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The air in Sub-Level 4 tasted of ozone and old copper. Elias adjusted his headset, his eyes locked on the flickering green terminal. After months of decrypting the heavy-layer protocols of the "Lazarus" archive, he had finally broken through.

From deep beneath the floorboards, miles under the crust of the earth, something immense groaned in response. The "Lazarus" wasn't an archive. It was a doorbell. 126424

The lights in the lab flickered and died. In the sudden darkness, the numbers began to glow with a faint, bioluminescent blue, lifting off the screen like a hologram. They began to rotate, shifting from numbers into a geometric shape—a keyhole. The air in Sub-Level 4 tasted of ozone and old copper

At first, he thought it was a timestamp—a forgotten moment in the Great Blackout. But as he ran the numbers through the station’s geological mapper, the terminal began to hum, a low vibration that Elias felt in his teeth. From deep beneath the floorboards, miles under the