"...sorry if I seem a little nervous," Dr. Rachel Minsky said, chuckling uneasily. "My first time, you know... I've seen the videos from previous explorations, but to actually go into the City myself—"

"Yeah... [i]first time[/i]," the Guide responded, almost sarcastically, not slowing down his pace. 

This particular "district" (if such concepts even applied to the alien City) was a web of oppressively narrow streets, with huddled buildings—all angles and crooked lines—leaning over them like a clamp closing imperceptibly slowly. There was no need for the human archeologists to install lamps; the existing million-year-old light fixtures still illuminated the underground City well enough. 

A signpost here pointed out the route to the Dig Site 01 (a particularly profitable location, albeit far too deep in the City for comfort), but the Guide did not bother looking at it, knowing the route by heart. He led Rachel past one crossroad to another, then down its right-hand fork, when suddenly—

[i]—a dark shape, like a misshapen maggot twice the size of a subway train, rushed at them down the street, and before Rachel could react they were both smeared on the pavement underneath its bulk—[/i]

—he dragged her brusquely towards a side alley. Right as they reached the end, [i]something[/i] hulking and black could be seen rushing down the street they just left. It passed them with a rumble, and the moment it was out of view, its shadow vanished and the noise went silent. 

Without a word he led her out of the alley and they resumed their route. Disquieting sounds arrived occasionally from neighboring streets — sizzling sparks, unhuman shrieks, earthshaking thudding; the sounds of the Traps activating blindly around the City against nobody in particular. 

[hr]

They soon arrived into a new "district", a giant checkerboard of city squares studded at their sides with kilometer-tall towers scratching against the cavern ceiling. Here he bid her to wait seventy-six seconds before entering one particular square, and in doing so he saved her life from a fractal web of gleaming, hair-thin, razor-sharp floss that filled the square in an instant, and disappeared just as suddenly. Rachel wanted to go on, but the Guide held her tight for thirteen seconds more, and then the floss once more appeared for a brief while—

[i]—slicing her head and neck into a mess of bloody chunks of meat, her body collapsing at his feet and twitching, twitching—[/i]

—giving Rachel a cold sweat; she had been completely sure that it was safe, and she'd have entered the square carelessly had he not held her. Was the City developing new tricks? The Traps had never been known to remanifest so soon after the last activation. 

Nobody ever managed to figure out a clear pattern to the Traps, if any. They manifested apparently at random, and always with just a split-second warning at best. Only the Guides somehow knew every Trap in advance, and the only way to traverse the City safely was to use their services. 

The safe route that her Guide had planned, all the stops and detours at exactly the right moments—all of it from his visions of never-to-be futures, inside which died countless beheaded, dismembered, incinerated Rachels. (His visions had to include her presence; the Trap pattern changed depending on who accompanied you.) No wonder he avoided talking to her, even looking at her; from his perspective, she had died in countless horrible ways so many times. 

Rachel shuddered. No, there was no point in thinking about those dead in other timelines, because after all, [i]she[/i] was entirely safe, wasn't she? Nobody led by a Guide had ever died in these streets. 

Then she remembered the theories. That the Guides' precognition was not precognition at all, but rather [i]experience[/i]; that upon dying, they immediately returned to a 'savepoint', the timeline of their death no longer extant but for the memories in their heads. 

Thus a hundred Rachels went on that route with him, and every single one was sure that she is the last one, the one who will survive...

[i]Just as sure as I was,[/i] she realized. 

"Guide," she said, her throat suddenly hoarse, "tell me... right now, do you know of every single Trap, [i]right up[/i] to when we'll safely arrive?"

He looked at her askance. "Yeah, of course," he said, and her heart sunk as she realized that she had no way to verify whether he was lying. 

And then she kept following his guidance, because she had no other choice.