Kim pulled the Ramcharger onto main street. It was the primary artery of Eden Falls and all roads broke off from it. The town was designed and built around the need to move heavy military industrial equipment as well as the massive logging trucks that came from Wychwood.
Her shoulders were tense and she gripped the wheel hard. It was clear to me that she was struggling with everything that just happened and being grilled by her daughter wasn’t making things easier.
“What does my dad have to do with any of this?” I asked in the space of her silence.
“Dave … Your dad and I go way back, Benjy.” She said, “He was an operator at the Fort when they devised Project Gateway. His expertise was … and still is, advanced nuclear power.”
She pulled off main street and onto the road that went behind The Garden Newspaper and W.E.D.N tower, then shut off the engine and looked at me through the rearview.
“He was instrumental in getting the generators online and maintaining the immense power required to operate the gate.”
There it was. A dozen weird memories of my father’s late nights, working at his home office with the strange technical manuals I’d sneak a peek at when he went for more coffee. The intense calls behind the heavy wooden door that I could hear from the heating register in my next door bedroom.
The secret wasn’t infidelity or a gambling addiction, it wasn’t some serial killer story from the Twilight Zone. It was much, much worse. My own father was part of this grand conspiracy that threatens to unravel Eden Falls and he doesn’t even acknowledge the harm that he’s made.
“He knows?” I said. “My dad knows what this thing is doing to people and he doesn’t care?”
Elijah put his hand on my shoulder, to calm and refocus me.
“It’s not that simple, Benjy,” Kim said. “The Ochre … it changes people. It makes them forget, it makes them complacent. Your father is one of a few who were there, at ground zero, when it first came through.”
“What do you mean he was at ground zero?” I asked. I felt Elijah’s hand grip tighter. “Is it permanent? Does it get worse?”
“It’s hard to explain,” she said, looking at us all slowly. “I’m not saying that because you’re children or anything like that. We can’t even explain it to ourselves.”
“Is it a chemical agent?” Katie asked. “A memetic virus? How does it propagate?”
“Better yet,” Ace said, “Why are YOU immune to it?”
She didn’t answer Ace right away.
Instead, she unclipped her watch, the big black dive model she always wore, and held it up.
In the late evening light, something beneath the crystal shimmered green. Not a reflection, movement. The surface beneath the hands pulsed faintly, iridescent like beetle shell or sea glass. It shimmered with an unnatural depth, like there was more behind it than the dial could hold.
“This,” she said quietly, “is Verdantine.”
We all leaned closer.
“It came through during the first Gateway activation. Not from the other side like a traveler, but like residue. The way dew forms on glass when the temperature shifts. It wasn’t part of any experiment. No one summoned it. It just… appeared. On the inside of the chamber walls.”
Katie blinked. “So it’s a substance?”
“A fragment,” Kim said. “We call it Verdantine. It’s not mineral, not biological. It reacts to subsonic pulses, especially frequencies from the Project Gateway signal array. It doesn’t transmit. It listens. Always. Even when the watch is off.”
She turned the face slightly. We saw the shimmer change, reacting faintly to the sound of her voice.
“Your father helped power the Gateway, Benjy. But he was also part of the recovery team. He touched this stuff before we knew what it was. A lot of us did. Most don’t remember. Some never stop remembering.”
“You’re saying it affects memory?” I asked.
She nodded. “Memory. Emotion. Time perception. It doesn’t talk, not exactly. But it carries impressions. Echoes. Sometimes those impressions settle in. Sometimes they root. That’s why some of the Fort people change. They get quiet. Or obsessive. Or just… disappear.”
Ace narrowed her eyes. “Then why are you not affected?”
“I am,” Kim said. “But I learned to live with it. The Verdantine in this watch keeps me tethered. It resonates with the Gateway’s Voidband signal, but in reverse, it lets me hear the bleed before it comes. Like a warning system. Or a canary in a coal mine.”
Elijah, still quiet, stared at the dial.
“And there’s no more of it?” he asked.
Kim clipped the watch back on her wrist.
“There are three pieces left in the world. One is sealed in a vault under Fort Savannah. One was lost during the HARBOR Protocol breach. And one is ticking on my wrist.”
“So, why are children less susceptible?” Elijah finally asked.
