The desert stretched ahead like an endless burnt sheet of parchment. Sand, silence, and scorching wind.
The black SUV rumbled across the broken road, tires kicking up a dusty ghost trail. Inside, Nate leaned forward from the back seat, the shard in his hands wrapped in copper mesh to dampen its pulses.
Tuck, behind the wheel, glanced at the cracked GPS. "We're still three hours from the site. That's assuming the road doesn't wash out."
Mallory sat shotgun, chewing on a dry protein bar. "It won't. These roads were built during the war years. Designed for mobility under bombardment."
Tuck raised an eyebrow. "And how do you know that?"
She grinned faintly. "Because my granddad helped build them. Sealed his engineering record with his dog tags."
Nate blinked. "Wait, your grandfather was military?"
"Army Corps of Engineers. Built bridges, dug tunnels, hid things under sand that no one was meant to find."
Iris, seated beside Nate in the back, chuckled. "Then this trip is a family reunion."
---
They reached the marker at dusk: a rusted pole with a faded red number—314B. Hidden beneath it, half-buried in shale and ancient concrete, was an old Cold War listening station.
Mallory knelt, brushing sand away from a hatch. "It's here."
Tuck tapped the steel with a wrench. "Sounds hollow. She might open."
They worked in tense silence. By nightfall, the hatch groaned open with a scream of rust and age. A cold breath of air rose up—unnaturally cold.
Nate felt his skin goosebump. "That's not just lack of sunlight. There's something... old in there."
Iris flicked on a headlamp. "Then let's go wake it up."
---
The descent was tight. A rusted ladder led fifty feet down to a platform wrapped in coiled cable and dust-choked sensors. Iris led, her weapon drawn.
The walls bore faded stenciling: U.S. SIGNAL CORPS – SUBSITE ANCHOR 2.3
Mallory swept her light across a bank of shattered computers. "They were studying something."
Tuck pried open a fuse box. "Or keeping something asleep."
In the center of the room lay a large metallic disc embedded in the concrete floor. Its surface was polished obsidian, ringed by faded warning symbols in multiple languages: English, Russian, Mandarin, and a language none of them recognized.
Nate knelt beside it and removed the shard from the copper mesh.
The disc immediately responded.
Faint lines appeared across its surface—etched with heat and light.
Mallory stepped back. "It's syncing."
Nate nodded. "Like before. But faster."
Iris stared at the lines. "That's not data."
"What is it then?" Tuck asked.
"It's a map."
---
The lines formed a tri-spoked geometry—connecting the Mojave site to two other points: one off the coast of Greenland, and one in the heart of the Amazon.
Mallory swallowed hard. "Three anchors. Like a triangle."
Nate felt a sudden pressure behind his eyes, as if something unseen had taken notice. The shard pulsed once—hard.
"QUERY ACCEPTED. INITIATING SIGNAL LINK."
The voice bloomed again. In their minds. Not a sound but a meaning, heavy with layered purpose.
The air changed. Static built in the walls. Tuck's hair stood on end.
Then a secondary signal pinged from the Greenland coordinate.
"Something responded," Nate whispered.
Iris's voice was low. "Then someone else is awake."
---
They sealed the site and fled before dawn. Two black drones swept over the sky as they drove, scanning. Nate watched them shrink in the rearview mirror.
Back at their temporary safehouse, a bunker tucked under an abandoned radio tower, they spread maps across the table.
Mallory drew a line between the three points. "This triangle? It's not geographic. It's energetic. Each point sits at a convergence of magnetic anomalies."
Tuck ran his fingers along the map. "So we're looking at a... planetary circuit?"
Nate nodded. "Like a global tuning fork. And when it activates—"
Iris interrupted. "—it won't just ping. It'll transmit."
Mallory leaned back. "To who?"
The room fell silent.
Tuck finally muttered, "You don't think... to space, do you?"
Nate didn't answer.
He didn't need to.
---
Later, as wind howled over the desert, Nate sat on the roof with Mallory beside him. He looked at the stars.
"Why now?" she asked. "Why did it start activating?"
"Because we triggered it. Or maybe we were meant to. Like a trapdoor waiting for someone dumb enough to open it."
"Or brave enough," Mallory said quietly.
He looked at her. "You still think we can stop it?"
She didn't answer immediately.
Then, "I think we can understand it. And sometimes that's enough."
Nate looked at the shard glowing faintly in his hands.
He wasn't so sure.
---
Meanwhile, far above Earth, the Watcher satellite stirred. Its optics turned toward the Mojave. Data flowed through ancient circuits—awakening subroutines coded in extinct languages.
In a hidden chamber beneath Langley, alarms flared red. Whisper operatives sprang to action. One of them, codenamed Vox, stared at a screen.
"They've activated Anchor 2," she said into a phone.
A gravel voice responded: "Prepare for contact. If they reach Anchor 3—terminate."
---