He should leave them.

  Temptation overwhelmed him. It would be so easy. And practical. Luca could do what he needed without complications, without having to play useless guessing games with them. Being able to work directly would save you not only time, but worry. It would give him more confidence in getting what he wanted: confidence in being able to return to Shawn, to his little brother.

  Yeah.

  It would be so easy.

  Pain shock him as he closed his hands, and he shook his head. “No. I won’t fail,” he muttered for himself. Clinging to the last remaining of his clarity like a burning nail, he spoke to Nagato through clenched teeth--. “I can't float or swim, brat. If I didn’t care I wouldn’t have approached you all. That would have been smarter than —fuck, no, fuck you,” he hissed, at their surroundings, and then pulled them with more effort. “Let's go! We must leave now.”

  “You could have said something,” Nagato insisted, scowling.

  “And attract all the things on the mines?” Luca smiled at him. It wasn’t nice. “I could, I guess. But I don’t hate you enough. Yet.”

  Nadeene appeared behind them as a comet, and pushed them all next to the yellow panel. Luca, who had been flattened against the wall for them three, made a pained sound. But it was enough to make him came back to himself even better than before, and stretching his hand, he pressed the panel.

  The wall slid open.

  “Asshole,” said Nagato, “I’ll leave you behind.” And then he ran across the entrance, like a fucking preschooler.

  Feeling the urge to said something he’d –probably- felt bad for later, Luca followed behind him biting his tongue. I would be so easy. He was really regretting not getting the fuck out of there without that bunch of parasites clinging to his bare veins.

  As they crossed to the corridor, the echo of the hum still haunting them, the malicious whispers started to fade. Almost as if by agreement, they did not stop there, but continued moving forward until they reached the next room, and then the next corridor, and another room. Only when they couldn’t hear the humming anymore did they stop.

  Now his mind wasn’t so focused in no jumping to his coworkers’ throat -or really abandoning them to their luck- Luca was able to take notice of his surroundings.

  “This is new,” he muttered. Black hexagonal panels interlaced with glowing red veins formed the walls, with a smaller version on the floor. The machinery here was quite different to anything from the other areas, in a sense he couldn’t explain. Except that everything there was ten times dangerous. He wouldn’t be touching anything of it. At least they looked dormant. Or was only his hope speaking?

  Nagato cleared his throat. “So –where from here?” He wasn’t looking at him but the rest did.

  How awkward.

  “Left?” Luca offered. They had two options –two yellow panels. There was no opposition, so he followed first that direction. The next corridor branched off to the left, and after some doubts, they took this. They were really quiet. More than before.

  The tension clung to the air like a fog.

  But they kept moving. There was no one there that didn’t want to live another day.

  … Then, footsteps.

  They froze. Luca felt his skin bristle. The sound was faint at first, a soft tapping that echoed through the corridor as they moved forward. And it didn’t stop when they slipped inside a room. And then again into another corridor. It was obvious something was following them.

  “What should we do?” asked Liona, biting her lips. She had a hunted look, even when she tried to kept her composure. “Should –should we split?”

  “No!” Nagato raised his voice accidently. Clearing his throat, he insisted, “no. If we split, we’ll making their job easier.”

  “We could cover more space,” offered Nadeene, earning a frown from Nagato.

  Luca listened at the sound, and then his face went blank. “I don’t think is a good idea,” he said, slowly, no looking at them.

  The image of Ladon’s, standing up at the end of the corridor, flickered like a mirage.

  “It isn’t the best idea, but we have no a lot of good ones,” Liona pointed out.

  Luca didn’t answer, eyeing the shadows. “There’s something here,” he murmured. “Don’t fall–”

  “Liona? Nadeene? Is that you?”

  The voice was familiar. Too familiar.

  Liona’s eyes widened, her face paling. “Ladon?” she whispered, her voice trembling.

  “No,” Luca said sharply, grabbing her arm as she took a step forward. “It’s not him.”

  “But—”

  “Ladon’s dead,” Nagato interrupted, his voice low and tense. His eyes were wide and he was clutching Liona’s other arm. “We saw what happened. That’s not him.”

  “It’s another trick,” Nadeene pressed in, her face strangely blank. “Let’s keep moving.”

  Liona hesitated, her eyes darting toward the sound of the voice. For a moment, it looked like she would dart pass them. But then she nodded, her jaw tightening as she forced herself to turn away.

  They quickened their pace but it didn’t really help. The footsteps kept with them, growing even louder.

  Ladon’s voice called out again, pleading, desperate.

  “Please, wait! I’m here! Don’t leave me!”

  Luca clenched his teeth, forcing himself to ignore the voice. He knew what this was. A trap. Like the one they had suffered from the hum. Each one of them knew. But knowing didn’t make it any easier when the voice felt real and glimpses of the Ladon’s continued hunting them from the corner of their eyes.

  You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

  “Fuck you,” Nagato hissed under his breath. “I didn’t even like that guy.”

  Liona made a sound of outrage.

  “Get in line,” said Nadeene, to their surprise. “What? He clung to me, didn’t do shit, and made my skin crawl.”

  So Ladon was a crept. Great. Couldn’t happen to a better guy, then.

  “I knew it!” Nagato raised his fist. “My gut doesn’t lie.”

  “How could you-?” Liona started, a mix of emotions on her voice.

