The air inside the containment chamber didn't just hum; it throbbed with a low-frequency vibration that rattled the marrow in Thomas Briggs' teeth. The Aurora Engine, a massive, spire-like construct of brass housing and pulsing conduits, was no longer merely "running." It was waking up.
The frequency was climbing. It wasn't just a number on a dial anymore; it was a physical weight, a localized gravity that made every breath feel like pulling silt through a straw. Sheriff Briggs, a man whose patience for "science-fiction bullshit" had expired twenty years ago, squinted through the haze of ionized air at the main console.
The terminal flickered, a stark white screen bleeding through the static of the room's electromagnetic interference. The text was sharp, clinical, and terrifying:
AURORA ENGINE: STANDBY SYSTEM INTEGRITY: 45% WARNING: COHERENCE DRIFT DETECTED SIGNAL DETECTED: SOURCE UNKNOWN
Briggs wiped a bead of greasy sweat from his forehead. He wasn't a man of letters, but he knew what "Warning" meant. He fumbled for the radio on his belt, his fingers clumsy in the intensifying heat.
"Harris! Get your ass in here! Now!"
Moments later, Officer Harris burst through the heavy lead-lined doors. He stopped dead, his knees buckling slightly as the atmospheric pressure hit him. The air was thick with the scent of ozone and scorching copper.
"Briggs?" Harris choked out, his hand flying to his throat as if to keep his windpipe from collapsing. "What the hell is this? The whole building is shaking."
"The frequency," Briggs growled, pointing a thick finger at the monitor. "Look at the damn screen. It's climbing."
As they watched, the digits flickered. 56%. The sound in the room shifted from a low growl to a piercing whine, a pitch so high it felt like a needle being driven into their ear canals. Harris clutched his head, his face contorting in pain. "What do you need me to do? We need to shut it down!"
"Shut it down? I don't even know where the 'off' switch is on this godforsaken toaster," Briggs barked. He turned his gaze toward the reinforced glass of the observation deck. "I want Oreson Blinkon. He might know how to operate and stop this and explain what is happening. He's standing outside the lab acting like he's waiting for a bus. Get him in here. Drag him if you have to."
Harris didn't argue. He turned and sprinted back toward the exit, his boots echoing against the metal floorboards that were now vibrating so violently they seemed to blur.
Inside the belly of the beast, Briggs and Collin—the scientist who looked like he was about to vomit—clutched the edge of the control desk. The temperature was skyrocketing. The Aurora Engine was a heat sink, and with the lab's cooling systems failing to keep pace, the air was turning into a kiln. There were no air conditioners, no vents powerful enough to combat the thermal output of a machine attempting to pierce the veil of reality.
The door hissed open again. Harris returned, practically shoving Professor Oreson Blinkon into the chaos. The scientist looked disheveled, his eyes wide with a mixture of academic wonder and primal terror.
"What is happening, Sheriff?" Oreson shouted over the roar.
Briggs lunged forward, grabbing the scientist by the lapels of his white lab coat. "How the fuck should I know? You're the one with the PhD! I'm just a sheriff who's supposed to keep people from speeding or stealing chickens! Look at the machine and tell me why is it moving like crazy. Do you care to explain what was happening?!"
Oreson stumbled toward the console, his fingers flying over the keys despite the tremors. He stared at the integrity reading. 69%.
"Talk to me, Blinkon!" Briggs roared, his fury fueled by the mounting pressure in his skull. "Is it supposed to be doing this?"
"Wait... just wait a second," Oreson muttered, his eyes darting across the data streams. "The coherence... it's not drifting. It's being pulled. Something is... anchoring onto us."
"Don't tell me to wait!" Briggs slammed his fist onto the console, narrowingly missing a delicate sensor. "Tell me what the fuck is happening before we all turn into atoms!"
Oreson snapped. He turned on Briggs, his face flushed a deep, angry red. "What the fuck do you think I'm doing? I'm trying to figure it out! This is uncharted territory! We are listening to the heartbeat of the universe, and right now, the universe is screaming!"
The argument was cut short by a sound that silenced the roar of the engines. It came from the sound radiator—a massive, dish-like speaker array designed to translate frequency into audible waves.
Buzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.
It was a mechanical drone at first, an electric hornet's nest. But as the frequency graph on the secondary monitor began to shift from a jagged mountain range into a sharp, upward spike, the sound changed. It began to modulate. It began to take on the cadence of breath.
"Someone is talking," Collin whispered, his voice trembling.
"Don't be ridiculous," Oreson said, though he didn't look convinced. "It's just harmonic resonance."
"It's not resonance," Briggs said, his instincts as a lawman overriding his confusion. "That's a voice. It's a rhythmic pattern. If you don't understand what it's saying, why don't you fuckin' record it?"
Oreson and Collin looked at each other for a heartbeat before realization set in. Both men reached into their coat pockets, pulling out digital field recorders. They held them toward the radiator, their hands shaking as the machine reached 92% integrity.
The room began to heave. The concrete floor cracked, a spiderweb of fissures radiating out from the Aurora Engine's base. Light, blinding and violet, began to bleed from the seams of the machine.
99%.
The sound radiator let out one final, crystal-clear burst of audio. The buzz vanished, replaced by a voice that sounded both ancient and infinitely far away. It wasn't a shout; it was a desperate, melodic warning that vibrated in their very bones.
"Be... careful."
The word had barely finished echoing when the counter hit 100%.
The world turned white. The Aurora Engine didn't just break; it detonated in a symphony of shrapnel and blue fire. The frequency chart machine imploded, its glass screen turning into a cloud of lethal dust. The radiator melted into a puddle of slag.
