Thomas sat on the floor with his back against the wall, his ribs still aching from where the soldier's fist had connected when he'd tried to protect Amelie. His little sister was curled up against him, her small body trembling despite the warmth of the building.
This was wrong. All of it.
Amelie never came to him for comfort. She was always Mom's little shadow, always showing off her violin skills or her perfect grades, always getting the attention he felt he deserved. For eight years, he'd resented her for being the favorite, for being the one who could do no wrong. But seeing those men grab her, hearing her scream his name when they'd dragged her from the school cafeteria, something had snapped inside him. Something protective and fierce that he didn't even know existed.
"Tommy?" Amelie's voice was barely a whisper against his shoulder. She hadn't called him that since she was five.
"Yeah?"
"Are Mom and Dad okay?"
Thomas looked down at her tangled brown hair, so much like their mother's. He wanted to lie, to tell her everything would be fine, but the words stuck in his throat. He'd heard the soldier talking on his radio earlier, something about a "medical situation" and "containing the asset."
"I don't know," he said finally. "But they're tough, you know? Dad used to be a cop. And Mom... Mom's really smart."
"Smarter than my teacher?"
"Way smarter." He adjusted his arm around her, wincing as his bruised ribs protested. "She'll figure this out. She always does."
Amelie was quiet for a moment, then: "I'm scared."
"Me too," Thomas admitted, and it felt strange to say it out loud. At fourteen, he was supposed to be brave, supposed to protect his little sister. But sitting in this office with armed guards outside, he felt very young and very powerless.
The office they were trapped in belonged to one of Mom's research assistants. Dr. Martinez, maybe. The walls were covered with whiteboards full of equations Thomas couldn't understand, and there were family photos scattered across the desk. A normal person's life. Just like theirs had been this morning.
Hours passed in tense silence, broken only by the guard's periodic checks and the distant hum of machinery. Thomas had counted seventeen check-ins when something changed. The ambient noise of the building started to shift. Ventilation systems, electrical humming, the subtle sounds of a working facility, all of it began to feel wrong.
At first, it was just a feeling. The air itself seemed to grow thicker, more oppressive. The fluorescent lights flickered occasionally, casting dancing shadows that seemed to move with purpose rather than randomness.
"Thomas," Amelie said, sitting up slightly. "Do you hear that?"
He strained his ears, listening past the hum of the lights and the distant murmur of voices in the hallway. There was something else now, so faint he might have imagined it. A rhythmic sound, almost like breathing, but too slow and too deep to be human.
"Probably just the air system," he said, but even as the words left his mouth, he didn't believe them.
The sound grew gradually more distinct over the next hour. Not breathing. Chanting. Someone was speaking in a low, repetitive cadence that seemed to vibrate through the walls themselves. The words, if they were words, weren't in any language Thomas recognized, but they made his skin crawl in ways he couldn't explain.
Amelie pressed closer to him. "It sounds like someone praying, but... wrong."
Thomas felt it too. A creeping sense of wrongness that seemed to seep through the walls. The chanting was getting clearer, more purposeful, though he still couldn't make out individual words. Whatever language it was, it seemed designed to make human ears uncomfortable. Each syllable was like fingernails on glass.
The temperature in their office began to drop. Slowly at first, then more noticeably. Their breath started to mist, and frost began forming on the windows despite the building's heating system.
"Tommy, I'm cold," Amelie whispered.
"I know," he said, pulling her closer. "It'll be okay."
But he wasn't sure of anything anymore.
The chanting continued for what felt like hours, rising and falling in intensity. Sometimes it would fade to barely audible, then surge back with renewed fervor. And with it came smells. Metallic and sharp, like pennies left in the rain. Thomas knew that smell from when he'd fallen off his bike and scraped his knee badly enough to need stitches.
Blood.
But there was something else underneath it. Something organic and wrong, like meat left too long in the sun. Thomas's stomach clenched, and he had to swallow hard to keep from gagging.
Then, abruptly, the chanting stopped.
The sudden silence was somehow worse than the sound had been. But it wasn't really silent. Thomas could sense something in the next room, something that definitely wasn't human. The air felt charged, like the moment before lightning strikes.
That's when they heard footsteps approaching their door. Not the heavy boots of the guard, but lighter steps. Familiar steps.
"Hello?" The voice was warm, concerned. "Is someone there?"
Thomas's heart leaped. "Aunt Zoey?"
There was a pause. Just a beat too long before the response came. "Thomas? Amelie?" Genuine shock colored the voice now. "What are you... how..."
