The air in the command center was thick enough to cut with a knife. Rostova's harsh words – giving them only a day to find another way instead of wiping everything out – pressed down on everyone. Aris definitely felt it; it was like a constant, annoying buzz in his head. He kept staring at the info coming from the spheres, trying to find something, anything, that made sense. But the patterns were just a mess, like some kind of physics code he couldn't crack.
Suddenly, the door slid open, breaking his train of thought. One of those GORCI assistants walked a woman into the room. She moved carefully, like she was afraid of breaking something. Her eyes were light blue and seemed scared all the time. She seemed to be in her early thirties, but looked older, exhausted. Then Aris noticed the faint, shiny scars all over her hands and neck. They looked like cracks in glass filled with silver. And they seemed to shine differently than regular scars.
"Commander," the assistant said. "This is Elara Vance. She's a civilian. We got her out of the Cairo mess about half a year ago. She already talked to people, but she kept saying she needed to tell the 'main scientist' what she knows."
Rostova didn't even blink. "We're kind of busy here, Ms. Vance. We already have your statement."
"The statement says I was 'blind from being scared' and that the scars were 'all in my head'," Elara said. Her voice was quiet, but firm. It sounded like she was telling a truth that people had doubted so much it had become hard. "The statement is wrong."
Aris stood up, making his chair scrape against the floor. She looked right at him. For a second, they just looked at each other – the only person who lived from Jakarta and the one who lived from Cairo. They just understood each other; they'd both seen something terrible.
"I'm Dr. Aris Thorne," he said quietly. "Please. Tell us what happened."
Rostova sighed, annoyed, but nodded.
Elara's eyes went distant, like she was watching a memory playing out in front of them. "I taught kids. We were visiting Al-Azhar Park. Then the Obelisk… it just appeared… and everything went silent… then started spinning." She hugged herself tightly. "Most of the kids… they just died. Like someone flipped a switch. But I was on the edge of the group. I ended up behind a stone wall."
She held up her hands, showing the shiny lines. "One of the spheres… it didn't go all the way into the ground. It was sticking out, maybe ten feet away from me. And it was… vibrating. But you couldn't just hear it. You could feel it in your teeth. In your bones."
Kaito leaned forward, completely hooked. "What did it do?"
"It… opened up," she whispered. "But not like a door. There wasn't a door at all. The air around it just… seemed to ripple. And then I felt the Siphon."
Aris felt cold. That word. The one he couldn't find when he wrote his reports.
"It's not like anything you've ever felt," she went on, her voice a little strange. "The reports describe 'shock', but that's not right. Shock is something from this world. This was… not from here. It felt like ice burning in my veins. It felt like… something was draining the color out of me. Draining all the warmth. It doesn't just take your power. It takes you. Your very life. You can feel it leaving, little by little."
Aris nodded, remembering what happened in Jakarta. The cold, wired fence. The feeling of falling apart. "You fought back," he said, not really asking.
She looked at him, thankful that someone believed her. "I crawled away. The farther I crawled, the weaker it got. But it touched my arm." She pointed to the scars on her neck. "And my shoulder. It was just for a second. But it was enough to leave these. And enough to… change me inside. I can feel them now, you know. The spheres. I can feel them under the ground. It's like a… quiet hunger."
"What you're saying is just a story, Ms. Vance," Rostova said, sounding bored. "You're probably just feeling things because you're traumatized. Your 'scars' probably just came from some weird shock reaction. Nothing special."
"I don't mean to be rude, Commander," Aris said, tense. "But she's explaining how the Draw works better than any machine we have. She felt it. I felt it. It's the same thing."
"So it's a weapon that leaves people behind who can sense its pieces? Rostova asked back, not believing it. That doesn't seem smart for something meant to harvest everything perfectly."
"Maybe it's something we don't understand," Kaito said, his mind working like a machine. "What if the Siphon doesn't get everything perfectly? What if some energy sticks to nearby things, like on people's brains? Ms. Vance, you said you can feel them now. What does it feel like?"
Elara shut her eyes, thinking hard. "It's like… a quiet shaking. Like a guitar string pulled tight, ready to snap. And… the animals. They know something's up. Right before it rains, the birds go quiet. Completely silent. I remember that in Cairo, too."
Rostova sighed, sounding annoyed. "I can't tell the Global Council to watch for birds. Dr. Thorne, Mr. Tanaka, you have less than a day. Focus on things we can measure, not fairy tales." She turned back to her desk, ending the conversation.
The assistant gently steered Elara, who looked sad, out of the room. As she walked past Aris, she stopped. "It's not a fairy tale," she whispered, pleading with him. "It's a warning. The hunger is getting stronger."
After she left, Kaito turned to Aris, looking worried. "Rostova does have a point. We can't really prove any of this."
"We can't prove anything with our machines, either, Kaito," Aris said, watching the door Elara went through. "She's something we can study. A living thing that tells us what the Draw really is: taking power from someone. And she's given us something new."
"What's that?"
"A warning." Aris's mind was going fast, making plans. "The animals. And people like us. The 'early warning system.' Rostova thinks it's a bad thing. I think it's something we can use. If we can feel it, maybe we can guess when it will happen. Maybe we can even… stop it."
He looked from Kaito's unsure face to Rostova's cold stare, and then to the Obelisk on the screen. They had a survivor. They had her story. They had a weird feeling slowly growing in his head. It wasn't much. But against something five kilometers tall, it was all they had.