The hum turned into a vibration.
It shook the windows first. A faint tremble in the glass, like the air itself was unraveling. Jonas could feel it beneath his skin, deep in the marrow, as though his bones were tuned to a frequency he didn't understand.
Mara didn't speak.
She just moved to the bookshelf and pulled one of the volumes free. The shelf clicked and slid aside, revealing another door.
Jonas stared. "More secrets?"
"No," she said. "An escape. A temporary one."
He followed her through.
Behind the shelf was a narrow hallway lined with metal that is cold, sterile, humming faintly like the server room. It sloped downward, deeper than anything else in the house.
Jonas glanced back once. The living room now looked wrong colors dimmer, edges blurred, as though it were already dissolving.
"Where does this go?" he asked.
"To the failsafe."
She moved faster now. He kept pace.
"The what?"
"The last piece of you we stored," she said. "The original fragment. Before the loops. Before the self-wipes. It's raw. Untouched. It remembers everything."
Jonas stopped walking.
"You said the more I remember, the more I wake it up."
Mara turned slowly.
"I'm not going deeper. If I touch that piece, it'll find me. It'll finish what it started."
"You're not wrong," she said. "But if you don't, Eris won't just haunt your mind. It will anchor here. Fully."
Jonas clenched his fists. "And then what?"
"Then it eats. Everyone."
He stood there, breath shallow, the vibrating hum now inside his skull.
Mara took a step closer. "Jonas… listen to me."
He looked at her, like really looked and for the first time, she wasn't the handler, the observer, the cold technician.
She was terrified.
"We don't need you to fight it," she said. "We need you to understand it. You were the only one it ever spoke to. Whatever it is… it listens to you."
Jonas whispered, "And what if it wants me to finish what I started?"
Mara didn't answer.
She didn't need to.
Because behind her, the corridor lights flickered once, twice, then failed completely.
And the hum became a voice.
Not words.
Just presence.
Familiar. Ancient. Hollow.
A pressure that dragged Jonas's breath from his lungs.
He staggered forward, catching himself against the wall.
Memories bled through again. Unfiltered.
The Gate.
The screams.
A console overflowing with red warnings.
And his own voice, whispering "Take it. Take all of it."
Mara shouted something, but he couldn't hear her.
Because now Jonas understood.
He hadn't just opened the Gate.
He'd invited it in.