The basement felt colder now, the walls pressing in with every breath Anatoly took. The dim lighting from the flickering overhead bulbs cast strange shadows across the sterile, metallic surfaces of the room. It was as though the air itself had thickened, resisting their movements. The harsh hum of the air conditioning system—a sound that had once been a background white noise—now felt like the pulse of something alive.

  Anatoly, usually so composed, stood completely still, his dark eyes locked on the pod. Tankai, who had been practically buzzing with frantic energy just moments before, now stood frozen beside him. Both men were breathing heavily, caught somewhere between disbelief and a creeping sense of dread.

  The figure in the pod—pale, translucent, and shimmering—remained eerily still. It had been like that for as long as they’d been standing there. Neither of them could fully process what they were seeing. It wasn’t human, yet it looked disturbingly close to being one. The glowing figure inside seemed both too alive and too still at the same time. It was as if the line between life and death had been blurred in the most unnerving way possible.

  Tankai took an unsteady step forward, his pulse quickening. “This is bad. This is really, really bad. What the hell are we even looking at?”

  Anatoly didn’t move. His gaze was fixated on the being inside the pod. His expression was unreadable, but there was something... other in his eyes. Something deeper. Something lost.

  The figure’s glowing eyes flickered to life as if it had heard Tankai’s words. Its gaze seemed to settle on them, although it had no visible pupils, no true eyes—just glowing, shifting light where eyes should have been.

  Without warning, the air around them vibrated. A low hum resonated through the room, as if the pod itself were alive, reacting to their presence. Tankai instinctively took a step back, his instincts screaming at him to flee. Anatoly, on the other hand, moved closer, drawn in by something the other man couldn’t quite understand. It wasn’t just curiosity—it was compulsion.

  “Anatoly, what’s going on?” Tankai’s voice shook with unease. “What is this thing? Why is it glowing like that? What happened to this place?”

  Anatoly’s lips parted, but before he could speak, a voice—cold, yet calm—filled the air, vibrating through their very bones.

  Welcome.

  Tankai’s heart skipped a beat. The voice came from everywhere, from inside the walls, from the very air around them. He looked at Anatoly, but the doctor’s face was stone, unreadable. Was he hearing it too?

  "Did you—" Tankai started, but his voice faltered.

  The figure inside the pod moved slightly, almost imperceptibly, as though acknowledging their presence. The air grew heavier, pressing down on them like an invisible weight.

  You are not lost, but you will be. Soon. The voice again, reverberating in their chests, almost as though it were echoing in the very space between their ribs.

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  Tankai shook his head in disbelief, backing away another step. “This is insane... You’re saying we’re—what? Not lost, but about to be?”

  Anatoly finally spoke, his voice a near whisper, as though he were speaking to himself. “It’s... it’s more than that. This is... this is a temporal anchor.”

  Tankai frowned, glancing at the glowing figure. “A what?”

  Anatoly’s gaze never left the pod, his mind churning with thoughts too rapid to fully catch. "A temporal anchor. It’s a point of disruption in time—a fracture, a break. It’s what caused this... this absence." He gestured around them vaguely. “The hospital. The world. Everything.” His voice trailed off as he looked back at the pod, as though he could unravel everything simply by staring at it.

  The figure inside the pod was still, but there was a strange energy radiating from it, pulsing in time with their heartbeats. The glowing eyes seemed to shift subtly, as though the being was considering something.

  Tankai stepped closer, drawn by the figure's quiet power. “So... this thing’s the reason the world’s gone to hell? What exactly is it, though? A creature? A machine?”

  Anatoly’s lips twitched, almost as if he were about to answer, but the voice interrupted them both.

  I am not a creature. I am not a machine. I am the anchor—the point of all things lost.

  Tankai shivered, but Anatoly only moved closer to the pod, ignoring the chill that ran through him. He pressed a hand against the cold glass. "And how do we undo this... this... rupture? How do we fix it?"

  The figure’s glowing eyes flickered once again, dimming for a moment. The timeline is broken. To repair it, you must sever the anchor.

  Tankai’s brows furrowed. "Sever it? How do you sever time?"

  You must find the source. The one who created the fracture. The one who made this moment inevitable.

  Anatoly’s breath caught in his throat as the weight of the figure’s words settled over him. Tankai’s voice broke through the silence. “So we find whoever caused this... and fix it? Simple enough. If you’re gonna make us do your dirty work, you could at least tell us who the hell they are.”

  You know who it is. You have already met them. The one who abandoned you.

  Anatoly’s hand, still resting on the glass, trembled. The words hit him like a blow to the chest. His pulse quickened, and for the first time since they’d arrived in this strange world, his calm, rational facade cracked.

  Tankai caught the shift. "What is it? What are you hiding?"

  Anatoly snapped back to reality, his face a mask once more. “It’s nothing.”

  Tankai’s gaze narrowed. "You know something, don’t you? Who is it?"

  But Anatoly didn’t answer. He couldn’t—not yet. He wasn’t ready to confront it, not until he understood everything.

  The figure in the pod shifted again, its form distorting as it spoke once more. You will need more than your intellect to find the source of the rupture. You will need the key.

  Tankai took a deep breath. "The key... What key? What key is it talking about?”

  The voice echoed, growing sharper with each word. The key to undoing it all. The one who controls the fracture. The one who holds the timeline in their hands. You know them. Find them.

  Anatoly’s eyes darkened. He turned away from the pod, the weight of the words pressing down on him. His heart raced. The one who controls the fracture. Who could it possibly be?

  “I have to know,” Anatoly said, his voice tight with urgency. “We need to understand who—"

  A loud noise interrupted him. A tremor rumbled through the room, and the lights overhead flickered again. The temperature seemed to drop even further, and a sharp pain shot through Anatoly’s chest, like an invisible hand had gripped his heart. Tankai shot him a concerned look, but the doctor didn’t react.

  Anatoly’s voice trembled as he spoke. “We need to go. We need to find them—before it’s too late.”

  Tankai opened his mouth to protest, but before he could say anything, the figure’s voice filled the room one last time, this time more insistent, more powerful.

  The key is closer than you think. The anchor has already awakened.

  The ground beneath them trembled, and Tankai stumbled forward. The pod’s hum grew louder, the energy within the room intensifying. Suddenly, it was as though everything around them was... warping. The walls stretched, and the air became thick with static. Time itself seemed to bend.

  Tankai gripped the edge of the pod for support, his heart racing in his chest. “What the hell is happening?!”

  But Anatoly didn’t answer. He couldn’t. His mind was already running through a thousand possibilities, all of them terrifying.

  The figure’s eyes glowed brighter now, the room pulsing in time with its power.

  You cannot escape the fracture. The timeline is unraveling, and you are its key.

  And then—silence. Everything stopped. The tremors ceased. The air stilled.

  Anatoly and Tankai stood in the center of the now-quiet room, breathing heavily, their hearts still racing.

  The pod, the figure, everything was still.

  But something had changed.

  Something had awakened.