?The gloom in Cristy’s bedroom was lit only by the glow of three monitors.

  Outside, Stonemouth held its breath under the weight of armored vehicles.

  Nobody understood. An old janitor dead and the town militarized? For people, it was fear. For Cristy, it was an error in the code. And she was born to debug it.

  ?She cleared her throat. Fingers struck the mechanical keyboard with military rhythm.

  It wasn't an improvised talent. Code ran in her blood. Her father, currently eating dinner downstairs oblivious to everything, had once been a Lead Security Architect on the East Coast. Cristy hadn't grown up on fairy tales, but on cryptography manuals.

  "I build mazes no one can escape from," he used to tell her.

  She had learned to break them at twelve.

  ?"Let's see where you're hiding..." she hissed.

  ?She launched the script. The military hadn't wired their own infrastructure; they were piggybacking on municipal servers. That was where she'd catch them.

  RTSP protocol breached. City video recorders opened like tuna cans.

  Packet sniffing activated.

  Beep. Beep. Beep.

  ?The monitors lit up.

  Grainy video windows showed the occupied skeleton of Stonemouth.

  Monitor one: armored cars in front of the library.

  Monitor two: checkpoint at the gas station.

  "Found you," she murmured.

  ?With a sharp command, she synced the dynamic map and sent the link to Tony and Alex’s phones.

  Three words: The way is clear.

  ?She killed the monitors. Darkness swallowed the room. She closed her field laptop and shoved it into her backpack. She tied her hair in a tight ponytail, pulling the skin until it hurt. The straight-A student was gone.

  ?She opened the bottom drawer of her dresser.

  She pulled out the black hoodie. It smelled of ozone and ink.

  The logo on the chest, a glitched hexagon with a stylized crow, seemed to pulse in the dark: V.H. // THE VOID HUNTERS.

  It wasn't fashion. It was a uniform.

  She pulled it on. The heavy cotton covered her shoulders, and the apathy of her golden life vanished.

  She looked in the mirror. The glass no longer reflected the class valedictorian. It reflected a shadow.

  Snap a photo. Sent.

  ?Alex ??: Loading the kit. Don't get caught, Ghost.

  Tony ??: See you at the crossroads.

  ?She reached under the bed and dragged out her combat boots. She laced them tight, locking her ankles. She stood up and clicked her heels on the wood.

  She opened the window. The damp November air hit her. She lowered herself from the ledge, landing silently in the garden.

  Over the wall, her parents were arguing about dinner. She was already a ghost among the pines.

  ?The Border Crossroads was an island of asphalt where streetlights seemed to be dying of old age.

  Alex was sitting on the rusted guardrail. He checked his watch: 8:28 PM.

  "Where are you guys?" he whispered into the steam of his breath.

  ?A rhythmic squeak broke the silence.

  Tony emerged from the fog, pedaling a monster of iron and rust. He stopped in front of Alex, short of breath.

  Alex hopped off the rail. "Nice wheels. Did you rob a museum?"

  "Mine is gone," Tony said, patting the chipped handlebars. "Billy destroyed it. This... was my dad’s."

  ?Alex's sarcasm died. He recognized that bike, a relic covered in dust in the Flint garage.

  "Get off," he ordered.

  "What? We're la..."

  "Get off. Your knees are in your mouth. You'll burn out your legs in thirty yards."

  Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  Tony obeyed. Alex pulled out a wrench and raised the seat exactly four inches. He tightened the bolt with a sharp snap.

  "There. Now you have a fighting chance."

  ?Tony looked at him. "Thanks. But listen... there's something. I heard my dad on the phone. He was talking about the military trucks. He said they're escorting a company called TerraCore Industries."

  Alex frowned. "TerraCore?"

  "Yeah. And they're taking control of Shaft 4."

  ?"Guys!"

  Cristy emerged from the shadow of the pines. With the black hoodie and boots, she looked ready for war.

  "I have the video feeds," she said rapidly. "The convoys are all heading to the north sector. Old mining area."

  She stopped, looking at Tony. "Shaft 4 is there. That's where they found Grant."

  ?Silence fell heavily.

  "Grant dies there, and a few hours later a private army shows up," Alex muttered. "That's not a coincidence."

  "They're looking for something," Tony said. "But if they're all there..."

  "...no one is watching the other side," Alex finished with a cold half-smile.

  ?Tony got back on the bike, setting his gaze toward the opposite hill, where the silhouette of the clinic stood against the moon.

  "Let's go to St. Alder. If Ravenwood is the key, it's in there."

  ?The woods around the clinic weren't a place; they were a trap.

  Briars and black mud. Tony pushed the heavy bike, his breath tasting of metal.

  "Do you smell that?" Cristy whispered.

  "Ozone," Alex replied, rubbing his arm. The hairs were standing up. "And burnt meat."

  ?In front of them, the clinic wasn't silent.

  Frenetic blades of light filtered from the boarded windows. Sounds of destruction: breaking glass, snapping wood, shouting.

  "Someone's there," Tony hissed. "And it's not the military. They're making too much noise."

  ?Cristy pointed to a shadow. "Service door unhinged."

  They slipped inside. The air stank of mold. They hid behind a pile of rusted gurneys in the lobby.

  ?Chaos was total.

  Four guys were trashing the reception area. Emptying drawers, smashing chairs.

  In the center was Billy Miller. But he was a mask of terror.

  "Search! You have to search everywhere!" he screamed, overturning a filing cabinet.

