The silence in Jax's apartment after Thorne left was heavier than any Maya had ever known. It was the silence of a bomb that had already gone off, leaving their eardrums ruptured and the world irrevocably changed. The air itself felt used, contaminated by his calm, poisonous certainty.
Jax was the first to break as always. He slammed his fist down on a stack of computer manuals, sending them cascading to the floor. "Clean energy?" he snarled, his voice cracking. "He thinks he can bribe me with that? Who the hell does he think I am?"
But his eyes, wide and darting, betrayed him. Maya could see the gears turning. The technologist in him was captivated by the puzzle, the sheer scale of the potential. Thorne had planted a seed, and it was already putting down roots in the fertile soil of Jax's curiosity.
"He thinks you're a person who solves problems," Leo said quietly. He hadn't moved from his spot by the wall. His arms were still crossed, but it looked like a defensive gesture now, not a confident one. "And he presented you with the biggest one imaginable."
"He threatened to dissect me," Chloe whispered from the corner where she'd curled into a ball on the floor. She was rocking slightly, her arms wrapped around her shins.
"He said 'invasive.' He looked at me like... like I was a specimen." A sob hitched in her chest. "We can't stay here. We have to run. We have to go now."
"And go where, Chloe?" Leo's voice was strained, his logic a fraying rope. "They found us here. In a locked apartment. They knew we'd be here. They're not just watching; they're orchestrating. Running is what he expects us to do. It's the irrational, emotional response. It's how he'll justify putting us in a box."
"So what's your brilliant, rational plan, Leo?" Jax shot back, rounding on him. "Wait here for him to come back? Cooperate? Help him 'communicate' with the scary rock? Did you see what it did? Did you feel it?"
"I saw a phenomenon I can't explain!" Leo's composure finally shattered, his voice rising to a shout. "And he... he showed me things. Records. Carbon dating from the site that places it well outside any human timeline. Geological surveys showing the entire bedrock beneath that block is a crystalline structure that shouldn't exist. He has proof, Jax! Proof that what we found isn't just an artifact. It's an... an impossibility. And his is the only narrative that even attempts to explain it!"
The room erupted into chaos.
"He's lying! It's fabricated!"
"Why would he fabricate it? What would be the point?"
"To control us!"
"To contain a threat! Don't you see? We're the variable he can't control!"
Maya listened to the cacophony, their voices crashing around her. Jax's frantic techno-optimism warring with his fear. Chloe's pure, animal terror. Leo's foundational worldview crumbling, leaving him desperate to cling to any structure, even one built by Thorne.
They were breaking. Thorne hadn't just questioned them; he had expertly identified the cracks in each of them and driven a wedge into every one.
She closed her eyes, blocking them out. She focused on the memory Thorne had pulled from her. The feel of the stone. Not the hum, not the light. The feeling. The profound, desolate loneliness. It wasn't the loneliness of a machine. It was the loneliness of a living thing. A creature, or a person, sealed away in the dark for eons.
'You are now connected to it.'
Thorne's words weren't just a statement. They were a diagnosis.
She opened her eyes. "We're not running."
Her voice was quiet, but it cut through the argument like a knife. They all turned to look at her.
"What?" Chloe said, her face a mask of betrayal.
"Leo's right. Running is what he expects. It makes us fugitives. It makes us guilty." She took a deep breath, the plan forming in her mind as she spoke, a desperate, reckless gamble. "And Jax is right. We can't just wait for him to come back."
"So what's the third option?" Jax asked, his anger giving way to confusion.
"We go back to the source," Maya said, her voice gaining a sliver of strength. "Not as interns. Not as victims. We go back to the door."
A stunned silence greeted her.
"Have you lost your mind?" Leo breathed. "The site is swarming with his people! It's the most heavily guarded piece of real estate in the city right now!"
"Exactly," Maya said, a strange calm settling over her. "He'll never expect it. He thinks he's intimidated us into hiding. He thinks we're broken. He's watching the airports, the bus stations, our homes. He's not watching the one place he already controls."
"Why?" Chloe asked, her voice small and terrified. "Why would we go back there?"
"Because Thorne is lying," Maya said, the certainty solidifying in her gut. "Maybe not about everything, but he's lying about what it is. He called it a weapon. An 'artifact.' But it's not. I felt it. It's... a prison. And we're the ones who cracked it open." She looked at each of them in turn.
"We're responsible. We can't just hand that responsibility over to a man who talks about 'invasive' procedures and 'containment.' We have to see it through."
"See what through, Maya?" Leo demanded, throwing his hands up. "What is the goal here?"
"I don't know!" she admitted, her own frustration boiling over. "But I know that sitting here and waiting for him to decide our futures feels wrong. I know that letting him experiment on whatever is behind that door feels wrong. We go back. We see what we're really dealing with. And then... then we decide."
It was a leap of faith. An emotional, illogical, terrifying leap. The exact opposite to everything Leo stood for.
He stared at her, his internal war visible on his face. Logic screamed at him to refuse, to call the police, to do anything but this. But Thorne had taken logic and twisted it into a weapon. The only thing left was trust.
Jax was the first to nod, a grim, determined look replacing the conflict in his eyes. The mission appealed to him. A direct, high-stakes hack on the most secure site imaginable. "He's got tech. I can work around tech. I can get us in."
Chloe looked from face to face, her terror slowly being edged out by a flicker of something else-resolve. Thorne had threatened to cut her open. The door, for all its terror, had not threatened her. It had only asked, silently, to be seen. "If it's a prison," she whispered, "then maybe someone's inside. Maybe they're scared, too."
All eyes fell on Leo. The anchor. The skeptic. He looked at Maya, and she saw the moment his decision was made. It wasn't a surrender. It was a choice. A choice to trust her feeling over Thorne's facts.
"This is insane," he said, his voice low. "It's the most irresponsible, dangerous, idiotic thing I have ever even considered."
He let out a long, slow breath.
"What do you need me to do?"
The relief that washed over Maya was so potent it made her lightheaded. They were a team again. Fractured, terrified, but united.
"Jax," she said, her voice now all business. "You have two hours. I need a way in. I need to know their patrol routes, their camera blind spots, everything."
Jax was already moving towards his computers, a fire lit behind his eyes. "On it."
"Leo, you're on research. Thorne mentioned 'Hound-Keepers.' I don't care if it's mythology. Find me everything. Every reference, every obscure footnote."
Leo gave a sharp, determined nod and pulled out his tablet, his fingers flying across the screen.
"Chloe," Maya said, her voice softening. "I need you to... listen. You said you could feel it. A current. I need you to find that current again tonight. Be our compass."
Chloe uncurled herself from the floor, wiping her tears away with a shaky hand. She nodded, her jaw set.
Maya looked at her friends, this ragtag band of interns who were about to declare war on a shadowy government agency. They were scared. They were in over their heads. But they were moving.
The point of no return wasn't when Thorne had walked in. It was this moment, right now. The moment they decided to walk right back out, and straight into the storm.