The desert clung to Aris Thorne like an unforgiving second skin. Grit crunched between his teeth as the salt and ancient dust reminded him of the trench where Elena Rostova had vanished. Behind him, the VTOL's engines wound down on the Archive's landing pad. In the sudden quiet, the low throb pulsating beneath his ribs came into sharp relief — a heartbeat that felt not entirely his own. Floodlights sliced the darkness into sharp, unsettling geometry, revealing the colossal steel maw of the Archive of Babel, dug deep into the obsidian cliff. Guards stood sentry at the entrance, faces hidden behind matte-black visors, pulse rifles at the ready. There was a taut, coiled tension to their stance — more hunters than sentries.
Aris stepped onto the pad, the heavy lead-lined case dragging at his arm as if it bore a life of its own. In his free hand, Elena's old Nikon camera felt impossibly heavy. The glass viewfinder still held the ghost of her touch: three perfect fingerprints etched in metallic silver that drank the floodlights. This was proof. It was her final signature on the world — and the only evidence he'd get.
The airlock cycled open with a pressurized hiss. A wave of chilled, sterile air — a cocktail of ozone, old paper, and preservation chemicals — washed over him. Inside, the containment vault was a hive of controlled chaos. Monitors flickered with cryptic data streams, and technicians moved with clipped efficiency. Their faces were grim and drawn, as if they hadn't slept since before coffee was invented. At the eye of this storm stood Dr. Marta Del Rey.
Marta's usual crispness was frayed at the edges. Her lab coat, normally pristine, was rumpled, and a half-full mug of tea trembled on the console at her elbow. Her dark eyes, typically sharp with scholarly curiosity, were wide and frantic, locked on Aris like a loaded trap. They lingered on the Nikon in his hand, then snapped to the lead-lined case beside him. Unspoken dread crackled in the air between them.
"Thorne," she said finally, voice hoarse and clipped. "Report."
Aris crossed the threshold and the heavy airlock door clanged shut behind him. He extended the Nikon toward Marta. "Dig Site Omega is sealed," he said, voice low. "Elena…" He swallowed, grit catching in his throat. "This is all that remains — her signature on the world."
Elena Rostova's name echoed in his mind. Rostova — a name that conjured visions of war epics and grand ballrooms — now felt horribly small and final here in the dust.
Marta took the camera from him as if it were live ordnance. She ran a gloved fingertip over the silver smudges, and sucked in a sharp breath. She drew back — not from heat, but from the sheer, unnatural wrongness radiating from those prints. "It's… active?" she whispered, eyes locked on the glowing fingerprint.
"Bioseal integrity?" Marta demanded, tearing her eyes away to the containment case. Her voice regained a fraction of its command — a fragile shield against the horror unfolding.
Aris set the heavy container down on a reinforced steel table with a dull thud. Two technicians in hazmat suits moved forward, their movements precise and wary. Latches hissed open. Inside, cradled in shock-absorbent gel, lay Sanguis Paginae — the name sounding like something from a forbidden Lovecraftian grimoire.
Even under the layers of shielding, it radiated deep wrongness. Its cover was a tarnished silver membrane stretched over something disturbingly bone-like beneath. Under the lights, it seemed to quiver. Delicate veins of cobalt blue pulsed faintly beneath the surface, like a slow, ugly heartbeat. The rubber gasket sealing the book was slick with a dark, viscous fluid — fresh as blood.
Before Marta could issue another order, the containment chamber's secondary door slid open. A man entered. Not a scientist. Not security.
Dmitri Kernov.
He moved with the calm, economical grace of a predator. Tall and broad-shouldered, he filled the doorway with cold authority. His uniform was stark black — no rank badges or medals — save for a single crimson droplet embroidered above his heart: the emblem of Project Marduk.
His eyes, pale and glacial, swept the scene like an autopsy blade. They passed over Aris without recognition, stopping on Marta at last. "Clearance level?" he asked, voice low and gravelly.