  "Billy, there's nothing here!" whined one of his crew, Davis. "Let's get out of here!"

  Billy grabbed him by the collar. "You don't get it, you idiot! If I don't bring him that box, we're dead! He said he'll make us disappear like Grant. You want to end up like him? You want your ears to explode?"

  ?Behind the gurneys, Tony felt his blood freeze. Billy knew.

  ?"Search!" Billy bellowed again. "A black file, a box, something with the symbol!"

  ?Then the air changed.

  A sudden pressure crushed their eardrums inward. The flashlights flickered.

  The hum arrived.

  A low, visceral sound coming from inside their heads.

  Bzzzzzzzzzzt.

  ?"What the hell is that?" Davis screamed, covering his ears.

  The hum became a high-pitched, drilling whistle. A severed high-voltage cable whipping the air.

  "AAARGH!" Billy fell to his knees, screaming.

  Behind the gurneys, Cristy and Alex collapsed. Cristy curled up, a silent scream in her throat. Alex tried to resist, but the world unraveled.

  ?Tony fell on his side. The pain was a red-hot needle in his auditory nerve.

  He was about to pass out when his pocket exploded.

  The pendant vibrated violently.

  Tony shoved a trembling hand in and gripped the stone.

  The moment his skin touched the crystal, the world went silent.

  The hum vanished. Cut off.

  ?Tony gasped for air. He looked around.

  Alex and Cristy were writhing on the ground. Billy and his gang were crawling in vomit.

  The hum was still there. It was killing everyone. Except him.

  Tony looked at the crystal. It pulsed with rhythmic light, synchronized with his heart. He felt a furious energy rush up his arm, a current ordering his bones.

  He didn't think. It was just desperation.

  He got on his knees. He raised the hand with the quartz and slammed it onto the concrete floor.

  ?BOOM.

  No sound, but an invisible shockwave.

  Tony felt the vibration discharge through his body, violent, as if it were tearing his tendons. The floor shook.

  The hum ceased. Instantly.

  ?Billy remained on all fours, nose bleeding.

  Alex and Cristy stopped writhing, pale as corpses.

  "Go..." Billy whispered. Then he screamed, mad with terror. "GO! EVERYONE OUT!"

  They scrambled toward the exit, tripping, knocking everything over. The door slammed.

  The silence that followed was worse than the noise.

  ?Tony remained there, hand on the ground. The crystal had rolled away, inert, a piece of dead coal.

  He felt hollowed out. As if the wave had taken something vital with it. He tried to stand, but violent nausea bent him double; his hands shook so hard they seemed rattled by residual current.

  ?"What the fuck..." Alex dragged himself backward, away from him. "Tony, what the fuck did you do?"

  Cristy was against the wall, eyes wide. She looked at him as if he were a dangerous stranger.

  "You turned it off," she whispered. "You touched the ground and... that's not possible."

  ?Tony clutched his hand to his chest. His fingers were numb, cold.

  "I don't know," he stammered. "I just wanted it to stop." He saw the fear in their faces. "Don't look at me like that. Please. It's me."

  ?Alex swallowed. He approached, hesitating, then grabbed his jacket.

  "Ok. Ok, breathe," he said, forehead to forehead. "I don't give a shit how you did it. We're alive. You're not a monster, you're Tony. Clear?"

  ?Cristy touched her ear. Her fingers came back stained with blood.

  "Grant," she said dryly. "Exploded eardrums. It was this. This frequency killed him. And it was about to do the same to us."

  ?"They were hunting us," Tony murmured.

  They stood up with difficulty.

  "We have to go," Alex said. "Now."

  ?But Tony was staring at the hole in the wall opened by Billy.

  Behind the drywall was an old brick wall. And a rusted iron gate.

  "A freight elevator," Alex mumbled. "Industrial."

  "What's down there?" Tony asked.

  "I don't know. But I feel freezing air."

  ?Sound of gravel outside. Sharp braking.

  Cristy ran to the window. She recoiled, white.

  "It's not Billy. Black vans. Private contractors. They have our bikes." She turned, pure panic in her eyes. "They know we're inside. They've locked every exit."

  ?CRASH.

  The main door shook.

  "Perimeter sealed. Moving in," a metallic voice crackled.

  ?"Inside," Tony ordered, pointing to the freight elevator. "It's the only way."

  They squeezed into the old cage. It smelled of stale oil.

  Alex searched for the controls. "It's dead! No power!"

  The lobby door gave way. Green laser beams cut the darkness.

  ?"Tony... stop." Cristy pointed to a brass plate on the panel.

  There was a geometric indentation. Irregular hexagon.

  "The pendant," she whispered. "Put it there!"

  ?"Visual contact sector three," the cold voice said. Red dots slid across the wall.

  ?Tony took the spent crystal. As soon as he brought it close, he felt a weak vibration, a request.

  He pushed it into the slot.

  CLACK.

  ?The crystal lit up violent blue. The cage gave a seismic jolt.

  The floor disappeared.

  They plummeted into the void with a deafening hydraulic whistle.

  As gravity crushed them to the floor, Tony looked up at the opening speeding away.

  For a second, he saw soldiers leaning over the edge.

  Then he saw something else.

  On the shaft wall, etched into the raw concrete rushing upward, was a freshly painted message, red as arterial blood:

  ?DO NOT DESCEND.

  ?Then darkness swallowed them.

  Author’s Note ??