The White Core

The breach was already shrinking when Mara pulled him through it.

Hot smoke still rolled behind them in dirty waves, but the air on this side changed so fast Elias stopped and coughed harder. The heat dropped out of it. The smell of burned algae, hot plastic, and old rust gave way to something dry and filtered, almost sweet, like chilled metal washed too often. Light spilled down the corridor in a clean white sheet. No soot on the walls. No old water marks. No patched wire bundles. Just smooth panels, seam lines fine as paper cuts, and a pale floor that reflected their shoes back at them in blurred ghost shapes.

Mara caught his sleeve before the seam could pinch shut on it. "Move. If it resets, it seals us in the wall."

He went because she hauled him forward, not because his body agreed. Every full breath scraped under his ribs. Smoke sat rough in his throat. He looked back once through the narrowing split and saw only orange flicker and drifting sparks where Lina had vanished behind the fallen rack. No voice. No movement. A blank burning gap.

His feet dragged for half a step.

Mara saw it and her mouth tightened. "You go back there now, you die there. Then she gets nothing from it."