Tales of the End of the Century

The crevice continued deeper into the cave from the north side of the tiny chamber. The headlamp's beam pierced through, but didn't reach the bottom. Bai Ye squeezed into the crevice, the quartz particles on the rock walls rustling softly against his coat. This crevice was narrower than the one in Old Wei's cave, so narrow that with each breath he could feel his chest pressing against the rock, and the rock against his chest. It was cold, much colder than outside, not the dry cold of winter, but a damp cold seeping from deep within the rock layers, sticky against his skin, with a very faint smell of sulfur.

Tie Niu followed behind him. The crevice was too narrow for the axe handle to pass through, so he took the axe from behind his waist, held it in his hand with the blade facing forward, and gently tapped the right rock wall with the back of the axe, relying on the echo to determine if there was a collapse ahead. Each tap produced a muffled tremor in the rock wall, which traveled far along the crevice before dissipating.

Lan Susu walked at the back. She put the oscilloscope into her backpack, folded the antenna and tucked it into a side pocket. The beam of her headlamp shone over Tie Niu's shoulder onto Bai Ye's silhouette ahead. She no longer needed to look at the oscilloscope—the signal was too close, so close that she could feel it without an antenna. It wasn't the dark red glow that Lao Wei emitted from ashes, nor the flickering frequency fluctuations of the previous rift-phase test subjects. It was continuous, extremely stable, like a stone that had been warmed for a long time—not hot to the touch, but constantly radiating a faint warmth.

Bai Ye walked at the front. He focused his attention on his breathing, letting his senses protrude forward. Since entering the resonant realm, he had been practicing his ability to distinguish specific signals amidst background noise, but this time he didn't need to. There was no background noise. Old Wei's cave was far behind; the sounds of flowing water, residual electricity, and the howling wind in the cracks of the rock had all vanished here. Only a profound silence remained, along with that steady, continuous pulse. It was like someone pressing their fingers on your wrist, neither urging you on nor withdrawing them.

After walking for a quarter of an hour, the crevice suddenly turned sharply to the right. At the end of the bend was an iron gate.

It wasn't the hand-welded iron door like those in Old Wei's cave, nor the rusted iron railings like those in the ventilation alley. This door was small, shorter than any he'd seen before, only reaching Bai Ye's chest. The door panel was cut from a single piece of steel, with no welds along the edges, and the four corners were riveted to the rock wall. The rivets weren't rusted, and the steel plate was coated with a layer of darkened anti-rust paint, with several extremely fine scratches on the paint surface—fingerprints, arranged in the same way as the engravings on Old Wei's iron door frame: seven deep and one shallow, the last stroke perfectly straight.

Tie Niu crouched down, his headlamp illuminating the row of engravings. "The engravings on Old Wei's door are from the same person. But this door is older than Old Wei's—it's not a sealed door, it's the entrance."

"He carved the same mark on the door." Bai Ye reached out and touched the row of marks. The direction of the scratches was exactly the same as on Lao Wei's door, but the force was lighter, as if he had used all his strength with each lift of his hand in a lower and cramped space. "He treated every door as the same. Cracks in the rock, side passages, ventilation alleys—he would carve the same mark on every entrance that took a long time to find. Not for himself—he knew all along that these marks would lead people to places they shouldn't go."

Lan Susu took out a pencil and paper from her backpack and traced the row of engravings on the iron gate. The side of the pencil swept across the paper, and the raised lines slowly emerged—seven deep lines, one shallow, and the last line perfectly straight. She placed the rubbing next to the page in Sergei's notebook where the dried pine needles were tucked inside, alongside Old Wei's rubbing of the iron gate frame. The curves of the fingernails on both rubbings were exactly the same.

Bai Ye reached out and pushed the door. The door wasn't locked; the hinges made a very subtle scraping sound with a gentle push, and the door silently sprang open. Behind the door was a man-made sloping alley, much wider than the crack, wide enough for two people to walk side-by-side. The chisel marks on the cave walls were arranged with extreme regularity—not the rough chisels of Lao Wei, but engineering-grade; the spacing, depth, and angle of each chisel mark were uniform, like a standard alleyway constructed according to blueprints.

