Elias: The Breach Begins

The Mojave night was unnervingly still, the kind of silence that felt engineered rather than natural. The old Cold War listening station sat half‑buried in the sand, its rusted satellite dish angled toward a sky that no longer remembered it. Elias Rourke stood inside the main control room, palms pressed against the edge of the console, watching the trembling waveform on the cracked monitor.

Then he sat, observed, and prepared for battle. They had been chasing this anomaly for months.

“Signal reacquired,” Mara Vance said, her voice tight with concentration. Her fingers danced across the keyboard, coaxing the ancient equipment to life. “It’s faint, but it’s stabilizing.”

Rowan Ortiz, the team’s resident skeptic, leaned against a support beam with his arms crossed. “Or it’s just atmospheric noise again. This place is older than all of us combined.” Kira Dane shot him a look. “Noise doesn’t repeat itself in structured intervals.” Rowan shrugged. “Neither do hallucinations, but here we are.”

Elias barely heard them. His breathing had slowed, deepened. He’d learned to do that over years of meditation — not to calm himself, but to listen. To feel. To sense the subtle shifts inside his own mind.

Tonight, something was shifting back. The waveform pulsed. Once. Twice. Then it elongated into a smooth, rhythmic oscillation. Mara’s eyes widened. “It’s syncing with our sweep pattern.”

“No,” Elias whispered. “It’s syncing with me.”

The room fell silent. Kira stepped closer. “Elias… what do you mean?”

- Prologue: The Quiet Recording