Echo of the Rift

He wasn’t alone in this hell. Beside him, Eva screamed, her face contorted, she let go of the controls and clutched her temples. «Get out! Leave me alone! It’s not my fault! I couldn’t…» Her words were drowned out by sobs. Kyle saw her eyes fill with terror, reflecting something known only to her – perhaps her own ghosts from Quantum Dawn or from the depths of the Wasteland.

Even Drake, pinned to the floor, emitted muffled, choked groans, his body convulsing, an expression of unspeakable suffering frozen on his face. The Shadow had clearly found his pressure points as well.

«Rain! Eva! Wake up!» Lina’s voice, weak but unexpectedly firm, cut through the cacophony of pain and fear. Staggering, she rose to her feet, blood still flowing from her nose, but her eyes burned with fire. She held an injector in her hand. «This isn’t real! Do you hear me? It’s the Rift! It’s playing with you! It’s trying to break us!»

Kyle opened his eyes with immense effort, feeling cold, sticky sweat drenching his face. The gravitational pressure began to slowly subside, the Thunderclaw was moving again, though its engines coughed raggedly from the overload. Lina, still clutching her head but standing more steadily on her feet, looked at him with concern and a new, unfamiliar respect. Drake, breathing heavily, got up on all fours, picked up his knife, but his face was darker than a thundercloud, and his gaze darted nervously around the corners, as if he was still searching for an invisible enemy.

«I’m… alright,» Kyle forced out, though it was a blatant lie. He felt his heart pounding wildly in his chest, and the voices, though they had subsided for a while, still echoed maliciously at the very edge of his consciousness, ready to return at any moment. He looked at Eva. She sat with her head in her hands, her shoulders shaking slightly. In her eyes, when she finally raised them, he saw not only the remnants of terror, but also something resembling shame. She knew he had seen her weakness. And perhaps she had seen his. This was their shared hell.

«We can’t… we can’t continue like this,» Eva said, her voice quieter, but with a ring of steel. She was already recovering, her engineer’s logic taking over her emotions. «If the anomalies continue to intensify at this rate, we won’t reach the center of „Echo-7.“ We’ll just go insane or be torn apart. We need to find shelter, wait until reality stabilizes at least a little. Or at least pretend that we have a clear plan, and not just a desperate dash into the unknown.»

«Shelter?» Drake laughed hoarsely, but the laughter was empty, devoid of any mirth. «Are you serious, Carter? We’re ten miles from this damned crack in the arse of the world, and it’s already crawling into our heads like a worm in a rotten apple! Where the hell are you going to hide? In this radioactive rubble? Or in your vaunted damn logic, which almost kicked the bucket a couple of minutes ago?»

«Shut up, Holt,» Eva snapped, but her gaze was fixed on Kyle. She was waiting for his decision, though deep, long-standing distrust was still readable in her eyes. But now something new was mixed in with it – perhaps the understanding that they were all in the same boat, and this boat was rapidly sinking.

Kyle took a deep breath, trying to piece together the shards of his thoughts. He knew Eva was right – they wouldn’t withstand another anomaly like that without rest and preparation. But stopping meant losing precious time, and every hour of delay brought them closer to inevitable failure. And yet, somewhere in the depths of his tormented consciousness, he felt the Rift calling him. Ella’s voice, even if it was just a cruel illusion, a product of his diseased imagination, pulled him forward like a powerful, irresistible magnet.

«We’ll find shelter,» he finally said, his voice hoarse but firm. «The drones registered the remains of an old military bunker somewhere around here, to the northeast. „Northern Shield,“ I think. We’ll wait it out there, check the equipment, try to recover. And decide how to move forward. But we’re not retreating. „Echo-7“ is our only chance. Whatever the cost.»

Lina nodded gratefully, her face still pale, but a faint spark of hope flickered in her eyes. Drake just shrugged, muttering something unintelligible under his breath, but didn’t argue further. Eva, after a long, tense pause, silently turned to the control panel, directing the Thunderclaw towards the indicated coordinates. But Kyle felt this was only the beginning. The Rift had already penetrated their minds, and with every step, every meter closer to its heart, it would dig deeper, more ruthlessly. He looked out the window at the distant, venomous, pulsating glow of «Echo-7» and thought that perhaps it wasn’t them going towards it. It was patiently waiting for them, setting its invisible traps.

