Tian shot to his feet so suddenly the crowd flinched back, like prey before a predator's sudden strike. His eyes blazed with something between desperation and madness, his hands clawing at his hair as though he could rip the failure out of his skull.
"Why did it fail?!" His voice cracked like shattering glass, echoing across the atrium."I was this close!"
He pressed two trembling fingers together, leaving barely the space of a hair's breadth.
"Zero point three percent!" he shouted. His voice rose into a howl, raw and frantic. "Ninety-nine point seven percent!"
Gasps rippled through the atrium. For most, the number meant nothing. But for those who understood—Elena, Kai, Amara, and the senior engineers—it was a dagger. To be so close… and still collapse.
Tian began pacing in frantic circles, his movements jerky, unstable. His fingers cut through the air, tracing equations no one else could see. Invisible boards lit behind his eyes, numbers spilling, graphs unfolding, universes rising and falling in his mind.
"The tunnel was stable! The entanglement was perfect! Coherence held—IT HELD!"
His voice rose to a fever pitch. He wasn't speaking to them anymore. He was speaking to the ghosts of his calculations, to the silence of the failed machine, to himself.
The residents pressed themselves against the walls, fear crawling into their throats. This wasn't their calm, brilliant leader. This wasn't the man who had guided them through endless failures with patience and resolve.
This was a man unraveling. A genius crushed beneath the weight of his own obsession.
Elena's heart twisted. She had seen this before. Too many times. Brilliant minds so sharp they cut themselves apart, men and women who had stared into the abyss of physics and lost themselves in the spiral. She knew what Tian was becoming. And it terrified her.
"Stop it, Tian!" Elena's voice cut through his spiraling madness like a blade. Her tone cracked the air, demanding his attention.
"You broke every protocol! You endangered all of us! You nearly destroyed everything we've built!"
Her words fell like a verdict, heavy and final. In this underground fortress, her voice carried the weight of law.
"Your research privileges are revoked. Your leadership is over." Elena's gaze was ice. Her voice, merciless."We can't trust you with human lives."
The words were daggers. They weren't just commands—they were exile.
Kai and Amara rose beside her, their stances silent but unwavering. In that moment, three years of partnership, of friendship, of shared purpose, ended without ceremony.
The crowd seized the moment. Their whispers turned to shouts.
"He's dangerous!". "Send him to the surface!". "He's lost it!". "We trusted him with our children!"
The atrium thundered with accusation. One hundred eighty-eight voices, united in fear, in anger, in betrayal.
Tian stood in the center of their judgment, alone. The storm swirled around him, and for the first time, no one stood by his side.
It wasn't death they handed him. It was worse. The death of purpose. The death of trust.
Yet even as the crowd roared, the facility whispered something else.
Deep in the broken heart of the PEC1R, error codes flickered across hidden displays. Magnetic sensors trembled with impossible readings. Residual quantum patterns bled through the walls, vibrating faintly like the heartbeats of another reality.
The failed experiment had left scars. Not just damage—signatures. Spacetime rifts, subtle and unstable, hummed like a quiet echo.
Unnoticed, the system recorded them, line by line, whisper by whisper.
Something was awakening.
But the crowd only saw the man in the center—their fallen leader.
Tian slumped back into the sofa, his fury drained, leaving only despair in its place. His shoulders sagged. His eyes dimmed. The weight of five hundred and ninety failures pressed down upon him like a mountain.
"Elena…" His voice cracked, a whisper stripped bare. "The calculations were perfect. It should have worked."
Her gaze softened—just a little. Not with forgiveness, but with pity. The kind of pity that burns worse than anger.
"Calculations aren't everything, Tian. This isn't just math. We're not solving an equation—we're protecting people."
Her words carved deeper than any formula.
"But we were so close…" His voice trembled with helplessness, like a child denied his dream.
"Close to what?" Elena's reply was sharp, merciless. "Close to killing us all? This is why protocols exist. To protect us from ourselves. From… this."
She gestured at him—at his wild eyes, his trembling hands, the chaos he had unleashed.
The judgment didn't end there.
Marcus Torres stepped forward, his massive frame blotting out the glow of the red emergency lights. His voice rumbled with the weight of authority, of fatherhood, of fury.
"Security will escort you," he declared. His words were final, unchallenged. "Until the Director decides your fate, you're confined to quarters. You don't move without clearance."
The guards moved in, heavy boots striking like hammers on steel.
Tian didn't fight. He rose slowly, each movement heavy, as though invisible chains bound his body. His eyes swept across the crowd. Faces once lit with admiration now looked at him with nothing but fear, disappointment, contempt.
He opened his mouth. His voice was softer now, but carried across the silence.
"You'll understand one day. When someone else breaks through… when someone else touches it. Then you'll know. You'll know how close we were."
Elena turned her face away. Her voice was cold, stripped of warmth.
"Maybe. But whoever does… will do it the right way."
The words landed like nails in a coffin.
The lift doors opened. Two guards stood ready, hands firm on Tian's arms. He allowed himself to be led, steps slow, heavy, echoing against the steel walls.
Just before the doors closed, his gaze found Elena's. For the briefest instant, sorrow flickered there. Not forgiveness. Not reconciliation.
Just grief.
And then the doors shut, sealing him away.
The atrium breathed again. Voices rose as engineers muttered about repairs, medics tended to the wounded, and technicians rushed to stabilize the systems. Life pushed forward, trying to stitch together the wounds of the catastrophe.
The underground city began to heal.
But far below, in the wounded husk of the PEC1R, the resonance remained.
Reality remembered. And reality had begun to move.
The universe had heard their defiance. And its answer was coming.