The artifact, the heart of the Epsilon project, continued its slow, silent descent. It sank into the black recess, taking the low, rhythmic wuh-wuh-wuh pulse with it. As the obsidian cylinder disappeared beneath the floor, the metallic ozone smell in the air intensified, stinging their nostrils like battery acid.
"It's not a transmitter," Ethan realized, his voice barely a rasp. "It's a plug. It was holding something back. And now that we've activated the protocol, the 'Transfer' is letting that something out."
Vivian, recovering her scientific focus, rushed back to the control panel, her fingers flying across the now-stable green touchscreen. The archaic script was now replaced by functional, translated data streams.
"Ethan, look!" she gasped, pointing to the main graph on the screen. "The hum wasn't a signal out. It was a frequency stabilizing a massive energy field in! This artifact was a Containment System, the 'Golden Limit' we translated! It was holding back an anomalous dimensional flux—a rift!"
The final remnant of the artifact vanished completely into the darkness of the pit. In its place, where the floor used to be, there was now only an absolute, perfect circle of Nothing. It wasn't darkness; it was the absence of light, sound, and even spatial dimensionality. The air stopped moving above it. It was a flawless, black hole, a terrifying geometric zero point.
A single data point flashed on the control panel, drawing Vivian's attention.
TRANSFER COMPLETE. ANOMALY: D-CLASS (ACTIVE).DIMENSIONAL RIFT STABILIZED. ENTRY/EXIT WINDOW: 60 SECONDS.
"A D-Class Anomaly means a catastrophic, irreversible spatial shift!" Vivian cried out, pressing keys frantically. "The Transfer wasn't just energy; it was opening the pathway! The codicil wasn't about communication, Ethan—it was a safety manual! We completed the final sequence to close the rift, but the system interpreted the 'Limit' as a window for temporary passage!"
"Sixty seconds," Ethan repeated, his hand moving automatically to his hip, where his sidearm should have been. He only had sensors and field tools. "Sixty seconds to enter or exit, or we're locked in with whatever comes through that... that hole in reality."
He looked at the unmoving, terrifying black circle. Despite his immense fear, his mind, fueled by survival instinct, focused. This wasn't a threat he could fight; it was a physical law broken.
"What's on the other side, Viv?"
Vivian was scanning the remaining screens, her breathing ragged. "The system is providing a visual feed, but the image is unstable... Static, light, and geometry that doesn't make sense... Wait... there's a structure... a platform... it looks like... it's not earth!"
The black circle began to shimmer at the edges. Tiny flecks of white light—like distant stars viewed through a warped lens—appeared in the void. And then, the first sound: not the metallic hum, but a subtle, chilling wind, rushing out of the hole.
"The window is closing, Ethan! Fifty seconds!" Vivian yelled, tears of ozone-induced pain streaming from her eyes. "We sealed the station. If we don't go through now, we die when this place runs out of air, or whatever comes through kills us!"
Ethan looked at the sealed door, then at the black abyss, and finally at Vivian, whose desperate curiosity was now a paralyzing fear.
"We go through," Ethan decided, his voice calm despite the turmoil. "If that thing is an Exit Point, we need to neutralize it at the Source. Grab whatever you need. We jump on thirty."
As Vivian retrieved her own specialized pack, Ethan pulled out a small flare, activated its chemical light, and threw it into the swirling blackness of the pit.
The flare hit the surface of the void, disappeared for a split second, and then reappeared on the other side, floating lazily over a strange, alien landscape bathed in purple light.
WINDOW CLOSING: 30 SECONDS.
Ethan looked at the flare, then at the sealed door, then at Vivian. "Ready for the jump, Doctor?"