Not wheels, nor wings, nor earthly tread,
But currents where the unseen led.
Through cracks of time and folds of space,
We move with shadows, leave no trace.
In pulses soft, the journey calls,
A road that shifts, yet never falls.
Where paths dissolve and worlds unspin,
Where the ordinary ends, our path begins.
Hallways upon hallways, doorways that led to nothing, winding corridors folding and unfolding in and out of time. The Conduit was both real and not, flickering in and out of existence, which made it a real pain for those who worked here. Lysandra had learned to navigate the Conduit, though it had never quite become that much easier. Some personnel of the Department found it comforting, Lysandra was not one of them.
Technically she was a federal employee but it never felt like it, they were typically cut off and didn't even answer to the president. She was aware of other organizations similar to them that they worked alongside on occasion but they weren't here nor there. She pushed past a door hoping that it wouldn't set her back an hour, and to her amazement it was the right room, the Nexus. The air was thick with the low hum of old electronics, the faint buzz of fluorescent lights overhead, and the scent of machine oil and paper. It was empty, as usual, previous shift long gone, the only sign of their presence a half-empty coffee mug left on the counter. She could never quite understand the comfort some found in this place. It was too cold. Too sterile. The static noise, the endless flickering lights. It always felt like it was on the edge of collapsing into nothing.
She made her way across the room, her footsteps echoing faintly in the hollow, cavernous space. The Nexus had been built with an efficiency in mind, sleek metal panels, crisscrossed by tangled wires that led to ancient computers and bulky analog screens. Nothing sleek or futuristic here. No clean interfaces. No touchscreens. Only clunky buttons and dials that looked like they belonged in a NASA control room, circa 1969. No one knew why they still used this ancient technology but it was always here and they dare not question it.
She reached the control panel at the far end of the room. A large console sat before her, its buttons well-worn and its screen displaying a series of grainy, green text that constantly flickered. The dials and switches on the console buzzed slightly when she touched them. She began inputting the required codes to bring the system online.
Lysandra ran a quick diagnostic scan. Most of the astral pathways were stable, but as always, a few were acting up. Some routes near Sector 3-A were particularly unpredictable today. She keyed in a few more commands, pulling up a map of the astral grid. The main line was particularly crowded, she pushed some buttons and turned a dial and opened an alternate line splitting off of it that went through the second dimension as a detour.
The screen flickered, casting a ghostly green glow over Lysandra's face. The map of the astral pathways rippled, as though the very fabric of the Conduit had momentarily shuddered in response to her commands. The alternative line appeared, jagged and unstable in some parts, but it was her best shot. A detour, sure, but it would alleviate the pressure on the main line for the time being. It would have to do.
Lysandra turned a few more knobs and opened a few more alternative pathways to alleviate the pressure on the main line. According to the manual, if the main line was to ever be compromised reality itself would collapse, though she didn't need it to know that, she had witnessed an alternate reality collapse once and she had to seal off the astral routes to it so it wouldn't flood into neighboring realities.
She checked the temporal stability of the alternate lines. A few had more interference than she liked, but they'd hold long enough to divert some of the traffic. The last thing she needed was for a major breach to happen. A ripple in the Conduit could send shock waves through time and space itself. If she wasn’t careful, things might start to break apart.
She keyed in a few more commands, rerouting the pathways, trying to lighten the load on the main line, but the system was resistant. It was always resistant.
The green text on the screen blinked erratically as Lysandra watched it, her fingers pausing over the console. Something wasn’t right. The pathways she had rerouted were still growing unstable, and the energy fluctuations in the system were increasing by the second. The low hum of the machinery grew louder, more erratic, vibrating through the air like a tuning fork about to snap.
She turned a dial harder than she meant to, and the monitor blinked with a burst of static. The map shifted for a moment, revealing a dark, jagged tear in the astral grid, a breach, it had hidden itself well but it was revealed now.
Her stomach dropped. She quickly began to frantically turn dials and shut off routes to reroute whatever it was moving through the astral plane in a place it could be entrapped.
Her hands moved rapidly over the console, flicking switches and twisting knobs with precision. But the breach wasn’t cooperating. The pathways she rerouted all seemed to feed back into the tear.
“Come on,” Lysandra muttered, tension lining her voice. “Just hold together for a little longer.”
The hum of the machines around her grew louder, and the green text on the screen was now flashing in irregular patterns, almost as though the system itself was struggling to keep up with the changes she was forcing. Her fingers danced across the controls in a practiced frenzy, but the breach wasn’t closing. If anything, it seemed to be growing.
A low, mournful sound reverberated through the room, a sound not unlike a distant wail. Lysandra's eyes flicked to the far corner of the room, but the sound didn’t come from there. It wasn’t physical, it was… spatial. Something was slipping through the crack in the Conduit, something she couldn’t see, but could feel, like a presence pressing in from all directions at once.
A cold, paralyzing wave of energy shot through the room, freezing the air, sending a shock through the system. The walls of the Nexus flickered, bending and distorting, as though the very reality of the space was unspooling at the edges. Lysandra’s heartbeat thundered in her ears as she stumbled backward, her mind racing, trying to keep up with the impossible. She had to contain this, she had to close the breach, or-
The lights flickered again, this time more violently. The entire room shook.
Lysandra gasped. The breach wasn’t just a rift, it was a summons.
A sharp, guttural noise echoed from the other side of the Conduit, and then, a shape emerged. It was immense, a roiling mass of darkness, tendrils twisting and writhing through the air like living smoke. Eyes, too many eyes, flickered and burned within the darkness, watching her, aware of her presence.
It was alive.
It was coming for her.
Desperation hit Lysandra like a tidal wave.
She couldn’t let this happen. If she didn’t do something now, there would be no stopping it. Her fingers moved over the controls with a swift, practiced motion, trying to override the system, trying to force the containment seals back into place. But the breach was expanding, faster than she could react. The energy buildup was astronomical. The rupture was becoming irreversible.
But she had one final option. It was dangerous, more than dangerous, but it was the only thing that might have a chance of sealing the rift.
She reached for the emergency override, a red button, glowing with warning lights.
The machine screamed.
Lysandra slammed her palm onto the button. The room went dark. The world, time itself, seemed to freeze.
And for a moment, everything was still.
Then came the silence.
The Nexus would be rebuilt, and Lysandra lost to time.
Conduit | Shatterline »