The smell of burnt coffee lingered in the air like a ghost that refused to leave. Fluorescent lights hummed overhead, flickering faintly in the sterile white corridor as Dr. Nathaniel Reed stepped through the revolving doors of Aeon Laboratories. He was twenty-seven, sharp-minded, restless, and still reeling from the lack of sleep that had plagued him since he joined the project. His coat was wrinkled, hair messily combed to the side, but his ID badge clipped to his lapel granted him full clearance to one of the most classified research programs on Earth.
As he moved past the security gates, a voice called out from behind a massive paper-strewn desk.
"Dr. Reed?" the guard said with a familiar grunt. "You're late."
"I'm a scientist, not a clock," Reed replied with a weak smile, pushing through the checkpoint with a wave of his badge. The guard chuckled but said nothing more.
Inside, the polished floor reflected the glow of sleek, futuristic touchscreens and scattered holographic schematics. Reed turned a corner and found him—Dr. Vladmire Stone—leaning against the edge of a glass wall, sipping what looked to be his fifth cup of coffee that morning. His white lab coat was too crisp for someone who'd supposedly spent the night in the building, and his silver hair, though wild, was immaculately combed back. A man in his sixties, Stone had the eyes of someone who'd seen too much and regretted too little.
"Stayed up all night again?" Nathaniel asked, arching an eyebrow.
Vladmire scoffed and lifted his massive ceramic mug, which bore the faded words 'Don't talk to me until this is empty.' "Sleep is a crutch," he muttered, then turned on his heel. "Come. We've got work to do."
Nathaniel followed, quickening his pace to keep up. They walked past rows of biometric scanners, each one more invasive than the last. A palm reader. Retina scan. Voice authentication. Every few feet, they were watched by expressionless security guards, suited up and armed as if expecting a siege.
"You think it's ready to test?" Nathaniel asked.
"I think," Stone began, sipping again, "that thinking is dangerous without data. And right now, data is what we're missing."
They approached the elevator—no buttons, no keypad, only a scanner and a silent acknowledgment of their clearance level. The steel doors slid open, revealing a shaft that descended deeper than anyone outside the company would ever guess existed. They stepped inside.
The elevator hummed downward for nearly thirty seconds, lights on the wall flickering from white to a muted red. Below ground, the world felt different. Heavier. Like the air was being filtered not just for purity, but secrecy.
"I ran the numbers again," Stone said. "The energy signatures are stable. That much we're sure of."
"And the structure?"
"Still holding. Not a single crack. Not a fluctuation in the field. Whatever this thing is—it wants to be used. But that doesn't mean we should be the ones to do it."
Nathaniel glanced at the old man. "Then why keep going?"
"Because not knowing terrifies me more than opening the damn thing," Stone replied, finishing his coffee and tossing the mug into a nearby chute as the elevator slowed.
The doors opened with a hydraulic hiss.
The laboratory spread before them like the interior of a spaceship—immense, echoing, sleek with blackened steel and glowing blue lines pulsing along the floor like veins. The temperature dropped several degrees, not because of poor insulation, but because of it.
At the center of the chamber, surrounded by scaffolding, cables, and a dozen containment rings, stood a structure unlike anything discovered before or since. A massive stone archway—thirty feet high and composed of a dark, almost metallic stone that refused to be identified. Carved into every inch of its surface were intricate runes—symbols that defied classification.
Nathaniel approached it slowly, his voice hushed. "Still nothing from the linguistics team?"
"Not Norse. Not Egyptian. Not Christian. Not Hindu. Not even ancient proto-languages. It's as if this script was made by a civilization that never existed—or wasn't supposed to," Stone said.
"But we've translated pieces?"
"Enough to be dangerous," he murmured. "The symbols imply a function—gateway, threshold, passage. But a passage to where? That's the million-dollar question, Dr. Reed."
The lights above flickered as if responding to the word passage, and a faint electrical whine vibrated through the air, like the sound of a tuning fork struck somewhere deep beneath the surface.