"Aunt Zoey!" Amelie scrambled to her feet, pressing against the door. "We're here! Some men took us from school!"
Another pause. Longer this time. When Zoey spoke again, her voice carried a weight Thomas had never heard before. "Hold on, sweetheart. I'm getting you out."
The lock clicked, and the door swung open to reveal Aunt Zoey's familiar face. But something was different. Her clothes were disheveled, and there were dark stains on her sleeves that looked suspiciously like the metallic smell that had been growing stronger. But it was her mouth that made Thomas's stomach drop. Her lower lip was split open, bleeding heavily, with fresh blood still trickling down her chin and staining the front of her shirt.
When she saw them, genuine shock flickered across her features.
"What are you doing here?" she asked, but the question seemed aimed more at herself than at them. "You weren't supposed to..." She caught herself, then knelt down and pulled Amelie into a quick hug. "Okay. We need to get you somewhere safe."
"Where's the guard?" Thomas asked, standing up slowly. His legs felt unsteady after hours of sitting, but he couldn't stop staring at the blood on Zoey's lip. "Aunt Zoey, what happened to your mouth?"
Zoey's hand moved unconsciously to her lip, and when she pulled it away, her fingers came back red. "It's nothing," she said quickly, but Thomas could see the lie in her eyes. "Just... bit it."
The explanation felt wrong. People didn't bleed that much from accidentally biting their lip. And the way she kept dabbing at it with the back of her hand, like she couldn't make it stop bleeding...
"Where's the guard?" Thomas pressed.
Zoey's expression darkened. "He tried to stop something important. I had to deal with him."
The way she said it made Thomas's skin crawl. "What do you mean?"
"It's complicated, honey." Zoey's voice took on that tone adults used when they were avoiding difficult truths. "But he won't bother anyone anymore."
She led them toward the door, but Thomas hesitated, then reached back to grab the handle. Maybe if he closed it, locked it somehow... but Zoey was already pulling them forward.
"Come on," she said. "We don't have much time."
As they stepped into the hallway, Thomas caught a glimpse through the open doorway of the adjacent office and immediately wished he hadn't.
The guard was there, but calling him "there" was generous. He was sprawled in the center of the room, arms spread wide, his tactical vest shredded and stained with dark patches. His face... Thomas looked away before his mind could fully process what he was seeing, but the image burned into his retinas anyway. Where his eyes should have been were two dark, wet holes, and his mouth was open in a silent scream.
But it was the floor around him that made Thomas's stomach lurch violently.
Symbols were drawn in what could only be blood. Fresh blood, still glistening in the fluorescent light. The patterns weren't random; they were deliberate, purposeful, forming intricate geometric shapes that hurt to look at directly. Like his eyes couldn't quite focus on them.
But his feet wouldn't move. His hands were shaking too badly to do anything useful.
"Don't look," Zoey said sharply, pulling him away from the doorway. "It's not safe."
"What happened to him?" Thomas's voice cracked.
"He tried to stop something that was bigger than him," Zoey replied, and there was something almost proud in her voice. "Something that's been planned for a long time."
She led them quickly down the hallway, past offices and laboratories Thomas had visited dozens of times with his mother. But nothing looked familiar now. The fluorescent lights continued to flicker intermittently, casting dancing shadows that seemed to move independently.
"Where are we going?" Amelie asked, her small hand clutching Thomas's shirt.
"Somewhere safe," Zoey replied. "Somewhere your mother's colleagues can't interfere."
They stopped in front of what looked like a storage closet, but when Zoey pressed her hand against a hidden scanner, the wall slid aside to reveal a narrow corridor. Thomas had never seen this passage before, despite spending countless hours in the building.
"Emergency routes," Zoey explained, seeing his confusion. "Your mother insisted on them."
As they walked into the corridor, Thomas tried to memorize the numbers Zoey had pressed. Six digits. Started with a three, maybe? Or was it eight? His mind felt fuzzy, panic making it hard to think clearly.
The corridor was dark and narrow, lit only by dim emergency lighting that cast everything in red. Their footsteps echoed strangely. The air here was different too. Thicker, more oppressive, carrying scents that didn't belong in a modern research facility.
"I don't like this," Amelie whispered.
"Neither do I," Thomas admitted.
The corridor ended at another hidden door, this one requiring both a hand scanner and a numeric code. Thomas watched carefully as Zoey input the numbers, but his hands were shaking so badly he could barely focus. Three... eight... no, wait...
"This way," Zoey said, her voice carrying an excitement now that hadn't been there before.
