The walk back to Jax's car was a funeral procession. The three of them moved in a shell-shocked silence, each lost in the echo of Thorne's calm, terrifying voice. The city, which usually felt so alive, now seemed like a painted backdrop, its sounds flat and meaningless.
Jax fumbled with his keys, his hands shaking so badly he dropped them twice. The metallic clatter on the asphalt was jarringly loud. "National security?" he finally burst out, his voice cracking. "What does that even mean? What did we do?"
"We touched something we shouldn't have," Chloe murmured, sliding into the passenger seat and pulling her knees to her chest. She was staring blankly ahead. "I told you. It was a membrane. We poked a hole in it."
"It's a rock, Chloe! A weird, warm, glowy rock that maybe emits some kind of radiation, but it's still a rock!" Jax's protest was desperate, an attempt to claw back a reality that was rapidly disintegrating.
Maya got in the back, the worn upholstery cold through her jeans. She leaned her head against the window, watching the dark buildings slide by. "He knew Leo's name," she said quietly. "He knew what we study. He called it an 'artifact.' He's not some random government spook. He's... a specialist."
"A specialist in what?" Jax demanded, pulling jerkily away from the curb. "Glowing rocks?"
"In things that shouldn't exist," Chloe answered, her voice hollow.
They drove to Maya's apartment first, the silence thick and suffocating. No one suggested a debrief. No one suggested they talk about what to do next. The unspoken agreement was to retreat, to hide, to process the impossible.
"What do we tell Leo?" Jax asked as Maya opened her car door.
The question hung in the air. Leo, who had warned them. Leo, who had been right.
"We tell him the truth," Maya said, her voice heavy with exhaustion. "And we pray he has an answer that doesn't make me want to throw up."
She climbed out, the night air feeling thin and insubstantial. "Be careful going home."
Jax just nodded, his face pale in the dashboard glow. Chloe didn't look at her at all.
Up in her apartment, the silence was a physical weight. She locked the door, bolted it, and leaned against it, her heart still hammering. The shower she'd taken earlier felt like it had happened in another lifetime. She was still covered in a fine layer of grit and fear.
She went to the sink and splashed cold water on her face, the shock of it a brief, sharp anchor. She looked at her reflection in the mirror. Her eyes were wide, the pupils dilated. She looked like a stranger, a fugitive.
Material witnesses. Tier-One security event.
The bureaucratic coldness of the terms was more frightening than if he'd outright threatened them. It meant they were part of a system now, a system with its own rules and definitions, and they had no lawyer, no rights, no recourse.
Her landline phone, a relic she kept for emergencies, rang, shrill and startling in the quiet.
She stared at it, her blood running cold. They. They already knew her home number. Of course they did. They knew everything.
It rang again, insistent.
Swallowing hard, she picked it up. "Hello?" Her voice was a croak.
"Maya? It's Leo." His voice was tight, strained. "Are you okay? I've been calling your cell for an hour."
A wave of relief so potent it made her knees weak washed over her. "Leo. Yeah. I'm... I'm home. My phone's... dead." The lie tasted bitter.
"What happened? I saw the news. The tremor was right at the site. Then you guys just vanished from the chat. I was... worried."
He was worried. He'd been sitting in his neat, logical apartment, watching the news and worrying, while they were being branded national security threats by a man in a suit.
"We went back," she said, the confession feeling like a stone dropping into a well.
There was a long, heavy silence on the other end of the line. She could almost hear his disapproval, his disappointment. "Maya..."
"It's worse than you think, Leo. So much worse." The words started to tumble out, a frantic, hushed torrent. She told him about the warm slab, the glowing symbols, the three-headed hound, the crack. She told him about the black uniforms, the agents, the lights. She told him about Dr. Aris Thorne.
"He knew your name, Leo," she finished, her voice trembling. "He called you 'the logician.' He has files on us. Pandora Division. He said it's a national security event. They took our phones."
The silence from Leo's end was now profound. It wasn't disapproving. It was stunned.
"Leo? Are you there?"
"Pandora Division," he repeated slowly, as if tasting the words. "I... I've heard that name."
"What? Where?"
"Declassified files. From the Cold War. Unexplained phenomena stuff. It was always dismissed as conspiracy theory. Folklore for paranoid historians." He paused. "They're real."
