Bianca’s blood ran cold instantly.
Every instinct screamed at her to run.
Not fight.
Not ask questions.
Run, just run.
The old woman noticed.
Of course she did.
“You’ve seen them,” the woman said quietly.
Not a question.
Bianca took a slow step backward.
The hallway suddenly felt too narrow.
Too quiet.
“How do you know that?” Bianca asked carefully.
The woman studied her for a moment before answering.
“Because people who witness the fractures tend to describe the same feeling afterward.”
“That’s somehow not comforting.”
“No,” the woman agreed softly.
“It usually isn’t.”
The system flickered again.
[ Unknown Presence Interfering ]
[ Caution Recommended ]
Bianca resisted the urge to yell at it.
Barely.
The old woman looked toward the snowy mountains outside the glass wall.
“When reality tears,” she said calmly, “something always looks back.”
Bianca’s pulse quickened.
Images flashed briefly through her head again:
blue cracks spreading through the sky the giant eye between stars something moving in endless darkness watching her waiting
She shoved the memories down immediately.
Nope.
Absolutely not.
Not unpacking cosmic trauma today.
“Okay,” Bianca said slowly, “either you’re about to explain a lot of things or I’m reporting you to somebody.”
A faint smile touched the woman’s mouth.
“You assume there’s someone here capable of stopping me.”
Oh good.
Threatening old lady.
Exactly what this week needed.
Bianca folded her arms carefully.
“That sounded dramatically evil.”
“It was meant to sound honest.”
Somehow worse.
The woman walked slowly past her toward the observation glass.
Bianca noticed something strange immediately.
No sound.
Her footsteps made almost no sound at all.
The system reacted again.
[ Spatial Distortion Detected ]
“…cool,” Bianca whispered.
“I hate that.”
The woman glanced at her reflection in the glass.
“You’re frightened.”
“Congratulations on identifying human emotions.”
“You should be.”
That shut Bianca up for half a second.
The woman’s expression shifted slightly then.
Less cryptic.
More serious.
“The Void noticed you.”
There it was again.
That word.
Void.
Bianca’s stomach tightened.
“You people keep saying that like I’m supposed to know what it means.”
“Not people.”
The correction came instantly.
Small.
Quiet.
Wrong.
Bianca stared at her.
“…that was somehow creepier than the original sentence.”
The old woman ignored that completely.
“With what?”
The woman finally looked directly at her again.
And for one horrible second—
Bianca saw something move behind the woman’s eyes.
Not metaphorically.
Actually move.
Like shadows shifting beneath deep water.
The system flashed violently.
[ WARNING ]
[ WARNING ]
[ Observation Detected ]
Bianca stumbled backward immediately.
“What the hell are you?”
The woman blinked once.
And suddenly she looked normal again.
Old.
Calm.
Human.
Mostly.
“That,” the woman said softly, “is a very dangerous question.”
The hallway lights flickered.
Once.
Twice.
Then stabilized again.
Bianca’s breathing turned uneven.
This wasn’t like the Red Room.
That had been human evil.
Concrete evil.
Understandable evil.
This felt different.
Bigger somehow.
And Bianca hated big mysterious things.
The woman tilted her head slightly.
“You hear it, don’t you?”
Bianca froze.
“The whispering.”
Silence.
Cold spread slowly down Bianca’s spine.
Because yes.
Sometimes late at night— especially after the facility incident— she heard things.
Soft sounds behind thoughts.
Almost voices.
Not words exactly.
More like distant echoes underwater.
She’d ignored it.
Aggressively.
Because acknowledging supernatural whispering felt like the first step toward becoming a horror movie victim.
Bianca forced a laugh.
“Nope. Absolutely no creepy whispering here. Mentally stable.”
The old woman sighed softly.
“Denial only delays the damage.”
“Oh good. Love that sentence.”
The system suddenly flickered harder than before.
Then— for the first time— it spoke without prompts.
[ She should not be here ]
Bianca froze completely.
That had never happened before.
The system usually reacted.
Observed.
Commented occasionally like an emotionally unavailable narrator.
But this?
This sounded almost… alarmed.
The old woman’s eyes narrowed slightly.
Interesting.
Like she noticed the reaction somehow.
“Your companion dislikes me,” she said quietly.
Bianca stared.
“…okay now you’re REALLY making me uncomfortable.”
The woman stepped closer again.
Not aggressively.
“You need to leave this place soon.”
Bianca frowned immediately.
“That’s already the plan.”
“No,” the woman corrected softly.
“You misunderstand.”
The temperature around them dropped sharply.
Frost spread slowly across the edges of the observation window.
Bianca noticed instantly.
So did the system.
[ Environmental Shift Detected ]
The woman’s voice lowered slightly.
“They’ve already started searching.”
Bianca’s heartbeat quickened.
“Who?”
The woman looked at her silently for several long seconds.
Then answered:
“The things beyond the fractures.”
Nope.
Absolutely not.
Bianca physically pointed at the woman.
“See THIS? This is why normal people avoid cryptic conversations.”
The woman almost smiled again.
Almost.
“You think this ends with secret organizations and buried experiments,” she said quietly.
“It doesn’t.”
The hallway lights dimmed again.
Snow hammered harder against the glass outside now.
Bianca suddenly became aware of how isolated the mountain facility really was.
Miles of wilderness.
No cities nearby.
Nowhere to run if something impossible arrived.
The woman looked toward the storm.
“When the first veil broke,” she whispered, “something crossed over.”
The system glitched violently.
[ STOP ]
[ INFORMATION RESTRICTED ]
Bianca blinked.
“…excuse me?”
That was new too.
The old woman’s expression sharpened slightly.
Interesting.
Like the system’s reaction confirmed something for her.
“You don’t even understand what’s inside you yet,” she murmured.
Bianca’s jaw tightened.
“I’m getting real tired of people talking about me like I’m a valuable mysterious science project.”
The woman turned fully toward her again.
For the first time— actual emotion entered her voice.
Not fear.
Not pity.
Concern.
“You are far worse than a science project, Bianca.”
Silence.
The use of her name hit strangely hard.
Bianca never told her.
The old woman noticed immediately.
“Ah,” she said softly.
“Now you’re paying attention.”
Bianca took another step backward.
The air suddenly felt difficult to breathe.
“Who are you?”
The woman studied her quietly.
Then finally answered.
“My name,” she said softly, “is Evelyn Voss.”
The name meant nothing to Bianca.
But the system reacted instantly.
Violently.
[ ALERT ]
[ HORIZON FOUNDER DETECTED ]
[ PRIORITY THREAT ]
Bianca’s stomach dropped.
Oh.
Oh that was bad.
Very bad.
Because there was only one thing worse than discovering a conspiracy.
Meeting the person who started it.
It seems trouble always seems to find Bianca, what will she do and Elena knows that she has a companion, do you think she knows it’s a system.