Three minutes had already become two.
Jessica stood in the center of the underground control room,
staring at the monitors as the countdown numbers continued to
fall.
02:14
02:13
02:12
The glowing device in her hand vibrated steadily now, the etched
symbols across its surface shifting faster than before. The light
had intensified so much that the blue glow reflected across the
walls of the chamber.
It felt almost alive.
Across the room, Dr. Adrian Kessler paced slowly in front of the
monitors.
His earlier confidence had faded into something far more serious.
Calculation.
Strategy.
Panic carefully hidden beneath discipline.
Jessica watched him.
"You knew the system communicated with something out there,"
she said.
Kessler didn't deny it.
"We suspected," he corrected
