CHAPTER 7 — “The Sealed Threshold”
506 Words
The corridor leading to Sector D6 was colder than it should’ve been.
Not the sterile chill of malfunctioning vents—the cold here carried weight, a quiet density that pressed against Riven’s skin as he and Calyx approached the sealed wing. The station maps insisted the area was offline, quarantined years ago, inaccessible without Command override.
But the lights told a different story.
They flickered in a rhythm Riven recognized instantly.
Short. Long. Short.
The same cadence the terminal had flashed when the anomaly tried to speak.
Calyx slowed, eyes narrowing. “That pattern again.”
“It’s not interference,” Riven murmured. “It’s intentional.”
A security camera perched at the corner of the hall tilted downward by a few degrees—as if embarrassed to be caught watching. Its lens glimmered with a faint residue, like something warm had breathed across it.
Riven tried not to think about that.
They stopped in front of the D6 blast door.
It wasn’t pristine like the map suggested.
The metal panel bowed outward by a fraction—barely visible unless you knew how the material behaved. Heat shimmered faintly along the surface, concentrated on the lower-left corner where something heavy had pressed against it.
Calyx touched the edge.
He flinched.
“It’s warm,” he whispered.
Riven ran a scan. The handheld sensor pulsed once, then displayed:
pressure shift: +0.7
timestamp correlation: 00:17:43
Riven’s breath caught.
“It’s the same value from last night.”
Calyx exhaled slowly. “So whatever passed through C2… also pushed this door.”
“Or tried to.”
“Riven,” Calyx said. “This is a sealed sector. Nothing should be able to reach the inside.”
Riven didn’t answer right away. The door was lying, the system was lying, and somewhere inside all of that, something was telling the truth.
His handheld flashed again—this time with a brief system log overlay:
ARCHIVE ACCESSED: LOOM MODULE
Just for a heartbeat.
Then gone.
Calyx turned sharply. “You didn’t trigger that.”
“No.”
“Then who the hell is pulling old research files?”
Riven didn’t breathe. “Someone… or something… is looking for context.”
A faint vibration rippled through the blast door. Not enough to shake it—just enough to be felt through the floor.
Riven stepped back instinctively.
Calyx moved with him.
From the upper seam of the doorframe, a fine metallic particle drifted down.
Not dust.
A single flake of alloy—thin as ash—twisting gently through the still air.
There was no airflow here.
No draft.
No reason for anything to fall.
Riven’s eyes slowly rose to the top of the door.
A sound clicked inside the locking mechanism.
Not the sound of unlocking.
Not the sound of sealing.
A neutral, unnatural recognition-click—as if the door had just identified something standing in front of it.
Calyx whispered, “Riven… what did it just detect?”
Riven swallowed.
“I don’t think it detected us.”
- Writer