The chamber was vast and circular, extending both up and down farther than the emergency lighting could reach. The walls were covered in murals that belonged in no modern building. Primitive artwork depicting twisted figures engaged in acts that made his stomach turn violently. Bodies stretched in impossible angles, their mouths opened in silent screams.
"Oh God," Thomas whispered, pressing his back against the wall. "What is this place?"
Amelie had gone completely white, her small hands clutching at his shirt so tightly her knuckles were bloodless. She was making small, frightened sounds.
"I want to go home," she said, but the words came out in a breathless rush. "Tommy, I want to go home right now."
Around the space, arranged at what looked like temporary work stations with folding tables and laptops, were about six people in everyday business attire. They looked like stressed office workers who'd set up shop in hell itself. One woman was typing frantically while sipping from a coffee cup. A man in a polo shirt was hunched over a tablet.
When Zoey led the children in, they all looked up with expressions ranging from surprise to genuine alarm.
"Zoey," the woman with the coffee said, her voice tight with panic. "This wasn't part of the schedule. We're still forty minutes out, and the government teams are already in the building. We don't have time for complications!"
"There were problems," Zoey replied, her voice taking on a clipped, professional tone. "The extraction team ran into issues that needed immediate containment."
Even in hell, they talked like project managers.
The man with the tablet looked up, sweat visible on his forehead. "Dorothy, we need to make a decision. The military is three floors up and they're moving fast. If we don't go now..."
Thomas stared at them. "We're not complications. We're people."
The man looked genuinely distressed. "Of course you are. But right now we have to adjust our timeline, and that creates problems we weren't prepared for."
At the far end of the room, sitting in a comfortable office chair with a tablet in her lap, was someone Thomas recognized with shock.
"Grandma Dorothy?" Amelie's voice was tiny, confused.
"What the hell?" Dorothy said, looking up sharply from her tablet. "Thomas? Amelie?" The shock in her voice was genuine, followed quickly by frustration. "What are you doing here? How did you..." She set down her tablet with visible irritation. "This wasn't supposed to happen. You weren't supposed to be here."
"Ready for what?" Thomas demanded, backing toward the entrance with Amelie. "Grandma, what is this place?"
"It's family business," Dorothy said, standing up and pacing now, clearly agitated. "We've been working on this for years. Your mother was supposed to help, but she..." Dorothy trailed off, looking frustrated. "Children always complicate things."
The woman with the coffee looked up from her frantic typing. "Dorothy, we need to move faster. Government teams are in the building. They'll find us soon."
"I know, Margaret," Dorothy replied, her voice taking on the same strained professional tone. "But we can't rush the setup. The portal calculations require precise timing."
"Portal calculations?" Thomas felt like pieces of a horrible puzzle were clicking into place. "This is about Mom's portal, isn't it?"
Dorothy's expression sharpened. "Your mother made something incredible. But she wanted to limit it, use it for boring things. She never understood what it could really do."
"Which is what?"
"To take us home," Zoey said softly, and for the first time, there was genuine emotion in her voice. "To the place our family has been trying to reach."
Above them, something hummed with power that Thomas could feel in his bones. The sound was familiar, like the hum that came from his mother's lab late at night when she thought no one was listening. The portal. It was here, directly above them.
But there was something else now, something that made the hum deeper, more resonant. As if the portal was connecting to something far more vast and alien than it was designed for.
[THE DELIVERY PARAMETERS HAVE BEEN COMPROMISED]
Came a voice from overhead. It sounded almost human, but with an electronic undertone that made it clear this was artificial intelligence.
"I know, Valk," Dorothy replied, addressing the ceiling like this was a normal phone call. "We're adapting. Circumstances changed."
The man with the tablet was now hunched over his device, both hands working frantically. "Dorothy, the power requirements are way beyond safety limits. If we push past what it's designed for..."
"Then we push," Dorothy said simply. "This is our only chance. Once the government takes control, we'll never get another shot."
"Shot at what?" Thomas demanded.
"To go where we belong," Dorothy replied, but her voice was distracted, focused on her tablet. "Our family has been working toward this for generations. Since we first found out there are other places. Better places."
The humming above them grew louder, more insistent. Thomas could feel it in his chest now, a rhythmic pulsing that seemed to sync with his heartbeat.
"I want Mom and Dad," Amelie said, tears starting to flow. "I want to go home."
"You will be home soon, sweetheart," Dorothy said, but she wasn't really looking at them anymore. "Where we're going, families like ours don't have to hide what we can do."
"What can you do?" Thomas asked, though he was afraid of the answer.