Tie Niu, headlamp in hand, slowly made his way through the tunnel, examining the walls. He found ventilation holes, rusted cable hooks, and several long-abandoned narrow rail sleepers. These sleepers were common transport materials in the mine, arranged in the same way he'd seen in the outer mining areas of Project Aurora. He crouched down and touched the cross-section of a sleeper; the wood was rotten and soft, but the cuts were clean, sawn, not split. He stood up, the beam of his headlamp illuminating the sleepers—they weren't for transporting ore outwards, but for transporting something inwards. An inward-running transport line, used even after the mine ceased production.

"This isn't a mine tunnel." Tie Niu switched the axe to his left hand. "This is the standard tunnel structure of Project Aurora. It's the same as the auxiliary passage outside Research Institute No. 17—the ventilation boreholes are spaced one and a half meters apart, the cable hooks are every three meters, and the sleepers are made from the same batch of preservative-treated wood. Project Aurora didn't just leave one backup entrance in this mining area—they hollowed out this entire mountain."

Bai Ye walked ahead of him, realizing they had already ventured quite deep into the alley. The pulse was becoming clearer, no longer a faint warmth, but a low hum layered deep within. He felt something tightening in the same direction. "Old Wei is on the outermost level, and the person who was here before Old Wei lives deeper—he opened the door here, it must be related to those transferred test subjects. Maybe this is the entrance they were sent in through."

Lan Susu crouched down, her headlamp slowly scanning the railway sleeper. Embedded in the sleeper was a very faint mark—not carved with a fingernail, but branded with a hot iron, its edges charred black, yet its shape was still discernible: a circle with a vertical line drawn inside. The standard marking for Project Aurora; the vertical line represented the entrance number. Since she met Tie Niu, she had heard him mention the meaning of this mark twice—the first time at Research Institute No. 17, and the second time at the backup warehouse. She stuffed the pencil back into her backpack, stood up, and looked into the depths of the alleyway.

At the end of the alleyway stood a double-leaf, sealed door, larger than any I had ever seen before, almost as thick as the hatch of a military submarine. The door panel was covered with dense reinforcing ribs, the rivets arranged at angles matching the standard blueprints of Project Aurora, but a half-person-high hole had been cut into the rust-proof paint with an oxy-acetylene torch—the cut was fresh, the weld marks at most six months old, and the edges hadn't rusted yet. Behind the hole wasn't darkness, but light. A very faint, warm yellow light emanated from a very deep place behind the door.

"He made it." Tie Niu touched the weld marks on the cut. "After he sent Lao Wei out, he went in himself. Half a year ago, he passed by here—cut open the door and went in. This cut wasn't for entering the door, but to allow air to circulate deeper."

Bai Ye stooped as he passed through the cut. Behind the door was a vast underground space, the light from his headlamp barely reaching the ceiling or walls. A faint smell of burning kerosene lamps lingered in the air—not from recently extinguished lamps, but from lamps that had burned long ago, for many years. He adjusted his headlamp, the light spreading in the darkness to illuminate the floor—a layer of dried, cracked canvas covered the floor, upon which lay rows of enamel mugs. Not seven, not a dozen. Dozens. Each one was spotless, the bottoms free of tea stains, polished to a shine, neatly arranged before him. Next to the front row of mugs lay a piece of chalk, pressing down on a torn fragment of a test subject list. He picked up the chalk and examined it for a moment, recalling the small piece he'd brought back from the air-raid shelter, and the gesture of the man surnamed Ji from the supply and marketing cooperative placing the mugs under the bench. He looked up at the darkness he had never seen before, yet had sensed countless times in countless signals—every slow signal that had once lit up and then gone out was now quietly placed here, as if someone had gathered them up one by one and then lit them again.