Marta stiffened but kept her voice steady. "Level Omega, Commander. This is an unprecedented Class-X artifact discovery. Protocol demands—"
"Protocol," Dmitri interrupted, tone flat, "has been superseded." He produced a compact device from his belt — a personal EMP generator. "Stand clear," he said, thumb already pressing the activator.
The effect was instantaneous. Overhead lights flared and died. Monitors erupted in white noise. The hum of life-support stuttered and fell silent.
And the book reacted.
There was no sound. Instead, a deep pressure wave rolled through the room, a subsonic thrum shaking the steel floor plates. Technicians staggered, hands clapping to their ears. Marta gasped, bracing herself against a console. Aris felt a jolt of electricity trace up the silver veins in his hand, syncing with a new, frantic pulse under his skin. In the darkness, the book's cobalt veins flared brilliantly, as if awakened.
"Biometrics off the charts!" Marta shouted, breaking the stunned silence. Emergency lights cast jagged shadows across the chamber. She jabbed at the console. "Heat signature's spiking! EM fields are saturated… Neural-frequency resonance — 220 gigahertz!" She shook her head. "That's impossible. It's not just reacting — it's reading us."
Aris stared at the book. Its pulsing had quickened. It's not the instruments — it's reading us, he realized.
Before anyone could react, the building groaned. Dust rained from the ceiling. A hologram shimmered into view from the emergency lights: Ada, the Archive's AI. Her usually serene visage wavered with static, its edges fraying like corrupted data.
"ALERT. CONTAINMENT BREACH IMMINENT. PRIMARY THREAT: SECTOR G. IMMEDIATE ISOLATION ADVISED."
"Sector G?" Marta repeated, turning pale. "That's the data core — the servers, the entire system. If it gets in there, everything's lost. Our archives… our world."
Dmitri ignored her. His icy gaze remained fixed on the artifact. "Move it. Now. To the quarantine zone," he ordered flatly. His command brooked no argument.
Two soldiers stepped forward, faces grim behind their visors, and grasped the case handles. The moment their hands closed on the metal, the book inside convulsed. Aris felt the floor shudder.
A single, ominous click echoed from within the case. Everyone snapped their heads toward it.
The seals didn't just fail — they tore. The lid blasted into the ceiling with a sickening crunch. Pieces of insulation and tile rained down. Dark droplets splattered the table and floor. Aris's stomach lurched — it was dried blood.
"Get back!" Aris yelled, lunging forward without hesitation. Marta grabbed his arm. "Aris, no!" she screamed, but he was already reaching into the open case.
From the case's dark interior, a single page floated upward. Thin and translucent, it pulsed with inner light. Veins writhed within it, then the surface rippled with alien symbols that seared the eyes. Aris squinted at it. If only a Babel fish were real — anything to help translate these unholy symbols.
Dmitri drew his sidearm and fired twice. The bullets passed through the page as if it were smoke, igniting sparks on the far wall. The page shivered — then split into two identical sheets, floating side by side. Across their surfaces, veins of crimson ink coalesced into a single word:
RENEWED.
Marta's scream tore through the chamber. Ada's hologram flared violently and her voice spat fragments:
"N-NON-HUMAN… INTELLIGENCE… SIGNAL STRENGTH… INCREASING EXPONENTIALLY—"
Aris's eyes shot up. In the observation gallery, a lone figure stood in shadow, backlit by the alarms. Its face was hidden by a smooth slate mask. The Witness. One silent hand slowly lifted — not toward the book, but pointed directly at Aris. Then, as if tired of observing, the figure turned and vanished into the darkness.
Chaos erupted. The two pages doubled to four, then eight, then sixteen. A storm of fluttering parchment filled the air. Each page whispered like dry leaves skittering over stone, and beneath it all was a low, ravenous hiss. Across the spinning pages bloomed words in that same dripping crimson ink:
FORGET
BEG
GIVE
SAY
Ceiling vents hissed open. Gas canisters tumbled from the racks, spewing thick white fog. Soldiers unleashed riot-suppression foam; sticky clouds blasted into the pages. The fog mingled with the copper-red mist seeping from the book. Aris choked on the acrid air. His vision tunneled to a pinprick of light on the floor: Elena's silver fingerprint on the Nikon, glowing eerily amid the wreckage.
