2025-06-03 19:26:02Private Recovery Room – Groote Schuur East Wing – 6:47 AM
The morning light did little to ease the tension. Siya sat at the edge of a hospital cot, eyes fixed on Asanda’s sleeping form. A tangle of wires connected to heart monitors beeped slowly, rhythmically, each sound a fragile reminder that her sister, after years of disappearance, after nightmares and unmarked graves, was alive. But even in sleep, Asanda wasn’t at peace. Her body twitched every few minutes. Her lips moved in silence, whispering things only the dead understood. The nurses had insisted on sedatives, but Siya had intervened. She needed Asanda alert, she needed answers. Marks entered quietly, holding two paper cups of bitter hospital coffee. “Any change?” “Not really,” Siya replied, accepting the cup. “Her vitals are steady. But she hasn’t spoken since we left the sublevel.” Marks glanced at Asanda, unease in his posture. “You sure we shouldn’t alert higher authorities?” Siya gave him a sharp look. “And have them lock her up again? Dissect her? No.” Marks didn’t argue. “So what’s the next move?” Siya leaned back. “We find out what the spiral really is. Valkenberg, Groote Schuur, these places aren’t isolated. They’re linked by something deeper than corridors and patient files. There’s a pattern.” He frowned. “What kind of pattern?” She pulled out the notebook she’d been compiling, dates, drawings, coded language, all revolving around a central shape. The spiral. “It’s not just a symbol,” Siya said. “It’s an invitation. A design that pulls you deeper the longer you stare. I think it’s a sound. Or a resonance. Maybe both.” Marks shook his head. “Like a beacon?” “Or a doorway.” Suddenly, Asanda stirred. Her eyes opened, bloodshot, terrified. “Siya…” she whispered. Siya moved to her side. “I’m here. You’re safe now.” Asanda gripped her wrist with surprising strength. “You didn’t close it. You only turned the key halfway.” Siya’s throat tightened. “What do you mean?” Asanda’s eyes darted around the room. “They’re still singing. Below the walls. Beneath everything. I can hear them again.” Marks stepped closer. “Who?” Asanda’s voice cracked. “The Echoed.” Hospital Archives – Sub-Level Records Room – 11:12 AM They returned to the archives later that morning. The narrow aisles were a maze of metal drawers, dusty folders, and forgotten histories. Marks helped Siya drag out one of the old catalog boxes labeled 1969–1980: Experimental Wards (Unindexed). Asanda was resting in a secured wing, under Marks’ own arranged supervision, away from official eyes. They couldn’t afford another “incident.” Siya flipped through the yellowing files. Patient numbers. Date entries. Audio logs. Then she found it. A file marked: Subject 0397-E: Acoustic Containment – Preliminary Trials – Ward E.W. She opened it. Inside: black-and-white photographs of the Threshold Room, cleaner and fully intact. A woman strapped to the chair. Doctors in coats observing from behind thick glass. On the bottom, scrawled in faded red ink: Containment unsuccessful. Subject self-harmonized. Result: Nonlinear bleed. Echo persists. Siya ran her finger along the notation. "Echo persists.” She remembered Asanda’s words: they’re still singing. “What if they’re not just hearing something?” she murmured. “What if they’re hearing themselves, trapped in the resonance?” Marks looked disturbed. “You’re saying the patients didn’t just go mad, they got recorded?” “Like impressions on a record,” Siya said. “They became the spiral.” And just then, something strange happened. From one of the overhead speakers in the archive, a low whisper filtered in. “…Siya…” Marks froze. “Did you hear that?” It repeated, slightly louder. > “…echo… echo… echo…” The lights above them dimmed briefly. And then silence. Siya stood slowly. “They’re not just in the walls. They’re in the system. Anything with resonance: wiring, speakers, even thoughts…” She turned to Marks, eyes haunted. "The spiral is listening.” Groote Schuur East Wing – Rooftop – 12:07 PM The rooftop offered a sliver of stillness. Siya and Marks stood against the railing, overlooking the city. The wind tugged at their coats, as if trying to pull them away from everything they knew. The hospital loomed beneath them, ordinary on the outside, but within, the walls were humming with hidden voices. “I don’t think