The door closed with a sound that was far too polite for comfort.
Sam stared at it.
"…I hate when doors do that."
Alex tried the handle.
It didn't move.
Jordan cleared his throat. "Before anyone panics, I'd like to point out that facilities like this usually *want* people to go deeper."
"That does not help," Lena said.
Maya pressed her palms to the wall. The hum was back—but distorted, overlapping, like echoes answering each other late.
"It knows we're here," she whispered. "Not the building. The other thing."
Riley tilted his head. "It's curious."
Sam shot him a look. "That's worse."
---
They moved down the corridor because staying still felt like an invitation.
The lights overhead flickered on in sections, illuminating peeling paint and warning stripes that had been scuffed by years of use. Every few feet, a camera stared down at them—dark, inactive, but still watching.
Sam waved at one. "Hi. Please don't turn on."
It didn't.
Jordan stopped at a wall of filing cabinets, half-tipped and rusted.
"These aren't digital backups," he said, pulling a drawer open. "They wanted these *forgotten*."
Alex flipped through a folder.
Most of the text was blacked out.
Heavy. Aggressive.
Like someone had tried to erase a memory with a hammer.
Lena leaned over his shoulder. "What does it say?"
Alex read aloud:
> *Initial anomaly discovered beneath Marrow during excavation.*
> *Non-local spatial behavior observed.*
> *Object displays resistance to fixed coordinates.*
Sam blinked. "So… it didn't like staying put."
Jordan nodded slowly. "Or it couldn't."
Maya winced, pressing a hand to her temple.
"It was lost," she said. "And angry about it."
The sound came again.
*Thud.*
*Scrape.*
Closer.
Alex snapped the folder shut. "We need to keep moving."
---
They reached a larger room—once a control center.
Monitors lined the walls, most cracked or dead, but one flickered faintly, looping a degraded video.
Sam leaned closer. "Is that… our school?"
The footage showed the town decades ago. Smaller. Less finished. And beneath it all—movement.
Lines on the screen twisted unnaturally, as if the ground itself were trying to rearrange.
A voice crackled through the speakers.
"…containment via structural anchor is failing…"
Maya sucked in a breath.
"That's when they built the building," she said.
Alex turned to her. "As an anchor."
"Yes," she whispered. "A *promise*. A fixed point."
Jordan folded his arms. "You trap something that can't stay still by making the place itself remember."
Lena frowned. "That sounds… cruel."
Sam shrugged weakly. "Government."
The video glitched.
A new image appeared.
A symbol flashed on-screen.
Three overlapping rectangles.
The locator.
Riley stepped back sharply. "It's not just a mark."
Jordan's eyes widened. "It's a map."
---
The scraping sound was much closer now.
Metal on concrete.
Slow.
Intentional.
Sam whispered, "It's coming, isn't it."
Maya nodded. "It always was."
The control room lights dimmed, then shifted to red.
**UNAUTHORIZED ACCESS — LEVEL BREACH**
Sam groaned. "Of course *now* the system works."
Alex scanned the room. "Exit?"
Jordan pointed to a side corridor. "Maintenance tunnel. Narrow."
"Great," Sam said. "Love a horror squeeze."
They ran.
---
The tunnel was barely wide enough for two people side by side. Pipes rattled overhead. Water dripped steadily, counting down time in slow, mocking seconds.
Behind them—
*SCRAPE.*
Closer.
Lena glanced back. "Alex—"
"I know," he said. "Keep moving."
The tunnel bent sharply.
Then opened into another chamber.
This one was different.
Not industrial.
Architectural.
The walls curved in ways that made Alex's eyes hurt if he looked too long. The floor wasn't quite level, but it felt… intentional.
Maya froze.
"This is it," she whispered.
Sam swallowed. "It is what?"
"The original space," Maya said. "Before the building. Before the lie."
At the center of the room was… nothing.
And yet—
Something tugged at their attention, like a word on the tip of the tongue.
Jordan whispered, "It's not visible."
Riley shook his head. "It doesn't want to be."
A ripple passed through the air.
Not outward.
Inward.
Alex felt his balance shift, like gravity had briefly reconsidered him.
Sam yelped. "NOPE."
---
Above them, in the town, alarms quietly rerouted.
Agent Harris stood in front of a monitor showing live feeds he wasn't supposed to have.
"They're inside," he muttered.
Behind him, Director Kade's voice was smooth. "Good."
Harris turned sharply. "You *wanted* this?"
Kade folded her hands. "I wanted a response."
"And if they trigger it?"
Kade smiled thinly. "Then we'll finally learn whether the anchor still holds."
---
In the chamber, the air vibrated.
The invisible thing shifted.
And for the first time, it spoke.
Not in words.
In *direction*.
Sam staggered. "It's pointing."
Jordan squinted. "At what?"
Maya's eyes filled with tears.
"At me."
The hum surged—loud, fractured, overlapping with the deeper, heavier resonance of the thing beneath.
Two forces.
One built to hold.
One built to escape.
Alex stepped in front of Maya without thinking.
The ripple paused.
Not stopped.
Paused.
And in that fragile stillness, something changed.
The thing beneath Marrow hesitated.
Not because it feared them.
But because it recognized them.
Not as obstacles.
But as variables.
And variables, it had learned, were dangerous.
Somewhere deep in the facility, a final file unlocked itself.
**PROJECT PALIMPSEST — PHASE II: HUMAN INTERFACE**
And the town above remained blissfully unaware that the lie holding it together was starting to crack—not from pressure—
But from curiosity.