Giri worked through yesterday's backlog, his team barely exchanging words as they dove deep into code. Shadows lengthened across the office floor. One by one, his coworkers packed up, the evening came sooner than Giri expected.
A satisfied sigh broke through his focus. Hane stretched at her desk, her smile reflecting the glow of her monitor.
"You still here?" she asked, glancing around the empty office. "Everyone's gone home."
Giri blinked, finally noticing the empty office around them.
"Yeah, just... finishing up a few things."
Hane shrugged, giving him a small, knowing smile as she submitted her merge request.
"Alright. Have a nice weekend."
With a final wave, she turned and left.
Giri exhaled slowly. This felt wrong - not the overtime, but lying to people he worked alongside every day.
The walk to the elevator felt longer in the empty office. His footsteps echoed through the silence, each sound amplified in the deserted space.
Giri worked overtime before, but never alone. The eerie silence and vast space made his stomach churn.
The equipment elevator stood before him, bigger than the usual one, its floor scarred with years of heavy use. Giri followed Yuki's instructions. The button shifted from blue to purple, a change he'd never seen before.
The elevator groaned to life, but something felt off. Instead of the usual downward motion, the car moved at an angle. Giri's stomach lurched as the compartment descended diagonally, like a rollercoaster taking an unexpected turn. He braced himself against the wall.
The doors opened with a soft hiss. Giri squinted as bright fluorescent light flooded the elevator car, a sharp contrast to the dim lighting he'd left behind. His eyes adjusted to reveal a vast space that stretched far beyond what he'd expected for a basement level.
White panels lined the walls and ceiling, their pristine surfaces reflecting the overhead lights. This wasn't the cluttered equipment storage he'd visited before - the space had the sterile, organized feel of a high-tech laboratory.
To his left, mysterious machines stood as tall as he did. Their sleek metal casings hummed with quiet energy, status lights blinking in steady patterns.
What caught his eye most was the impeccable organization of the cables. Each bundle was perfectly routed, color-coded, and labeled. Not a single wire out of place.
"Impressive..." Giri whispered.
A long corridor stretched out on the far right, breaking the monotony of the white panels. Steel doors lined both sides, each marked with illuminated labels that cast a soft blue glow against the walls. The letters seemed to float in the air, reminding Giri of holographic displays from sci-fi movies.
His footsteps echoed as he walked down the corridor, reading each label. 'A.I.R', 'N.E.O', 'P.H.I' - acronyms that meant nothing to him passed by until he spotted it. 'S.I.P' glowed above the third door on the right, its metal surface unmarked and pristine compared to the others.
The silence pressed against his ears. No hum of machines reached this far, no whisper of air conditioning, not even the usual creaks and groans of a building settling. Just dead silence that made every breath sound too loud.
Giri stood before the S.I.P door, his heart thumping against his ribs. The keycard felt heavy in his hand.
"Well, let's hope this wasn't designed by Weyland-Yutani. I'm not in the mood for jump scares."
YOU ARE READING
GameDev Reincarnated into His Own Creation
FantasyWhen renowned game developer Giri meets his untimely end, he awakens as twelve-year-old Vel in the magical realm of Aeonalus-his own creation. Five hundred years have passed since he crafted the world, and Vel finds himself in the village of Oakhave...
