End of Time Revelation and Exodus

Ben eases into the vent shaft, the metal skin of the Ark cool against their shoulders. Dust drifts in slow strips through the dark, lit by the faint blue of their face display.

Alice squeezes in behind Ben, one hand braced on the wall, the other tugging at a loose bolt on Ben's shoulder plating with quick, practiced taps.

Ben pauses while Alice leans closer, yellow eyes flicking over the narrow passage. Her voice stays light, but her motions are careful, almost tender in the cramped space.

The shaft shudders. A seam of paneling ahead flexes outward, then clicks free with a dry metallic snap.

Something thin and dark slides through the gap, not a person, not a machine, just a nest of cable and scraped insulation with a red status tag wired into it.

From deeper in the duct, a faint tapping answers, too deliberate to be settling metal. The loose panel twitches again, as if something on the other side knows exactly where they are.

Ben eases onto the cable route and follows it with careful, steady movements, fingertips skimming the conduit instead of the live bundle.

The wire bends behind a service rib and drops into a maintenance slit that should not connect to this shaft at all.

Ben peeks through the slit. Below, a dim service crawl opens into a thicker trunk line, and a fresh splice climbs from there toward the ship's inner systems.

Ben tracks the splice to its junction and finds a red-tagged relay tucked under the insulation, its seal cut and re-wrapped by hand.

At the end of the branch, the wiring disappears into a dark panel marked with an old administrative stencil. The tapping sound comes from beyond it, crisp and deliberate.