The lab wasn't supposed to exist.
Buried two kilometers under the Antarctic ice, beneath a fake geothermal research station called Vostok-7, it had no name on any map. No budget line. No oversight.
Only one rule: What happens here never leaves here.
And right now, Victoria was breaking it—by choice.
She stood in Chamber Nine, naked except for a mesh suit wired with biomonitors that glowed faint blue. Her breath fogged in the -30°C air, but she didn't shiver. Not anymore. Her body had stopped reacting to cold weeks ago.
On the far wall, a containment field pulsed—a swirling vortex of fractured time stolen from a temporal echo over Buenos Aires. It flickered between 1976 and 2041, screaming silently as it strained against magnetic restraints.
"That's your last chance," said Dr. Chen, voice tight through the intercom. "We don't know what this energy does at cellular level. You could unravel."
Victoria didn't turn. "I'm already unraveling, Chen. Everyone is."
