CHAPTER THREE: THE WAY DOWN IS NEVER STRAIGHT
1707 Words
CHAPTER 3 — THE WAY DOWN IS NEVER STRAIGHT
The access lift was not meant to be used during ceremonies.
It existed for the in-between hours—the narrow spans of time when Haven’s public skin slept and its working body stretched, when maintenance crews spoke softly and the colony allowed itself the truth of what it was: a machine pretending to be a city.
Tonight, its doors slid shut with a faint, offended click, as though aware it was being asked to keep a secret.
Liora keyed the descent manually.
“No beacon,” she said without looking at Rafe. “No status pings. If we trip an auto-flag, Voss will lock the ring before we reach the sublevels.”
Rafe leaned back against the rail, one hand braced, boots planted wide as the lift began its downward glide. He watched the floor numbers fall away on the dim display panel, each one a reminder of how carefully Haven rationed access to its own depths.
“You assume she hasn’t already,” he said.
“I assume she’s choosing her language,” Liora replied. “Which means we still have minutes.”
The lift hummed—a low, steady vibration that should have felt comforting. It was the sound of systems behaving, of weight moving exactly where it had been designed to move.
Instead, it resonated wrong.
The vibration carried a subtle discord, like a note played half a step off. Liora felt it in her teeth, a faint pressure behind her eyes that had nothing to do with altitude change.
Rafe felt it in his knees.
Neither commented.
They passed below the inhabited rings. Painted panels gave way to bare alloy. Decorative curves straightened into structural honesty. Here, Haven stopped pretending it was a home and admitted it was an argument—mass versus void, human insistence versus lunar indifference—held together by equations and faith.
“You’re not military,” Rafe said at last.
“No,” Liora replied.
“That wasn’t a question.”
She glanced at him briefly, then back to the control panel. “I’m the person they call when the military explanation stops working.”
He smiled faintly. “That’s still not an answer.”
“I build things meant to survive silence,” she said. “Vacuum. Time. Pressure no one wants to think about.”
“And when they don’t?”
“I figure out why.”
The lift shuddered.
Not enough to trigger alarms. Not enough to justify panic. Just enough to register as intent.
Rafe’s hand tightened on the rail.
“That wasn’t settling,” he said.
“No,” Liora agreed. “That was… acknowledgement.”
The hum resumed its measured rhythm, but the sense of wrongness did not leave. It lingered, patient.
Three levels below the last mapped maintenance ring, the doors hesitated.
Liora frowned. “It shouldn’t—”
The doors slid open anyway.
Cold air spilled in.
Not the sharp, brittle cold of vacuum breach. Not the managed chill of environmental drift. This cold was heavier, denser, carrying weight rather than absence.
Lunar stone held cold differently than metal.
This was not the absence of heat.
This was the memory of it.
The chamber beyond was narrow, unfinished, and officially nonexistent. Rafe stepped out first, scanning instinctively, his body moving ahead of conscious thought. The deck plating beneath his boots was temporary—bolted, not welded. A concession made by engineers who hadn’t trusted what lay beneath enough to seal themselves to it.
“What is this place?” he asked.
“A lie,” Liora said, stepping out beside him. “A pause in the design.”
She knelt immediately, palms flat against the deck. The vibration was stronger here—not loud, not violent, but undeniably present. It traveled upward through bone rather than ear, settling into her wrists, her shoulders, her spine.
Her breath caught.
She hadn’t felt this since—
No. Not yet.
She pushed the thought aside and rose, pulling a compact scanner from her belt. The projection bloomed in the air, ghosting the stone beneath the plating. Layered strata appeared, intersected by reinforcement ribs and stress curves that made no mathematical sense.
“These supports were never meant to be permanent,” she said quietly. “They’re bracing something.”
Rafe followed the scan with his eyes. “Or holding it down.”
Before Liora could answer, her comm vibrated—sharp, insistent, encrypted.
VOSS_PRIORITY_OVERRIDE.
She ignored it.
The vibration pulsed again, longer this time.
Rafe watched her face. “You should answer that.”
“I will,” she said. “When I have something worth saying.”
She expanded the scan, pulling archived survey data the system insisted didn’t exist. Old readings bled into new ones—sloppy, redacted, incomplete. A paper trail designed to end curiosity rather than satisfy it.
“Someone knew,” she murmured. “Early days. Before Haven went public. Before the narrative set.”
Rafe crouched beside her. “Knew what?”
“That the Moon doesn’t behave like inert rock,” she said. “That it responds. Slowly. On scales we don’t like.”
Another tremor rolled through the chamber—longer this time. Not stronger.
