The world fractured in two. Siya’s body stretched like a thread caught between realities, her arms pulled forward into the black seam while Marks clawed at her waist, dragging her back. The silence roared louder than sound itself, collapsing her thoughts into a single point of white heat.“Asanda!” she cried, throat tearing.From within the rift, her sister’s face flickered, grainy, layered, dissolving like ash in water. “Come deeper,” the voices whispered, stacked in her timbre, too many to belong to one person.Marks snarled, pulling with everything he had. Siya’s palms burned so fiercely she thought her bones would ignite. Then, with a brutal snap, the seam slammed shut.The corridor buckled. Lights burst overhead. Siya collapsed onto the cold concrete, her chest heaving, Marks half-sprawled beside her, both gasping in the acrid dark.Her branded palms smoked.“Christ, Siya,” Marks rasped, shoving himself upright. “You almost...” He cut himself off, shaking his head. “We need to mo

The lab stood at the edge of Observatory, tucked between derelict warehouses and a half-collapsed textile mill. From the outside, it looked abandoned, rusted fences, windows clouded with dust, and weeds breaking through cracks in the cement. Siya checked the address again. It was right. This was the place Dr. Halim had once run experiments, a private research wing funded quietly through Groote Schuur.She felt Marks tense beside her. He scanned the street, hand on his sidearm. “Doesn’t look like anyone’s worked here in twenty years.”“Rautenbach made sure people forgot about it,” Siya said. Her voice was low, her stomach knotted. “But Halim’s files pointed here. If anyone knew what Threnody was meant to be, it’s him.”They pushed through the gate. The air inside the lot smelled of mold and burnt wires. Siya’s boots crunched on broken glass as she approached the front door. It was heavy steel, not wood, and locked with an old biometric pad. Strangely, the screen flickered to life as sh

The following morning she decided to go pay a bisti to her mother at her childhood home in Crossroads.The house smelled the same, even after all the years, after the layers of dust and the slow rot of silence, Siya could still smell the faint trace of jasmine soap her mother used to scrub the kitchen tiles. She stood in the doorway now, hand on the frame, listening. The house was too still, no radio, no kettle whistling, no television running in the background. Just the faint groan of the old beams settling in the walls.Her pulse quickened. She had not told Marks she was coming. She hadn’t told anyone. Some truths, she felt, could only be pulled out in private.She found her mother Thandi Ndlovu sitting in her armchair, in the living room, with a blanket across her knees even though the evening wasn’t cold. The curtains were drawn. A half-empty glass of water trembled faintly on the side table, as though she had been holding it moments before Siya arrived.“You came back,” Thandi s

The road back to Valkenberg looked like it had been forgotten by the city. Siya watched the trees blur past the window as Marks drove. Branches hung low over the cracked tar, shadows stretching long under the pale moon. Every few meters, she saw the signs of collapse, a smashed lamppost, a burned-out car, glass scattered across the street like frost.The air was colder here. She felt it pressing against her skin, heavy, like it carried weight.“Last time we came,” Marks muttered, his jaw tight, “we swore we’d never set foot here again.”Siya didn’t answer. Her eyes stayed fixed on the road. She felt the pull in her chest, the same tug that had been growing stronger since the blackout. Something waited at Valkenberg, and it wasn’t just a memory.When the gates appeared, twisted and half torn from their hinges, Marks slowed the car to a crawl. Rust streaked the iron. The hospital grounds were overgrown, weeds pushing through cracks, vines curling up the white walls. Yet the place didn’t

The hospital was too quiet. That was the first thing Siya noticed.After the soldiers stormed Groote Schuur, after the lockdowns and barricades, after the hum had rattled the city to its knees, this silence felt wrong. It was not peace, but a pause, the kind that comes before a storm.Siya walked the empty corridor with Marks behind her. Their boots echoed too loud on the tiles. Emergency lights glowed red above every doorway, a warning that seemed permanent now. The hum was gone, but her body still remembered it, like a bruise under her skin.They had come back for one reason, to find answers before the military erased everything.Marks muttered, “Feels like a tomb.”“Not a tomb,” Siya whispered. “A throat.”He frowned. “A throat?”She touched the wall. Even without sound, the plaster seemed to vibrate faintly under her palm. “It’s still speaking. We’re just not hearing it right now.”They turned the corner toward the old intercom control room that had been gutted during the first wa