The heavy door of the Level 3 Isolation Lab stood at the corridor's end like a massive, malignantly infested metal tombstone. The gray-white crystalline veins were no longer just covering it; they burrowed deep into the alloy door panel like wildly proliferating blood vessels and nerve bundles, fusing the door seamlessly with the surrounding walls, ceiling, and floor, forming a daunting, *living* barrier.
The door's observation window was long since completely blocked by opaque crystals. Only the edges of the door seam leaked that thick, unsettling gray-white glow, pulsing faintly like the breath of some living thing. The rustling sound acting directly on the consciousness peaked here, no longer background noise but transforming into an omnipresent whisper, as if countless voices were murmuring behind the door, tempting, mocking.
The energy intensity saturating the air was alarmingly high, even triggering overload warnings in Kael's sensors. Occasional stress-induced arcs of electricity flickered across Lia's synthetic skin. Rex shifted his grip on his weapon uneasily, his scanning eye fixed intently on the door as if something might burst through at any moment.
"This thing... doesn't look like it'll open easily," Rex's voice sounded subdued even over the comms.
"Physical breaching is extremely difficult," Lia's scanner meticulously examined the door and the surrounding crystalline structures. "These growths have altered the door's structural integrity. Forcing it open could cause an unpredictable energy discharge or structural collapse. And... they seem to possess a kind of... active defense mechanism."
She pointed to a spot where the crystals seemed slightly thinner, the remnants of what might have been an emergency manual control panel. "Any unauthorized contact might trigger a powerful energy backlash."
Kael stared at the door, the image of the similarly crystal-infested hatch from the end of his 'Pandora' mission overlapping with it. A cold sense of déjà vis gripped his heart. He knew what was inside, or rather, he knew the nature of the thing.
"We don't need to breach it," Kael's voice was unnervingly calm as he retracted his high-frequency blade. "It's inviting us in."
"Inviting?" Rex's emitter produced a confused static burst.
"This energy signature, this conscious whisper... It's aware of us. Particularly you, Commander," Lia analyzed the data streams. "Your biosigns and neural patterns have residual correlations with the data from ten years ago. It's... 'interested' in you."
Kael didn't deny it. The fragmented memories made it clear—this crystal, or this entity, possessed a form of consciousness, and it remembered him. *Survivor*... The identity felt more like a curse now, the mark of prey.
Slowly, he raised his hand, not touching the door, but holding his palm a few centimeters above the writhing crystalline veins.
Almost instantly, the crystalline veins flared with light! A powerful, cold stream of energy surged forth, not as an attack, but washing over Kael's armor like a scan, focusing intensely on his head.
Kael grunted, his body jolting slightly as his vision flickered again—fragmented memories surged uncontrollably: his squad members transforming, his lieutenant's final warning, an endless, cold gray-white expanse...
But this time, he didn't resist. He forcibly suppressed the biological revulsion and fear, opening his neural interface, allowing the energy limited "access."