Anomaly

Originally, I had imagined that the small crater I'd created with my powers would only be a few meters deep before we reached the underground sewers or some other similar structure beneath the residential area. That said... surprisingly, the descent took far longer than I'd expected. Forget the few meters I'd initially calculated.

This was getting ridiculous. It took us nearly ten full minutes to reach anywhere that could even be considered a proper underground level, and that was with me moving us downward at a moderately fast pace. It wasn't fast enough to make the descent feel anything close to teleportation, but it was definitely fast enough that taking this long made absolutely no sense.

Layers of dirt and concrete passed around us as we continued downward, one after another, occasionally revealing remnants of pipes, cables, and structures that had clearly been buried at some point.

The deeper we went, however, the stranger things became. The feeling that we were simply traveling through the underground of a city gradually disappeared. This felt less like descending beneath the ground and more like descending into something.

And honestly, the deeper I went, the more a single question kept pounding at the back of my mind. What the hell was going on in this city? Eventually, after that thoroughly uncomfortable journey into the deepest part of the residential area through a hole I'd created myself, my feet finally touched something solid.

The moment I felt the ground beneath them, my dark wings, formed from smoldering feathers that dissolved like smoke, lost their lift and dispersed into the air. At the same time, the ropes keeping Victor, Rupert, Arthur, and Charlotte restrained began to loosen, slowly lowering the four of them toward the ground before finally releasing them.

The place was, naturally, almost completely dark. For several seconds, all we could make out were vague shapes and indistinct shadows scattered around us. Gradually, however, everyone's eyes began to adjust to the lack of light.

Fortunately, I didn't have that problem. My vision was excellent in both brightly lit environments and places where most people would barely be able to see their own hand in front of their face.

One of the small perks of being an anomaly, I suppose. But there was something else about this place that deserved far more attention. The smell. The moment my feet touched the ground, I noticed a strange and unpleasant odor hanging in the air. It was difficult to pinpoint exactly what it was.

There was something damp, old, and... organic about it. A smell that seemed to have accumulated over the course of years, permeating the very environment itself. And judging by the way the others began wrinkling their noses and exchanging uncomfortable glances, I definitely wasn't the only one who had noticed this... less-than-pleasant aspect of the place.

Charlotte was the first to react to the smell. The moment the odor reached her nose, she pressed two fingers against it in a nearly futile attempt to keep any more of the filth from entering her lungs. Her face twisted into an expression of pure disgust, as though something particularly revolting had been infused into the very air around us.

“Ugh...!” Charlotte squeezed her eyes shut. She stayed like that for several seconds, holding her breath before finally risking a small breath through her mouth.

When she opened her eyes again, she began looking from side to side, trying to figure out where the smell was coming from. Her lips curled into an even deeper frown: “It smells even worse down here than it did up there...”

She barely finished speaking before grimacing and pulling her face back slightly: “Ugh!” Charlotte closed her eyes again, pinching her nose even harder: “This is seriously bad...” she muttered, her voice muffled behind her fingers: “It smells even worse than that worm-like anomaly they keep locked up on the upper floors”

She paused briefly, as if simply remembering the anomaly was enough to make the smell seem even more unbearable: “And I thought that thing's smell was impossible to beat...”

No one commented on Charlotte's words. Even so, the expressions on their faces said more than enough, making any verbal response practically unnecessary. Besides, Charlotte had a point. As unpleasant as that worm-like anomaly was, its smell was... tolerable.

There was a strange, heavy odor permeating the air here, something that was definitely unpleasant to breathe, but it was still a long way from being unbearable. More specifically, the anomaly Charlotte had mentioned earlier really did smell horrible, one of the worst things I'd ever smelled.

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And that was saying something, considering the nature of that worm's anomalous power. Its body naturally gave off a rotten, nauseating odor, a mixture of decaying flesh and something far more difficult to identify, carried by toxic bacteria that spread through the air around it.

It wasn't necessarily dangerous on its own. Staying near it for a few moments wouldn't make much of a difference. The real problem arose when someone remained in its presence for too long, continuously breathing in the contamination. Other than that, it was practically harmless. But this place... This place somehow smelled even worse.

I was pulled from my thoughts by the conversation between Victor and Rupert beside me: “Any sign of them?” Victor asked, glancing at Rupert.