"They're very real. And they have our site. They have... the door."
"A door," Leo echoed, his logical mind grappling with the concept. "To what?"
"I don't know. But Thorne... he's not an archaeologist. He's a... a collector. And he looked at us like we were just another piece of the puzzle." She took a shaky breath. "What do we do?"
Another long pause. She could hear him thinking, his mind whirring through possibilities, probabilities, risk assessments. "The Professor," he said finally. "We have to tell Professor Evans. First thing in the morning. He has contacts at the city, at the museum. He can... he can vouch for us. Get this straightened out. It's the only logical path."
The logical path. It sounded so sane, so reasonable. A lifeline back to the world of rules and protocols.
"Okay," Maya whispered, clinging to it. "Okay. First thing in the morning."
She hung up, the dial tone buzzing in her ear. She felt marginally better. They had a plan. A sane, logical plan. They would tell the Professor, and the Professor, with his tweed jackets and his kind eyes and his decades of respectability, would fix this.
She managed to fall into a fitful sleep, her dreams haunted by silent, black-clad figures and a stone door that pulsed like a living heart.
-----------------------------
The morning sun felt like an accusation. It was too bright, too normal. People were heading to work, buying coffee, living their lives. Maya met Leo outside the Anthropology department building. He looked like he hadn't slept at all. His clothes were rumpled, his eyes shadowed.
"Jax and Chloe?" he asked, his voice rough.
"I called them. They're meeting us here. They're... scared."
"They should be," Leo said grimly. "The more I think about this, the less any of it makes sense."
Jax and Chloe arrived together, both looking pale and brittle. Chloe flinched at the sound of a slamming car door. Jax kept scanning the street, his hands shoved deep in his pockets.
"Let's just get this over with," Jax muttered.
They walked into the familiar building, the scent of old books and floor wax usually a comfort. Today, it felt like a tomb. They climbed the stairs to Professor Evans's office. His door was open.
And that's when the first cold trickle of dread seeped back into Maya's veins.
The office was a wreck. Not ransacked, but... emptied. The bookshelves, usually overflowing, were bare. Boxes were stacked haphazardly, filled with files and artifacts. Professor Evans, a man who was usually the picture of rumpled academic charm, stood in the middle of the chaos, his face ashen. He was being watched by two men in crisp, familiar black suits.
"Professor?" Maya said, her voice small.
He looked up, and the expression in his eyes made her blood run cold. It wasn't just fear. It was a deep, profound horror. He looked at them as if they were ghosts.
"Maya. Leo," he said, his voice a dry rustle. "You shouldn't be here."
One of the suits, a man with a jawline that could cut glass, turned towards them. "Can I help you?"
"We're... we're his students," Leo said, his confidence faltering. "We have a meeting."
"The Professor is unavailable," the man said, his tone leaving no room for argument. "He is assisting with a federal inquiry. Indefinitely."
"An inquiry into what?" Maya demanded, stepping forward.
The suit's eyes, cold and impersonal, scanned over their little group. He didn't answer. Instead, he looked back at Professor Evans. "Is there anything else, Professor? Any other... unauthorized personnel we should be aware of?"
Professor Evans's gaze flickered over them, and for a heart-stopping second, it held a desperate, silent warning. Then, it shut down completely, becoming a flat, empty mask.
"No," he said, his voice utterly devoid of emotion. "No one. They're just students. They know nothing."
He turned his back on them, picking up a box as if they were already gone.
The second suit gestured towards the door. "You heard him. The department is closed for the day. You need to leave."
They were herded out, back into the hallway. The office door closed behind them with a soft, final click.
They stood there, frozen, in the silent, empty corridor.
Jax was the first to break. "He sold us out. He just... he threw us to the wolves."
"No," Leo whispered, his face a mask of stunned disbelief. "He was protecting us."
Maya looked at the closed door, at the place where their last tether to safety had just been severed. The Professor's silence wasn't a betrayal. It was a message. A scream muffled by sheer terror.
They knew nothing.
It was the only shield he could give them.
And as they stood there, utterly alone, Maya understood the true depth of the hole they were in. There was no one left to tell. No one who could help.
They were on their own.