A few weeks had passed. They had interviewed all the children, only six in total, spread across 800 kilometers. Progress was slow. They worked steadily on a method to triangulate the pulses. Eventually, they succeeded. But just barely. Their first vector pointed northeast. They relocated, 28 kilometers away, placing the device again. After three more days, a second vector appeared. They worked more over several days, and moving about, placing the sensor, getting data. Slowly triangulating.
They finally triangulated a center point. It was precise. A single suburban house in a small, quiet town. Their data quickly aligned this house must have been the target. So soon they took a plane to the location. Texas-Arkansas border. The mother in this case was abusive, though polished in public, doting over her "perfect little angel" with violent demands. New boyfriends cycled in every four weeks. A perfect behavioral match for the entity's pattern, as far as the data suggested. They had a location now. A chance to intercept. As they drove, Tom spoke, "Should we try to trap it?" Miller shifted uncomfortably, unease sharp in her posture. "What if we can't? We should get the mother out of the house... even if she's abusive." Tom stared forward. "Who knows how this thing reacts to interference." They arrived while the mother was at work. Installed cameras. Wired the entire house. Parked the van a distance away. Scanner online. A stakeout began.
It was late, Day 3 of there long stake out. Car filled with fast food, and some wrappers. March 12, 2013, 2:13 AM UTC-5. The mother was asleep. The child awoke. The house lights flickered... then pulsed. Alarms in the van went off. Tom and Miller snapped awake. Some of the cameras in the trees were showing static, cameras not found. But the house ones continued to respond. Frequency scanners flared. But this time... not a pulse. All Wi-Fi was gone, missing from the detectors. The world had gone too quiet. No sound from the town, as Tom looked out the window, he noticed water slashed... frozen mid air from a car driving nearby in the road... the outside world was frozen in time. Instead of spikes of signal, there was now a constant vibration. Its strength grew slowly, building. On screen, the living room TV turned on. The signal on the scanner suddenly changed structure, growing with a complex structure. "Shit! It's happening." Miller said, typing rapidly. "It's... it's in a television broadcast format. Let me see if I can pull a local stream." Inside the house, on security footage, the TV displayed a high-quality animation. Disney-like. A fox, animated, walking through a forest. Its fur black-grey, rather high quality. With weird, slightly uncanny human-like eyes. Walking on two legs. The forest around it was dead, like a wasteland. Dark, dingy. Then it turned. Sat. The child stepped into the room, drawn by the light, awakened by the sound. The fox turned toward the camera. "Hello there ALL! I am Mr. Fox! I will help you learn things. Now, for tonight's special broadcast... a song!"
And it began. A song, modern, stylized. Electronic. Hiphop. Pop. A rhythmic rhyme. The singing voice was male, silky, not deep, effortlessly smooth. Far too good. "W-What is this?" Tom muttered, watching the computer record. The child stepped closer, mesmerized. The mother entered, groggy and confused. "Did you turn this on?" she snapped. "No," the child whispered. "It... it turned on by itself." She frowned. Walked to the remote. Pressed the button. Nothing. The remote was unresponsive. On screen, the fox's smile widened. "However... a mother of a kit must follow laaaw," it chirped. "But as Alicen did not, she shall be smelling mighty fine!" The mother, Alicen, froze in fear, backed away slowly. Her name. On the screen. "So... run—run—run—RUN!"
The lights flickered violently. The room plunged into darkness. The mother's eyes flared with static. She froze. Unmoving. A puppet. The TV pulsed white. From the walls, shadow-foxes. Glowing. Purple. Stylized. Teeth, eyes, outlines. Cartoonish yet impossible. Animated. Unreal. Like a cartoonist drawn over reality itself, bending the figures on the walls. Locked to flat surfaces. Then, bang, in the TV world, a forest. Empty. The fox gone. A digital field. Her body appeared, dropping from offscreen, but not quite her body. Animated. Expression locked in a silent scream. Mouth moving, no sound. The fox walked out, now eight meters tall in the cartoon world, walking on all 4's circled her. Outside, her body remained frozen. Inside, the child stared, trance-like. A shadowy fox with glowing purple eyes, and sharp teeth of purple glow moved across the wall, onto the floor. Into the child's shadow generated only from the glow of the TV. From the TV's glow. Miller whispered, "H-How... is this..."
