Zulfa’s consciousness clawed its way back slowly, accompanied by a blinding agony wracking his entire body. His spine felt shattered, his head thudded with a dull, throbbing pain, and the heavy stench of iron rust and damp earth pierced his nostrils the moment he forced a breath.

He no longer heard the roar of engines or the chaotic hum of city traffic on the surface. All that registered was the slow, monotonous drip of water, blending with the static hum of high-voltage electrical current hissing behind thick walls.

Zulfa blinked his heavy eyelids. He found himself being dragged forcibly by two burly guards clad in unbadged black uniforms. Both of his wrists and ankles were locked in specialized alloy-steel manacles emitting a faint blue glow—energy-suppressing cuffs engineered specifically to neutralize movement and drain a prisoner’s physical stamina.

"Wake up, fresh fish! Stop kissing the floor," the chubby first guard snapped, yanking Zulfa’s jacket collar roughly so the youth was forced to stand on trembling legs.

Zulfa swept his gaze around. They were marching down a vast, gloomy underground corridor. The walls and floor were built from super-thick reinforced concrete blocks lined with industrial steel plating—a secret Aethel Corp subterranean holding facility buried hundreds of meters beneath the old industrial district, a nightmarish place never logged on any official bureaucracy map in the world above.

To the left and right of the corridor lined rows of tightly sealed steel isolation cells with electrically charged iron-bar doors. From inside several of those cells drifted the sounds of agonizing groans, stifled sobs, or incoherent mutterings from fellow inmates who had evidently lost their minds to psychological torture and heavy underground radiation exposure.

"What is this place...?" Zulfa whispered hoarsely, his throat parched and raw when he spoke.

"This is the end of all your resistance, Engineer Arditama," the second guard answered in a cold, expressionless tone. "In this place, state law doesn't exist. There are only corporate rules. No one can save you, and no one knows you're here."

They kept walking past dozens of pitch-black cell doors. The atmosphere inside this underground facility was utterly dead; no sunlight, no sounds of outside life, only a dim, emergency red neon light flickering constantly on the low ceiling, casting eerie, elongated shadows.

"Shut up and stop moving!" the first guard barked as Zulfa staggered from exhaustion.

Moments later, they halted before an isolation cell situated at the darkest end of the corridor. The cell door was constructed of thick iron bars layered with a static energy field, reeking of sharp ozone.

The second guard pressed his digital access card to the electronic lock panel beside the door.

Bzzzt—Click!

The iron-bar door slid open sideways with an ear-splitting screech of grinding metal. Without ceremony, the two guards hoisted Zulfa's body and tossed him unceremoniously onto the cold, filthy concrete floor of the cell.

Thud!

Zulfa collapsed hard, breaking his fall with an injured elbow.

"Enjoy the rest of your life at the bottom of the earth, Engineer," the first guard sneered, hitting the cell door closure switch.

Click!

The iron-bar door slammed shut, locking Zulfa inside a dark three-by-three-meter room illuminated only by a sliver of dim red light bleeding from the outer hallway. The guards turned away, leaving the sound of their marching boots to slowly fade into the stillness.

Zulfa lay limply on the cold concrete floor, slamming his eyes shut as he fought the fire in his chest. The failure in the bureaucracy basement replayed in his mind—how Captain Danu had nearly been shot, how Naya had wept hysterically inside the overturned vehicle, and how the documents and cassette tape now hung suspended in uncertainty.

I'm sorry, Naya... Forgive me, Father, Zulfa whimpered painfully in the cell's darkness.

"You don't need to apologize to anyone in this place, son... because regret will only quicken your death."

A raspy, elderly, yet remarkably calm voice suddenly echoed from a dark corner across from the cell where Zulfa had been dumped.

Zulfa jerked in surprise. He snapped his head up, opening his eyes wide, and fumbled against the concrete wall to prop himself up. He squinted through the dim red corridor light spilling into the cell.

Across the tiny room, right behind the iron bars of cell number 404 positioned directly opposite Zulfa's, a gaunt human silhouette sat cross-legged on the concrete floor. The old man wore tattered, filthy inmate fatigues torn at the seams, sporting long, unkempt white hair and a thick beard shrouding half his face.

Zulfa swallowed hard, gripping the iron bars of his own cell.

"Who... who's there?" he rasped.

The old man across the way slowly raised his head. A pair of sharp, glowing eyes cut through the gloom, locking straight onto Zulfa and drawing a thin, bitter smile across his cracked, pale lips.

"Welcome to the bottom of hell, Zulfa Arditama," the old man said calmly. "I've been waiting a very long time for someone from the Arditama bloodline to come visit me in this isolation cell."