crew moving debris near the barricade. When a stack of drawers slipped and almost crushed a man's leg, Chris shoved hard, metal screaming as it toppled aside.
A faint blue flicker touched the edge of his sight.
+2 XP
Then he felt another softer pulse coming from the shard.
+3 XP
No reason. It seemed just surviving being counted it seemed. The shard warmed against his back, heartbeat syncing with his own, then stilled.
The fire burned low. People slumped where they sat. Valez dozed upright, pistol across his lap. Jess and Dev shared quiet jokes about voltage and luck. When Chris finally lay down near the wall, the concrete was cold, and the generator's hum filled the hollow where thought used to live.
Chris began to drift off when suddenly, the shard seemed to pulse fast as if danger was approaching.
He sat up before his eyes opened. The heat, and pulses from the shard had never been random it has been warning.
The generator still hummed. Fires still popped. But underneath from the barricade came faint voices. He moved quietly, pistol drawn, following the whisper down the narrow corridor. Red light faded into gloom.
Three people sat on the floor around a candle that shouldn't have stayed lit. Wax puddled, cooled, melted again in rings.
He realized it was Eda, Nolan and Bishop he believed were their names tempering earlier that they were told to guard the gate. All three began quietly chanting.
"…the gate opens…"
"…where faith bleeds…"
The words fell like a lullaby that was not used to comfort but to tame instead. The shard producing so much heat it made Chris start sweating.
He froze, pulse hammering.
Bishop lifted his head. He didn't startle. He simply turned toward Chris, eyes reflecting the candlelight, calm as still water.
"Just checking the sourroundings and saying a good luck prayer," Bishop said evenly.
Eda didn't move. Nolan's lips kept shaping silent syllables.
Chris's throat felt dry as rust. "Okay," he said clutching his pistol under his coat. He backed away, slow and careful, never turning until the wall blocked them from his sight.
Back in the bay, the generator sounded wrong like the croaking of a dying beast. Jess and Dev sat near the fire counting fuel cans. She looked up when Chris lowered himself beside them.
"Problem?" she asked.
"Not yet."
Jess studied him a second longer. The flicker from the firelight made the shadows on his face look older, hollow.
"You're a terrible liar," she said quietly. "What did you see?"Chris hesitated, eyes still fixed on the dark mouth of the maintenance hall.
"Three of them. Eda, Nolan, Bishop. Sitting in a circle. Whispering."
Jess frowned. "Whispering about what?"
He exhaled and then said "The same line from the broadcast I heard. The gate opens where faith bleeds."
Her hand tightened around the crowbar. "And you didn't tell Valez?"
"Not yet."
"Why the hell not?"
"Because the shard burned the second I saw them," he said. "It only does that for danger.
And if I start pointing fingers with my only proof being my shiny rock said they are bad, I'm the one they'll throw outside."
Jess stared at him, then at the dark tunnel. Slowly she said "we need to be careful, this is "creepy as hell."
"Yeah," he said softly. "I know."
The shard cooled even more , and its pulse fading completely for now.
Around them, People began to drift asleep, or finally have a mental break crying or whispering trying to process what they experienced today. The Metal ticking of the tunnel filling their head as they slowly fell asleep.
Chris was staring at the ceiling, until he thought about what the xp notification from earlier meant. Immediately a blue light brushed his vision as if by instinct listing information:
Level 1 — Progress 9 / 10 XP
Awaiting Class Designation
The text fuzzed, blinked, and erased itself.
He didn't tell Jess. He didn't tell anyone else.
The tunnel kept them safe, and able to collect themselves it seems for now.
But it couldn't keep what waited outside out for long. Somewhere close to the barricade, there was something staring at the barricade smelling the air, as if finding a new toy to break. It deciding to wait for an opportunity.