The feedback loop was no longer an idea. It was a physical thing, a circuit of power running from the machine, through him, and back again. The Oscillator’s steady hum climbed into a high, piercing shriek, a sound that vibrated in Sineus’s bones. The pale blue light of the core turned a bruised, sickly violet, pulsing faster and faster. The entire system was in revolt, force-fed a diet of truth it was designed to erase. System integrity was dropping, a catastrophic energy spike blooming from the core.
The shriek tore itself into a soundless roar. Reality in the center of the chamber gave way. A vortex of raw memory erupted from the Oscillator’s core, not a hole but a storm. It was a whirlwind of screaming, violet-black chaos, spitting out fragments of forgotten lives. The air grew impossibly cold, smelling of ozone and the dust of ages. The integrity of the chamber was failing.
One of the technicians, a young man with glasses, was too close. He screamed as the edge of the vortex touched him. He did not fly apart. He unraveled. His grey uniform dissolved into threads of light, his skin flaked away into motes of dust, his scream cut short as his entire existence was consumed. Seven others followed, their bodies turning to phantom static and then to nothing. Eight men, erased in three seconds.
On the floor, General Ivan Volkov looked up. The madness in his eyes was replaced by a moment of terrible, final clarity. He saw the storm of his own making. He saw the faces of the starved, the purged, the forgotten, swirling in the violet dark.
— So… this is the cost, — he whispered.
The vortex pulled him from the floor. He did not fight. He rose into the air, his body becoming translucent, a ghost consumed by other ghosts. He was unwritten, his memory devoured by the very oblivion he had sought to master. He vanished.
A single, sharp clink echoed on the steel deck as his heavy obsidian ring, the Volkov Ring, clattered to the floor. It was the only thing left.
The pull of the vortex found Sineus. It was a physical force, a psychic hook tearing at his mind. He felt the memories of the eight dead technicians, the terror of Volkov’s final moment, the hunger of the Plague itself. It wanted him. He was a feast.
He slammed his mental shield into place. The technique Sokolov had taught him. He anchored his mind to his Tokarev pistol. Its simple, physical memory. The worn wood of the grip. The cold weight of the steel. The clean, mechanical click of the slide. The shield formed, a thin, wavering barrier against the storm. It held at thirty percent, cracking under the strain.
He had to move.
Sineus ripped his hands from the Oscillator’s surface, severing the connection. The feedback loop snapped. The pain was immense, like tearing off a limb. He staggered, his vision swimming. The machine’s overload was now irreversible. It would tear itself apart.
He forced his legs to move, stumbling toward the command chair. Sokolov was still strapped in, a puppet with its strings cut. Sineus fumbled with the buckles, his fingers numb. He tore the helmet from the physicist’s head, the cables ripping free with a shower of sparks. Sokolov’s head lolled to the side. He was a dead weight.
— Wake up, Doctor, — Sineus grunted, hauling the man from the chair. — The work is not done.
He slung Sokolov’s arm over his shoulder and began to drag him toward the exit. The platform shuddered violently. A section of the upper catwalk tore loose, crashing to the floor in a spray of sparks and twisted metal. Concrete dust rained from the ceiling.
He passed a bank of shattered monitor screens. In a shard of dark glass, he saw his own reflection. It was still fractured, but the pieces were sharp, illuminated by the pulsing violet light of the vortex. The face of a man broken into a new and terrible shape, but whole.
He reached the corridor. The entire mountain was groaning now, a deep, structural agony. The chamber behind them was imploding, the roar of the vortex replaced by the shriek of tortured steel and the crash of collapsing concrete. He pulled Sokolov into the relative darkness of the service tunnel just as the entrance buckled and caved in, sealing them off.
The roar of the collapse faded, replaced by a ringing in his ears.
Dust motes danced in the narrow beam of his flashlight.
Now they had to escape the tomb.
