Episode 046| #002 Is Deeper Down

Kaiyuan Year 1010, January 4 · 9:31 p.m. · Saint Tranya, Underground · Beyond the Line

The man at the door looked Lika over once, and in the end didn't let him in.

He only turned half aside, said something to the people within, then jerked his chin, signalling the 2 men who had Lika boxed in to take him over to a clear patch of wall and wait. "They're busy in there," he said, his tone not so much explaining as notifying a piece of goods, "When it's your turn, they'll call you."

Lika was pressed down onto a long bench against the wall, one corner of it broken off. The 2 underlings stood one to a side, not touching him again, but with no intention of leaving either.

For Lika, this suited him fine.

Left to hang here, with no one speaking to him, was exactly the thing he'd been short of this whole way down — a stretch of time to quietly work the matter clean.

---

He shut his eyes, like an outsider scared dumb, resigned, waiting on his fate. In his head, he called #002 back up.

Since #002 had surfaced that evening back in 040, all he'd had in hand was one rough coordinate: beneath Saint Tranya, the depth masked out by Spectra. But back then he'd been up on the surface, at Substation No. 10, reading it across a thousand-plus metres of rock strata — reading it blurred.

Now it was different. He was underground himself, and #002 lay somewhere off in a direction beneath his feet. The distance had closed. He pushed the Triggerer's sense of bearing downward, and that coordinate, for the first time, came clear.

[#002 · Re-locating]
[Bearing: directly below, south]
[Depth: 2,300 metres underground]
[Against current position (1,040 metres underground): 1,260 metres further down]

2,300 metres.

---

Lika cracked his eyes open a slit and took a look around this underground market.

He'd already figured out the rules of this place. These people made their living off rift goods, off there being someone with the nerve to "go down" — down into those shallow Rifts under the city, grab a handful, and come back up. But the boldest of them, how deep could they go down?

He didn't have to ask. He'd looked the whole way in just now, and the deepest downward passage in this stretch beyond the line led to a place still hung with the same patched-together warm-yellow lamps. Which meant that however far these people drilled down, they were still inside the range of "where someone lives, where someone keeps a stall."

And #002 was at 2,300 metres.

A thousand-odd metres further down than the boldest soul in this stretch beyond the line dared go. Deeper than every one of these people who'd salvaged rift goods for a few months and reckoned they'd touched bottom. #002 wasn't only outside the official blueprints — it was outside the blueprints of these "people outside the blueprints" too.

The him of the past, when he buried a thing, never buried it anywhere others could reach.

---

Lika pressed his sense of bearing down a little further toward that depth, to read the signature on the bottommost layer of #002.

His temple began to throb a beat ahead of him. He knew what he was about to read.

[#002 · Bottommost-Layer Signature]
[L.K.S._Core]
[Linked Archive Date: March 11, Kaiyuan Year 925]

Him again. That same day again.

The one in the Frozen Reach, the him of the past had buried. This one under the city, the same. The same signature, the same 925/3/11 — one buried beneath the ice plains at the farthest south of the world, one buried directly under the city he'd lived in.

The him of the past had left one at each end of this planet. And both of them locked to the same lock he couldn't open.

---

Lika logged this one into the brain-chip too, tagged it, set it side by side with the one in the Frozen Reach. He had 2 points in hand now. 2 points could draw a line — but where that line pointed, he still couldn't read.

The thing he hated most was the feeling of having the clues in hand and still not being able to piece together the picture. And of all things, that was exactly what the him of the past was best at feeding him.

---

Over at the wall, that welded-shut door opened.

Not all the way, only a slit. A man slipped out sideways through the gap and said two low words to the man at the door who'd sized Lika up. Then the man at the door turned his head, looked across half the market, and looked over toward Lika.

This time, he jerked his chin.

The 2 underlings boxing Lika in moved at once, one to a side, hauling him up by the arms.

"Move," one of them said. "The people inside want to see you."

Lika stood up. That knot of cold half a step to his rear left moved along with him — but it didn't head toward the door. It headed for under his feet, that direction 2,300 metres down.

Shadow_001 paused a moment facing the direction of #002, then turned back and followed him.

【Ch. 046 End · Saint Tranya, Underground, Beyond the Line】