The night sky over the city's central commercial district suddenly warped into a scene of nightmare tension. Giant neon signs flashing across Aethel Corp's skyscraper facades flickered wildly, casting chaotic red and blue light across thousands of vehicles trapped in absolute gridlock.

Kr-r-ack... BOOM!

A second, massively powerful tectonic aftershock slammed back into the earth's surface. Pedestrians on the sidewalks shrieked hysterically, scrambling for safety while shielding their heads from falling skyscraper window glass shattered by the violent tremors. The wailing sirens of police cars and ambulances echoed back and forth across the night, forging a scale of mass panic the city's residents had never witnessed in their entire lives.

Deep within the earth's belly, contrasting sharply with the panic consuming millions above, Zulfa's group fought on in exhausting silence. Inside the obsidian-lined Arkian emergency evacuation tunnel, the air felt heavy and choked with lingering pillar-collapse dust.

Zulfa wiped the sweat and dried blood from his temple using his jacket sleeve. He bent down to check on several Arkian citizens suffering from minor injuries, while Naya gently handed out the remaining drinking water bottles to the children of the primordial tribe.

"How are their injuries, Zul?" Naya asked quietly, walking over to Zulfa after ensuring the refugees had water.

"Mostly bruises and heavy dust inhalation, but overall, they're going to make it," Zulfa answered in a raspy voice, drawing a long, weary breath. He stared up at the tunnel ceiling, still vibrating faintly from the shockwaves above. "That micro-quake... it's getting stronger. Which means the bedrock foundation up there is genuinely dying."

Captain Danu stepped up beside them with his assault rifle slung across his shoulder. The resistance leader's face looked grim. "Kaelen and the Arkian elders are negotiating alternative evacuation routes toward the northern sector. But our problem isn't just finding a place to hide, Zul."

Zulfa raised an eyebrow. "Meaning, Captain?"

"Right as that major tremor died down, one of our men monitoring the emergency radio frequency intercepted a national television broadcast from the surface," Danu explained, his jaw locking hard. "Vian Pratama is using this situation to spin the narrative."

Naya's eyes blew wide in shock. "Spin the narrative? What do you mean?"

Without waiting for a spoken reply, an Arkian fighter powered up a small portable holographic projector casting a live feed of a national news station from the surface. In the center of the screen, Vian Pratama stood tall behind a press room podium at Aethel Corp's main headquarters, dressed in a sharp suit devoid of a single trace of panic.

Vian's voice rang out decisively through the projector's tiny speaker, filling the tunnel chamber:

"Beloved citizens of the city, tonight we are tested once more by a tectonic natural disaster originating from the actions of an underground extremist faction calling themselves the resistance terrorist alliance," Vian spoke with a tone radiating supreme authority and false empathy. "They deliberately blew apart subterranean utility pillars to sabotage the stability of our beloved city. Corporate security and law enforcement are currently working overtime to hunt down these criminals and restore absolute security."

Naya clenched her fists so tightly her knuckles turned stark white, her breathing heaving with boiling rage. "That cunning bastard...! They're the ones who triggered this disaster through dimensional energy harvesting experiments, but now they're framing us as terrorists?!"

Zulfa said nothing. He stared intensely at Vian Pratama's face on the holographic screen. The youth's gaze was cold, harboring an escalating ember of unyielding resolve in his chest. Vian was manufacturing public opinion to rally citizens behind corporate repression before executing the Total Purge master plan in under two days.

"He's buying time and legitimizing a total crackdown against us," Zulfa stated calmly yet with heavy emphasis. "Vian knows full well that if the truth about my father's cassette tape and the memory chip leaks to the public, their regime collapses instantly."

"Then what's our next move, Engineer?" asked Kaelen, who had just joined them from the tunnel's end flanked by Arkian guards. "We can't sit idle in this collapsing cave while the enemy controls the narrative on the surface."

Zulfa turned to look at Kaelen, then shifted his gaze to Captain Danu and Naya. Unwavering conviction burned in his eyes.

"We aren't running anymore," Zulfa stated firmly. "We're punching a vertical path straight into Aethel Corp's main tower. We smash their reactor from the inside out before that stupid broadcast poisons the minds of every citizen up top."

Meanwhile, far above the earth's surface, across the sprawling plaza right before the grand gates of Aethel Corp's towering skyscraper, that night's press briefing still hummed with tension among journalists and heavily armed security details.

Vian Pratama had just straightened the mic on his podium, preparing to close the emergency press conference, when suddenly—

Cr-r-kk-r-r-ack!

An ear-splitting sound of tearing earth exploded right beneath the feet of the thousands gathered in the plaza.

Journalists and corporate guards shrieked hysterically, scattering in frantic disarray. Vian Pratama himself pitched backward, grabbing the edge of the podium table with eyes blown wide.

Before the corporation's primary skyscraper, a colossal fissure three meters wide suddenly split the main avenue with terrifying speed. The chasm gaped wide, swallowing several parked patrol cars and venting blinding purplish-blue high-energy steam from the earth's belly—signaling that the dimensional seal down below now stood on the razor's edge of total collapse.