Chapter 5: «Shadows in the Walls»

2247. The Wasteland, 12 kilometers from «Echo-7,» Abandoned Bunker «Northern Shield.»

The Thunderclaw shuddered to a halt with a heavy, protesting groan at the rusted, mangled gates of the abandoned bunker that once, in another, almost forgotten life, bore the proud name «Northern Shield.» Now the structure looked like a sinister ghost of the past – massive concrete walls, covered in deep cracks and sores of moss, half-sunk into the earth as if trying to hide from the horrors of the Wasteland. The steel gates, warped by time and perhaps some unknown force, barely clung to their rusted hinges, gaping with dark openings. Above the bunker, like a giant, malevolent eye, hung the cold, pulsating light of «Echo-7,» its unearthly glow casting trembling, elongated shadows on the gray walls, shadows that seemed too alive, too deliberate to be merely a play of light and darkness. Kyle Rain exited the transport first, his exosuit whirring in protest as it adjusted to the uneven, debris-strewn surface, a cold, clinging premonition tightening in his chest that he could neither explain nor ignore.

The air here was even heavier than in the open Wasteland, saturated with a strange, nauseating metallic tang and the smell of stale mold, which made his throat scratch and his eyes water. Kyle felt the pressure of the Rift intensify with every second, like invisible, cold fingers touching the back of his neck, whispering something unintelligible but infinitely ominous at the very edge of hearing. He glanced back at his team: Eva Carter, pale but composed, was already scanning the perimeter with a portable drone, her face tense but focused, every muscle controlled; Lina Cyrus, clutching her medical backpack like a lifeline, nervously looked around, her breathing rapid and uneven; Drake Holt, as always, tried to appear nonchalant, but his hand never left the hilt of his plasma cutter, and his gaze darted uneasily across the dancing shadows as if expecting an attack from every dark corner.

«This place looks more like a tomb than a shelter,» Drake muttered, kicking a chunk of concrete that rolled with a hollow, unsettling sound into the darkness of the half-ruined entrance. «Are you sure we’re relatively safe here, scientist? Because all my instincts are screaming that this hole is soaked in death and something worse.»

«Nothing is safe this close to the Rift, Holt,» Kyle snapped, trying to hide his own growing unease. He felt it too – the lurking, invisible threat. «But here we can at least try to wait out the peak of anomalous activity and check the equipment. Eva, what does the drone show? Is there a working entrance?»

Eva, without looking up from the screen of her neural interface, nodded curtly. «The main entrance is fifty meters north. The gates are partially collapsed, but there seems to be a passage. Inside, there are residual, weak energy signals, but… they’re extremely unstable. As if something is trying to turn on and immediately goes out again. It could be old, damaged equipment. Or… something else entirely. Something that’s mimicking it.»

«Something else? Worse?» Lina turned to her, her voice trembling, her eyes wide with fear. «What could be worse, Eva? Do you… do you mean… the shadows? I’ve heard they often appear in abandoned places like this, closer to active Rifts. Is it true?»

Eva didn’t answer, only casting a quick, meaningful glance at Kyle, full of unspoken questions and shared anxiety. He knew she was thinking the same thing he was. Shadows. Not just a play of light, but something more. He had seen them before, in the first, most desperate years after the catastrophe – elusive, translucent figures that vanished if looked at directly, but left behind a feeling of deathly cold in the bones and a clinging, irrational dread. He didn’t want to tell Lina about this, didn’t want to see her fragile, almost childlike hope finally crumble under the weight of this truth. But he couldn’t lie, give false assurances either. Not here. Not now.

«Possibly,» he finally said, his voice quiet but firm as steel. «But we don’t know for sure what it is. Maybe it’s just illusions, generated by the proximity of the Rift, like the ones we saw in the anomaly. The main thing is to stick together. Don’t stray from each other. And, whatever happens, don’t lose your head. Don’t panic.»

Drake snorted loudly, but this time said nothing, only tightened his grip on the cutter. The team cautiously moved towards the gaping maw of the entrance, their steps echoing loudly in the dead silence of the Wasteland. Inside the bunker, it was even darker and colder than outside. The air was stale, heavy, with the smell of decaying organic matter and something subtly chemical. The walls were covered with a thick layer of slimy mold, and old, broken lamps hanging from the ceiling on scraps of wire flickered ominously, though they couldn’t have worked for decades. Kyle switched on the lamp on his exosuit, and the narrow beam of light snatched from the darkness fragments of rusty furniture, mangled crates, and something that looked like old, dust-covered terminals. But something was wrong. Something subtly off. The shadows cast by their own flashlights moved slower than they should, as if lagging behind the light source, living their own, separate lives.