Dorothy looked up from her tablet, and for a moment, her expression was almost normal. Almost like the grandmother he remembered. "Things your mother never wanted to learn. Things she thought were too dangerous." She paused. "She was always too cautious."
The portal above them pulsed, and Thomas felt the air itself change. Thicker, more oppressive, carrying scents that definitely didn't belong in this reality. Whatever his grandmother and aunt were trying to do, they were very close to succeeding.
"Dorothy," Margaret called out, her voice strained with urgency. "We're at thirty minutes to optimal window. The children weren't factored into our calculations."
"I'm aware," Dorothy said, checking her tablet with the same casual attention she might give a grocery list. "We'll have to adapt. Family is family, after all."
Zoey stepped closer to Dorothy, lowering her voice but not enough that Thomas couldn't hear. "Mother, I need you to know, I was captured too. The government operatives had me when everything started."
Dorothy looked up sharply. "What? How did you..."
"I had to take a risk," Zoey continued, her voice tight. "I performed the Binding Invocation. The one you taught me when I was sixteen."
"The Binding Invocation?" Dorothy's voice carried a mix of pride and concern. "Zoey, that ritual requires..."
"I know what it requires," Zoey interrupted, gesturing toward the adjacent office. "The guard provided the necessary... components. It worked, but it cost us our stealth. That's how I was able to find the children, but it also means our timeline is compromised."
Dorothy was quiet for a moment, processing this information. When she spoke again, her voice carried new urgency. "How long do we have before the effects fade?"
"Maybe an hour. Less if they bring in someone who knows what to look for."
"Then we accelerate everything," Dorothy said decisively. "Margaret, new timeline. We go in twenty minutes, not thirty."
"Twenty minutes?" Margaret's voice pitched higher. "Dorothy, we haven't finished the stabilization..."
"We'll have to risk it," Dorothy said, then looked back at Zoey with something that might have been maternal concern. "Are you all right? The Binding Invocation takes a toll, especially on someone who hasn't used it in years." Her eyes fixed on Zoey's still-bleeding lip. "And you bit through your lip again. Just like when you were learning."
"It's the only way to anchor the words," Zoey said, wiping more blood from her chin. "You know that."
"I know," Dorothy said softly. "But it's been so long since you've had to... I was hoping you'd never need to use it again."
Thomas felt his stomach lurch as another piece clicked into place. The blood on Zoey's lip wasn't from running or fear. It was part of whatever horrible ritual she'd performed. She'd bitten through her own lip on purpose, as part of the magic that had killed the guard.
The chanting they'd heard through the walls, that horrible, inhuman language that had made his skin crawl, that had been Zoey. Aunt Zoey, who used to braid Amelie's hair and bring them cookies, had been speaking those impossible words. And the guard...
"You killed him," Thomas said, his voice barely above a whisper but carrying clearly in the chamber. "You killed him. That was you. You did those things. And your lip... you hurt yourself. It wasn't an accident."
Everyone in the chamber turned to look at him. Zoey's hand moved instinctively to her lip again, coming away red. She didn't deny it.
"Thomas," she started, but he was backing away, pulling Amelie with him.
"The chanting we heard," he continued, his voice getting stronger, more horrified. "Those words that made us sick, that was you. You were in that room, and you..." He couldn't finish, couldn't say the words that would make it real.
"It was necessary," Zoey said quietly.
Thomas's voice cracked. "You tortured someone to death! We heard it! We heard you doing... whatever that was!" His hands were shaking now, and Amelie was pressing closer to him, sensing his terror.
Dorothy sighed, looking genuinely disappointed. "This is exactly why we didn't want them here yet. Children don't understand necessity."
"I understand enough," Thomas shot back, his voice gaining strength from his anger. "You're all completely insane. That guard died screaming because of what you did."
"The Binding Invocation requires sacrifice," Dorothy said matter-of-factly, as if explaining a recipe. "It's old magic, Thomas. Older than this pathetic modern world and its silly moral constraints. Zoey did what she had to do to serve the family."
Thomas stared at his grandmother, at this woman who had read him bedtime stories, and felt something break inside his chest. "What are you?" he whispered.
"What are we going to do with them?" Zoey asked after a moment, trying to redirect the conversation, but Thomas caught something new in her voice. "They haven't been trained for what they will see."
"They come with us," Dorothy said matter-of-factly. "It's not ideal, but it's better than leaving them behind to face what's coming to this city."
"What's coming?" Thomas pressed, but Dorothy's attention had already shifted back to her tablet.