  Then Luca saw it –at the end of the corridor. Ladon’s image flickered there, blood oozing from his eyes, nose and mouth, dripping on the floor. Dripping.

  Luca halted on his tracks.

  “Man, don’t do it!” Nagato hissed, spinning around to face Luca. His hand shot out, gripping Luca’s arm tightly. “You didn’t like him either.”

  “I didn’t,” Luca confirmed, blinking slowly. Perhaps it was the slap of emotional damage that loosened his words.Perhaps it was the “He tried to trip you up before. Guys like him use others just to survive—I can’t stand that.”

  “Damn,” Nadeene gasped, pushing them into the nearest room. She leaned against the wall, her voice trembling slightly. “Last mission, a woman from Delta-M fell when that giant centipede was chasing us. He was right behind her at first… I thought—I thought maybe I’d seen it wrong.”

  Liona’s expression fell down.

  Nagato scowled deeply. “Shouldn’t the report have mentioned something like that? Or is all this talk just empty threats they throw at us?”

  “The reports they pull from the system only gives them basic info,” Luca said, regaining some composure as he gently freed his arm from Nagato’s grip. “And anyone can fill in the blanks however they want.” Or leave things out entirely, he added silently.

  “It's not worth a shit then.”

  “Something like that.”

  Luca’s eyes darted around as the talk died down. And then almost smiled. “Look at that.” Panels of white light were spread across the walls, displaying strange symbols and what appeared to be graphics. But most importantly, at the middle of this, there was a red panel, familiar numbers reflected on this.

  He pressed his arm without hesitation.

  “What is this supposed to be?” Nagato asked, his tone tinged with frustration as he gestured at the screen.

  “Take a picture,” Luca said absently, already leaning closer to examine it. His eyes darted across the display, searching for something specific. Where would it even be? The vague descriptions he vaguely remembered weren’t doing him any favors right now.

  “Why are you doing there without me?” Ladon’s anxious voice came from outside. “Aren't we a team?”

  They ignored the thing, trying to focus on their current situation.

  “The mission is completed,” Nadeene murmured, her voice heavy with unease.

  “But there’s no follow-up mission,” Nagato shot back, running a hand through his hair. “Fuck. What are we supposed to do now?”

  Luca found what he was looking for —a small, pulsing light on the wall, and pressed it. The panels disappeared, leaving only a grid of symbols on the wall. They were carved on the metal and glowed red.

  “Alright. Someone knows ‘alien’?”

  The only familiar ones where those he had seen on the mines. They had seen on the mines.

  “That symbol was on a mural,” murmured Liona, pointing out the one in the top corner. “I think –I think it was about the crash. Perhaps we should…?”

  “Some of these were in the rooms, in those 'machines'. Shouldn’t we choose the one of the Energy Core?” Nadeene offered.

  “We could press all them,” Nagato pipped on. “What? I was only an idea,” he defended himself when he saw the look everyone gave him.

  “Perhaps no only one,” Luca mumbled. “The people in the mines are sacrificing others to the aliens. I saw the spiral and the altar on the mural. Three symbols?”

  Ladon’s mirage flickered in front of them. “It isn’t nice to ignore your friends!” His voice erupted like a cacophony of wails.

  It almost sent Luca stumbling back due the piercing headache. The pain let his anger to bloom, and he rushed ahead, straight to the wall. Ladon’s image disappeared as Luca passed by –but let him a last gift. A last wail almost exploded his ears, swallowing all the sounds of the room, and let him dazed for a splint second. However, it wasn’t enough to stop him.

  The three symbols were pressed –first the altar, then the spiral, then the inverted triangle. The instant he hit the last one, the red glow become green, and oozed a viscous liquid of the same color. When it reached the ground, smoke arose, just a few inches from where Luca was standing.

  Luca moved backward by instinct.

  “You're shitting me!” Nagato jolted, pain left aside for the outrage. “Twenty minutes?!”

  “Hurry up.” Luca ran towards the wall with the yellow panel. “We must find the exit.”

  The instant the wall slid open, Ladon’s monster appeared there, eyes completely black, green lines bursting open on its skin.

  “You’ll die!” It screamed, blood coming out its mouth, splashing the floor. More smoke rose where it touched. But it was the pain that the otherworldly sound behind its voice that made them wince and grab their heads. “You’ll die like me!”

  “Shut the fuck up!” Nagato screamed and threw its flashlight at it. The item flew into the air and passed through the image, making it disappear.

  They took advantage of this to cross, and ran ahead. Nagato picked up the flashlight on his way, while Liona took out –a water bottle? Luca took out his multi-tool. He had a lot of sharp ends.

  “Keep moving,” Nadeene said, her voice steady despite the fear in her eyes. She was the only that didn’t have anything to protect herself with. “We can’t let it get to us.”

  They pressed on, moving through a new room and into another corridor. But the voice followed them, growing more insistent, and the pain kept emerging. Throbbing pain behind his eyes, at both sides of his head. The rest wasn’t better.

  “You should just die here! Just like me!”

  Luca’s hands clenched into fists, his nails digging into his palms. He focused on the corridor ahead, on the faint pain on his hand. Anything to drown the voice, the effects of it.

  “We’re almost there,” Nadeene said, her voice cutting through the haze. “Just keep moving.”

  A metal door appeared at the end of the hallway, almost as an afterthought. A bastion of hope.

  Or a fucking trap.

  But they didn't have many options.

  Not good options, only desperate ideas.