Alfred Pike refused to leave the freezing subterranean floor. The bunker’s internal nuclear reactor had proven entirely insufficient to hold the threshold open, almost melting down after a mere eighty seconds. Unwilling to accept failure, Alfred gave a terrifying order: he instructed his engineers to bypass the facility’s safeties and illegally hardwire the machine's cooling coils directly into the main arteries of the Russian national power grid.They were no longer running on batteries. They were siphoning the lifeblood of an entire nation.The third test utilized a fully grown mountain goat.When Dr. Arisov engaged the coils, the immense power draw caused the heavy concrete walls of the bunker to groan under the electromagnetic stress. The goat was pushed into the blinding white light. It survived the initial breach, stepping into the void.For two agonizing minutes, the telemetry held. Then, the radiation spiked to catastrophic levels. The goat violently boiled away into a cloud o

The blinding white light of the threshold hummed with a terrifying stability.Down on the frost-covered concrete of the testing floor, Dr. Arisov wiped a thick layer of condensation from the inside of his golden hazmat visor. He signaled to the engineering team."Subject Gamma is locked," Arisov announced, his voice trembling slightly over the encrypted comms.On the mechanized track sat a heavily reinforced, polycarbonate enclosure containing a fully grown rhesus macaque monkey. It was strapped into a miniaturized tactical harness, wired with dozens of deep-tissue biometric sensors, and completely sedated to prevent it from panicking and damaging the telemetry equipment."Engage the track," Alfred Pike ordered from the elevated observation deck.The heavy gears ground together, pushing the enclosure forward. The monkey slipped seamlessly into the violent, swirling vortex of luminescence. Just like the dog before it, the animal vanished instantly from the physical realm.Arisov sprint

"Hold her down!" Dr. Arisov screamed, his voice cracking violently over the internal comms of his hazmat suit. He threw himself onto the frost-covered concrete, his knees slamming into the floor beside the violently shaking body of the petite sniper.The ten heavy mercenaries who had just saved Zhenya’s life by dragging her out of the spatial vacuum immediately swarmed her. They pinned her shoulders, her hips, and her legs to the freezing floor, acting entirely on pure, adrenaline-fueled instinct. Zhenya was thrashing wildly, her eyes wide and unblinking, her mouth locked in a silent, agonizing scream as the alien parasite tightened its lethal grip on her flesh."Trauma kit! Bring the heavy extraction tools! Now!" Arisov bellowed, frantically waving his gloved hands at the junior technicians hovering near the edge of the testing floor.A reinforced steel medical case was shoved across the concrete, sliding into Arisov’s knees. He snapped the heavy latches open, bypassing the standard

Nobody moved. Nobody spoke. The only sound in the room was the rhythmic dripping of blood falling from Zhenya’s chin and splashing onto the frost-covered concrete.The ten mercenaries who had pulled her from the void, men who had spent their entire lives dealing in death and warfare, instinctively took a collective step backward. The heavy scrape of their tactical boots against the floor echoed loudly. Their hands were shaking. A few of them unconsciously raised their assault rifles, their fingers hovering nervously over the triggers, treating the petite sniper not as a comrade, but as an apex predator that had just breached containment.They were terrified of her.Behind the primary control console, Dr. Arisov was hyperventilating inside his hazmat suit. He stared at the massive pool of blood forming around Zhenya’s knees. As a medical professional, his mind was frantically calculating the absolute impossibility of the situation."She... she tore out her primary brachial artery," Ari

The subterranean bunker fell into a tense, suffocating silence after Alfred Pike disconnected the encrypted comms with Gina.He stared at the dormant black archway, his golden visor reflecting the sinister red hazard lights. He knew what had to be done. Jason needed to cross the threshold. But Gina's cynical words echoed in his mind: He hates the syndicate. He does not take orders. I cannot just convince him to come.Before Alfred could formulate a counter-strategy, Dr. Arisov broke the silence. The lead scientist’s voice was trembling as he monitored the heavy, lead-lined containment unit housing Anastasia's kinetic geodes."Patriarch," Arisov stammered, pulling up a rapidly declining holographic graph on the primary console. "There is something you need to see. The kinetic geodes... the energy levels are still dropping."Alfred frowned, turning away from the observation deck railing. "The coils are disengaged, Doctor. The machine is off.""It does not matter!" Arisov panicked, his h