The structure above them hummed with increasing intensity. The emergency lights flickered more rapidly now, casting wild shadows that seemed to dance independently. And in those shadows, Thomas thought he could see shapes that definitely weren't human.
Around the chamber, the stress was becoming obvious. People were speaking in hushed, urgent tones into phones, laptops were being slammed shut, and everyone kept glancing nervently at the ceiling where that artificial voice continued to provide updates.
"Nineteen minutes," Margaret announced, her voice tight. "All systems are approaching critical parameters."
Dorothy stood up, setting aside her tablet, but before she could speak, a harsh alarm began blaring throughout the chamber. Red warning lights flashed on every screen, and the artificial voice from above took on an urgent tone.
[CRITICAL MALFUNCTION DETECTED. PORTAL BREACH IMMINENT]
"What?" Dorothy snapped, her composure cracking for the first time. "Valk, report!"
[THE PORTAL MATRIX IS DESTABILIZING]
The AI responded, its voice carrying electronic stress.
[POWER FLUCTUATIONS ARE CREATING CASCADE FAILURES. CURRENT TRAJECTORY WILL RESULT IN UNCONTROLLED BREACH IN APPROXIMATELY EIGHTEEN MINUTES]
Margaret's face had gone white. "An uncontrolled breach? That could tear a hole in reality itself!"
"Can we abort?" Zoey asked, panic creeping into her voice.
"Negative," Valk replied. "The system has passed the point of safe shutdown. The portal must complete its cycle or risk catastrophic collapse."
Dorothy was frantically typing on her tablet, her calm demeanor completely shattered. "The calculations are wrong. Something's interfering." She looked up, her eyes wild with frustration. "We need Vivian. Only she understands the core architecture well enough to stabilize this."
"But Vivian's under government control," Margaret said, her voice rising with panic. "She's not going to help us!"
"She will if she wants to prevent a catastrophe that could destroy half the continent," Dorothy replied grimly. "This isn't about our plans anymore. This is about survival."
The portal above them pulsed erratically, its steady hum now a chaotic symphony of grinding machinery and electronic screams. The chamber shook with each pulse, and Thomas could see cracks forming in the ancient stone walls.
[SEVENTEEN MINUTES TO UNCONTROLLED BREACH] Valk announced.
Dorothy's eyes darted frantically between her tablet and the chaos unfolding above them. Then, slowly, her gaze settled on Thomas and Amelie. Something cold and calculating flickered in her expression.
"Unless..." she said quietly, her voice taking on a dangerous edge. "Unless we can get word to Vivian. Let her know we have them."
Zoey caught the direction of Dorothy's stare. "Mother, how? The government has her completely isolated. We can't exactly call her cell phone."
"The situation has changed!" Dorothy snapped, her composure completely gone now. "We're looking at collapse, Zoey. Everything we've worked for, everything our family has sacrificed for generations, will be destroyed."
Margaret looked between Dorothy and the children, understanding dawning on her face. "You want to use them as leverage. But how do we even contact her?"
Dorothy's hands were shaking as she paced. "There has to be a way. Some channel they're not monitoring. If Vivian knows we have her children, if she knows what's at stake..."
Thomas instinctively stepped in front of Amelie, his heart hammering against his ribs. "What are you talking about?"
"We need to find a way to reach your mother," Dorothy said, her voice becoming eerily calm despite the chaos around them. "She needs to know you're here. She needs to understand what happens if she doesn't help us fix this." She didn't finish the sentence, but the threat hung in the air like poison.
"Grandma, you can't..." Thomas started, but the words felt stupid even as he said them. This wasn't his grandmother anymore. This was someone else wearing her face.
"We need to think," Dorothy said, turning back to the others. "There has to be some way to get a message to her. Some channel the government isn't monitoring completely."
"The portal network itself," Margaret suggested desperately. "If we could somehow route a signal through the quantum channels..."
"Too risky," Zoey said. "That could destabilize everything even more."
"Then what?" Dorothy demanded. "We have minutes before this whole thing collapses, and our only hope is a woman who doesn't even know her children are here!"
Thomas felt Amelie's small hand grip his shirt. His grandmother, the woman who had taught him to play chess, who had made him pancakes every Sunday morning, was looking at them like pieces on a board. Expendable pieces.
That's when Amelie whispered something that made Thomas's heart break completely.
"Tommy," she said, so quietly he almost missed it, not looking at him. "I wet myself."
The portal's chaotic pulsing grew more violent, and Thomas realized with crystalline terror that their lives had just become bargaining chips in a game he didn't understand. And time was running out for everyone.