Chapter 268: The Deep Below

As expected the illusion vanished the moment Aaron pulled the trigger. The apartment started to turn into mist, the wall turned into that white strands all over the mine’s wall and ceiling.

The ruined sack by Wade hanging right on top of him. It was empty now, ruined like a balloon.

His daughter was gone, even when the cries kept echoing and drilling his brain.

Agnes stood in front of Aaron for one final second, her body twisting unnaturally as the warmth and softness of her face gave way to something hideous.

Her skin sagged, her eyes widened with a hatred that felt far more real than anything else he had seen inside the mine, and her mouth stretched into a crooked, furious smile.

"You traitor," she hissed. "You left us to die again."

Then her image collapsed into the darkness.

Aaron remained where he stood, his arm still extended. The gun trembled in his hand, and he could not tell whether it was from exhaustion or the force of what he had done.

His chest felt hollow.

He had known it was an illusion. He had known that the woman standing before him was not Agnes, that the child crying somewhere behind her was not his daughter.

Yet he had still wanted to believe.

For one terrible moment, he had almost chosen it.

He could have stayed there. He could have accepted the apartment, the warmth, the sound of his wife moving around him and the small cries of the daughter he had never been able to hold.

He could have let the illusion swallow him whole and died inside it with them.

At least there, he would not have been alone.

His fingers tightened around the gun. Shame started to fill his heart.

’How weak am I to even think about that? I am the leader, I should finish my mission.’

Aaron lowered his arm, but his hand continued to shake. He had survived the apocalypse, led people through starvation and bloodshed, and watched friends die without being able to save them.

He had convinced himself that he had grown stronger because of it.

But the hive mind had found the one thing he had never managed to bury.

It had offered him a life he had lost, and he had almost abandoned everything for it.

Eric stepped closer and tapped him once on the shoulder.

He did not say anything.

Aaron glanced at him. Eric’s expression was pale beneath the grime covering his face, but he did not look afraid of Aaron. He only looked tired.

"Thank you," Aaron said quietly. "For bringing me back."

Eric gave a small nod. "You would’ve done the same."

"Maybe." Aaron looked down at the gun still trembling in his hand before forcing his fingers to loosen. "But you did it this time."

He took one last breath, then secured the weapon at his side.

"Come on. We need to keep moving."

Eric hesitated. "Aaron—"

"We can talk after we get out." Aaron turned toward the descending passage. "Stay close. Watch the ceiling, and don’t touch anything unless I tell you to."

Eric nodded and followed. They continued deeper into the mine.

The passage gradually sloped downward, the ground becoming uneven beneath their boots as the walls narrowed around them.

The air grew colder, but the smell of damp stone was slowly replaced by something wet and organic. The deeper they went, the more the white growths covered the mine.

Thick strands of parasite tissue spread across the walls like roots. Pale sacks hung from the ceiling, swollen and motionless, their surfaces glistening whenever the faint light from the mushrooms touched them.

The mushrooms themselves grew in clusters along the ground and between cracks in the stone, their soft glow barely strong enough to illuminate the path ahead.

There were no aberrants.

No infected people rushed from the darkness. No distorted voices called their names. Nothing moved except the occasional twitch of a tendril or the slow pulsing of the sacks above them.

The silence was worse than an attack.

Eric was the first to break it.

"I’m sorry," he said quietly.

Aaron kept his eyes on the path ahead. "For what?"

"For what you saw."

Aaron’s jaw tightened.

"It was a weakness," he said. His voice sounded rougher than he intended. "The parasite found it and used it against me. That is all."

Eric glanced at him. "You don’t have to make it sound so simple."

"It is simple."

"It didn’t look simple."

Aaron stopped walking for half a second, then continued. "I was weakened by the illusion. I allowed it to distract me from the mission. I almost killed you. That cannot happen again."

Eric did not argue. He only nodded, though his eyes remained fixed on Aaron with quiet concern.

Aaron noticed it but said nothing.

They walked on.

The passage descended farther. The walls seemed to breathe around them. Every few seconds, a faint pulse traveled through the pale tissue, disappearing into the darkness ahead.

Aaron kept one hand near his weapon and the other close to the C4 charges attached to his vest.

The silence pressed against them.

"Do you think Team B—" Eric stopped mid-sentence.

Aaron had already raised one hand. He stood completely still, staring ahead.

The passage ended several meters in front of them. There was no wall, no collapsed tunnel, and no continuation of the mine.

There was only a hole.

It opened across the entire width of the passage, so large that the opposite side was impossible to see.

Darkness swallowed the edges, and the faint mushroom light vanished before reaching the bottom. The hole seemed to descend forever.

Eric stepped closer, his face tightening. "How deep is that?"

"We will see."

Aaron reached into his gear and pulled out one of the chemical light sticks they carried for use in dark environments.

He bent it until the inner capsule cracked, then shook it once as a pale glow spread through the tube.

He threw it into the hole and they waited.

The glowing stick fell through the darkness for several seconds before striking something far below.

It landed on white. There wasn’t any sound when the stick landed, it bounced a bit and moved slowly like that pale and soft thing was a wave.

Eric stared into the darkness. "That can’t be the bottom."

Aaron took out another chem light, cracked it, and threw it farther into the hole. It disappeared into the darkness before landing on the same white surface.

This time, the impact made the pale mass ripple.

Eric’s expression tightened. "What the hell is that?"

Aaron remained near the edge, watching the faint glow tremble against the pale tissue below.

"I don’t know. I have never seen something like that... but it looks like the white things covering the ceiling and wall, doesn’t it?"

Eric crouched slightly, trying to see beyond the limited light. The white surface stretched farther than either of them could follow, covered in folds and thick veins that disappeared into the darkness.

Something moved beneath it, slow and heavy, as though the entire mass had reacted to the chemical light striking its body.

"Is it alive?" Eric asked.

Aaron looked at the tendrils crawling along the distant surface. "The parasite is alive."

"That doesn’t mean all of this is a parasite."

"No." Aaron’s eyes narrowed. "But it’s another possibility. We’ve never seen anything this large before."

"Or anything like this at all." Eric glanced toward the white mass below. "Did that old man from the Greenwarden give you any clue what it was supposed to look like?"

Aaron shook his head. "Patrick didn’t know. I don’t think anyone does. Gideon said it was supposed to be a person, but that thing doesn’t look like a person at all."

Eric frowned. He took another chem light from his gear, cracked it, and threw it into the hole.

The faint glow descended into the darkness, illuminating more of the white mass below. As it settled, several shapes became visible across the surface. At first, they looked like folds in the parasite’s flesh.

Then one of them moved.

A face pushed against the white tissue, its features distorted as though something beneath the surface was trying to force its way out.

Another face appeared beside it, followed by several more, all trapped within the pale, swollen mass.

Eric gasped and stumbled backward. "That thing has faces."

Aaron stared down at the hole. The faces were not merely attached to the surface. They seemed embedded inside it, their mouths opening soundlessly as the white tissue shifted around them.

"I think this is it," Eric said, his voice strained. "I think this is the hive mind."

Aaron nodded slowly. It was the most logical conclusion. The parasite had spread throughout the mine, and the enormous mass below appeared to be the center of it all.

But something still felt wrong.

He crouched beside Eric and lowered his voice. "This might be a trap."