The air inside the main shaft was thick, tasting of iron and stagnant dust. As the strike team descended into the jagged maw of the canyon floor, the high-powered floodlights of their tactical suits struggled against a darkness that seemed to swallow light itself.
"Stay on the path Crul highlighted! Not a single step to the left or right!" Jason's voice hissed through the comms, tense and low. "We're moving at a crawl. I want the sonic vibration scanners at 100% sensitivity. If a pebble shifts three miles away, I want to hear it."
The soldiers moved in a tight formation, their boots crunching softly on the uneven rock. Every few meters, a technician stopped to plant a subterranean acoustic probe.
"Sir, the structural resonance is... weird," a young soldier whispered, his eyes darting toward the shadows of the cave walls. "The data Crul sent... that thing down there. It's the size of a goddamn mountain. Are we sure the restrictive matrix is still holding?"
