Underground Revelations

Security boots pound against concrete floors as armed personnel converge on our location. The briefing room's alarms shriek warnings that pierce through my skull, each pulse triggering electromagnetic feedback that cascades through nearby electronics.

"Move!" Dr. Aveline shouts, gesturing toward the maintenance corridor she'd indicated moments before. But before we can reach the ventilation access, the briefing room doors burst open.

Commander Mitchell strides through the entrance, her uniform bearing creases sharp enough to cut paper, sweat stains darkening the fabric beneath her arms despite the facility's controlled atmosphere. Her steel-gray eyes lock onto the Quantum Resonance Scanner in Kira's grip, then shift to the sparking electronics around my position.

"Stand down," she orders, but her voice carries calculation rather than aggression. "Dr. Aveline, escort these subjects to restricted levels. They need to understand the full scope of their situation before making decisions that could compromise global security."

Dr. Aveline's amber eyes flicker with surprise. "Commander, the lockdown protocols—"

"Are exactly why they need to see everything." Mitchell's gaze never leaves us as she speaks. "The ventilation system leads to surface access, but surface access leads to a world they're not prepared to navigate. Not yet."

My electromagnetic field pulses with suspicion, causing the security monitors to flicker with cascading error messages. "This could be a trap."

"Everything about your existence has been a trap," Mitchell replies, pressing her palm against a scanner that reads the whorls of her fingerprints with laser precision. "The question is whether you want to understand the cage you're in, or stumble blind through a world that will see you as weapons to be contained or destroyed."

The blast doors grind open, revealing descent into absolute darkness. The scent of recycled air mingles with something metallic—copper pennies dissolved in antiseptic.

Devon's retinal implant flickers as he processes the tactical implications. "Why show us this instead of implementing containment protocols?"

"Because containment protocols are what we use on failures," Mitchell replies, beginning her descent into the stairwell. "And your integration rates suggest you're anything but failures."

Dr. Aveline follows behind us, her hand trembling slightly as she grips the handrail. "Commander, if they're not ready for advanced revelation—"

"They triggered facility-wide electromagnetic cascade without conscious effort," Mitchell interrupts, her voice echoing off walls carved from bedrock. "They're accessing classified intelligence networks and communicating with escaped subjects. Ready or not, they're already involved."

My enhanced vision adjusts without conscious effort, revealing stairwells that spiral downward like DNA helixes. The electromagnetic signatures of hidden machinery pulse behind reinforced concrete—power conduits thick as subway tunnels carrying energy loads that could illuminate cities. Each level we descend feels like stepping deeper into the earth's bones, away from any pretense of normal human existence.

"How deep does this facility extend?" Devon asks, his retinal implant casting blue light across stone walls carved with symbols that predate human civilization.

"Twelve levels," Mitchell answers. "Each serving different functions you weren't cleared to know about during your simulation phase."

Simulation phase. The words taste like chalk dust in my mouth—a reminder that everything we'd experienced as training had been carefully constructed fiction.

Level Seven reveals chambers lined with cylindrical pods—not the neural integration units from our awakening, but cryogenic systems maintaining subjects in suspended animation. Frost patterns cover reinforced glass, obscuring faces that could belong to anyone's children, siblings, friends. Bio-monitoring displays show vital signs reduced to hibernation levels, brain activity flatlining in controlled near-death states.

"Two hundred and thirty-seven subjects," Mitchell explains, checking readings on a tablet that glows with alien script. "Various stages of enhancement integration. Some have been suspended for eighteen months while their neural architecture reconstructs."

Kira approaches the nearest pod, her reflection fracturing across ice-covered glass. The subject inside appears fifteen, maybe sixteen—young enough that parental consent forms would have been required. Purple veins thread beneath pale skin exactly like ours, forming geometric patterns that pulse with bioluminescence even in suspended animation.

"Their families?" she whispers.

"Receiving regular updates about their children's academic progress at various prestigious institutions." Mitchell's voice carries no emotion, just facts delivered like inventory reports. "Full scholarship programs that exist only in carefully maintained fiction."

The weight of those words settles in my chest like lead sinkers. Two hundred families living normal lives while their children undergo transformation into something beyond human comprehension. Birthday cards sent to addresses that don't exist. Christmas presents shipped to fake dormitories staffed by actors.

Level Nine houses the artifacts.

Crystalline structures the size of city buses rest on platforms that hum with containment fields. Their surfaces shift between translucent and opaque, revealing internal geometries that hurt to perceive directly. When I try to focus on their patterns, my enhanced eye flickers with recognition—mathematical equations describing physics that shouldn't exist.

"Recovered from the advance scout vessels," Mitchell explains, maintaining careful distance from the containment fields. "Each crystal contains approximately four exabytes of data in compressed quantum storage. We've decoded less than three percent after forty-seven months of analysis."

"Scout vessels?" Devon's implant processes data streams faster, his pupil dilating as information flows across the retinal display. "The Devourer fleet sent advance reconnaissance?"

"Twelve small craft entered our solar system eight years ago. Most self-destructed when intercepted. These samples come from the three we managed to recover intact."

Eight years. The timeline rewrites everything I thought I understood about humanity's preparation for invasion. While we attended normal schools, played video games, worried about college applications, governments worldwide were already reverse-engineering alien technology and planning human enhancement programs.

A communication console built into the chamber's far wall displays real-time feeds from identical facilities. Screens show cryogenic chambers in installations labeled Frankfurt, Beijing, São Paulo, Mumbai. The same pod arrangements, the same suspended subjects, the same careful monitoring of vital signs in children whose families believe they're receiving world-class education.

"Forty-seven facilities," I breathe, watching data streams flow between international installations.

"Each processing approximately two hundred subjects," Mitchell confirms. "Global coordination ensures consistent enhancement protocols across all populations."

The mathematics hit like physical blows. Nearly twelve thousand enhanced subjects worldwide, most still suspended in cryogenic chambers while their neural architecture rebuilds. Families across continents living fabricated lives while their children undergo transformation that will fundamentally alter human evolution.

My emotional state triggers electromagnetic feedback without warning. The containment fields surrounding alien artifacts flicker, power fluctuations cascade through facility systems, and emergency lighting activates as primary electrical grids destabilize.

"Neural chaos field activation detected," automated voices announce through speakers. "Facility lockdown protocols initiated. All personnel report to designated safe zones."

Steel barriers slam down across corridor entrances. Red lights strobe through chambers as blast doors engage, sealing sections of the facility from each other. The alien crystals pulse brighter in response to my uncontrolled electromagnetic discharge, their internal patterns shifting toward configurations that make my enhanced vision blur with overload.

"You need to control the field emission," Mitchell warns, backing toward an emergency exit that requires her authorization codes. "Uncontrolled interaction with alien technology could destabilize containment systems."

But the crystals aren't just responding to my electromagnetic field—they're amplifying it. Power feedback loops between my neural enhancement and the alien technology, creating resonance patterns that shouldn't be possible. The containment fields flicker faster, and through their wavering barriers, I glimpse something that makes my blood freeze.

The largest crystal isn't storing data at all. Something moves inside it, pressing against the containment field from within. Something that pulses with the same bioluminescent patterns threading through our enhanced neural pathways.

And as my chaos field interacts with alien technology, that something begins to wake up.