this is just about Asanda anymore,” Marks said. “I think we’re inside something much bigger.” Siya nodded. “It’s never just one institution. Valkenberg. Groote Schuur. Even the SANDF facility Asanda was moved to before she vanished. They all had reports of auditory hallucinations. Echo phenomena. Resonant architecture.” Marks rubbed the back of his neck. “And the spiral.” They both fell silent. The image had shown up in three places now, Valkenberg’s sublevel, Groote Schuur’s Threshold Room, and in that ancient file marked 0397-E. “I think the spiral isn’t just a design,” Siya said. “It’s a map. A code. And someone figured out how to follow it.” Marks looked over. “Someone? Or something?” Before Siya could answer, her phone buzzed. Unknown Number. She hesitated, then answered. “Detective Ndlovu.” Static. Then a voice, raspy, genderless, mechanical. “You’re not the first to follow it. But you’re too close now. They will hear you.” Click. The line went dead. Siya stared at the screen. “They’re watching.” Marks stepped closer. “We need to move her. Asanda.” “She won’t be safe here. Not even in isolation. They’re already reaching through the hospital systems.” “Where then?” Siya turned to him. “Back to the place where it began. Before Valkenberg. Before Groote Schuur. The first hospital in the file.” Marks narrowed his eyes. “Don’t tell me…” She opened the manila folder, revealing a brittle document: Groote Schuur Annex B – Decommissioned in 1972. Location: Observatory Ridge, beneath the old surgeon’s theatre. Marks exhaled. “You want to take us to an abandoned surgical wing under the Observatory? With a possibly haunted audio system and a resonant map leading to God-knows-where?” Siya turned to him. “That’s exactly what I want to do.” Asanda’s Isolation Room – 12:42 PM They returned to find the door slightly ajar. Siya’s stomach dropped, as she burst in. Asanda was gone. "Nooo...." The room was empty, no sign of struggle, no alarm was triggered. All that remained was the soft, rhythmic hum coming from the heart monitor left behind, and even though it was unplugged it was still beeping steadily. Marks checked the cameras, swearing under his breath. “The footage’s blank. Just static. Someone scrubbed it live.” On the bed lay a sheet of paper, left behind by Asanda. Siya unfolded it. It was a hand-drawn spiral, drenched in charcoal, that was darker, more jagged than the rest and at the center, a single word: BELOW
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Chapter 41 - Rapture Protocol
The hospital lights buzzed with static. Dr. Rautenbach’s office smelled like antiseptic and sweat. He stood alone in the dark, staring at a terminal embedded in the wall, its interface glowing with a faint green hue. His hand trembled slightly as he slid an old keycard through the reader.ACCESS GRANTED: LEVEL OMEGAA digital prompt blinked: Activate RAPTURE Protocol? Y/NHe hesitated.Outside, thunder cracked like bone. The hospital's power grid wavered under the storm. Somewhere below, alarms were already screaming, equipment failing, the hum deepening.Rautenbach wiped his forehead and pressed Y.A hollow chime echoed through the walls. Somewhere deep in the hospital’s forgotten wings, gears began turning, doors locked, lights dimmed to red, and in every speaker embedded in every ward, a tone began to play.Not a song, but a low, pulsing, spiral-coded sequence.Rautenbach whispered, “God forgive me.”But the system didn’t need forgiveness. It needed silence.Siya felt it immediatel
Chapter 40 - The Sprial Seed
The rain hadn’t stopped for three days. It soaked the bones of the hospital, whispering through cracked windows and dripping into the endless corridors like a countdown. Siya sat alone in her flat, staring at the files Khumalo had smuggled out of the burned-out archive. The hard drive hummed on the desk beside her. It sounded too much like Asanda’s lullaby.She hadn’t slept much, not since the last feedback incident, not since watching Marks bleed from his ears, whispering her sister’s name with his eyes rolled back and vacant.She scrolled past another set of corrupted logs. Names she didn’t recognize. Test groups. Frequencies. Audio trials. Her own pulse quickened as a familiar word flickered across the screen: Cohort Omega: Auditory Seeding (Infant), Subject S. Ndlovu.”She froze. The document was dated 2000. She highlighted the name again: Subject S. Ndlovu.Her breath snagged in her throat. She clicked it. The file opened into an encrypted video window. A flickering scene emerge