«Do you… do you see that?» Lina whispered, her voice trembling so much that Kyle could barely make out the words. She pointed a shaking hand at the wall where her own shadow seemed frozen in place, still and dense, even though she had already taken a step to the side. «This… this isn’t normal. Kyle, tell me it’s just fatigue. Please, tell me it’s my imagination.»

Kyle clenched his jaw so hard his teeth grated, feeling an icy coldness slowly spreading down his back, restricting his movements. He desperately wanted to lie, to say that it was just a play of light or a residual effect of the gravitational anomaly on their vision. But he knew the truth. These weren’t just shadows. It was something that lived in the walls of this damned place, something that had awakened and was fueled by the ominous, distorting proximity of «Echo-7.» He turned to Eva, searching her eyes for support or at least confirmation of his fears, but her face was stony, impassive, and her hand instinctively rested on the holster of her pulse pistol.

«It’s not fatigue, Lina,» he finally said, trying to make his voice sound calm and confident, even though everything inside him tightened with foreboding. «But we can’t let this distract or frighten us. We’re here to wait it out and gather information. We’ll find the central command room, secure it, and check the drone data. If something… if something tries to manifest, we’ll be ready.»

«Ready?» Drake laughed hoarsely, his voice sharp and mocking in the oppressive silence of the bunker. «Are you serious, Rain? You don’t even know what the hell we’re dealing with! What if these ’shadows’ of yours aren’t harmless illusions? What if they’re real and hungry? I’m not going to die here for your crazy theories and ghostly hopes!»

«Then get out, Holt!» Eva snapped, her eyes flashing steel in the semi-darkness. «No one’s keeping you here. Get back out into the Wasteland if you’re so brave. But if you stay, you’ll do as you’re told, or I’ll kill you myself before those shadows get to you. Believe me, it will be quicker and more merciful.»

The tension between them flared again, like a spark in a powder keg, but Kyle resolutely raised his hand, stopping the brewing conflict. «Enough. We can’t afford to be divided. Not now. Drake, we need your skills. Eva, keep yourself under control. Lina, stay close to me or Eva. We’re moving on. Together.»

They moved slowly down the dark, narrow corridor, every sound – the creak of metal under their feet, the distant drip of water, their own ragged breathing – seemed deafeningly loud in the dead silence. Kyle felt the pressure in his head building, as if the Rift itself was penetrating his mind with invisible tentacles, whispering, tempting. And then he heard it again – Ella’s voice, faint, almost indistinguishable, but so distinct, seemingly coming from the very depths of the bunker, from around the next corner. «Daddy… I’m here… I’m scared… help…» His heart clenched painfully, and he involuntarily quickened his pace, ignoring Lina’s worried, questioning look.

The corridor led them into a spacious central hall – a vast, dilapidated room with a partially collapsed ceiling, through the holes in which the faint, sickly light of «Echo-7» penetrated. In the center of the hall, like an ancient altar, stood an old, dust-covered command terminal, its screen dark, but weak, barely perceptible sparks of energy crackled and trembled in the air around it, like miniature, lost lightning bolts. Eva, forgetting caution, immediately headed towards it, hastily connecting her neural interface to try and extract any data. Kyle remained standing at the entrance, his gaze fixed on the darkest corner of the hall, where, for a moment, he thought he saw a small, hunched figure. But when he blinked, there was nothing there. Just dancing shadows.

«There’s a signal!» Eva’s voice, tense but with a clear note of surprise, snapped him out of his stupor. «It’s… it’s old recordings. «Northern Shield’ wasn’t just a military bunker, it was a classified research station before the catastrophe. They were studying the very first Rifts that appeared. There are reports… detailed reports… on «Echo-7.» They call it… «Ground Zero.» The Source. And…» She suddenly fell silent, her face, illuminated by the flickering light of the interface, turning sharply pale.

«What?» Kyle stepped closer, feeling his pulse quicken, a chill running down his spine. «What is it, Eva? Speak!»

Eva slowly turned to him, her eyes wide and filled with such genuine, deep anxiety that he had never seen in her before. «They write that „Echo-7“ isn’t just a Rift. It’s… it’s the primordial source. The singularity point that spawned all the others. And they mention… an entity. Something that lives inside it. Something that sees us. Right now.»

