SSS-Class Profession: The Path to Mastery-Chapter 215: What the Dark Keeps

The forest was breathing in silence.

Camille stood with her back pressed against the cold concrete outcropping, fingers curling and uncurling around the strap of her satchel. The vent slat beneath her palm had gone slick with condensation, cold seeping up through her skin. Alexis stood just a step away, motionless but tense, her posture coiled like she was listening for a sound only she could hear.

"We’re wasting time," Camille whispered. "If this place has power, it might have lights. Radios. A map. Something."

Alexis’s response was quiet but firm. "And if it has a broken elevator shaft? A pit? Collapsed floor? One wrong step in the dark and it’s over."

Camille gestured to the half-buried structure. "And what if it doesn’t? What if it’s safe and we lose the chance because we were too cautious?"

Alexis didn’t answer. Her eyes were on the forest now. The light had almost completely drained from the sky. Every vine and trunk was a silhouette. Every shadow, a wall. The silence wasn’t comforting anymore—it was dense. Waiting.

That’s when they heard it.

A snap.

Branches crunching. Brush slashed aside in sharp, desperate bursts.

Alexis grabbed Camille and yanked her down behind a broad knot of roots just as the noise grew louder—closer. Not wandering. Not animal.

Someone was running.

Hard.

Fast.

They saw the figure burst into view a second later—barefoot, thin, ragged. Female. Her head snapped side to side, scanning the trees like something was on her heels. The whites of her eyes were stark against the grime and blood on her face. She looked more like a ghost than a person.

Camille’s breath hitched. She started to rise—maybe to speak, maybe to run.

Alexis shoved her toward the outcropping. "Now. Inside."

"The hatch—"

"Try it."

They stumbled back toward the vent slat and the moss-slicked seam below it. Camille dropped to her knees, scrabbling at the frame, feeling for hinges, a handle—anything.

"It’s jammed—"

The running figure changed course.

She was coming straight at them.

Alexis joined her, shoulder to shoulder, driving her fingers beneath the edge of the panel. They heaved. It groaned—like something metal grinding against rust. Still stuck.

Camille slammed her palm against it. "Come on—come on—"

The vent door gave with a wet pop and a sudden lurch. Both girls toppled inward, tumbling down a short slope into the dark.

The figure reached the hatch just behind them.

For a half second, Camille swore she saw the face—angular, pale, streaked with scar tissue.

Then the hatch slammed shut.

The bolt scraped into place from the inside with a hollow click.

And the world went dark.

No voices.

No movement.

Just the thick sound of breath—hers, Alexis’s, and one more that wasn’t either of theirs.

It was pitch-black for several heartbeats.

Camille lay still, chest pressed to something damp and uneven—stone or dirt. Alexis shifted beside her with the faintest rustle. Somewhere near the door, the third presence was gasping for breath, each exhale uneven and wet, as if her lungs didn’t quite seal right.

A faint whimper echoed off the narrow walls.

Camille held her breath.

A second later, Alexis whispered, "Don’t move."

They waited.

Gradually, their eyes adjusted—just enough to make out shapes. The interior was small. Low ceiling. Concrete or steel walls beneath layers of moss and insulation that had rotted and flaked. Water dripped in slow, distant intervals from somewhere they couldn’t see.

A red emergency light blinked in the far corner, more dead than alive.

And in that pulse of dim light, they saw her.

The woman.

She was hunched by the hatch, her back to them. Hair hung in matted clumps past her shoulders, half of it cut unevenly like it had been torn off rather than trimmed. Her skin was warped in patches, scarred so deeply it looked melted in places. Across her upper back, the fabric of her shirt was torn and crudely stitched together with vines and thin cables. She wasn’t breathing like someone tired—she was breathing like someone who had been running for years.

Camille’s mouth went dry. She didn’t dare speak.

Alexis shifted slightly, trying to ease her weight off a metal pipe beneath her hip. The motion made a soft clink.

The woman flinched.

She turned slightly—just enough for them to see the jagged scars across her cheek, the twitch in her right hand. Her eyes were mismatched. One wide, wild. The other nearly sealed shut by scar tissue. A thin brand or code was burned into the underside of her wrist—faded, but unmistakable.

Subject 3830.

Alexis touched Camille’s arm and mouthed, "Don’t speak."

Camille nodded.

The shelter was narrow—maybe an old maintenance tunnel or vent control room. Along one wall were broken panels, bits of tubing, what looked like an air filtration box long since gutted. Someone had rigged makeshift furniture from scrap: a net of woven plastic bags and plant fiber serving as a hammock, stacked cans pressed flat for shelves. A single rusted bowl held scraps of dried leaves and bone.

The woman moved suddenly.

She crossed the small space in two lurching steps—faster than either of them could have expected—and reached for something on the wall.

Alexis tensed.

So did Camille.

The woman grabbed a knife.

It wasn’t factory-made. The blade was shaped from salvaged metal, sharpened against rock, and bound with cloth and wire into a brutal handle.

She turned.

Faced them.

And stepped forward.

Camille backed into Alexis. "What do we do—?"

The woman didn’t speak.

She didn’t blink.

She raised the blade.

Another flicker of red light. Her face fully lit now—one side torn by burns, the other marked with what looked like surgery done by hand and desperation. Her mouth was slack. Twitching.

Then Alexis stepped in front of Camille.

Her voice was clear, but shaking. "We’re not here to hurt you!"

The woman froze.

Camille echoed her, louder. "We didn’t know someone was living here—we were just trying to find shelter!"

The knife didn’t lower.

Her breath came faster.

More light. The emergency bulb pulsed again.

The blade trembled in her grip.

Camille saw her flinch at the word "shelter." Her lip quivered.

Then—finally—her body sagged.

She dropped the tip of the knife.

Not fully.

Just a few inches.

Her mouth moved.

The sound came out broken, like the word itself had to claw through her lungs to reach them.

"...You’re not them."

Camille’s heart slammed in her chest.

Alexis lowered her hands very slowly. "No. We’re not." freēwēbηovel.c૦m

The woman stared at them for another second, then sank back against the wall, sliding down until she was seated on the cold floor.

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