They turned from the arch and moved to the command platform—a raised circular desk cluttered with monitors, sensors, and control panels manned by a half-dozen scientists and technicians. Below them, on the lab floor, cables coiled like metallic serpents, connecting the arch to enough power to light a small city.
Dr. Anna Morales was already at the main terminal, adjusting the readings. "Dr. Stone, energy levels are rising again. Same pattern as last night. It's... rhythmic."
"Like a heartbeat," Nathaniel added.
Stone didn't answer right away. He was staring at the arch again, eyes narrowed behind his glasses. Then he muttered, "Run another spectro-analysis. I want full waveform monitoring. And prep the magnetic anchors, just in case."
Technicians snapped into motion. The lab became a flurry of organized chaos as people rushed to their stations, voices echoing across the massive chamber. Reed moved to assist, pulling up data from the arch's internal sensors.
"Temperature around the core's rising," he called. "And there's a spike in radiation—not dangerous, but it's building."
The lights flickered again—then dimmed. All at once, the runes on the arch began to glow.
Not softly.
Not calmly.
But violently. Like magma veins igniting inside stone.
A low hum filled the chamber, followed by a resonating thoom, like a pulse of thunder underwater. The air shimmered with distortion, and the arch's interior—once empty—began to warp and swirl like liquid obsidian.
"Containment field up!" someone yelled.
"Magnetic anchors live!"
"It's forming something!" another voice cried.
Stone's eyes widened. "Everyone back! Get clear!"
And then—it happened.
A violent implosion of sound and light erupted from within the arch. Space itself bent inward, collapsing like a dying star—and in its place, a swirling vortex of red and black tore into reality. The edges of the portal shimmered like oil on water, and the pull... oh god, the pull.
Like a black hole had formed in the heart of the lab.
Tables flew. Papers, chairs, and instruments were sucked in instantly. A scientist screamed as he lost his footing, tumbling into the air and disappearing into the vortex with a strangled cry. Chaos broke loose. Sirens wailed. Warnings blared in synthetic voices:
Warning. Containment breach. Gravitational anomaly detected. Evacuate immediately.
"SHUT IT DOWN!" Stone roared over the noise, grabbing onto a support beam as his coat whipped in the wind tunnel forming around them. "KILL THE POWER—NOW!"
"It's not responding!" someone shouted. "Systems are offline—it's overriding us!"
Nathaniel braced himself against a console, watching helplessly as one by one, people were lifted off the ground and swallowed by the portal. "Dr. Stone!" he cried. "We have to get out!"
But Stone wasn't moving. He was staring into the portal like a man seeing God—or the Devil—for the first time.
"No," he whispered. "It's here. It's real."
Then the floor cracked.
The support beam snapped.
Stone's fingers slipped.
And in a flash of red and black, Dr. Vladmire Stone was torn from the ground, his body weightless for a moment as he locked eyes with Nathaniel.
"Tell them…" Stone began, but the rest was lost as he was consumed by the vortex.
"VLADMIRE!!" Nathaniel screamed, lunging forward—but the wind was too strong. The lab was collapsing around him. Sparks rained from the ceiling. Glass exploded. Flames licked the walls. Then—
Boom.
The explosion sent Nathaniel flying backward. He slammed into the far wall, pain exploding through his skull. Everything blurred. He could hear alarms, screams, the hiss of fire suppression gas. His vision tunneled.
And then—silence.
For a moment, there was nothing but smoke, ruin, and the distant ringing in his ears.
Nathaniel coughed, his body trembling as he fought to stay conscious. His vision swam, but he forced his eyes toward the arch.
The portal was still open.
But something had changed.
A figure stood beneath it.
A man—tall, impossibly tall and handsome—stepping out from the vortex, and he was completely naked. His skin was a dark brown, lean, powerful, and covered with symbols, runes and etchings of some unknown origian along his chest, arms, and collarbone—the same runes carved into the arch.
The man opened his eyes. No whites. Just glowing, golden irises that seemed to pulse like electricity.