Chapter 39 - Spiral With No End
Marks lay slumped against the wall, breath rattling like gravel in his throat. Siya held him there, feeling the tremors in his chest ease to a shudder. She wiped the blood from under his nose with her sleeve, her own hands shaking worse than his.He opened one eye, unfocused. “Still here?” he croaked.“You scared the hell out of me,” Siya said, voice rough. “You’re not dying today, you stubborn bastard.”Marks coughed, a raw, tearing sound. He pressed the heel of his palm to his temple. “What… what the hell was that, Siya?”She looked past him, at the blank monitor. Her own reflection stared back in the dead glass, wide eyes, hair matted to her forehead with sweat.“That wasn’t just an echo,” she said. “It’s feeding back on us, on you and pulling something out.”Marks tried to push himself upright but winced. Siya hooked her arm under his shoulder and braced him until he was sitting up, back against the cabinet.She forced herself to focus, to do what she did best, gather evidence eve
Chapter 38 - Feedback Victim
The recording lab was the only place left in Groote Schuur that still felt like it had walls thick enough to keep the Spiral’s hum out. Or so Siya told herself as she sat hunched at the terminal, headphones half-off, eyes red-rimmed and dry.Marks was pacing behind her, arms folded, boots tapping a restless beat. He hadn’t said much since they’d hauled the old reels out of the Black Room. His skin still looked too pale, like the hum down there had leeched something out of him.“I don’t like it,” he said, for the third time in ten minutes. “Running that old tape through the system. It’s the same pattern that screwed our forensics guys.”Siya didn’t look back. “I know. That’s why we isolate it first. We need to know what they buried and why it’s stronger now.”Marks stopped pacing. She could feel him watching her, she’d come to know that silence well. It wasn’t the silence of someone calm. It was the silence of someone standing on the edge, waiting for the ground to crumble.She pressed
Chapter 37 - Lost Footage
The old AV room smelled like burnt dust and stale air. Siya stood with her arms crossed, watching the projector stutter to life. The machine looked ancient, a relic from the era when everything about Groote Schuur had been hush-hush behind padlocked doors and redacted folders.Marks hunched over the reels, his hands steady despite the tremor that had crept in since they’d come back from the psychiatric wing. He threaded the brittle film through the projector’s teeth, squinting in the dim light.“Tell me again why we’re digging through thirty-year-old reels,” he muttered, voice dry but tight.“Because Rautenbach’s private archive didn’t just keep written files,” Siya said, her voice low. “He logged everything and the tapes he hid weren’t just records. Some of them were experiments they didn’t want anyone to see.”She flicked the wall switch. The overhead fluorescents died with a soft snap, plunging them into shadow. The projector threw its beam onto the cracked pull-down screen, flicke
Chapter 36 - Between Frequencies
The rain hadn’t stopped by the time Siya and Marks pulled back into the Groote Schuur staff lot. The storm washed the world in cold neon. Every streetlight haloed in the downpour. Somewhere high in the wards above them, an emergency siren warbled on and off, but down here, the annex waited quiet as a grave.Siya stepped out into ankle-deep water. She could feel the vibration under her boots, the hum that hadn’t left her since they’d heard the boy at the Listening Post. The same note. The same spiral in her head. She wondered if it would ever stop.Marks fell into step beside her, shotgun hidden under his coat, shoulders hunched against the wind. Neither of them spoke. They didn’t need to. The truth sat between them like a living thing: the hospital wasn’t just infected by the Spiral, it was the Spiral and Asanda’s voice was its pulse.They slipped through a side entrance near the old psychiatric wing, dark now, flooded in parts from the broken windows and leaky pipes. Each footstep ec
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