⭐ CHAPTER 14 — “THE CORRIDOR THAT SHOULD NOT EXIST”
839 Words
The fracture sealed behind them with a sound like metal compressing under impossible pressure—a deep, resonant clang that vibrated through Riven’s teeth. For a moment, he thought the memory had followed them out, but when he turned—
He froze.
This corridor was real.
Not reconstructed.
Not elastic.
Not guessing at its own shape.
The floor supported their weight with clean mechanical certainty. The air smelled of sterilized alloy. The lights flickered in a pattern too controlled to be memory-logic.
Calyx raised his wristband.
“No reading drift. No temporal instability. This place… exists.”
“Then why isn’t it on any schematic?” Riven asked.
Idris leaned against the wall, breathing hard. “Because it shouldn’t. This corridor doesn’t belong to Asterion-3.”
Riven scanned the plating. The alloy was darker, richer, with faint micro-grooves spiraling down its length. Not manufacturing defects—design language.
“Phase 2 architecture,” he whispered.
Calyx’s jaw tightened. “That program was shut down before construction.”
Riven touched the wall. “Unless someone finished it in secret.”
IDRIS BLEEDS
Idris shivered suddenly, gripping his chest.
“Something’s wrong,” he whispered. “My heartbeat… I can’t sync with this place.”
“We’re not in memory-space anymore,” Riven said. “Your connection to it is destabilizing.”
“It feels like something is still trying to finish a sentence inside my head.”
Calyx steadied him. “Stay close. No wandering.”
A soft hum filled the hall—the low vibration of a defense grid running idle. Not anomaly. Not memory.
Security.
They were in a locked part of the station.
A part meant to stay closed.
THE 00:17:43 DOOR
A door stood ahead, thicker than standard hatchwork, its frame etched with a time-stamp:
// EVENT LOCK — 00:17:43 //
Riven stepped forward. Beneath the timestamp was a biometric panel.
“Riven,” Calyx said quietly. “What if this door needs Hale?”
Riven didn’t answer.
He placed his hand on the scanner.
The panel pulsed—once, twice—then glowed green.
IDENTITY CONFIRMED: HALE
Idris inhaled sharply. “It thinks you’re him.”
Riven swallowed. “Or it can’t tell the difference.”
The door slid open.
THE PHASE 2 ROOM
The room beyond felt older than the station.
Cables webbed across the ceiling like nerves. Screens embedded in the walls flickered with dying software loops. A central console pulsed with amber light, running a log so old the text blurred at the edges.
Riven approached.
A line appeared:
LOOM PHASE 2 — PROTOTYPE MEMORY ENGINE
STATUS: FAILED / ACTIVE
Calyx exhaled. “This wasn’t abandoned. It was sealed.”
Another line scrolled:
FUNCTION: RECONSTRUCT ENVIRONMENTAL MEMORY
ERROR: HUMAN ANCHOR MISSING
Idris stepped closer, drawn as if by gravity. “It needed someone. Not data.”
Riven scanned the log.
Lines flickered, then stabilized long enough to read:
WITHOUT ANCHOR, THE SYSTEM REBUILDS MOMENTS OUT OF ORDER
WITHOUT WITNESS, THE SYSTEM CANNOT COMPLETE THE EVENT
Then the text glitched violently.
A voice overlay crackled from an ancient speaker—warped, but unmistakable.
“It won’t collapse. It adapts.”
Calyx’s head snapped toward the sound. “That’s Hale.”
Riven froze.
Another voice followed—urgent, strained.
“Close it before it stabilizes—”
Idris grabbed his temples with both hands. “Stop—stop—stop—I can hear him like he’s standing right next to me.”
His knees buckled.
Riven caught him, lowering him gently. “Idris. Listen to me. You’re not remembering. You’re being pulled.”
Idris’s voice trembled. “He’s asking me something. Asking—no, expecting—”
The console flashed:
PHASE 2 FAILURE:
HUMAN MEMORY REQUIRED FOR STABILITY
Calyx hissed a breath. “Loom didn’t fail because it malfunctioned. It failed because it needed people—and the people didn’t survive.”
Riven stared at the words, feeling something awful settle into place.
“Hale wasn’t trying to stop the anomaly,” he whispered.
“He was part of creating it.”
THE LOCKDOWN
Without warning, the lights snapped to red.
The hum deepened into a warning pulse.
Calyx checked his scanner. “Lockdown. Full Phase 2 lockdown. It thinks we’re intruders.”
Riven stepped back from the console. “We need to move. Now.”
A seam opened on the right wall, revealing a downward stairwell.
From below came a faint metallic sound—long, curved, resonant—
The sound that had haunted every fragment.
The half-ring.
But this time, it wasn’t reconstruction.
It was here.
Alive.
Moving.
Remembering.
Idris staggered to his feet. “It’s coming. It knows we’re in the place where it was born.”
Riven took his arm. “Then we go down. The origin is below.”
As they approached the stairwell, the console flickered one last message:
THE ORIGIN IS BELOW.
Then the lights cut out.
The corridor fell into darkness, broken only by the slow, deliberate inhale of something waiting in the level beneath them.
- Writer
