The hum of Jeena's SUV was the only sound that cut through the morning haze. The world outside her windshield shimmered like static — a mirage, too stable to be natural. She had been driving for hours, tracing the encrypted coordinates that had appeared on her secure police terminal three nights ago.No sender. No trace. Just one word in the subject line: VEERT.
Her GPS kept glitching, each reroute forming the same path again, like something wanted her to keep moving forward. "Not funny," she muttered, tapping the screen. The digital map flickered — north, then blank — before redrawing a single pulsing dot. The coordinates were buried deep within what used to be an abandoned research sector thirty kilometers beyond town.The air here carried an odd pulse, a kind of weight. She couldn't shake the sense that she was driving into a heartbeat.
Her phone rang."Detective Jeena? This is Dispatch. Your signal's spiking — you sure you're not in a dead zone?""I'm fine," she said, though her voice was tight. "Keep this line open."
The dispatcher's voice cracked. "You're… breaking… can't—"Then nothing. A shriek of static swallowed the rest.
Jeena exhaled slowly. "Right. That's new."
She parked by a derelict checkpoint. The signage was long faded, but she could still make out the last three letters –RT E. The other letters were erased by weather and time.She lifted her scanner — the same model she used to track forensics signals — and pointed it at the air. The readings danced violently. Frequencies spiking, converging, then flattening, as though the environment was breathing back.Jeena frowned. "Point Veert," she said softly, almost to herself. "What the hell are you?"
The soil around her boots vibrated faintly, and the sound that came from beneath wasn't wind. It was layered — faint whispers of something trying to mimic speech, a ripple that resonated deep in her sternum. She took a step back, adjusting her holster. "If someone's out there," she called, "you've got about five seconds to step into the light."
No one came. Only the low, oscillating hum.
She pressed her comm again. "Base, it's Jeena. I've reached the coordinates, but something's—"
The line hissed. A garbled male voice cut through — not dispatch. "Detective Jeena Patel… your persistence is noted."
She froze."Who is this?""Not who," the voice said, the distortion deepening, almost organic. "Where. You are within resonance. You've already arrived."
Then silence. No echo, no static — just air.
Jeena's eyes darted to her scanner. Every frequency had flatlined. She looked around — the trees had gone unnaturally still. Even the insects had stopped.
A faint metallic chime rang out, like something striking steel beneath the earth.
Her flashlight beam trembled as she followed the sound toward a small, circular patch of ground where the dirt looked… smooth. Artificial. Kneeling, she brushed the surface — and the soil caved slightly, revealing a black glass-like layer beneath, pulsing with a dim amber light.
"What did they build here?" she whispered.
A sudden vibration surged through the glass. Her scanner rebooted on its own, scrolling a message across its cracked screen:
RESONANCE FIELD: ACTIVEENTRY THRESHOLD BREACHED
And then her body went weightless.
The world folded in — not blackness, but density. A moment stretched into minutes as she felt her thoughts stretch thin, like static overlaid with memory. The faces of Ethan and Seth flashed in her mind — not as recollections, but as coordinates.Then the light snapped off, and Jeena's SUV dashboard flickered miles away, engine still idling, the driver's seat empty.
Only the faint echo of her radio repeated her last words, looping through static:
"—I've reached the coordinates, but something's—"
Then silence.
Point Veert had claimed another frequency.