"The door in the dark"
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Patience was a cage. I paced the length of my apartment, the four walls feeling more like a prison with every passing hour. Kael had left with a final, unreadable look, advising me to "sit still and let the energy settle." But the energy he was talking about wasn't just in the stone; it was in me, a caged tiger pacing behind my ribs.
Lena's digital trap hung in the air, a sneer in the silent code. She thought she had me running scared. She thought I was broken.
I stopped at the kitchen counter, my fingers splayed on the cold quartz. The cracked glass from the water tumbler was a stark reminder of my loss of control. Of the power I'd almost unleashed. Kael's method was smarter, safer. But it was slow. And every second I waited was a second she spent cementing her victory, erasing my name from my life's work.
The obsidian stone sat silent, a dark pupil staring at the ceiling.
Sit still.
No.
A new impulse, sharp and clear and entirely my own, cut through the directive. I couldn't attack Lena digitally. I couldn't confront Jameson directly.
But I could go to the source.
The warehouse. The physical manifestation of the secret. Aethyr Holdings' only asset. If I wanted to understand the resonance of Jameson's shame, I needed to stand where it happened. I needed to see it.
The decision was made in an instant, a spark of defiant rebellion against Kael's careful guidance. This wasn't blind rage; it was a calculated risk. I was a scientist. I needed data. And some data couldn't be gathered from a quiet room.
The industrial district was a graveyard of Aethelburg's past. Rusted skeletons of machinery lay behind chain-link fences topped with barbed wire. The air smelled of oil, decay, and the damp chill coming off the river. I parked my car several blocks away, the beat-up sedan I used for errands a perfect disguise in this neighborhood.
The warehouse belonging to Aethyr Holdings was exactly as the records described: a hulking, decaying monolith of red brick and corrugated iron. Several windows were boarded up, and a heavy chain and padlock secured the main rolling door. A NO TRESPASSING sign hung crookedly, rusted through in one corner.
My heart thumped a steady, adrenaline-fueled rhythm. This was stupid. Reckless. Kael would undoubtedly call it a spectacular failure to "become quiet."
I pushed the thought away.
I found a side door, half-hidden behind a mound of old pallets. The lock was old, simple. A few minutes with the set of lockpicks I'd inherited from my father—another of his quirky hobbies I'd never questioned—and the mechanism gave way with a satisfying click.
The door swung inward with a groan that echoed into a profound darkness. The air that washed out was frigid and heavy with the ghosts of industry: old grease, metal dust, and the sweet, rotten scent of damp concrete.
I slipped inside, pulling a powerful flashlight from my jacket. The beam cut a swath through the oppressive dark, illuminating a vast, cavernous space. Dust motes danced like frantic spirits in the light. Abandoned machinery, shrouded in torn plastic, cast long, twisted shadows that looked like tortured giants.
And then I felt it.
The moment I stepped fully onto the concrete floor, a vibration went through the soles of my boots. It was a deep, sickening thrum, entirely separate from the hum of the obsidian in my pocket. This was a lower frequency, a dissonant chord that made my teeth ache. This wasn't a stone absorbing emotion; this was the very building itself, saturated with it.
I didn't need to try to listen. The resonance of this place forced itself upon me.
It was a crushing weight of desperation. The gritty ambition I'd felt before was here, but it was soured, twisted by cut corners and willful ignorance. I could almost hear the shouts of foremen over the din of nonexistent machinery, feel the cut-throat pressure to produce, to profit, to build a legacy no matter the cost.
And beneath it, like a black sludge under the foundation, was the shame. The knowing. The buried truth of what this place had truly cost.
My breath fogged in the beam of my flashlight. I was shaking, not from the cold, but from the emotional poison seeping into me. This was a mistake. This was too much.
Get out. The thought was a scream in my mind.
But my feet were rooted. The flashlight beam trembled as I swept it across the far wall. And then it caught something.
Not machinery. Not debris.
A door. Modern, reinforced steel. Out of place in the decaying factory. A digital keypad glowed faintly next to it.
Lena.
She wasn't just hiding a secret in ledgers. She was hiding something here. In the flesh.
Every instinct told me to run. But the pull was too strong. I moved toward the door, each step heavier than the last, the dissonant resonance of the place making my head swim.
I reached the door. The keypad was a high-end model. No picking this. I pulled out my phone, my fingers numb, ready to see if I could even get a signal in this tomb, to maybe try to bypass it—
A hand clamped over my mouth from behind, yanking me backward off my feet.
I didn't even have time to scream. I was dragged into the deeper shadows, my flashlight clattering to the ground and rolling away, its beam spinning wildly, illuminating dizzying glimpses of the ceiling.
A man's voice, low and gravelly, hissed in my ear. "You just can't leave well enough alone, can you?"
I struggled, elbowing back hard. I connected with something solid. He grunted, his grip loosening for a fraction of a second. It was all I needed. I twisted free, stumbling forward into the path of the spinning flashlight.
For a terrifying second, the beam illuminated his face. He wasn't some hired thug. He was the stone-faced security guard who had escorted me out of Veridian. Lena's personal watchdog.
His eyes were cold, professional. He didn't look surprised to see me. He looked… expectant.
"She said you'd show up here eventually," he said, advancing. "Sentimental. Too clever for your own good."
My back hit the cold steel of the door. Nowhere to run. Panic, pure and blinding, threatened to short-circuit my brain.
Then my hand closed around the obsidian in my pocket.
The guard lunged.
I didn't think. I yanked the stone out and, acting on pure instinct, didn't throw it. I shoved it toward him, my mind screaming not a word, but a feeling. A raw, amplified blast of the warehouse's own resonant energy—the decades of fear, shame, and desperation I'd just absorbed.
The air between us warped.
The guard didn't get thrown back by an invisible force. He froze mid-lunge, his face contorting in sudden, inexplicable terror. He wasn't seeing me anymore. He was seeing whatever ghosts this place held for him. His eyes went wide with a horror that was decades old, personal, and utterly consuming. He let out a strangled gasp, clutching his chest as if his heart had seized, and stumbled backward, collapsing to his knees.
He was whispering, over and over, "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I didn't see, I couldn't…"
I stared, my own breath coming in ragged gasps. What had I done?
The reinforced door behind me buzzed loudly, making me jump. The electronic lock disengaged with a heavy thunk.
It was opening.
Someone was on the other side.
I was trapped between a man lost in a waking nightmare and whatever—whoever—Lena was keeping hidden in her modern vault.
The choice was gone. The patience was gone. There was only the terrifying, unknown present.
The door began to swing inward, revealing a sliver of blinding white light from within.