“That .. we don’t know,” Kim said. “There’s speculation and some tests being ran on children at Fort Savannah, but Dr. Gotleib believes it has to do with the neurological and cognitive flexibility of immature brains.”
Dr. Gotleib. The name sent shivers down my spine. Everyone in school spread rumors of the awful, Josef Mengele-esque experiments that he would do on children when they were taken. Sadly, Kim Nguyen’s confession did nothing to alleviate my terror of the name.
“They’re experimenting on kids?” Ace said. “We have to stop them.”
“It’s not that simple, Ace.” She looked at her directly. “Dr. Gotleib isn’t some boogeyman, he’s a government contracted scientist who’s been at the forefront of the resistance of the Ochre and its invasion. He designed my watch and other tools we’ve been using to fight the growth.”
“I don’t care what he designed,” Ace growled. “You don’t experiment on kids. Period.”
“Ace, that’s just naive,” Katie said softly, then looked back to her mom. “What kind of tools has he developed? What has he learned from the tests?”
And just like that, Katie defused Ace’s objections with simple facts. We all knew Ace. She would stand up and defend anyone being bullied or mistreated, but these weren’t simple schoolyard antics. This was life and death from a government and military way bigger and way stronger than any bully she ever put down.
Kim looked at her daughter and in the breath of hesitation, I could see her heart breaking at her daughter’s innocence hardening, as she’s been forced to accept a terrible compromise and compartmentalize the data in the face of real horror.
“My watch,” Kim said. “And the technology we built into the radio that will, hopefully, interrupt the signal at the tower.”
Kim put us all back on focus. What we were here for anyway. The power still pulsing in the radio device in the back of the Ramcharger hummed softly, steadily, waiting for our next move. She had brought us to the W.E.D.N Tower, the source of the Signal, and we were going to make our stand there, at The Garden of Eden Falls.
“So, what’s the plan?” Ace resigned her defiance in a huff. “I don’t think your badge will get us into the radio station.”
Kim looked at her watch, checking the time. “We got a reprieve at the Monolith Power Station. No swarm, no signal. We were able to push back on the signal enough with the power hooked to it, but we need to get this connected to the broadcast antenna up there and lock it down for good.”
“I don’t think your security clearance will work here,” I said. “How do we get in?”
Kim paused.
‘You kids wanna do some breaking and entering?” She said.
Ace immediately grabbed a tire iron and crowbar from the truck’s toolbox, she didn’t need to be told twice.
Katie had a look of disbelief at her mother, normally stoic and by the book, inviting us to meyhem.
Elijah and I looked to each other, it wasn’t our first rodeo in some good old fashioned B&E, but it was our first invitation by an adult.
“Great,” Kim said. “Ace, you’re going to get us through the fence. Katie, you and I will tackle any locks. Elijah, Benjy, I want you two to take my weapon and use it when the swarm comes. Don’t let them touch you.”
She pulled the radio out of the back and dropped it onto the furniture dolly. The red light still pulsed like a glowing heartbeat.
I suppose that was the first time I had actually stopped and -looked- at the W.E.D.N Tower. From the base of the tower, and consuming the building, were numerous thick, gnarled, and twisted tendrils or roots, resembling veins or branches. They intertwined and crawled upwards, almost like a parasitic growth, further obscuring the building and creating a sense of decay and entanglement.
Above the tower, the sky was a swirling vortex of darkness, with concentric circles emanating from the very top of the spire, as if it was emitting some unknown energy or signal that distorts the atmosphere.
“Tell me you’re seeing this,” I said in disbelief.
“Oh screw that noise,” Katie said, taking in the building ahead of us.
Ace gripped the tire iron tighter, although I could see the adamant resolve she had waver for a moment.
“Stay strong,” Kim said. “No matter what we see, we have to stay grounded and focused. Don’t let the nihilism of the Ochre take you.”
I looked to Elijah. He was patiently waiting by the Ramcharger with the improvised weapon from the Nguyen’s home.
“What?” He said. “This is what the world looks like all the time to me, Benjy.”
It was that moment that I truly understood my closest friend. His vision of the world, the ultimate corruption and emptiness of it all, the void of ineffable nothingless constantly staring into the vacuum of his incredible mind, was breathtakingly real and we all saw it.
He patted me on the shoulder as he walked by me. I caught myself staring in shock, awe, and a pit of sadness in my stomach that to this day I still feel him.
“It’s okay, Benjy.” He said quietly, “Let’s get it done.”