Longer.
As if whatever caused it was stretching.
Rafe’s slate vibrated in his pocket.
He took it out.
One message. No sender ID.
LOCKDOWN PROTOCOLS PENDING. CLEAR THE SUBRINGS.
He showed it to Liora.
She closed her eyes for half a second.
“She’s sealing us in,” she said. “Or trying to.”
Rafe’s jaw tightened. “We don’t have long.”
“No,” Liora agreed. “We have exactly enough.”
She moved to the far wall, where a narrow seam cut through the alloy. It wasn’t a door—not officially—but her hands knew the spacing instinctively. Muscle memory guided her fingers as she keyed a sequence no longer taught, no longer acknowledged.
The panel slid aside with a sound like reluctant breath.
Beyond it: stone.
Not raw, fractured stone—but smoothed. Shaped. Touched.
Rafe stared. “That’s not natural.”
“No,” Liora said. “That’s intentional.”
They stepped through.
The chamber beyond was larger than Haven’s designers had admitted even to themselves. The stone walls curved inward—not collapsing, not resisting, but listening. Veins of darker material threaded the surface, faintly luminescent, pulsing in slow, measured intervals.
Rafe felt it then.
Not vibration.
Presence.
Like standing inside a held thought.
“What is it?” he asked softly.
Liora didn’t answer.
Her hands were shaking.
She knew this place.
Not from memory—from absence. From the shape of a question she’d learned, very carefully, not to ask.
Her comm flared again—this time not Voss, but a private channel.
Mika.
She accepted without looking away from the stone.
“Liora,” Mika whispered. “It’s changing. The signal—it’s responding faster now. Like it’s… excited.”
Her throat tightened. “Mika, listen carefully. Whatever you’re seeing—don’t try to talk to it.”
A pause.
“It’s already talking.”
Rafe looked at her sharply.
“What does he mean?” he asked.
Before she could answer, the stone wall pulsed—brighter this time. The veins flared, light rippling outward in concentric patterns that moved with unmistakable intention.
And then—sound.
Not through air.
Through structure.
A resonance that bypassed the ear entirely and landed directly in the chest.
Rafe staggered back a step, breath knocked loose. Liora dropped to one knee, palms braced against the stone.
Images flooded her mind—not visions, not hallucinations, but impressions. Weight. Time. Patience stretched so thin it became intention.
And beneath it all—
Recognition.
Her breath came fast.
“No,” she whispered. “No, no—”
Rafe grabbed her shoulder. “Jameson. What is it?”
She looked up at him, eyes wide, unguarded in a way professionals rarely allowed.
“It knows me,” she said.
Above them, Commander Aline Voss stood very still.
The crowd noise had shifted—less celebration now, more confusion. Snow cannons paused mid-cycle. The choir froze between verses, smiles stiffening as uncertainty crept in.
Her aide leaned close. “Commander, subring activity confirms unauthorized descent. Jameson and Calder.”
Voss did not turn.
“And the anomaly?”
“Active. Expanding influence radius. Still within tolerance.”
Voss’s fingers tightened around the railing.
“She was not supposed to find that,” she said quietly.
“Ma’am?”
Voss turned then, her practiced smile fully gone.
“Seal the lower access points,” she said. “Prepare a narrative that explains a systems rehearsal without ever using the word unexpected.”
“Yes, Commander.”
Voss looked down through the transparent flooring, through layers of metal and stone and carefully buried truth.
“Some things,” she murmured, “are meant to remain theoretical.”
Deep below, Liora pressed her forehead to the stone.
The resonance softened—not retreating, but steadying. Like something satisfied to be acknowledged.
Rafe watched her, unease crawling up his spine. “You need to tell me what we’re standing inside.”
She swallowed.
“When I was sixteen,” she said slowly, “I was part of a survey team. Pre-Haven. Prototype rigs. Experimental resonance mapping.”
Rafe waited.
“We picked up something,” she continued. “Not a signal. A pattern. The data was buried. The project dissolved. I was reassigned.”
“And?”
“And I never stopped dreaming about it,” she whispered. “About being heard.”
The stone pulsed again—gentler now.
Mika’s voice crackled through the comm, fear threaded with awe. “Liora… it just changed its output. It’s matching something.”
“Matching what?” she asked.
A pause.
“Your old survey signature,” Mika said.
Silence filled the chamber.
Rafe looked from her to the glowing stone.
“Well,” he said quietly. “That’s personal.”
Liora closed her eyes.
Above them, Haven celebrated Christmas.
Below, the Moon remembered.
And the way down, she knew now, was never straight back up.
End of Chapter 3
- Writer
