2025-10-17 03:42:19The forest grew thinner as they moved north.
The air smelled sharp, like metal after lightning. Every few minutes the ground hummed, soft and steady, as if something deep below was breathing. They had walked since morning. The trees looked wrong now. Some had twisted trunks that bent toward the ground. Others grew in perfect straight lines. The pattern made Caleb uneasy. He stopped when he saw the smoke. A thin column rose above the trees a few miles ahead. It was not black like fire but grey and steady. “Someone’s burning fuel,” he said. Dylan looked through his scope. “Could be a crash.” “Or a camp,” Nora said. They followed the smoke. The closer they came, the stronger the smell of oil became. The trees opened into a clearing filled with old trucks and broken walls. Ahead stood a small complex of concrete buildings. The fences around it had collapsed in places. The sign on the gate was faded but still readable. FEDERAL RESEARCH SITE – RESTRICTED ACCESS. Caleb studied the symbol beneath it. The same mark they had seen in the tunnels. They moved through the gate. The hum was stronger here. It came from the ground and the walls. A generator throbbed faintly near the main building, its cables running into the floor. Nora whispered, “Someone’s alive.” Caleb nodded. “Stay behind me.” The first room was filled with stacked crates. The air was warm and dry. A faint glow came from the corridor ahead. They moved down it, passing open doors filled with old lab equipment. On the wall someone had drawn a line of symbols with a marker, each one crossed out except the last. It looked like a schedule, but the numbers made no sense. Then a voice came from the far room. “Don’t move.” Caleb froze. The voice was low, rough from disuse. A man stepped into view holding a pistol. He was thin, his clothes dirty but neat, his face lined with exhaustion. A badge hung from his pocket: Dr Marcus Hale. He kept the gun steady. “Who are you?” Caleb raised his hands. “Cascadia Hydro. We were at the plant when this started.” The man lowered the gun slightly. “You made it out?” “Barely,” Caleb said. “What is this place?” Hale motioned them inside. “You’d better come in before the lights change.” They followed him into a control room filled with humming machines. Monitors flickered, showing static and blue lines. Papers covered the tables. One wall held a map of the valley with red marks across it. Dylan closed the door. “You’ve been here the whole time?” Hale nodded. “I was part of the secondary team. When the pulse broke containment, the others evacuated. I stayed to finish recording data.” Nora looked at the screens. “You were studying it?” “We built the first shield for it.” He rubbed his eyes. “It wasn’t supposed to reach the surface.” Caleb leaned on the table. “What is it?” Hale hesitated. “We called it an anomaly at first. Energy that could replicate itself. But then it began to respond to observation. Every reading changed when we measured it. We thought it was interference. It wasn’t.” He opened a file drawer and pulled out a small drive. “This is what’s left of our records.” Nora took it carefully. “Does it show how to stop it?” He shook his head. “No. It shows that it listens.” They stared at him. “It uses the same frequencies we used to track it,” he said. “It learned the pattern. Now every time we send a signal, it echoes back. Smarter. Clearer.” Caleb remembered the voice at the relay tower. “It spoke to us.” Hale looked up sharply. “Then it’s already reached you.” The lights in the room flickered. The hum under the floor rose in pitch. Hale moved to the console. “It’s near.” “What do you mean by near?” Dylan asked. “The field moves. It travels through the ground like a tide. When the readings spike, it’s under us.” The lights went blue. The monitors changed from static to lines of text scrolling too fast to read. Every screen is filled with the same words repeating. WE HEAR YOU. WE SEE YOU. Nora backed away. “It’s in the system.” Hale shut off the main breaker. The screens went dark but the hum stayed. Caleb turned toward the door. “We need to go.” Hale grabbed his arm. “Wait. There’s something you have to see.” He led them down another corridor to a smaller room. Inside, a single glass tank stood in the centre. Blue liquid filled it halfway. Inside floated what looked like a piece of metal wrapped in wires. It pulsed faintly with light. “This was the first sample we took from the riverbed,” Hale said. “It was small then. We thought it was mineral growth. But it reacts to thought, to emotion. When we brought it here, the readings changed every time we spoke near it.” Luke stepped closer. “It’s alive?” “In a way,” Hale said. “It doesn’t die. It remembers.” The hum grew louder again. The liquid in the tank rippled. Light spread through it, faster and brighter. Hale backed away. “It knows we’re here.” The lights in the ceiling burst one by one. Blue sparks rained down. The hum turned into a steady tone that shook the glass. “Out,” Caleb said. They ran for the corridor. Behind them, the tank cracked. A thin mist rolled out, glowing faintly. Hale stumbled but Caleb pulled him forward. They burst into the open yard as the building lights flickered behind them. For a moment everything was quiet. Then the hum stopped. Total silence. Dylan looked back. “What did you do?” Hale stared at the facility. “It shut itself off.” Nora whispered, “Why?” He looked at her, eyes wide. “Because it doesn’t need the machines anymore.” They stood in the open clearing, breathing hard. The forest around them was still. Then, from the speakers mounted on the roof of the building, a voice spoke. It said each of their names. Slow. Clear. Calm. Caleb. Nora. Dylan. Luke. Hale. They turned toward the sound. No one was there. The speakers clicked once and went silent. The air smelled like rain again. The hum returned, softer now, coming from the ground beneath their feet. Hale whispered, “It’s learning to speak.” Caleb stared at the building. “Then it’s listening right now.” No one moved. The wind rustled through the trees, carrying the faint sound of the pulse rolling out across the valley like distant thunder.
