The descent took six hours, and every one of them tried to kill us.
We started at the lowest accessible point of Level 9, in a maintenance junction that most people pretended didn't exist. The door was sealed with warnings in three languages and a biometric lock that had broken decades ago. Finn picked it in under a minute.
"You know what's funny?" they said as the door groaned open. "When they don't want people going somewhere, they put up warnings. When they really don't want people going somewhere, they just forget it exists."
Beyond the door was darkness. Complete and absolute, the kind your eyes couldn't adjust to because there was nothing to adjust to. Our portable lights cut through it like knives, revealing a corridor that descended at a steep angle, walls covered in art deco tilework that had probably been beautiful before the decay.
"Sector 13 should be about three kilometers down," I said, checking the ancient station schematics I'd pulled from the public archives. "Assuming the maps are accurate and nothing's collapsed."
"So many reasons to feel confident."
We descended.
The gravity was wrong almost immediately. Too light, then too heavy, fluctuating as the station's rotation wobbled in sections that hadn't been maintained in a century. My stomach lurched with each transition, and I saw Finn grab the wall for balance more than once.
The temperature dropped as we went deeper. The upper levels stayed warm from human activity and functioning climate control. Down here, everything was failing. Our breath came out in clouds. Frost formed on the pipes that ran along the ceiling.
"I think we're entering the old residential sector," Finn said, playing their light over a doorway. Inside, we could see apartments frozen in time. Furniture covered in dust. Children's toys scattered on floors. Pictures on walls showing people who'd been dead for longer than we'd been alive.
"They evacuated during the Sealing," I said, remembering the history I'd read in stolen books. "Moved everyone to Level 9, then sealed this off. Said it was structural issues. But really, they just wanted to consolidate us. Easier to control a compact population than one spread across multiple levels."
"Control." Finn spat the word. "They're good at that."
We moved through the ghost city, our lights revealing frozen moments of interrupted lives. A table set for dinner, plates still waiting. A bedroom with clothes laid out, ready to be worn. A child's room with drawings on the walls - stick figures holding hands under a smiling sun.
None of these people had ever seen a sun. They'd been born on the station, lived on the station, died on the station. But they'd still drawn suns, still taught their children about light and warmth and the star that used to sustain humanity.
Hope, I thought. Or memory. Or maybe just refusal to forget.
"Yellow stripes," Finn called out. They'd found the maintenance corridor, exactly where the dying scavenger said it would be. The yellow paint was faded and flaking, but still visible against the gray walls.
We followed it deeper.
The corridor branched and twisted, a labyrinth designed by engineers who assumed it would be maintained, who couldn't have imagined it would become a tomb. Pipes leaked. Wires sparked. The floor was uneven where supporting structures had shifted over decades.
And the sounds.
God, the sounds.
Metal groaning under stress. Water dripping in irregular rhythms. Wind whistling through cracks in the hull - actual wind, which meant the outer seal was compromised somewhere. And underneath it all, a low humming that might have been machinery or might have been my imagination.
"This is where we die," Finn said conversationally. "Just so you know. This is the point in the story where the protagonists ignore all the warning signs and walk into the trap."
"Noted. Keep walking."
"See? This is why we die."
At the junction, we took the left fork like the old man had said. The corridor narrowed here, forcing us to walk single file. Finn went first, their smaller frame better suited to the tight spaces. I followed, trying not to think about all the weight above us, all the water pressure from the recycling systems, all the ways the station could decide this section wasn't worth holding together anymore.
My light caught something on the wall. I stopped.
Graffiti. Fresh, or at least fresher than everything else down here. Written in bioluminescent paint that still glowed faintly: "M.C. was here. Found it. Couldn't open it. Couldn't move it. Couldn't stop thinking about it."
Marcus Chen. The dying scavenger. He'd left a marker. Proof that he'd made it this far, that the treasure was real, that we weren't chasing a Drift-addled dying man's fantasy.
"Jax," Finn called back. "I found it."
I hurried forward, the corridor opening into a small chamber. And there, set into the wall, was the door.
It was different from everything else down here. Not art deco, not decorative, just pure function. Heavy metal, reinforced edges, and yes - a biometric lock that hung open and broken, sparking occasionally with electrical discharge.
"Someone forced it," Finn said, examining the lock. "Years of work, probably. Jury-rigged power sources, mechanical bypass, brute force. This wasn't just picked, it was conquered."
"Could you open the rest?"
They studied the door itself. "The lock's dead, but the door's on some kind of mechanical system. Pressure seal, maybe? Give me a few minutes."
I stood watch while Finn worked, my light playing over the chamber. More graffiti here, all in Marcus Chen's hand:
"Day 47: Made progress on the lock."
"Day 103: Bypassed the first security layer."
"Day 189: Broke through. God help me, I broke through."
One hundred and eighty-nine days. The old man had spent over six months coming down here, working on this door, refusing to give up even as his body was failing.
What could be inside that was worth that kind of dedication?
"Got it," Finn said. The door unsealed with a hiss of pressurized air - two centuries old and still holding. "Ready?"
I nodded.
Finn pulled the door open.
The lights hit the interior, and we both stood there, frozen, staring at what Marcus Chen had died protecting.
"Holy shit," Finn whispered.
"Yeah," I agreed. "Holy shit."
We'd found the treasure.
And it was going to change everything.