Rogier cursed under his breath. Damned Lorelai and her damned greed.

They’d always stopped on the first chamber of the third floor. Sure, it wasn’t the most profitable strategy, but it never ran the risk of them moving on to the fourth floor.

“Come on,” Lorelai had said. “One more expanse. Think of the materials we can get in a third-level middle expanse instead of skimming from the surface. Rogier, your little girl has a birthday coming up, right? Don’t you want to get her something nice?”

And he, like the Ring-damned fool he was, had agreed. Once he’d buckled, so did the other two members of their party. Besides, what were the chances of the first third-floor door they ever opened moving them to the fourth floor instead of a middle chamber?

As it turns out, they were far higher than he had feared.

As soon as the door opened before them, he knew they’d made a terrible mistake. This expanse was unlike any Rogier had ever seen in fifteen years. Hell, this wasn’t even like any of the interstices he’d had the misfortune of stumbling into. The air felt… different and had an intense stench of antiseptic.

When entering an expanse, they had always emerged in the open. The Delve-Lands consumed anything that lingered near the doors for too long. But now, there was no illusion of an open sky. No facsimiles of plants. No wind. They were in the dimly lit lobby of some sort of facility. When the last member of their four-man party stepped into the room, the elevator doors slammed closed, disappearing into the plain gray wall.

Rogier looked around, a chill going down his spine. Aside from the unfamiliar, almost alien furniture design, one thing stood out the most, even in that dim lighting.

The walls, the floor, the ceiling, even the furniture.

They were all the exact same matte shade of gray.

Lorelai tried to keep the group’s spirits up as they walked through a set of double doors into a long corridor lined with doors and the occasional frosted windows, trying to convince them there was no way they’d been taken to the fourth floor despite the lack of a map.

Rogier tuned her out as they inched forward, him and Lorelai covering the front and Derola, Lorelai’s cousin and Rogier’s drinking buddy, covering the rear. Slerios, the Magdriver scout they had a contract with, went ahead, silent as a ghost but with a broad grin plastered on his face.

He gave Rogier the creeps. But, he was also the finest scout Rogier had ever worked with, so it all balanced out.

Slerios paused and then shrugged, starting to jog, ever silent, ahead. His complete disinterest in staying out of sight of the windows made Rogier feel safe enough to proceed. Unless their scout warned them of danger, it was safe.

Curiosity warred against caution in his mind. Just because this seemed to be a fourth-floor expanse, it didn’t mean they were done for. He’d heard of people returning from the fourth floor, and every single one that did had become fabulously rich for it.

How hard could it be to find another elevator? None of them had lost their badge, so leaving shouldn’t be that difficult. His curiosity won out. He might as well explore and find something to ensure his baby girl wouldn’t have to work a day in her life. So, he walked up to the nearest door and tried the handle. It felt cool to his touch. Surprisingly enough, it turned smoothly.

He glanced at Slerios, who had reached a fork in the corridor. He chose to take the turn to the right instead of going ahead. Rogier shrugged. The man knew what he was doing.

“Reggie, what are you doing?” Hissed Derola.

“We’re Delvers, remember? I’m trying to make the most of this bullshit,” he growled back. He waved at Lorelai to get into position.

He slowly and carefully swung the door open, his gun at the ready. He needn’t have bothered. The room was devoid of life.

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A faint light illuminated five long rows of backpack-sized pods with glass windows. They entered the room and took a closer look.

“Are those… Child incubators?” Lorelai asked nobody in particular.

“Uh,” Derola said, pointing right above the door. “Guys?”

Rogier looked at the first writing he’d seen in this strange expanse. Every other object Rogier had expected to be a sign was bare, but these words were embossed into the wall. “Maternity ward… Deck 21… Room 43?”

Lorelai started quietly yammering on about how this must be one of the exceedingly rare undiscovered third-floor chambers. She kept going right up until the moment they heard the screams of Slerios echoing down the sterile corridors.

They rushed out of the room and ran towards the source of the screams. They were about to reach the turn Slerios had taken when the screams suddenly cut off. They froze and looked at each other.

Rogier looked into Lorelai’s wide eyes and nodded slowly at the turn, shaking his head. The other two women nodded back.

He took a shuddering breath and held his hand up, silently counting down from five. On zero, they took off, Rogier outpacing the women because of his longer legs, but not by much.

He’d just passed that turn when Rogier spotted a dark blur in the corner of his vision. He activated his adrenaline augment and whirled around, raising his gun at whatever was moving.

What Rogier saw was Lorelai’s headless body take one more step and collapse onto the ground with a wet squelch. Even with his sped-up cognition and movements, he hadn’t seen what happened, only the results. Lorelai was dead, and a large, four-legged shadow was between him and Derola.

Whatever this creature was, it stalked toward Derola, who raised her rifle and, with a scream of fury, held down the trigger. The monster seemed unaffected by the hail of bullets.

“Rogier, Rogier help me!” He heard her scream as she reloaded. “Maybe its back is a weak spot! Shoot it!”

He stood there, frozen. He looked down at Lorelai’s body, then back to the monster. It was getting closer to Derola, even though she was showering it with bullets while backing up.

He couldn’t die here.

Derola would be fine.

He had a daughter.

Derola could handle herself.

He had his badge.

All he needed was an elevator.

He turned and ran, Derola’s pleas for help turning into angry shouts. Then, they turned into screams. He could taste bile on his tongue.

He kept running. Even when the screams cut off. He took random turns and kept running.

He looked around wildly, trying to find an elevator, but he couldn’t see a single hint of color anywhere.

He reached a crossroads and, from his panicking mind, bubbled up a question. In this gray expanse, would the elevator doors be gray, too? If so, they would be impossible to find.

That thought made him stop, a sinking feeling in his stomach. He looked around, but aside from his own labored breathing, he could hear nothing else. Could he have lost the monster? Maybe it was busy with the other bodies. The thought of his dead companions almost stirred something in his heart, but the fear was too strong.

He looked around, hoping against hope to see something, anything that would help him escape.

He took a deep breath to calm down, and that’s when he heard it. A person talking.

He turned towards the corridor that was the source of the sound and squinted. Was that… Colour? Yes. It was! Down that corridor, past a left turn, something glowed faintly blue.

Rogier ran towards salvation, heedless of the noise he was making. Whoever was talking was loud enough to cover the sound of his footsteps.

Right before reaching the turn, Rogier slowed and pressed himself against the wall. His wits hadn’t abandoned him yet. This could be a trap.

He slowly peeked past the corner, and for a moment, he forgot all about the danger and his dead friends.

The blue light came from a complex-looking machinery leaning up against a wall, but that’s not what captured his attention. A massive man stood before an obsidian door decorated with a golden snake eating its tail. He turned his head, and Rogier saw the man's bright grin. This was a Delver few didn’t know.

Shal Hiwara. The patriarch of the Molten Fist Clan. But, he was here? Why? He was rarely spotted beyond the second floor, let alone the third.

Rogier blinked sweat out of his eyes and gasped, taking a reflexive step back out of sight.

In a single eyeblink, an impossibly thin man as tall as the patriarch had appeared next to him. A man that was the same gray as the rest of this expanse.

Before he could even start thinking about what he saw, he heard a gunshot.

Then, a man laughing.

He felt a hot breath on his neck.

Blood-soaked jaws closed around his head.

A moment of pain.

Then oblivion.