The wind blew across the lakeshore, carrying a sharp chill that cut through Landon Hale's jacket. The streetlights behind him flickered, their reflections trembling across the dark water. He walked slowly, boots crunching against the gravel, hands tucked into his pockets. The city felt distant here. Only the lake, black and silent, stretched out in front of him.He stopped at the edge. The water lapped at the shore with a hollow rhythm, slow and deliberate. Kinetic Echo flared without warning. Landon staggered back, barely catching his balance. He pressed a hand to his temple, feeling the familiar pull, the cascade of future fragments racing through his mind.Shadows moved beneath the surface. They weren’t fish. They weren’t shapes he recognized. Each shift seemed calculated, purposeful. The water seemed to pulse around them. His heart rate climbed, but he forced himself to stand still. He had to observe, not react."Landon?" A voice came from behind. Claire. She stepped lightly ove

Landon pushed open the door to the small café. The bell above jingled once. The space smelled of warm bread, coffee, and sunlight. The early morning crowd was thin. A few tables were scattered near the windows, and the soft hum of conversation filled the room.Claire was already there. She sat at a corner table, her laptop closed, fingers loosely folded over the edge. Her hair caught the light in streaks of gold and brown. She looked up and smiled, small but honest. It was rare. “Morning,” she said.Landon dropped his pack by the chair and sat. He didn’t move quickly, didn’t scan the room. For once, there was no mission, no threat, no enemy tracking their steps. Just the café, just the quiet.“Morning,” he said back. He let the word stretch, letting himself linger in the simplicity.A waitress approached, notebook in hand. “Coffee?” she asked.“Black,” Landon said.Claire nodded. “I’ll have the cappuccino, extra foam.” She glanced at him, then back at the table. “I made us pastries.

The comms room was silent except for the hum of monitors. Priya leaned forward, her eyes scanning the screens. Lines of data scrolled faster than she could read them. Something in the patterns made her chest tighten.“Landon,” she said without turning. Her voice was low, urgent. “You need to see this.”He stepped around her, boots clicking on the concrete floor. Jin hunched over a console, fingers moving in a blur, trying to cross-reference energy readings from Milwaukee with satellite imagery of surrounding cities. Claire leaned against a table, arms crossed, watching the trio work in tense silence. “What is it?” Landon asked.Priya pointed at the map. Red blips pulsed across the Midwest, stretching outward from Milwaukee. “Sinkholes. Sudden drops in the earth, random. Some cities report entire streets collapsing. Others, people found dead in rivers or ponds with no water in their lungs.”Landon froze mid-step. “No water in the lungs?”Priya nodded. “They drown, but the bodies tell

Landon Hale stood at the edge of the pier, wind cutting across his face. The sun had dipped below the horizon, leaving the lake dark and restless. He pulled his jacket tighter and let his eyes sweep over the water. The surface shimmered unnaturally, small ripples moving against the direction of the wind. Nothing should have done that. Not with this calm.Jin’s voice crackled over the earpiece. “Landon, we’re getting interference across all sonar stations. The readings don’t make sense.”Landon adjusted his stance on the slick boards, eyes narrowing. “Show me.”The feed appeared on the small holo-screen clipped to his wrist. Waveforms pulsed erratically. Peaks rose and fell as if the lake itself were breathing. Landon frowned. “That’s, massive. That’s not fish. That’s not geology. Whatever it is, it’s huge.”“Yeah,” Jin replied, tension in his tone. “We’re seeing energy signatures that match some of the THALASSA Protocol anomalies. Something is moving beneath the surface. Bigger than

The first sign is not sound. It is pressure. Deep under Lake Michigan, where light has never reached, something shifts. Thick water presses inward. Silt lifts from the lakebed in slow clouds. Old stone shapes sit in the dark, carved and stacked long before cities existed. The stones tremble. Hairline cracks spread across their surfaces. Chains run through the structures. Massive links, each wider than a truck, stretch and pull. Rust flakes drift away like dead skin. The chains groan, not loud, but heavy. The sound moves through water, then through rock, then through the bones of the land above.A pulse follows. It moves outward in a perfect ring. Water bends around it. Fish scatter. Instruments miles away spike, then flatline, then recover. The pulse does not burn or break. It tests. It touches.Far away, machines pause for half a second. Old servers reset without command. A satellite shifts its orbit by a fraction no one can explain.In a desert church, a man drops to his knees