The room remained silent after Professor Kael spoke. Nobody wanted to ask the obvious question forming in everyone's mind. If the thing inside the archives had already existed within the station before the breach began, then where had it been hiding all this time? And more importantly—how many others were still hidden aboard Aegis Academy?
The blast doors behind them groaned again.
Not from impact this time, but from pressure. The metal bulged inward slowly as though something enormous on the other side was leaning against it curiously. Several students backed away immediately while one of the NUS soldiers raised his rifle with trembling hands.
"Professor," the soldier whispered nervously, "tell me those doors can hold."
Kael did not answer immediately, which terrified everyone more than if he had simply said no.
Mitchelle stared uneasily at the warped metal while the whispers returned faintly inside his mind. Ever since the tower began appearing in his dreams, the voices had changed. Before, they had sounded distant and fragmented, like broken radio transmissions drifting through static. Now they sounded clearer. More awake. Sometimes he could almost understand individual words.
"Historian…"
Mitchelle flinched instinctively.
Lena noticed immediately. "You hearing it again?"
He nodded slowly.
"What's it saying now?"
Before he could answer, the station lights flickered violently. Then gravity failed.
Everyone inside the chamber suddenly floated several inches off the floor as alarms screamed throughout the corridor. Weapons, equipment, and loose debris drifted upward weightlessly while red warning lights spun through the darkness.
"Artificial gravity collapse detected," the station announced calmly. "Dimensional contamination spreading."
A second later gravity returned all at once.
Hard.
Several students crashed painfully into the floor.
At that exact moment, the blast doors split open.
Not shattered.
Opened.
Something on the other side had carefully peeled the reinforced metal apart like opening a container.
Darkness flooded into the chamber first.
Then came the sound.
Breathing.
Slow.
Immense.
Wet.
Mitchelle's body locked up instantly. Every instinct inside him screamed to run.
The thing entering the room did not resemble a creature in any normal biological sense. Its shape shifted constantly as though reality itself could not fully process what it was seeing. One moment it appeared vaguely humanoid. The next it resembled a mass of tangled limbs wrapped around a gigantic vertical mouth lined with moving teeth.
Everywhere it moved, the air around it distorted unnaturally.
Like reality itself was decaying in its presence.
Several students immediately began crying from pure terror. One fainted outright. Even the NUS soldiers looked visibly shaken.
Professor Kael stepped forward calmly despite the tension consuming the room. Golden symbols ignited across his black robes, illuminating the corridor in flickering geometric light.
"Everyone behind me," he ordered quietly.
The creature stopped moving.
Its head—or whatever approximated a head—slowly turned toward Mitchelle.
Then every voice inside his mind spoke simultaneously.
"FOUND YOU."
Mitchelle screamed.
Pain exploded through his skull as memories flooded into his mind all at once. Not his own memories.
Other people's.
Other worlds.
He saw alien civilizations drowning beneath black oceans while cities collapsed into endless pits beneath crimson skies. He saw giant chained doors opening while entire galaxies burned. He saw worlds consumed by darkness older than stars themselves.
Then he saw Earth.
Not future Earth.
Ancient Earth.
Thousands of years before recorded human civilization.
And standing beneath a black sky—
The tower.
Mitchelle staggered backward violently, nearly collapsing. Lena grabbed him immediately.
"Mitchelle!"
The creature moved the instant she touched him.
Fast.
Far too fast.
One moment it stood across the chamber. The next it appeared directly in front of them. Its vertical mouth split open wider.
Inside were more mouths.
Professor Kael attacked instantly. The symbols around him erupted into blinding gold light while space itself compressed violently around the creature. Entire sections of the chamber folded inward unnaturally beneath the force of the dimensional pressure.
For the first time, the entity reacted.
It screamed.
The sound bypassed physical hearing completely and slammed directly into everyone's minds. Several students collapsed unconscious immediately while others began bleeding from the eyes and nose.
The walls surrounding the chamber cracked open as Dream corruption spread through reality like fractures in glass. Thick black liquid began leaking upward from the floor while distorted shadows crawled unnaturally across the ceiling.
Kael's expression darkened.
"It's anchoring itself."
One of the soldiers looked horrified. "What does that mean?"
"It means," Kael said quietly, "it's trying to fully enter reality."
That was enough to break everyone's paralysis.
The surviving students sprinted toward the emergency transport corridor while Kael held the creature back. Golden geometric constructs repeatedly formed around the entity, only to shatter moments later as the thing tore through them with impossible strength.
Mitchelle looked back once while running.
He regretted it instantly.
For a brief second, the creature's constantly shifting face stabilized.
And he recognized it.
Not fully.
But enough.
Human.
Or at least it had once been human.
Its face resembled a man stretched unnaturally thin, with hollow eyes and skin covered in moving symbols. A memory surfaced instantly inside Mitchelle's mind.
The expedition photograph from 2704.
One of the explorers whose face had been scratched out.
"Oh God…" Mitchelle whispered.
The thing smiled directly at him.
Then Professor Kael slammed both hands together.
The chamber behind them collapsed into a sphere of golden light before emergency blast shields sealed shut over the corridor.
Silence followed.
Heavy breathing filled the transport hall.
Nobody spoke for several long seconds.
Finally Lena looked carefully toward Mitchelle. "You saw something."
Mitchelle stared at the floor. "I think…" He swallowed hard. "I think that thing used to be human."
One of the soldiers cursed quietly while another immediately shook his head.
"That's impossible. Dream-corrupted entities don't retain identity structures."
Professor Kael emerged slowly from the sealed corridor behind them.
Everyone turned instantly.
For the first time since Mitchelle had met him, Kael looked exhausted. Thin cracks of black corruption spread across one side of his robes before slowly fading away.
"You're wrong," Kael said quietly.
The room became silent again.
Kael looked directly at Mitchelle.
"The first Deep Dream expedition did not fail seventeen minutes after contact."
Mitchelle felt his stomach tighten. "What do you mean?"
Kael hesitated briefly before answering.
"The records were altered."
Even the NUS soldiers looked shocked.
"The expedition survived inside the Deep Dream for almost three years."
Nobody spoke.
Kael continued quietly. "When they returned… they brought something back with them."
Lena frowned. "You mean that thing?"
"No," Kael answered.
His voice sounded heavier now.
"That was one of the expedition members."
A cold silence spread through the corridor.
Mitchelle felt sick.
"What happened to the others?"
Kael looked away briefly. "We never found all of them."
At that exact moment, the station lights died completely.
Not flickering.
Gone.
Total darkness swallowed the corridor.
Then the station intercom activated.
Only it was no longer the station AI speaking.
It was a human voice.
Distorted.
Whispering.
"Open…the door…"
Several students froze instantly.
The voice repeated again through every speaker aboard the station.
"Open…the door…"
Then louder.
"LET US IN."
Something slammed violently against the hull of Aegis Academy from outside.
The entire corridor shook hard enough to throw people off balance.
Warning alarms immediately erupted across every system.
"Hull breach detected."
"Hull breach detected."
"Hull breach detected."
One of the soldiers activated an exterior monitor with shaking hands.
Everyone in the corridor turned toward the screen.
Something enormous surrounded the station.
At first Mitchelle thought it was another dimensional fracture.
Then he realized the horrifying truth.
It was a hand.
A gigantic black hand wrapped around Aegis Academy from outside orbit itself.
And attached to that hand—
Something was staring directly at him through the darkness of space.
Smiling.