The intercom clicked off with a final, clinical thud, leaving us in a silence that was rapidly being filled by the rising, rhythmic thrum of the sub-levels.
Everhart wasn't coming to save us.
He was waiting for the experiment to conclude.
"Locked," Xander hissed, his shoulder pressed against the durasteel door.
He wasn't looking at the datapad anymore; he was looking at the way the metal was starting to shimmer. A fine frost of blue-green crystal was beginning to weep from the door's seams.
"The Chorus is hijacking the magnetic locks. It's sealing the exit."
"James," Drake growled.
He was slumped against the wall, his face a ghostly grey, but his eyes were hard. He didn't look at me like an asset this time.
He looked at me like a teammate who was lagging behind.
"Quit staring at your hands. We're being boxed in."
I looked up.
The heat-map vision was still flickering, but I fought to suppress it. My jaw ached where the crystal shard had pierced the gum, but instead of focusing on the pain, I focused on the vibration.
It wasn't just a hum.
It was a sequence.
Three short. One long.
"It's not just locking the door," I said, my voice sounding like gravel grinding together. I forced the words out, fighting the urge to let the entity's syntax take over. "It's... it's a circuit. It's using the door as a conductor."
Kara stepped forward, her hands venting a low, frustrated steam.
"Can you blast it open? Give me a target, James. I'm done waiting for a lab coat to tell us we're allowed to live."
"No," Xander interrupted, his analytical mind finally catching the gear-turn. "If she blasts it, the kinetic energy just feeds the lock. James, you said it's a circuit. Can you... can you interfere with it?"
I looked at the door.
I didn't want to touch it.
Every instinct screamed that making contact would be like plugging my brain into a lightning rod.
But then I looked at Drake's blood-soaked shoulder and Luna's trembling hands.
If this is happening anyway, how do I survive it?
I walked toward the door.
The air grew colder, the hunger in the walls becoming a physical weight. I didn't just reach out blindly.
I waited.
I listened for the pulse.
Three short. One long.
I placed my hand on the cold durasteel.
The scream that entered my mind was instantaneous, but I didn't let it pull me under this time. I didn't seek the cathedral.
I looked for the gap.
"Kara," I gasped, the blue-green light beginning to bleed from under my fingernails. "Siphon the hinges. Now. Don't burn them. Cold. Make them... make them silent."
Kara didn't hesitate.
She lunged forward, her hands hitting the metal. The temperature in the small hallway plummeted. Ice began to crackle over the crystalline growth.
"Xander!" I shouted. "The pulse! I'm holding the frequency steady... it's a flat-line. Break the physical lock!"
Xander didn't use a tool.
He focused his aerokinesis into a high-pressure needle, aiming it directly into the frozen mechanism I was holding open with my mind.
It was a three-way synchronization:
My resonance filtering the interference.
Kara's cold making the metal brittle.
And Xander's precision providing the killing blow.
SNAP.
The internal mag-lock shattered.
The door groaned, the crystalline lattice covering it turning to grey, inert dust.
"Move!" Drake barked, finding a surge of adrenaline.
He shoved the door open, leading the way into the service lift lobby.
We weren't safe, but the tone had shifted.
I wasn't just the monster in the room.
I was the one holding the door open.
I looked at my hand—the blue-green tint was still there, but the hunger had receded, replaced by a sharp, focused exhaustion.
"You did it," Luna whispered, her hand briefly brushing my arm.
It was the first time she hadn't flinched.
"I didn't do it," I said, my voice a little more human, a little more mine. "We did."
The lift lobby was a wreck, the ceiling panels hanging by wires, but the service elevator was still humming.
We piled in, the doors sliding shut just as a wave of blue-green light flooded the stairwell we had just escaped.
Everhart's voice returned over the elevator's small speaker.
"Ingenious, James. You didn't just harmonize; you performed a Dissonance Filter. The data on your neural adaptation is... succulent."
"Shut up, Everhart," Drake growled, leaning his head against the lift wall.
He looked at me, a ghost of a smirk crossing his bloodless lips.
"Nice work, asset."
"My name is James," I said.
Drake's smirk widened a fraction.
"Right. James. Let's get to the surface. We have a professor to fire."
The lift began to rise, but the floor beneath our feet didn't just vibrate with the engine.
It hummed.
The Chorus hadn't lost.
It was just changing the song.
But for the first time, I knew how to hum back.