The silence in Lab 17 was suffocating. Every member of the team felt it—the pressure, the expectation, the fear that the next anomaly would be the one to finally tear everything apart.
Mira's fingers hovered over the Chronocapsule's controls. She could still feel the shadow's gaze, cold and unblinking, even though the apparition had vanished. The knot's spiral pattern pulsed faintly, as if mocking her uncertainty.
Felix broke the silence, his voice brittle. "If that thing can get inside the lab, nowhere is safe. What's stopping it from—"
"Don't finish that sentence," Linh snapped, her nerves frayed. "We can't afford panic."
Kiran, always the optimist, tried to sound hopeful. "Maybe it's trying to communicate. The spiral—what if it's a code?"
Arjun shook his head. "Or a warning. Or a countdown."
Mira forced herself to breathe. She studied the knot, watching the black threads writhe among the gold. She remembered the Watchers' words, the regret that weighed on her heart. Maybe this is what it wants—to break us from the inside.
She straightened, voice steady. "We can't let it win. We need to understand what it's doing to the knot. Linh, Felix—run a full diagnostic. Kiran, help me cross-reference the spiral pattern with the anomaly logs. Arjun, keep watch on the external sensors. If it comes back, I want to know before it's standing in front of us again."
The team moved, each finding comfort in action. The lab filled with the soft hum of machines and the frantic tapping of keyboards.
But as Mira leaned closer to the knot, she heard something—so faint she almost missed it. A whisper, threading through the static:
"You can't fix what you refuse to remember."
Her blood ran cold. Was it the shadow? Or her own guilt, echoing back at her?
She looked at her reflection in the glass, the knot's fractured spiral glowing between them.
What am I missing? she wondered.
And how much more can we lose before the tapestry tears for good?
Outside, the city lights flickered. Somewhere beyond the walls of Lab 17, reality continued to unravel.