It only took a second for me to recalibrate and focus on the task at hand. Ace had already found a pair of bolt cutters and started in on opening a hole in the fence.
Kim and Katie pushed the dolly across the parking lot, making way too much sound for comfort. The sun had already set and the streetlights down the road had come on. The lights surrounding The Garden were noticeably absent.
We ducked through the hole, one by one, and emerged on the other side. It felt like even a chain-link barrier was somehow keeping the corruption from overwhelming us. As soon as I stepped in, I felt it. The wave of vertigo, the sickly-sweet smell of Other that was so prevalent in the Letter House.
At first there was silence, but then as my ears adjusted, I could hear the hum coming from the tower. The black ooze of the Ochre seemed to pulse and undulate with the same frequency of the tower. Looking up at it, I distinctly recall feeling as if I was looking at some vestigial appendage of some impossibly large monster.
Kim pressed forward, avoiding any of the slow creeping tendrils of ooze that were working their way outward from the building.
A sudden, single beep came from Kims watch and she quickly looked at it. We didn’t need to ask what it meant. It was the top of the hour and the broadcast had begun.
The soft, distant hum of the radio tower erupted into an impossibly deep rumble from somewhere beyond normal space. The sound, if I could actually describe it, was like a football field sized cello being drawn across by a derailing freight train.
And then we heard it.
The buzzing.
It was distant at first, coming from the direction of Wychwood Forest, but the fading light of dusk showed the true size of the swarm. An enormous black wave of skittering bugs filled the night sky, blotting out the light pollution from the buildings and streetlights. It looked like a tornado of living things, all writhing and pulsing with the same corrupted heartbeat of the radio tower.
The device Kim and Katie were pushing began to buzz loudly in defiance of the signal. The radio tower seemed to turn its unperceivable gaze onto us and the swarm adjusted its course toward us like Moses parting the sea.
“Hurry! Get inside!” Kim shouted over the rumbling. “Don’t let them touch you!”
Ace scrambled toward the door and jabbed the crowbar into the crack, right above the latch, with all her might. She lifted her entire body off, walking up the wall while pulling on the bar as hard as she could.
Kim and Katie frantically pushed the dolly across the asphalt, its small wheels dragging and catching on every crack and crevice in the lot.
Elijah and I looked at the weapon we had and clicked it on. We hadn’t seen it function, but a gun is a gun, so we aimed it into the distance where the swarm was and activated it.
A wave of energy erupted from the end of the weapon. It wasn’t a laser beam or some sci-fi thing, but rather a barometric pressure bubble that seemed to drag Elijah and my consciousnesses along with it. The whole city seemed to collapse into a pulsating tunnel, shaped like the tube of energy that shot out, and it was all I could do to keep from vomiting.
It felt like the Tilt-a-Whirl at the local fair, but powered by a diesel motor stuck on wide open throttle.
The impact, if you could call it that, on the swarm was immediate. The entire cloud of creatures bent inward and where they touched the column of energy, they simply ceased to be.
There was no sound in my ears, outside of my own fluttering heartbeat. The effect of activating that weapon was like falling into the event horizon of a black hole. My mind and consciousness spaghettified, pulling into long strands of splintering reality. I stared too long into the abyss, and something beyond our world blinked and looked at me.
I don’t know how long I was screaming for, but my throat was sore by the time Kim grabbed me and Elijah and pulled us through the door.
Ace was on her hands and knees, breathing heavily. Her face was red with exertion and her hair was matted with sweat.
Katie stood inside. Her arms were wrapped around her torso tightly, like she was hugging herself, in an effort to touch nothing at all.
The door slammed shut and Kim pushed a nearby storage rack over, tying the handle to it so it couldn’t open outward.
Elijah took a couple of steps and vomited onto the floor. It was sudden, seemingly unexpected by the look of confusion and shock on his face. In the center of my vision, all I could see was the indescribable eye that looked at me from beyond space. It was like I looked at the sun too long and the blue dot of retina damage sat in my field of view.
Katie quickly came over to us, grabbing the both of us by the arm and looking deeply into our eyes. She wasn’t looking for her friends, she was looking for the Ochre inside of us.
Ace had stood and grabbed her tools, then slumped when she finally looked down the hallway.
My eyes left Katie’s gaze and I followed Ace’s down the hallway.