The silence wasn't a surprise. Victor had felt it coming the moment the hum died.
It wasn't a fade. It was a guillotine chop. One second, the manor was vibrating with the reassuring, low-frequency thrum of the cryo-vault in the basement; the next, it was dead. The air grew instantly heavy, as if the gravity generator had just been switched off.
Victor stood on the porch, the slice of cold pizza forgotten in his hand. He didn't bite. He couldn't. He knew what that silence meant.
"The insulation," he whispered to the empty air. "Please let the insulation hold."
From the depths of the manor—specifically, from the reinforced, lead-lined sanctuary of the basement—a sound rose. It wasn't a scream. A scream implies fear. This was a frequency usually reserved for tectonic plates shifting befor
