Elena POV
The sphere didn't explode as we expected; rather, it enclosed like it had just inhaled.
I felt the room lose its air, as if something had opened a mouth beneath the floor and swallowed it whole. The darkness pressed against my skin, thick as velvet, the taste of metal prickling on my tongue.
My ears popped. Adrian's hand found mine in the pitch-black, his fingers cold and a little damp before the emergency lights caught up.
"Elena"
"I'm here." My voice didn't sound like mine.
Then it hit me. Voices, voices as memories, hundreds of them—wrenched from the sphere itself—flooded through me. They were not just echoes: these were the memories and pain of every person the reservoir had ever claimed, unleashed into my mind all at once, screaming through my skull like a door had been kicked open on a room I never agreed to enter.
