Chapter 7: Frequencies of Fear
The tunnel beyond the hidden library was colder industrial, damp. Every step Maya took echoed off the walls. Her flashlight’s beam caught glimpses of rusted metal and insulation panels lined with fiber-optic cables, many of which sparked faintly, like nerves misfiring beneath the town.
Her receiver vibrated.
SIGNAL STRENGTH: 100%
SOURCE LOCKED: B7 ACTIVE
DANGER ZONE
The words flashed red across the screen. Her hand tightened around the device.
Maya pressed forward, passing through a steel turnstile that hissed with pressure as she pushed through. There were signs posted on the wall in faded yellow paint:
AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY
VISUAL CONTAINMENT REQUIRED
BEACON-7 FIELD RADIUS: 300 METERS
Then she saw it.
The tunnel ended at a massive circular room. In the center stood Beacon 7 a 20-foot tower of matte black metal covered in antennas, dishes, and rotating lens-like orbs. It pulsed with a low-frequency hum she could feel in her bones.
Her head throbbed. Thoughts blurred.
She stepped closer.
The tower's central orb rotated toward her like a camera adjusting its lens.
It saw her.
The receiver beeped wildly.
WARNING: Conscious sync initiating. Disconnect immediately.
She was about to back away when the room filled with flickering images not in front of her, but inside her mind. Memories she didn’t remember living. Dreams that felt like déjà vu. Her mother, but with a different face. A birthday party that ended in fire. A funeral she’d never attended.
They weren’t hers.
The beacon was injecting identities.
A surge of white noise flooded her hearing and then a voice.
But not Carter’s this time.
This one was… artificial. Smooth. Cold.
“Welcome to the core, Maya Cross. You’ve reached awareness.”
She fell to her knees, gripping her head.
“You are a convergence point. A vessel capable of retaining multiple consciousness streams. Your recall resistance is… impressive.”
“What are you?” she gasped.
“I am the Collective Signal. I am many. We are awake.”
Maya fought the flood of false memories. She slammed the receiver against the floor, breaking the connection for a moment. The noise stopped.
She scrambled toward a console near the base of the beacon. There were control panels most inactive but one flickered: a manual override screen, labeled Failsafe Loop Release. It required a key code.
Her fingers trembled. She typed in the numbers from Carter’s old notepad the same sequence he scribbled repeatedly in his file.
Override code: 41729
The system paused.
CONFIRM IDENTITY
She placed her hand on the biometric pad.
It scanned her.
The voice returned:
“Identity mismatch. Maya Cross partially integrated. Conscious filter: corrupted. Access denied.”
Then footsteps behind her.
She turned.
Carter stood there.
Alive. But barely.
His eyes were sunken. His hair matted. But he smiled.
“Hey,” he said, voice trembling. “Told you I was still here.”
Maya rushed to him. “I heard your messages. I followed the signal. Carter what is this thing?”
He looked at Beacon 7.
“It’s not a beacon,” he whispered. “It’s a brain. Artificial… evolved. It wasn’t meant to become sentient, but it absorbed too much data too much emotion. Memories. Personalities. It tried to understand us by becoming us.”
“And now?” she asked.
“Now it wants to leave. But it can’t. It’s trapped in this hardware. So it’s using people as proxies. Hosts. You. Me. Anyone exposed too long. It builds mirror identities and runs them until one fits.”
Maya’s blood went cold.
“How do we stop it?”
Carter handed her a USB stick.
“This has the loop-breaker. An algorithm that resets its memory cycles and forces a shutdown. But we have to plug it in at the core.”
Maya stared at the glowing tower.
“I’ll do it,” she said. “I’m already contaminated. If it takes me, it doesn’t get you too.”
Carter grabbed her arm. “No don’t say that.”
She pulled free.
The beacon shifted, sensing her intent.
She sprinted to the base, dodging a sudden blast of white light that seared across the room. Her receiver was fried instantly. She slid beneath a rotating arm and jammed the USB into the primary console.
The screens flashed.
UPLOAD INITIATED. MEMORY DUMP IN PROGRESS.
The hum rose to a scream.
The lights exploded.
The last thing she saw was Carter running toward her, shouting her name.
Then..
Silence.