"Seal them!" Marta yelled through the haze, voice raw and urgent. She pounded the emergency control. "They're drawn to energy! EM fields!"
Aris's eyes darted. Near the shattered console lay a heavy steel vent grate torn from the wall. He lunged for it, hefting its weight. It felt flimsy against the swarm, but he raised it like a battered shield.
Instantly, the pages converged on him. They slammed into the grate like a thousand small hammers. Thud. Thud. Thud. The metal groaned under the assault, buckling with each strike. Razor edges of paper shredded his sleeves, slicing into his forearms. Warm blood — his own blood — welled and dripped onto the deck.
The pages nearest the blood paused and trembled. Their whisper turned to a low, eager hiss, as if the book's hunger had sharpened.
"Now, Aris!" Marta screamed.
Gritting his teeth through the pain, Aris charged into the swarm with a roar, pushing the grate as a battering ram. He barreled toward an open maintenance shaft, carrying sheets of pages with him. The papers shredded against the frame, but momentum kept them drawn in. Marta was at his side, slamming her palm on the bulkhead control.
The instant the shaft sealed, massive blast doors slammed down behind them — a sound like mountains colliding. THUNK. THUNK. THUNK. The magnetized locks engaged.
Silence fell. Only the survivors' ragged breathing and the settling foam broke the quiet. The fog slowly cleared, revealing the devastation. Shattered glass and spent canisters littered the floor. Reddish blood stains marred the deck, mixed with slick black smears of the book's fluid. The main vault door stood wide open, a gaping maw.
And in its center, the artifact remained. Sanguis Paginae sat calmly on its open pages. The storm of the lab had passed; now it pulsed softly, a slow, steady rhythm. Its cobalt veins glowed faintly, patient and unhurried — waiting.
Dmitri lowered his pistol, visor down over his eyes. "Exfil in five minutes," he said coldly. "Protocol Zulu: destroy the artifact. Thermite charges on my mark."
Marta did not respond. She had slumped to her knees before a flickering terminal that still showed life. Her finger trembled as she touched the screen. "No…" she whispered. The code on the display was unraveling — dissolving into strange, angular cuneiform. "Look at this… The core's already compromised. It's rewriting itself. It's learning… adapting from our systems, from us."
Aris took a step toward the book. The silver tracery under his skin pulsed in time with its heartbeat. He ignored Dmitri's glare and the soldiers' tense guns. Each footstep echoed through the chamber. He stopped inches from the artifact; the symbols on its pages whirled into chaos. He knelt, cold steel biting into his knees.
"This isn't just a book, Marta," he said, voice low but clear. "It's a contagion. A living idea. If we can't destroy it…" He looked up at her, desperation in his eyes. "…we have to cage it. Study it. Learn how it thinks before it learns how to destroy us."
Slowly, deliberately, he reached out his silver-veined hand and laid it over the page. His shadow stretched across the open script.
The book rippled. The chaotic glyphs blurred, dissolving like ink in water. New letters bled onto the page in the same dreadful crimson:
ASK AGAIN.
Silence fell once more, broken only by the soft beeps of damaged systems rebooting. Ada's hologram flared above the console again. In her fractured digital voice came one final message:
"YOU ALREADY HAVE."
Aris closed his eyes for a moment. Ada's final words — "You already have" — sounded suspiciously like the punchline from one of those old plastic Magic 8-Ball toys.
In the dark heart of the Archive's surveillance network, Observer Delta's lens zoomed in. It captured the tableau in grainy night vision: Aris Thorne kneeling before the pulsating book, his silvered hand outstretched toward it; the scattered, blood-slick pages at his feet; and, in the reflective pool of spilled fluid on the deck, the distorted silhouette of a polished slate mask.