The elevator opened onto a corridor the wanderer hadn't seen before. Narrower. The walls here were darker stone, veined with something that caught the embedded lighting and held it. The air carried a different weight — thicker, damper, pressed down by the mountain above.

Footsteps behind them. Running.

"Wait — hold on —"

Kade rounded the corner at a half-jog, one hand pressing a tablet to his chest, the other reaching toward them as if he could close the distance faster by wanting to. His breathing was quick, not from exertion. From something else.

"You're going to the briefing." Not a question. He fell into step beside them, talking before he'd caught his breath. "I was looking for you. Upstairs. Then Yara said she'd seen you take the lower elevator, and I thought — good, good, you're going, that's good."

The wanderer slowed their pace. Kade didn't seem to notice. He was pulling his stylus from behind his ear, twisting it between his fingers as he walked.

"The passages are stable today. Did you hear? First time in — I don't know, a long time. The surveyors went down at dawn and came back saying the map still held. The same map. From yesterday." He laughed, short and tight. "You don't know how strange that is. Usually by morning the whole topology's shifted. But today — today it's like the depths are waiting."

The corridor turned. A glass panel in the wall showed nothing but darkness beyond — one of the deep shafts, angling down toward the rift. No bioluminescence visible. Just black.

"The specimen," Kade said. "That's what the briefing's about. What they brought up last week. You saw the announcement?"

"I saw it."

"Right, right. The patterns on its surface — they're not random. Orlen thinks they might be structured. Like, really structured. Like —" He stopped walking. The stylus went still between his fingers. "You work in pattern theory, don't you? Languages? That's what you said. On the shuttle."

The wanderer turned to face him. The embedded lighting caught the dark veins in the stone and pulled shadows across Kade's face. He looked younger than he had in the bright corridors above.

"I work with patterns," the wanderer said.

"But you're a linguist. That's what I told Orlen. That's why she approved —" He stopped. Something in the wanderer's silence caught up with him. "Aren't you?"

The glass panel beside them was a black mirror now. Their reflection stood motionless in it — two figures in a corridor that seemed to narrow as it descended. The building's hum was louder here. The wanderer could feel it in their chest, a low frequency that seemed to be counting something.

"I didn't say that," the wanderer said. "On the shuttle."

Kade's hand tightened around the stylus. "You said you were here to study what surfaces."

"I am."

"You said patterns. You said you see things — connections —"

"I do."

"Then what —" He broke off. His eyes went to the wanderer's hands, then to their face, then away. Something was happening behind his expression. Not anger. Not yet.

"What do you actually do?"

The wanderer let the question sit. The hum of the building measured out the seconds. Three pulses. Four. Somewhere below, something mechanical whirred and stopped.

"I notice things," the wanderer said. "The way patterns move. The way they repeat or don't. I don't have a word for what I do."

"Everyone has a word for what they do."

"Not everyone comes from the same places."

Kade stared at them. The stylus had stopped moving. His breath was shallow now, and the wanderer could see the calculation happening — how much he'd vouched for, how much he'd assumed, how much was now uncertain.

"The briefing is in ten minutes," he said. "Orlen's expecting a linguist. Someone who can tell us if the specimen's patterns might be language."

"And if I can't tell you that?"

"Then I look like an idiot." He said it flat, without self-pity. "And you probably don't get access to the lower labs again."

The wanderer watched the dark glass. Their reflection didn't move. The rift was down there somewhere — the depths that were waiting, the topology that had paused, the specimen with its patterns that might be language or might be something else entirely.

"I see patterns," the wanderer said. "I can tell you what I see. I can tell you what connects. But I won't pretend to be something I'm not."

Kade exhaled. Not relief — something more complicated. His stylus started moving again, turning between his fingers in a rhythm the wanderer recognized. The same rhythm as the building's hum.

"She's going to ask you questions," he said. "Orlen. She's sharp. She'll know if you're faking."

"Then I won't fake."

"You'll just — what? Tell her you're not a linguist but you see patterns?"

"Something like that."

Kade laughed. Short, disbelieving. His stylus had started moving again, slower than before.

"You're strange," he said. "You know that?"

The wanderer didn't answer. The building hummed. The dark glass held their reflections — two figures in a corridor that led down, toward the specimen, toward whatever was waiting in the stable depths.

"Come on," Kade said. "We're going to be late."

He started walking. After a moment, the wanderer followed. The corridor narrowed further as it descended, the walls pressing closer, the ceiling dropping. The stone's dark veins pulsed once in the embedded light — or didn't. The wanderer wasn't sure.

At the threshold of the lower labs, a door waited. Kade paused with his hand on the panel.

"One thing," he said, not turning. "The patterns on the specimen. The ones Orlen thinks might be language." He hesitated. "They change. Not when you're watching. Only when you look away."

The wanderer's hand found the wall. The stone was warmer than expected. It hummed against their palm.

"I'll keep my eyes open," they said.

Kade laughed again — different this time, almost genuine. He pressed the panel. The door slid open onto blue-green light.