Previous Chapter
Latest Chapter
Chapter 13 – The Long Road Back
They did not rest long.The city behind them stayed quiet, but Caleb could feel it watching. The hum no longer chased them. It followed at a distance, steady and patient, like it already knew where they were going.The road north bent east, climbing into broken hills. The land grew rougher. Trees thinned. The soil darkened and cracked in long lines that glowed faint blue at night.Dr. Hale walked slower now. He leaned on a metal rod he had taken from the barrier. His breathing was shallow, controlled.“This terrain was never meant to hold the field,” he said quietly.Caleb glanced back. “Meaning.”“The pulse was anchored in the valley. Everything else is strain. That is why it builds structures. Towers. Cities. It needs shape.”“And the origin site,” Dylan said. “That is its core shape.”“Yes,” Hale said. “Or the closest thing it has to one.”They passed through a stretch of forest where every leaf pointed the same direction. No wind moved them. They did not shift when touched.Nora b
Chapter 12 – The Quiet Cities
The road north widened as they left the ridge.It led straight into the valley where the lights burned. The hum followed them down, steady and low. Caleb felt it in his chest now, not loud but present, like pressure before a storm.The city stood untouched.Buildings were clean. Windows unbroken. Cars parked neatly along the streets. Digital signs glowed without flicker. Traffic lights shifted from red to green on perfect timing.No people.They entered slowly. Caleb watched every doorway. Dylan scanned rooftops. Nora stayed close to Luke. Dr. Hale walked with his head lowered, his eyes moving constantly, reading things no one else could see.The air smelled wrong. Not decay. Not smoke. Too clean.“This place should be dead,” Dylan said.Hale nodded. “It was abandoned early. Before the collapse spread this far.”“And yet it works,” Nora said.“Yes,” Hale said. “Because it no longer needs us.”They passed a bus stop where a screen displayed weather updates from years ago. The date chan
Chapter 11 – Northbound
They left the research site before the sun fully rose.The blue glow still hung in the sky, thin but constant, like a stain that would not fade. Caleb walked first, following the narrow road that curved north between dead trees. The ground felt firm again, but the hum was stronger than before. It no longer came only from beneath the soil. It moved through the air, soft and even, like a signal spread too wide to track.Dr. Hale walked behind Caleb. He looked worse in daylight. His face was pale, his eyes sunken, his hands shaking when he adjusted the strap of his bag. He had not slept. None of them had.Nora stayed close to Luke. The boy was quiet, watching the trees as they passed. Every so often he tilted his head, as if listening to something the others could not hear.Dylan brought up the rear. He scanned the forest, rifle held low. He had stopped asking questions. The answers were never good.The road climbed slowly. The farther north they went, the stranger the land became. Grass
Chapter 10
They didn’t go far from the research site.The air was cooler in the trees, but the hum still reached them from below.It never stopped, not even for a breath.They set camp near a dry creek bed where the ground felt solid.Caleb built a small fire. The light made a circle around them that faded into the dark.The forest was quiet.Too quiet.No insects. No birds. Only the soft hiss of the wind moving through dead branches.Dr Hale sat apart from the group with the laptop he had carried from the lab.A cracked battery powered it, the screen faint but readable.Lines of code and numbers filled the screen.He typed slowly, whispering to himself.Dylan watched him. “You think he can still pull something useful from that thing?”Caleb poked at the fire. “He’s the only one who understands what’s happening. Let him try.”Nora sat with Luke beside her, wrapped in a blanket.The boy’s eyes were half closed.Every few minutes he looked at the sky, then at the trees, as if expecting something t
Chapter 9
The forest grew thinner as they moved north.The air smelled sharp, like metal after lightning.Every few minutes the ground hummed, soft and steady, as if something deep below was breathing.They had walked since morning.The trees looked wrong now.Some had twisted trunks that bent toward the ground.Others grew in perfect straight lines.The pattern made Caleb uneasy.He stopped when he saw the smoke.A thin column rose above the trees a few miles ahead.It was not black like fire but grey and steady.“Someone’s burning fuel,” he said.Dylan looked through his scope. “Could be a crash.”“Or a camp,” Nora said.They followed the smoke.The closer they came, the stronger the smell of oil became.The trees opened into a clearing filled with old trucks and broken walls.Ahead stood a small complex of concrete buildings.The fences around it had collapsed in places.The sign on the gate was faded but still readable.FEDERAL RESEARCH SITE – RESTRICTED ACCESS.Caleb studied the symbol ben
Chapter 8
The road north started through a narrow pass. Broken rocks lined both sides, and the ground was soft from the storm. The group moved in silence. No birds. No wind. Only the steady hum seemed to come from under their feet. By midday, the light changed. The sun faded behind thick clouds. Caleb walked ahead, watching each step. He heard a deep crack before he felt it. The ground shifted once, then dropped away. He fell with the others. The noise of breaking stone filled his ears. Then everything went dark. When he woke, his head hurt. Cold air touched his face. He sat up slowly. A beam of pale light cut through a hole above him. Dust drifted in it like smoke. Nora was beside him, coughing. Dylan was farther back, pulling Luke out from under a piece of wood. Everyone was bruised but alive. They were standing in a tunnel. Metal rails ran along the floor. Pipes lined the ceiling. Water dripped from somewhere unseen. Dylan looked up at the hole they had fallen throu
You may also like
Traces of Eve
Kei2.5K viewsTHE ROOT OF DARKNESS
ANITA_grace3.7K viewsDark Weapon Book One: Time of Bombing
Rachel N2.2K viewsTALKING TO SHADOWS: DEAR ISRAEL
Birdie4.6K viewsThe Mysterious Disappearance
Gbolahan 730 viewsThis is Me
Gbemiro 1.6K viewsThe Fugitives: There's always a plan
Raptor1.5K viewsCrimson Legacy
Tomo Dachii1.1K views