CHAPTER 8. ENTERING THE UNKNOWN
The old wood shed where Alex’s grandfather—Frank—once kept his madcap inventions had finally collapsed into the ground and into the past. Cracks in the walls, piles of scrap metal, and faded books had all seemed like a chaotic hoard of paranoia not long ago. But now Alex understood that much of what his grandfather had described was terrifyingly real.
He was seated at a half-rotten workbench, poring over notebooks filled with formulas and diagrams. Frank had been convinced that the “System” wasn’t just a conglomerate of corporations or a shadow government, but something global, invisibly corralling humanity into a “pen.” All so that people would never discover the greatest secret: the coordinates of a portal hidden deep in Antarctica, where no ordinary per