The words hung in the air, heavy as the concrete slabs of the collapsed ceiling above their heads. Lina sobbed softly, pressing her hand to her mouth, her eyes filling with tears of terror. Drake, who had been standing by the wall with the air of a bored predator, froze, his hand gripping the plasma cutter so tightly that his knuckles turned white. And Kyle… Kyle felt icy pincers squeezing him from the inside, freezing the remnants of hope. An entity. He didn’t know exactly what it meant, but with some primal instinct, he felt it was true. «Echo-7» wasn’t just waiting for them. It knew they were here. It was watching.

And at that very moment, the single surviving lamp in the hall flickered alarmingly, even though the terminal Eva was connected to wasn’t connected to the bunker’s general power system. The shadows on the walls trembled, stretching like clawed, hungry fingers, and from the very depths of the bunker, from the unexplored, dark corridors, came a sound – a low, vibrating, growing hum that made the floor tremble beneath their feet and the shards of glass jingle. Kyle spun around, his hand instinctively reaching for the pulse rifle, which seemed so useless, so childish in the face of this unknown threat. Something was approaching. And it definitely wasn’t an illusion.

Chapter 6: «Echo from the Depths»

2247. The Wasteland, 12 kilometers from «Echo-7,» Abandoned Bunker «Northern Shield.»

The low, vibrating hum, born somewhere in the depths of the bunker, intensified, filling the entire space as if the enormous, ancient heart of «Northern Shield» had suddenly started beating after decades of lethargic sleep. Kyle Rain froze, his hand gripping the useless pulse rifle in a death grip, his gaze darting frantically across the dancing, distorted shadows in the central hall. The ghostly, sickly light of «Echo-7,» penetrating through the gaping holes in the collapsed ceiling, trembled as if space itself around them began to warp, losing its familiar contours. The shadows on the walls stretched, their forms becoming more distinct, more ominous – they were no longer just blurred spots, but nightmarish silhouettes, vaguely resembling human figures, but with unnaturally long, broken limbs and gaping, empty voids instead of faces, from which seeped the same faint, unearthly light as from the distant Rift.

«What the hell… what the fuck is that?!» Drake Holt whispered, slowly stepping back, his plasma cutter flaring bright blue with a predatory hum, ready for battle. For the first time since Kyle had met him, there wasn’t a trace of his usual mockery or bravado in his voice, only poorly concealed tension bordering on primal terror. He turned sharply to Kyle, his eyes narrowed to slits, burning with an unkind fire. «Rain, you fucking said these could be illusions! This doesn’t look like fucking illusions, scientist! This is coming right at us!»

«I don’t know what it is, Holt,» Kyle snapped back, desperately trying to keep his voice even, though his heart pounded in his chest, threatening to burst out. He felt the pressure in his head intensify with every second, as if the Rift itself was trying to break through his skull, to penetrate the most hidden corners of his thoughts. Ella’s voice, weak but insistent, almost pleading, sounded again at the very edge of his consciousness: «Daddy… they’re already here… they’re coming for you… run, Daddy, run!» He gritted his teeth, trying to drive away this obsession, but the icy cold gripping his chest only intensified.

Eva Carter, who had been standing as if rooted to the spot by the terminal, quickly disconnected her neural interface, her face pale as a sheet but resolute. She instantly assessed the situation, her engineer’s mind already searching for a way out, even if there wasn’t one. She snatched her pulse pistol and turned sharply to the team, her voice unexpectedly loud and commanding, like an order on the battlefield: «We can’t just stand here and wait to be devoured! If this is some kind of anomaly generated by the Rift, we need to move, find a way out! If it’s something… real…» She paused for a moment, her gaze falling on the shadows that began to move slowly, inexorably along the walls, separating from them, «…then we’ll have to fucking fight!»

Lina Cyrus, pressed against the cold concrete wall as if trying to merge with it, trembled all over, her hands clutching her medical backpack so tightly that her knuckles turned white. «This can’t be real,» she muttered, her voice barely audible, broken with terror. «It’s the Rift… it’s playing with us… it must be playing… right, Kyle? Tell me this isn’t real! Please!»

