The medical tent smelled of antiseptic and desert dust, a combination that brought back memories Damian would rather forget. Field hospitals in Kandahar. Triage stations in Aleppo. Places where the line between life and death blurred into irrelevance.
He sat on the edge of a cot, holding a compress to his nose while his head pounded in rhythm with his heartbeat. The vision lingered like the afterimage of staring at the sun—fragments of impossible architecture, that wall of purposeful sand, Elara's amber eyes that weren't her eyes at all.
"You should be in a hospital." Elara stood in the tent's entrance, arms crossed, her silhouette backlit by the camp's work lights. "Temporal lobe seizures can cause hallucinations. Vivid ones."
"That wasn't a seizure." Damian lowered the compress. The bleeding had stopped, but his sinuses still burned with the phantom smell of ozone. "I've had my share of head trauma. This was different."
"Different how?" She stepped inside, letting the tent flap fall closed behind her. Without the harsh exterior lighting, her features softened slightly, though her skepticism remained sharp. "You touched an artifact that's possibly thousands of years old and claim you saw the future. Forgive me if my scientific training demands a more rational explanation."
"Does your scientific training explain why that gate glows without any detectable energy source?"
She opened her mouth to respond, then closed it again. In the silence, Damian heard the wind picking up outside—earlier than the meteorology reports had predicted. Sand began to patter against the tent walls like gentle rain.
"The consortium didn't hire me because they believe in rational explanations," Damian said. "They hired me because three workers have vanished, your equipment keeps failing near the gate, and someone high up is scared enough to throw money at the problem."
"And you're what—some kind of paranormal investigator?" The derision in her voice didn't quite mask the uncertainty beneath.
"I investigate anomalies. Usually they turn out to be mundane—espionage, politics, stress. But sometimes…" He met her jade eyes. "Sometimes the world is stranger than your degrees prepared you for."
The tent flap ripped open with enough force to make them both turn. Marcus Kane filled the entrance, his bulk made larger by a tactical vest and the kind of controlled fury that preceded violence. His face—scarred from a decade of private military work—was set in hard lines.
"You compromised the site." His voice carried the gravel of too many cigarettes and shouted orders. "First day here and you contaminate evidence Dr. Voss's team has spent weeks documenting."
Damian stood slowly, recognizing the stance of a man deciding whether to throw a punch. "Kane. Been a while since Damascus."
The security chief's eyes narrowed. "Holt. Should've known it was you when the consortium mentioned a specialist. Still playing cowboy?"
"Still pretending you're military?"
The tension crackled between them like static before a storm. Elara stepped back, uncertain whether to intervene or take cover.
Kane took a breath, his shoulders dropping a fraction. "That compound in Daraa. You saved my squad."
"You returned the favor in the embassy district."
Another beat of silence, then Kane's weathered face cracked into something that might pass for a smile. "Christ, Holt. Of all the archaeological digs in all the world." He extended his hand.
Damian shook it, feeling the familiar calluses of a soldier. "The consortium treating you well?"
"Can't complain. Babysitting academics beats getting shot at in failed states." Kane's expression darkened again. "But this place… something's off. My men are spooked. The locals worse. And now you're having visions?"
Before Damian could answer, another figure burst through the entrance—smaller, moving with the wired energy of too much caffeine and not enough sleep. Riley Chen looked like she'd walked out of a Silicon Valley lab: vintage band t-shirt, cargo pants with too many pockets, and enough gadgets hanging from her belt to stock a small electronics store.
"Okay, this is insane. Completely, utterly, off-the-charts insane." She held up a tablet where wavelengths danced like living things. "Dr. Voss, you need to see this. When tall, dark, and brooding here touched the gate, every sensor I planted went haywire."
"'Tall, dark, and brooding'?" Damian raised an eyebrow.
Riley shot him a glance. "Would you prefer mysterious and melodramatic? I've got options." She turned back to Elara. "The readings spiked into ranges that shouldn't exist outside a reactor. But here's the kicker—it wasn't coming from the gate. It was coming from him."
She pivoted the tablet toward Damian. The display showed a human-shaped heat signature surrounded by writhing tendrils of energy that looked disturbingly organic.
"That's impossible," Elara breathed, leaning closer.
"Right? That's what I said. But the equipment doesn't lie, and I triple-checked. The gate acts like an amplifier, but the initial energy signature? Totally human. Specifically, him."
The lights went out.
Not gradually, not with the stutter of failing bulbs, but instantly—every light in the camp died as if someone had thrown a master switch. The darkness was absolute, desert-night black pressing against the eyes.
"Generator failure," Kane said, his voice cutting through the alarmed shouts outside. "Riley, how long to—"
A sound like tearing silk interrupted him. Then the howling began.
The sandstorm hit the camp like a physical blow. The medical tent's walls billowed inward, straining against their anchors. Equipment crashed to the floor. Through the chaos, emergency lights flickered to life—pale green chemical sticks that turned everything into a nightmare aquarium.
"That's not possible!" Elara shouted over the wind. "The reports said midnight at the earliest!"
Damian grabbed her arm as a support pole bent dangerously. "We need to get to solid shelter!"
Kane was already moving, pulling back the flap to reveal a wall of sand that shouldn't exist—the storm had formed a perfect perimeter around the camp, rotation visible to the naked eye. But in the center, around the excavation pit, the air was eerily calm.
"The eye," Riley said, her irreverence gone, replaced by fear. "It's centered on the gate."
Through the swirling sand, Damian saw it—the black stone gate glowing not with its usual phosphorescence but with something that pulsed like a heartbeat. The symbols weren't just glowing; they were moving, rearranging themselves into new patterns that hurt to watch.
"Everyone to the main structure!" Kane bellowed, his command voice cutting through the storm. "Move! Now!"
They ran, bent double against the wind, sand scouring exposed skin like glass shards. Around them, workers scrambled for shelter, their terrified shouts in multiple languages blending into a chorus of panic. A tent tore free from its moorings and vanished into the maelstrom.
And then, over the roar of the storm, Damian thought he heard it—a whisper, faint but undeniable. His own name, carried on the wind.