Mr. Fox didn't rush. It circled her. Singing. "From your friends, from your family; Like they're the next calamity; Cut them out like profanity; [beep] into insanity..." The voice flowed, a curse word bleeping with the beat, as if a part of the song. "Running from your commitments; You're running up on the price; You better run, little woman; For you're running out of time." The fox's form shifted as it moved, with clear skilled singing, and vocal effects. Fluid. A mass of black. Glowing eyes and teeth. Energy radiating purple. "Some people fight for the noblest of reasons; Some fight for their wives and their rights; But little woman's bravery has a secret; Little woman only fights 'cause she wants to run—run—run—RUN!" Alicen, on the floor of the cartoon forest, shaking in utter fear, got up, shaking, paniced, and ran, as the instrumental section began, with some foxes in the far forest, shadows of trees, playing instruments. The giant fox fractured into thousands of smaller ones. They chased her through the stylized forest. The ground broke beneath her. She fell, landing in a foot-deep pool of water. Surrounding her: darkness. A void. And thousands of fox-eyes... glowing in the black. Then, another shape. Not a fox.
She screamed. Her voice now audible. "W-What are you?! Demon!" From the dark stepped a figure. Humanoid. Glitching. Static-filled. Fox ears. Tail. And that same silky voice. "You know exactly what you did to deserve this," it sang. "You were trying to make your kit into yourself. Do not worry, you will survive this. Your kit will live on... with my help. But your sin... is on the highest level. And now, here... you will join the others. As another... fox." The song ended. A pulse. A flash. Static. The TV cut out. Darkness. Silence. Then light. Sound. Time. The TV was off. The woman... gone. Disappeared. The child collapsed. Trembling. The clock read 2:13 AM. Exactly the same as before. Logs began pouring in.
They realized time had been paused except for a bubble around the house. The event itself had been entirely isolated. Shielded. Enclosed in some impossible field. They rushed out of the van, collecting data. Police arrived after being called by them, taking the child. The event was hidden from public. Tom and Miller worked through the night. Radiation detectors: clean. Radio waves: only the golden ratio spike. Cameras within the time-stop zone recorded 2 minutes and 28 seconds of additional footage. Cameras outside showed none of it and did not give anything to there systems until after the event. Wifi had stopped because singles were frozen in time outside the bubble. Without proximity they would've recorded nothing. The only reason they recorded data was because cameras, and there van was in the bubble. No explanation could be found. But something impossible had occurred. As there faces shift with utter horror.
As data finished uploading, Miller soon stands outside, looking at the cables of the camras, as police cars flash nearby taking the child. "The radius was between 20 and 30 meters," she said softly. "Temporal lock." She looked sick. Guilty. "We let her disappear." Tom placed a hand on her shoulder. "There was nothing we could do. If we had entered that house, we might be gone too." She returns to the van, and rewatches the footage of the abduction. Looking over the TV broadcast the entity made in its specific frequency. Rewatching the entire animation, and relissening to the song in the broadcast. Its all recorded. She quitely notices how the woman disapears from the living room instantly. As if cut out in a single 1-frame burst of light, that overwhelms the camra. Then she frowns, noticing how before the woman was absorbed into the TV... a shadow fox formed in a shadow behind the couch... and unseen, bit, and then pulled away with her shadow. Durring the entire time of her being in the TV, her physical body frozen in place with static eyes, she was literally missing a shadow. Until the song ended, and her body disapeared in a instant. She also notices other concerning details... the shadow foxes in the room... one absorbed into the shadow of the kid, shadowy fox ears, and eyes floating in the kids shadow. Until the TV stopped, and the kids shadow was normal. Meaning... Mr. Fox left some trace on the kid.
The report noted: such a frequency should not exist. Irrational numbers cannot be used for radio tuning. A golden ratio transmission was physically impossible. Yet it was detected. Somehow. Likely, the energy was not electromagnetic at all. Merely interpreted as such by equipment. Then: the broadcast changed. Became an ATSC standard TV signal. Full color. Sound. 4K resolution. Security cameras confirmed: TV powered on without input. All communication inside the radius was cut. All sensors dropped to zero. The area—temporally sealed. Time paused outside. Flowed inside. Possibly the reason the initial spike registered as so large—it was compressed from an external perspective.
Footage recovered showed a high-level animated sequence. Disney-quality. Surreal. Forests of ash. Dead trees. A fox with glowing, shifting features. Shadowy foxes multiplied. The child hypnotized. The mother vanished. Mr. Fox—designed with meticulous animation. Detailed fur. Anthropomorphic features. Moved fluidly between animal and human. Intelligent. Intentionally stylized. Fury frowned. Deeply.