The world snapped back into a horrifying, high-definition focus. The cold mud seeped through Maya's jeans, a grounding, disgusting reality. Thorne's voice, smooth and amplified, was a drill in her ears.
"You felt him, didn't you, Maya?"
Him. Not it. Him.
The confirmation was a second, more profound shock. The loneliness, the memory of sun, the pain-it had all been from a conscious mind. A person. Trapped.
Leo was pulling her to her feet, his grip vise-like. His face was a mask of grim acceptance. Chloe had pressed herself against the earthen wall of the trench, as if trying to disappear into it. In her ear, Jax was a frantic, staticky ghost.
"-they're everywhere! I've lost all feeds! They've got a full-spectrum jammer! Maya, get out of there! Get out!"
It was too late. The agents were already descending, not with aggression, but with a chilling, professional efficiency. They moved down the ladder and into the pit, forming a loose, inescapable circle. Their weapons weren't raised, but their posture promised instant, brutal compliance.
Thorne descended last, his movements graceful and unconcerned. He brushed a speck of dirt from his sleeve as his shoes touched the soft earth at the bottom of the trench. He ignored Leo and Chloe, his entire focus on Maya.
"The emotional resonance," he mused, stepping closer.
He looked at the cracked slab with the reverence of a scientist examining a rare isotope. "A bridge I could never build. My instruments can measure the energy output, map the dimensional fluctuations... but they cannot feel. You can." His pale eyes locked onto hers. "What is his state? Is he aware? Hostile?"
Maya's mouth was dry as dust. The memory of that crushing solitude, the fragile spark of hope at her touch, rose up in her. Thorne saw this thing, this person, as a specimen. A subject.
"He's scared," she spat, the words tasting like defiance.
A flicker of impatience crossed Thorne's face. "Fear is a baseline emotional response for any cornered organism. Is he a threat?"
Before she could answer, a low, deep tone began to emanate from the slab. It was the hum, but different. It wasn't the resonant frequency of a stone. It was a voice, a groan of pain and protest that vibrated through the very earth beneath their feet. The wires and sensors attached to the slab began to spark, tiny arcs of blue electricity snapping and fizzing.
One of the agents raised his weapon. "Sir, the energy spike is off the charts. Recommend we fall back."
"Hold your position," Thorne commanded, his eyes alight with a fervent, almost greedy curiosity. "This is a stress response. We're finally seeing its defensive capabilities."
"It's not a stress response!" Chloe cried out, her voice cracking. She was staring at the slab, tears streaming down her face. "You're hurting him! The metal... the probes... it's like needles in his skin! He's pushing back!"
The hum intensified, rising in pitch and volume until it was a physical pressure in the air, a shrieking wail of agony and rage. The crack in the slab began to glow with a fierce, blinding white light.
"Fall back! Now!" Thorne barked, his clinical detachment finally cracking.
It was too late.
With a sound that was less an explosion and more the universe tearing a seam, the slab shattered.
It didn't blow outward. It disintegrated. The dark stone dissolved into a cloud of fine, glittering dust that hung in the air for a moment, catching the light like a nebula. The wires and sensors were vaporized.
Where the slab had been was now a gaping, dark opening. And standing in the threshold, silhouetted against an impossible darkness, was a figure.
He was tall, powerfully built, clad in armor of a strange, non-reflective metal that seemed to drink the light. It was ornate, etched with the same swirling, alien patterns that had been on the slab. He staggered forward one step, two, then collapsed to his knees in the mud, his back heaving with ragged, desperate breaths.
The trench was utterly silent, save for the sound of those breaths and the faint tinkle of settling stone dust.
The agents stood frozen, their weapons half-raised, caught between protocol and sheer, unadulterated shock.
Thorne took a hesitant step forward, his tablet forgotten in his hand. "Fascinating," he breathed, his voice full of awe. "The stasis field... it preserved him perfectly."
The figure lifted his head.
Maya's breath caught in her throat. His face was sharp, angular, etched with a weariness that seemed to predate history itself. His skin was pale, almost luminous in the artificial light. And his eyes... they were a striking, molten amber. They were open, but they didn't see. They were clouded with a profound, cosmic disorientation. He blinked slowly, as if the very act of light hitting his retinas was a forgotten agony.
He tried to speak. A dry, rasping sound, like stone grinding on stone, emerged from his lips. The language was guttural, ancient, a series of clicks and growls that meant nothing to Maya, and yet, everything. It was the voice of the hum. The voice of the loneliness.
One of the agents, recovering his nerve, leveled his weapon. "On your feet! Hands where I can see them!"
The man-Alastor-flinched at the sharp, aggressive tone. His amber eyes finally focused, sweeping over the circle of black-clad figures, the weapons, the harsh lights. The confusion in his eyes crystallized into something else: panic.
He looked down at his own hands, clad in articulated gauntlets, as if seeing them for the first time. He looked at the mud, the modern equipment, the synthetic fibers of the agents' uniforms. None of it computed. The world he had known was dust. This new world was a cage of terrifying shapes and hostile sounds.
His eyes, wide and wild, finally landed on Maya.
Recognition.
It was fleeting, a spark in the chaos, but she saw it. He knew her. He knew the touch that had brushed his prison. The one moment of connection in an eternity of silence.
His gaze held hers for a heart-stopping second-a silent, desperate plea from the depths of time.
Then the moment shattered.
"Secure the asset!" Thorne commanded, his voice sharp with urgency.
The agents moved in.
Alastor's panic erupted. He didn't fight like a soldier. He fought like a cornered animal. He roared, a raw, primal sound that tore through the night, and swung a gauntleted fist. It connected with the first agent's chest, and the man flew backward as if hit by a car, slamming into the trench wall with a sickening crunch.
Chaos.
Weapons were raised. Orders were shouted. Stun rounds were fired, glowing projectiles that sizzled through the air. Alastor moved with an impossible, preternatural speed, dodging, weaving, his movements a blur of instinct and terror. Shadows in the trench seemed to writhe and cling to him, obscuring him.
"Don't damage him!" Thorne yelled, a note of desperation in his voice. "I need him intact!"
In the pandemonium, Maya acted. It wasn't a thought. It was pure, screaming instinct. While all attention was on the raging, disoriented ancient in their midst, she grabbed Chloe's arm with one hand and Leo's with the other.
"The ladder! Now!"
They broke from their paralysis and scrambled for the ladder. Leo went first, hauling himself up. Maya shoved a sobbing Chloe after him.
She risked one last look back.
Alastor was surrounded, a titan battling insects. A stun round caught him in the shoulder, and he roared in pain and fury, a blast of raw force erupting from him, throwing two agents off their feet. His amber eyes, blazing with a light that wasn't entirely human, found hers again across the chaos.
Run.
The word wasn't spoken. It was implanted in her mind, a final, desperate gift.
Then Maya was climbing, her muscles burning, her heart trying to beat its way out of her chest. She reached the top, and Leo pulled her over the edge.
The three of them stood for a split second on the rim of the pit, the sounds of the struggle echoing from below. They were free. But they were changed. The world was changed.
"We have to go," Leo gasped, his face ashen.
They turned and ran, not into the city, but away from it, into the deeper shadows, leaving behind the tomb, the warring agents, and the last warrior of a lost world, who had looked at Maya with the eyes of a drowning man.
The door was open. And the past had come pouring out.