"Out! Get out!" Briggs screamed, grabbing Oreson by the collar and Harris by the belt.
They scrambled for the exit as secondary explosions ripped through the lab's infrastructure. Fire erupted from the overhead conduits, raining liquid flame down onto the workstations. They hit the heavy doors and tumbled out into the cool evening air of the parking lot just as the lab's windows blew outward, casting a hellish orange glow over the Redwood Town outskirts.
Oreson collapsed onto the gravel, coughing violently. Harris caught him, holding the scientist upright as they watched the black smoke billow into the twilight sky.
Harris looked at Briggs, his face covered in soot. "Hey... Buddy. What the hell just happened in there?"
Briggs stood with his hands on his knees, gasping for air. "How the fuck should I know? First of all... did you call the fire department?"
"They're on their way," Harris nodded, his voice shaky.
Briggs turned his attention to the two scientists. Oreson and Collin were huddled together, clutching their recorders as if they were holy relics. The Sheriff's eyes narrowed. He knew the look of men holding something they shouldn't.
"You two," Briggs growled, stepping toward them. "I want one of those recorders. Now."
Oreson clutched the device tighter to his chest. "No. This is proprietary data. This is... this is a scientific breakthrough. We can't just hand it over to the local police."
Briggs took a slow, menacing step forward. "Listen to me, you lab-coat-wearing prick. My superior officer is on his way. He's been looking for an excuse to shut this 'shed' down for months. He thinks you're wasting tax dollars. I need evidence to show him that something actually happened here, or I'm the one who takes the fall for a multi-million dollar fire."
"We can't," Collin stammered. "It's... it's too important."
Briggs leaned in, his voice dropping to a dangerous, gravelly whisper. "If you don't give me that recorder, I'm going to tell every reporter in this county that you were running an illegal operation. I'll tell them you were the ones who killed Dr. Reeves. I'll make sure the world thinks you burned this place down to cover up a murder."
Oreson's face went pale. "You can't prove that. You have no proof it was us."
Briggs let out a harsh, dry laugh. "No proof? Oreson, look at yourself. You're missing your coat. You lost your gloves in the fire. And those fancy contact lenses you wear to look like you don't need glasses? I saw one of them melt right off your eye. Once the fire department cools that hellhole down, I'm going to 'find' your belongings in a half-burned state right next to the fuel lines. I'll say you started the fire to burn the evidence of your malpractice."
He stepped closer, his shadow looming over the terrified scientist. "You'll go to jail. The court will strip your licenses. You'll be lucky if you can get a job cleaning toilets in a bus station. So, unless you want your career to end in a prison cell... give me the fucking recorder."
With a trembling hand, Oreson reached out and handed the small black device to Briggs.
"Wise choice," Briggs muttered, tucking it into his pocket just as the sirens began to wail in the distance.
"Get out of here," Briggs commanded. "Both of you. Take the other recorder and vanish before the brass gets here. I'll handle the narrative."
The scientists didn't need to be told twice. They vanished into the shadows of the surrounding woods just as a black sedan pulled into the lot, kicking up a cloud of dust.
Out of the car stepped Freddy Alliston, Briggs' superior officer. Freddy was a man who looked like he had been poured into a suit that was one size too small. He had thinning blonde hair, a slight mustache that looked like a smear of dirt, and a soft, slightly overweight frame that mirrored Briggs' own—though Freddy lacked the Sheriff's hardened edge.
Freddy looked at the burning ruins of the lab, his face a mask of bureaucratic annoyance. "Did you find anything, Thomas?"
Briggs shook his head, his expression carefully neutral. "When we got inside, the machine just... turned itself on. Some kind of catastrophic feedback loop. We tried to see what the readings were, but the whole thing blasted apart. We barely made it out."
Freddy sighed, rubbing the bridge of his nose. "Typical. A million dollars of government funding literally up in smoke. Fine. You're dismissed, Briggs. I'll have the fire marshals take it from here. Go home."
"You sure you don't need help, Freddy?" Briggs asked, already turning toward his truck.
"No. Just go. I've got enough paperwork to drown a horse as it is."
The drive back to the edge of Redwood Town was a blur. The town was quiet, the ancient trees casting long, skeletal shadows over the road. Briggs pulled his truck into his driveway, the gravel crunching under his tires.
He was exhausted in a way that sleep wouldn't fix. He walked into his kitchen and prepared the only thing that made sense after a day of cosmic anomalies and blackmail: dinner. He fried a piece of chicken until the skin was crisp, boiled some potatoes until they were soft enough to smash with a fork, and scrambled three eggs. He sat at his small wooden table with a plate of food and a cold beer, the condensation on the bottle the only thing that felt real.
He ate in silence, the taste of the grease and the chill of the beer grounding him. But as he finished his meal and washed the grease from his hands, the silence of the house began to feel heavy.
He went to his bedroom and sat on the edge of the mattress. He reached into his pocket and pulled out the recorder.
He didn't play it. Not yet.
He crawled under the covers, the weight of the day finally crushing him into a fitful sleep. But the sleep wasn't a refuge. In the darkness of his mind, he was back in the lab. He felt the heat. He saw the violet light. And then, he heard the voice.
It wasn't a buzz anymore. It was clear. It was personal.
"Be... careful."
Briggs bolted upright, his heart hammering against his ribs like a trapped bird. Cold sweat soaked his sheets. The room was dark, save for the pale moonlight filtering through the blinds.
He looked at the nightstand. There, sitting beside his lamp, was the recorder.
He reached out, his hand trembling, and pressed the play button.