Aris noticed something different about the patterns in his head. They weren't just plain, geometric shapes anymore. Now, another image kept popping into his mind, clear as day: a kid's hand, small and pale, using a crayon on paper.
The hand was drawing the patterns that Aris had been studying.
It sketched the twisty Fibonacci sequences found in the underground part of the Obelisk. It shaded in the resonant harmonics that Felix had managed to figure out. It was like a perfect, natural picture of how the whole system was set up. And quickly before a migraine came, Aris would catch a glimpse of the artist: a girl who looked too wise for her age, clutching a worn-out stuffed rabbit. "Lily", he thought. The name just came to him, like a memory, a piece of info connected to the image.
"It's a child," he croaked to Felix, when the pain let up for a bit. He told him about the drawings. "There's a kid somewhere who understands this thing better than our computers."
Felix, always practical, checked the description against databases of survivors. "Lily. Nicknamed 'Silent Draw' in Hamburg. Eight years old. Found okay at the center of it all. Doesn't speak. She's in a mental hospital in Berlin run by GORCI. They think she's just scribbling because of trauma."
"Those are schematics," Aris insisted, suddenly sure of it. "She's not crazy. She's… She's dialed in." He was about to have Rostova bring the girl to them when the base's alarm went from a steady yellow to a loud, blaring red.
On the main screen, a remote team: Beta Team, was singled out. They were at the edge of the area, doing something a general at Global Command ordered in panic, even though it was now off-limits. Their task: to dig into one of the sphere burial spots and put a strong sonic device there.
"Beta Team, STOP!STOP what you're doing!" Rostova's voice was rough over the radio. "That's a direct order!"
But they were too late. The screen showed the drill bit, made stronger with diamond tips, hitting something rock solid a few meters down. There was a metallic ping that maxed out the audio sensors. Then, nothing.
For a few seconds, everything was still.
Then, the ground around Beta Team started to glow. A dim, sickly, silver light came from the dirt, spreading from the pathways between the spheres. The air above the soldiers started to shimmer, like Elara had mentioned.
The Siphon activated.
It wasn't the wave from Jakarta that hit the whole city. This was a focused, precise, and super strong reaction. No sound. The soldiers didn't even get to shout. They were standing there, just staring at their glowing boots. Next, a wave of energy, like wavy liquid metal, washed over them.
Aris watched, unable to do anything, as the color was taken from their bodies. Their green uniforms turned to ash, their skin to paper. In less than five seconds, they were just standing statues of grey dust, holding their shape for a moment before collapsing into small piles of colorless powder. Their gear, guns, radios, untouched. It only took the living stuff.
The silver glow in the ground faded. The shimmer in the air went away. The forest was quiet again.
The command center was silent, except for the static on the radio channel.
Kaito spoke first, his voice flat. "Defensive thing. Keeps the network safe."
"Not just defensive", Aris whispered, seeing Lily's crayon in his mind. "It's systemic. A white blood cell fighting off a germ. We're the infection."
Rostova stood still, her hands gripping the console. She had lost control. The gamble had cost four lives and showed something scary: the Obelisk wasn't just a passive tool. It was aware, protected, and would defend itself with deadly accuracy.
Soon, her computer was full of top-secret messages. The video of the Beta Team Incident had already been leaked, cleaned up a bit, but still horrifying. Global Command was falling apart. Some countries wanted to bomb with nuclear weapons right away. Others, scared of the Obelisk's defense on a global scale, wanted to leave the hemisphere and try to make peace. Julian Aris's OmniGen group was using the event to loudly say the military was incompetent and push for their company to take charge.
The base, once focused, was now a mess. The problem wasn't just one silent tower. It was a connected, smart system. And the world was replying not with teamwork, but with the chaos that the Obelisk seemed so good at ignoring.
Aris turned from the screen, still seeing the image of the four soldiers. He looked at Felix. "Get Lily", he said, not showing any emotion. "Get her out of Berlin and bring her here. Now. Her drawings aren't just random. They're the only map we have."
Things were falling apart, and the only thing they could hold onto was in the hand of a silent child.