4:30 PM
Downtown Antofagasta Streets
The walk home clawed at Elias's edges, the city unspooling into frayed threads under a sky bruised orange by dust and dying light.
Buses had ground to halt—anomaly protocols, the feeds droned—leaving streets choked with pedestrians shuffling like data packets in a jammed queue.
Antofagasta's pulse throbbed erratic: horns blaring from gridlocked autos, vendors hawking water at triple markups, their calls edged with desperation.
Military trucks squatted at intersections, olive-drab hulks with soldiers in mirrored visors scanning the crowd—boots scuffing pavement, rifles slung low but ready.
Routine lockdown, a grizzled sergeant barked to a knot of protesters, but his eyes betrayed the lie, flicking to the horizon where the array's dishes lurked invisible.
Elias wove through it, pack thumping against his back, the air thick with exhaust and fear-sweat.
Eyes tracked him—a woman clutching her toddler's hand, whispering mira, el chico de las estrellas; an old man on a bench, newspaper crumpled, staring like Elias carried the plague.
Whispers slithered: That's Orion Vale's kin. He knows.
A drone hummed overhead, red eye winking, logging faces in its cold ledger.
Elias kept his head down, boots kicking grit, the harbor's salt sting mixing with the metallic bite of tension.
His phone stayed dark—silenced, ignored—but the weight of those calls pressed like a bruise.
The apartment block loomed at journey's end: a sagging concrete hive in the downtown sprawl, balconies festooned with drying laundry like tattered flags.
Orion's money kept the rent paid, but the place screamed neglect—flickering hall bulbs, walls scarred by old floods.
Elias climbed the stairs, three flights of echoing steel, past doors where families huddled, voices murmuring prayers or arguments.
Mrs. Torres on the second landing cracked her door, peering out with rheumy eyes.
"Eli? Cuidado, mijo. The skies... they're angry."
He nodded once, tight, and pushed on, the stairwell's shadows lengthening like fingers.
His door—number 407, paint chipped to bone—waited ajar.
Elias froze, hand hovering on the knob, heart kicking once, hard.
He always locked it; habit from nights when the building shook with quakes or worse.
The gap yawned black, exhaling stale air laced with... what? Machine oil? Sweat?
He nudged it open with his foot, hinges creaking like a warning.
The apartment unfolded small and stark: a single room with a fold-out bed shoved against one wall, kitchenette opposite, scarred table between.
Posters of nebulae peeled from the plaster, a mini-fridge humming faint defiance.
Light slanted through slatted blinds, striping the floor in gold and gloom.
And there, at the table, a stranger slumped—head bowed in hands, shoulders heaving in silent rhythm.
Young, maybe twenty-five, Asian features gaunt under fluorescent pallor, clothes a ruin: ALMA tech uniform caked in red Atacama mud, patches frayed, boots tracking desert into the linoleum.
The man looked up slow, eyes hollowed by terror—pupils blown wide, whites veined red.
He clutched a steaming mug of instant coffee like a lifeline, steam curling ghostly.
"You... Elias Vale?" His voice rasped, raw as sandpaper on wire. "Orion's nephew."
Elias's back hit the doorframe, slamming it shut.
Adrenaline surged, hot and sharp.
"Who the fuck are you? How'd you get in here?"
His words came low, edged—stoic cracking at the seams.
The room shrank, walls pressing, the fridge's hum suddenly thunderous.
The man—Chen, he'd learn—pushed to his feet, chair scraping like nails on bone.
Hands trembled, knuckles white.
"Chen Wei. Night shift at the array. I was with him. When it hit."
He glanced at the window, as if shadows moved there, then back, pleading.
"Your uncle... he sent me."
Elias's laugh barked short, bitter.
"Sent you? To what, play messenger in my shithole? Where's he at? Hiding from the cameras? Orion's flair for drama—did he put you up to this?"
Chen shook his head, vehement, stepping closer.
The air between them thickened, charged like pre-storm static.
Up close, he reeked of dust and desperation, face a map of exhaustion—stubble shadowing jaw, lips cracked.
"Gone, Elias. He's gone."
The words hung, heavy as fallout.
Elias's stomach twisted.
"Gone where? Rehab? Some off-grid bolthole? Spill it—what's the play?"
"No." Chen's voice broke, a fracture running through.
He sank back, chair groaning.
"You don't get it. He's erased."
The room tilted.
Elias crossed to the table, gripping its edge, wood biting palms.
Outside, a siren wailed distant—civil defense, maybe—and the city held its breath.
Chen's eyes locked on his, twin voids brimming.
"After the signal locked in—everywhere, man. ITER spiking, DAVINCI glitching, even the damn street cams here in Anto—they swarmed the array.
Orion... he called lockdown. Full seal. Kept muttering, 'It's not in the systems. It's using them. Rewriting the bones.'
Terrified. Not like the old man rants—real fear. Said it was propagating, like a ghost in the wires."
Elias leaned in, voice dropping.
"Propagating? That's his code for hallucinating. What happened?"
Chen swallowed, throat working.
"Helicopters. Black, silent—dropped from nowhere, hour before dawn. Not Chilean birds. No rotors whine, no markings. Just... wrong.
Cut all comms in seconds. I was in the server crypt, ripping raw feeds to a shielded drive—Orion's order.
'Get it out, Chen. To Elias. The patterns matter.' We were linked, video feed. I saw it all."
He paused, breath hitching, hands weaving air like tracing ghosts.
The blinds rattled soft in a breeze, casting jittery stripes across his face.
Elias waited, pulse hammering, the apartment's confines a cage.
This is bullshit. Wake up.
"They breached control—tac team, black gear, faces masked like voids. No yells, no warnings. Just motion, fluid as code.
Orion spun to the cam—looked right at me. 'Not for them, Chen,' he said. Voice steady, but eyes... broken.
'For the pattern. Get to Eli.' Then he glanced past 'em, at the main display. The pulse—three beats, looping eternal.
And the air... fuck, Elias, the air vibrated. Not sound. Deeper. In your teeth, your skull."
Chen's voice frayed, demoing the pulse with trembling fingers: tap-tap-tap. Pause. Tap-tap-tap.
"Screen amped—louder in my head, syncing my thoughts. Feed went haywire. Your uncle... he didn't fight. Didn't run. Just faded.
Pixels eating him from the edges—skin to static, bones to snow. Soldiers froze, rifles down, staring like they'd seen God glitch out.
One breath, he was flesh. Next? Gone. Deleted. Feed died black."
Silence crashed in, thick as void.
Chen sagged, tears carving tracks in the grime on his cheeks.
He fumbled in his pocket, sliding a matte-gray drive across the table—small as a tooth, edges warm from his grip.
"Ran like hell. Only one who slipped the net. They're coming for this. For you. The patterns... he said you'd see."
Elias stared at the drive, world narrowing to its gleam.
The room spun slow—fridge hum, distant horns, his own breath ragged.
All day, the Noise he'd armored against: the stares, the whispers, the crush's fleeting warmth, friends' frantic pleas.
Denial's foundation, Orion's shadow—poof. Erased.
A sob clawed up, raw and unbidden, cracking his chest.
He snatched the drive, knuckles white, tears blurring the edges.
"No... fuck no. He can't—why? What did we do?"
Chen reached out, hesitant, hand hovering.
"I'm sorry, kid. The stars... they noticed us back."
Outside, the sun bled red into the sea, and Elias shattered—stoic shell splintering, grief flooding cold and cosmic, the first true echo of the void.