Chapter 146: Unearthing Corpses
Three days into the construction, the sounds of advanced machinery and the subtle shimmer of AMFS drones were the constant companions of Richard and Lina. They stood at the command and monitoring station, a sleek console glowing with holographic schematics of the expanding subterranean complex. Richard watched the progress, a cup of synthetic coffee in his hand, a sense of accomplishment slowly building.
Suddenly, a sharp, insistent alert pierced the calm. A small red warning icon flashed on Lina’s vision, originating from one of the deep-bore AMFS drones. Her eyes, usually impassive, narrowed fractionally.
"Sir," Lina stated, her voice devoid of inflection, yet with an undertone that immediately caught Richard’s attention. "An anomaly. One of the deep excavation drones, at approximately 3000 feet below the surface of the main hole, has stumbled upon a cavernous opening. It’s... unusually large."
Richard felt a prickle of unease, a faint, almost subconscious foreboding. He knew Lina wouldn’t interrupt him for a mere geological anomaly. "Show me," he said, setting his cup down.
Lina projected the drone’s feed onto the main display. The raw, jagged rock of the freshly bored tunnel abruptly gave way to a vast, untouched void. The drone’s lights pierced the darkness, revealing a colossal, almost perfectly circular chamber, its sheer scale dwarfing the initial excavation tunnel. It was unnervingly large, far beyond any natural formation he might expect.
"Let’s go," Richard decided without hesitation. The feeling of foreboding solidified into a potent curiosity.
They walked to the massive, hangar-like door that led directly to the stadium-sized hole, the sheer scale of the excavation now even more apparent. As the heavy blast doors slid open with a controlled hiss, Richard felt a vertigo-inducing lurch as he gazed into the seemingly bottomless abyss. The AMFS construction drones, resembling metallic spiders, crawled along the sheer walls far below, their de-atomizing lasers glowing like distant, tiny stars. The hole was indeed vast, a terrifying testament to Lina’s engineering prowess.
As Richard and Lina descended in a sleek, open-air lift, the air grew cooler, carrying a faint, earthy scent. The drone’s warning beacon shimmered at the bottom, a tiny pinpoint of light that seemed to draw them deeper. When the lift came to a gentle stop at the floor of the gigantic cavern, the raw, excavated ground stretched before them.
A shimmer. In the distance, at the far end of the chamber, a radiant light pulsed. The drones, still diligently working on reinforcing the ground walls, had unknowingly exposed something extraordinary. A section of the ground wall had given way, revealing a hidden cavernous chamber.