Kyle wanted to answer, to reassure her, but the hum suddenly turned into a sharp, ear-splitting screeching sound, as if giant invisible claws were tearing apart the very metal and concrete of the bunker. One of the shadows on the wall separated completely, flowing out of the plane, transforming into a three-dimensional, nightmarish figure – distorted, unnaturally elongated, with long, curved, spider-like arms and empty, bottomless eye sockets, from which seeped the same faint, deathly light, similar to the glow of the distant «Echo-7.» It moved slowly, but with a terrifying, inhuman purposefulness, heading straight for the terror-stricken Lina. Other shadows, one after another, began to follow its example, their movements jerky, twitching, like those of broken, clumsily controlled puppets.

«Lina, get out of the way! Move!» Kyle shouted, instinctively rushing towards her and forcefully pushing her aside, behind a massive chunk of concrete slab. He raised his rifle and fired. The pulse charge, flashing blue, struck the center of the dark figure, but instead of dissipating or even exploding, the shadow only shuddered for a moment, like ripples on dark water, and continued its slow, inexorable movement. The charge passed through it, leaving a smoking, scorched mark on the wall behind, but causing no harm to the shadow itself. Kyle felt the icy tentacles of panic begin to squeeze his throat. This was no illusion. This was something much, much worse.

«They’re invulnerable! Our shots go right through them!» Eva shouted in despair, opening indiscriminate fire with her pistol. Her shots also had no effect, only momentarily illuminating the hall with bright flashes that seemed to make the shadows even darker, even denser. «We can’t fight this! We have to leave, Rain! Now! Before we’re surrounded!»

«Where the hell are we supposed to go?!» Drake roared, desperately waving his gleaming plasma cutter. The blade hissed as it passed through one of the advancing figures, meeting no apparent resistance, but the shadow, instead of disappearing or even slowing down, extended its ghostly hand, and Drake was thrown back with such force as if he had been hit by an invisible ram. He crashed into the wall, cursing softly in pain, but immediately sprang to his feet like a coiled spring, his face contorted with rage and, perhaps for the first time, genuine fear. «These things… they’re playing with us! They won’t let us just leave! They sense us!»

Kyle desperately tried to think, to analyze, but the noise in his head intensified with every second, Ella’s voice, distorted and full of pain, mixing with the low, vibrating hum of the Rift, creating an unbearable cacophony in his thoughts. He noticed that the shadows weren’t just blindly attacking – they were moving deliberately, surrounding them, slowly but surely cutting off their only escape route, driving them deeper into the spacious hall, which now seemed like a trap. His gaze fell accidentally on the old command terminal that Eva was vainly trying to hack. The sparks of anomalous energy around it became brighter, more intense, and Kyle was suddenly struck by a realization – these shadows were undoubtedly connected to «Echo-7,» to its alien energy, and this terminal… perhaps it wasn’t just a pile of old iron. If it contained any data about the Rift, about ways to control or suppress it, there might be a key to stopping this invasion.

«Eva!» he shouted, his voice barely audible over the growing noise and screeching. «Get back to the terminal! Try again! Find something about controlling anomalous manifestations! About frequencies! This is our only chance! Drake and I will try to hold them back!»

Eva froze for a moment, her eyes full of doubt and fear, but then she nodded resolutely and, dodging a dark hand reaching for her, rushed back to the terminal, her fingers flying across the worn interface again. Kyle turned sharply to Drake, who was already furiously fighting off two shadows, his plasma cutter flashing in the semi-darkness, though his blows were as useless as Kyle’s shots. «Drake! Keep them at bay! Don’t let them get to Lina and Eva! Cover them at all costs!»

«Easy for you to say, scientist!» Drake growled, but still, shifting with a jerk, he took up a position between the advancing shadows and the women, creating a fragile barrier. Lina, still in deep shock, tried to help, frantically pulling neuro-stabilizers from her backpack, but her hands were shaking so much that she could barely hold the injector.

Kyle opened fire again, aiming carefully, trying to distract the shadows, to buy Eva precious seconds. But every time his charge hit one of them, it only momentarily split into two smaller, but even faster and more aggressive creatures. There were more than a dozen of them now, their movements becoming faster, more deliberate, and the hum in the hall turned into a deafening roar, pressing on their eardrums. And suddenly one of the shadows, the largest, the darkest, stopped right in front of Kyle, its empty, glowing eye sockets staring directly at him, seemingly penetrating his very soul, and he heard a voice – not Ella’s, not human, but something ancient, bottomless, deep as the abyss itself. «You have come for us… You are a part of us… Surrender to us… Become one with the Echo…» The voice didn’t sound in his ears, but pulsed, vibrated directly in his brain, tearing apart his thoughts, his will, his personality.