The air changed the moment the door sealed behind them.
It wasn't just the temperature—it was the pressure. Heavy, thick, almost gelatinous. Like they'd stepped into the lungs of a machine that hadn't drawn breath in decades. The hallway ahead stretched into darkness, and yet it wasn't silent. There was a hum beneath everything, low and rhythmic, like a heartbeat that had kept time long after the world stopped listening.
Theo flicked his lens to scan mode. Threadlines danced across the walls—denser here, interwoven like the bark of ancient trees, layered with old command glyphs and encrypted data loops.
"This place isn't just buried," he said quietly. "It's masked. Layered in memory shielding. That's why no one found it."
Ayen moved carefully beside him, her eyes sharp, one hand on her phase-blade. "And they sealed it from the inside. You can see it—look." She pointed to a rusted lock system on the inner wall, half-melted and overwritten with thick weld lines. "Someone didn't want this place reopened."
Theo crouched, brushing dust from the symbols. "Or didn't want something getting out."
They moved deeper into the lab.
The corridor eventually opened into a small atrium—round, with glass windows long since cracked and clouded by condensation. Terminals lined the walls. Many were dead. One blinked faintly.
Theo crossed to it and tapped the screen. Static. Then a prompt:
:: VERIFY IDENTITY :: ORIGIN CLEARANCE ONLY ::
He paused. Then reached into his coat, pulling out the spiral-marked cloth again.
"You kept that?" Ayen asked.
"I didn't just keep it," Theo said, placing the cloth against the scanner. "I never stopped being one of them."
The screen blinked. Then—
ID VERIFIEDACCESS GRANTED
Lights flickered on. Weak. Hesitant. But they worked. Overhead, faded signage came into view:
PROJECT ORIGIN — TIER ZERO SECTOR
Ayen whistled low. "Well. You weren't lying."
"I wish I was," Theo muttered. "This was supposed to be shut down after the core project moved. But Tier Zero… this was before the ethics council. Before containment protocols. It's raw."
He moved toward a nearby terminal and connected his thread lens.
The data flowed, slowly at first—then violently. Images slammed into his head: schematics, formulae, logs tagged with red warnings.
One name repeated over and over.
Dr. Isla Korr.
"The woman I saw in the orb," he whispered. "She wasn't just a researcher. She led Tier Zero."
Ayen leaned over his shoulder, reading. "Says here she submitted a delay protocol—something about temporal resistance anomalies."
Theo's eyes widened. "She knew. She knew time wouldn't behave. She tried to pause the experiment and they overrode her."
He flipped to the next log.
:: DAY -12We've gone too far. The core vibrates even when powered down. The others think it's residual memory—but memory doesn't thrum in rhythm. Memory doesn't watch you.
Ayen swallowed. "She was scared."
Theo nodded. "And right to be."
Another flicker in the data. A corrupted video file. He accessed it.
The feed stuttered to life.
Dr. Korr sat in a control room, eyes red from sleepless nights. Behind her, alarms blinked red.
"If anyone finds this—if any of you survived—we tried to control it. But time… time isn't a tool. It's not even a force. It's a response."
A shudder ran through the camera. Korr gripped the desk.
"I see it now. The threads remember everything. Every lie. Every attempt to rewrite. They retaliate not because we broke laws… but because we forgot what we broke."
The video ended in static.
Theo sat back, hollow.
"This isn't just about saving the world," he said. "It's about undoing a crime so old no one remembers committing it."
Ayen's voice was quiet. "What now?"
He turned toward the far end of the room, where a sealed elevator shaft stood beneath a sign marked "Primary Core Lab."
"We go deeper."
He stepped toward the lift. It groaned open, barely functional, dust pouring from the corners like smoke from a tired beast.
As they stepped inside, Ayen looked at him.
"You still believe you can fix it?"
He hesitated. "No. But I think I can understand it. And that's the first step toward forgiveness."
The doors slid shut.
And together, they began the descent into the place where time first learned to scream.