036. Bayu's Choice

Silently, Bayu briskly walked over the arid hilltop, a consequence of pollution. His steps were devoid of hesitation. Bayu descended the gentle slope, occasionally leaping over puddles of reddish water emitting a pungent metallic smell.
As he ventured further, the ground beneath his feet slowly darkened. Gradually, grass began to grow, although still scattered. The air became colder and everything became quiet, giving a sense of overwhelming loneliness and desolation. Bayu had entered the site of abandoned centuries-old mine shafts.
The terrain he walked on gradually inclined. The grass beneath his feet grew less and less. Amid the long stretch of the mountain slope, he turned and swiftly ran toward a small, arid valley filled with waist-high dead thickets.
The man's steps halted. His gaze fixed on a hole large enough for a person to enter. Dried-up carcasses of rodents lay a few steps away from the hole. The entrance was very clean as if someone had been maintaining the area.
"What are you doing in the restricted old mining area, Bayu?"
The man heard Andrei's voice questioning in his head. The earrings were crafted with ashurüss technology, enabling every EPCU task force member wearing them to connect telepathically. However, this ability would increase their blood sugar consumption. That's why Bayu, Andrei, and Oswald had consumed a lot of red meat at the shawarma restaurant earlier.
"I've found the point zero," Bayu replied without uttering a word.
"Wait there! We'll be there soon!"
"You'd better ask for assistance, Andrei. The creature seems to be living underground. Who knows what else lurks inside its lair," Bayu suggested. "I'm going in."
"Don't be stupid, mate!" Oswald warned the man.
"Stupidity can only be countered with knowledge, my friend. The key to gaining knowledge is through learning. And the best way of learning is by experiencing!" Bayu chuckled, then ran his fingers through his hair, slicking back the sweat-stuck strands on his forehead neatly. "I'm going to experience the creature's habitat myself!"
"Ugh!" Oswald snorted in frustration.
With a broad smile on his face, Bayu pulled a bandana from his pants pocket. He tied it around his head before covering it with the hood of his jacket and securing it tightly. Without a hint of hesitation, the handsome middle-aged man dropped into the gaping darkness on the ground.
Bayu fell freely for a few moments before the tunnel inclined, making it feel like he was sliding down a sandy slope. For almost two hours, he descended at high speed until the hole abruptly opened into a large tunnel. Bayu, suspended in the air, swiftly prepared his legs to hit the tunnel floor at high speed.
A tingling sensation enveloped Bayu as he successfully landed without losing balance. The powerful impact that should have been fatal posed no danger to the man. However, the extremely low oxygen levels made even a mutant like Bayu feel suffocated.
Calculating the ratio of the duration and speed of his descent, Bayu could estimate that he was tens of kilometers below the surface. The presence of oxygen strengthened his suspicion that this place hadn't reached the crystal belt encircling the Earth's core, even though it was already incredibly deep by human standards.
The ashurüss dwelling at the Earth's core would effortlessly navigate these tunnels. However, for Bayu, even taking a step made his breath wheeze. At that moment, he realized that he was no longer young for the first time. Chuckling, Bayu continued to explore the mysterious place, his vision unhindered by the darkness.
"Bayu, are you okay?"
Andrei's voice echoing in his head disrupted his thoughts. "I'm currently tens of kilometers below the surface."
"How are you planning to get back up?" Oswald inquired.
"I don't know," Bayu answered honestly. "The hole I entered is very slippery and almost vertically leads to the surface."
"We'll prepare an evacuation team to pick you up," Andrei asserted. "Don't explore any further!"
Bayu barely registered the words of the OCK operations leader in Chelyabinsk. His attention was fixed on the pile of fabric he spotted in the dim corner of the tunnel. Squatting down, he cautiously lifted a scrap of cloth. It was stiff and torn—a jacket, but one that had been left there for quite some time. His fingers brushed against dried mud, and something darker, harder to identify.
Piece by piece, he sifted through the pile, each article of clothing telling a grim story. Shirts, pants, and coats, all stained, some shredded beyond recognition. A cold realization crept over him—these weren’t just discarded items. They belonged to someone, maybe several people. His pulse quickened as he unearthed wallets, still holding money and identification cards, as if their owners had vanished in an instant.
Bayu’s breath caught when his hand touched metal—broken phones, gadgets too damaged to work, buried under the heap. Then, a worn backpack caught his eye. He unzipped it slowly, feeling the weight inside. Pulling out a laptop with a cracked screen, he stared at it, unsettled by the thought of who might have left it behind, and why they never came back for it.
"I think I've cracked the case of the missing people in Chelyabinsk," Bayu announced.
"What do you mean?" Andrei and Oswald asked almost in unison.
One by one, Bayu read aloud the names from the identification cards he had found. Andrei confirmed that these were indeed the names of the missing persons the Chelyabinsk police had been searching for. Yet, the lack of bodies or any other traces of the victims left a deep unease hanging over them. The grim truth behind these disappearances remained elusive, an unsettling puzzle they could not yet piece together.
Without a word to Andrei or Oswald, Bayu ventured further down the tunnel, which sloped increasingly downward. He walked for nearly an hour, the air growing heavier, colder. Then, the ground beneath his feet abruptly leveled. His next step landed on something hard. Bayu froze, his heart pounding as he realized the earthen floor had given way to something entirely unnatural—thick metal, cold and unyielding. The walls and ceiling mirrored this change, encasing him in what felt like the belly of some forgotten machine. For a moment, he stood there, caught between two worlds—one of earth, the other of steel—feeling as if he had stumbled upon a place that wasn't meant to be found.
"It seems I've found the entrance to the creature's territory," Bayu reported calmly to his two companions far above ground.
"I told you to stay put!" Andrei's voice crackled with irritation over the comms. "Wait until I get to you!"
"It's dull down here, Andrei," Bayu replied with a casual air. "Just taking a stroll. Who knows, I might end this quicker than we planned."
"For fuck’s sake, Bayu! Stop flirting with danger!" Oswald snapped, his voice laced with sharp concern.
"Isn't plunging into danger part of our job description?" Bayu chuckled. "You've been sitting behind a desk for too long, old friend!"
"That's—" Oswald cut himself off. He growled in frustration. "I should've bloody well restrained you at Thames House yesterday!"
Bayu silently laughed at his two companions grumbling. "Time has never been on our side," the middle-aged man said, his tone grew solemn, edged with a deep sense of purpose. "Someone has to find out all the facts about this case, and I will gladly do it!"