Rupert remained silent for several seconds, one hand pressed against his ear as he tried to pick up anything through the communicator. Then, suddenly, he grimaced and pulled his hand away: “Shit...”

He took a deep breath, clearly frustrated, before shaking his head: “Nothing. I can't get through to Emily, Laura... or even the operations base we set up at the entrance to the neighborhood”

Rupert's gaze slowly swept across our surroundings, as though he expected to find some visible explanation for the problem. His eyes lingered on the walls, the ceiling, and the corridors stretching out around us.

“Maybe it’s the environment...” Rupert murmured, more to himself than to Victor: “But I’m not sure. We’ve been much deeper during other missions, and the signals never failed like this”

Victor didn’t answer immediately. He remained still for a few seconds, weighing Rupert’s words. Then, a small click of his tongue escaped him, betraying his irritation.

“We’ve entered an anomalous area” Victor’s expression hardened as he narrowed his eyes: “Whatever is down here, it’s completely isolated from the outside”

He let out a heavy sigh and ran a hand through his hair, trying to organize his thoughts: “So we’ve lost contact with everyone outside...” Victor commented, his voice quieter this time.

Rupert slowly nodded: “Yeah.” For a brief moment, neither of them said anything else. The realization of our situation seemed to hang heavily in the air.

Victor finally shifted his gaze toward the rest of the group before finishing: “We’re completely on our own now. From this point forward, we can only rely on ourselves”

Naturally, this wasn’t good news. Not necessarily because we were in danger. Despite the foul smell permeating the place, there didn’t seem to be anything here capable of hurting us. At least, nothing I had been able to identify so far. Besides, I definitely wasn’t planning on standing around and waiting for something to threaten us.

That said... Yeah. Charlotte’s parents definitely weren’t going to be happy about this. Emily and Laura might very well decide to send more people after us, too. Considering our recent visit... that probably wouldn’t end well. Especially given our last interaction with the people up above.

I still couldn’t understand why the agents’ previous visits hadn’t caused any kind of reaction. They had shown up, investigated the area, and asked their questions, but as far as I knew, nothing had really changed.

The neighborhood residents, on the other hand, had made it abundantly clear how annoyed they were by my presence, and apparently by Charlotte’s as well. Now, after what had happened, there was no way to predict how they would react to another round of visitors.

Naturally, I wasn’t the only one worried about that possibility. Arthur seemed to share the same concern. After spending several moments absentmindedly touching and examining the walls around us, he finally pulled away from them and spoke aloud, almost as if he were organizing his thoughts by putting them into words.

“If we can’t communicate with the others, we could end up putting everyone in danger. Emily and Laura will probably realize we’ve lost contact, and they might end up sending teams after us...” He paused briefly, frowning: “And, honestly, I don’t think the people up there are going to receive those teams quite as... cordially as they received us” The last sentence lingered in the air for a few seconds.

Rupert, as always, had absolutely no talent for hiding what he was thinking. He let out a heavy sigh and brought his fingers to his temple, slowly massaging it before muttering a curse: “Damn it...”

He remained silent for a moment, as if waiting for some miraculous solution to materialize out of thin air. When it obviously didn’t, Rupert sighed again and continued: “So we’re stuck down here, unable to contact anyone, and we might still be putting the rest of the team at risk?”

He lowered his hand and looked at us with an expression of pure regret: “I knew I should’ve stayed home today”

I completely ignored Rupert’s words and decided to focus on the reason we had come to this place in the first place. Although it was entirely possible that Emily and Laura had already sent new agents, I was almost certain the two of them were watching us through the satellite cameras. There was little chance they had failed to notice everything that had happened over the last few minutes.

That said, I couldn’t completely rule out the possibility that this place possessed some kind of anomalous distortion, or some other absurd phenomenon capable of interfering with electronic equipment. Still, setting aside the fact that we couldn’t establish contact right now, everything had seemed perfectly normal while we were still up there.

There had been no obvious signs of interference, distortions, or any other phenomenon that could explain the sudden loss of communication. Because of that, the possibility seemed unlikely. In the end, we didn’t have many options. I exchanged a quick glance with the others before moving forward.

We kept our senses alert as we advanced, careful not to make any more noise than necessary. We followed the direction Charlotte had indicated, moving along the path where, according to her, the unbearable smell grew stronger and stronger. Whatever we were looking for, we were definitely getting closer.

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