Chapter 84: The Answer from the Void
Zak felt it before he saw it.
The QSE wasn’t just responding to the signal—it was synchronising with it.
Vibrations surged through the chamber like silent thunder. Zak’s body tensed as waves of harmonic pressure rolled through his nervous system. It wasn’t just energy anymore. The Engine wasn’t running—it was waking. Alive. Intentional. Aware.
The main terminal flared.
LIVE ENERGY RESPONSE DETECTED
ZAK CARTER HARMONISATION RATE: 97.6%
SUBJECT BIO-QUANTUM ENTANGLEMENT CONFIRMED
His knees threatened to give out. His body felt like it had been hardwired into the Engine’s frequency. He could feel the QSE’s pulse in his chest—like a second heartbeat, perfectly in sync with his own.
This wasn’t connection.
This was integration.
Dr Raines stared at the monitors in disbelief. “The interface was supposed to be one-way. Passive. Controlled.”
Zak’s breath came shallow. “That’s where you went wrong. You treated it like a tool. It’s not.”
The harmonic frequencies accelerated. The chamber darkened, flooded by layered echoes and rippling distortion in the air. Static arced across the consoles as terminals blinked and glitched.
Then—clarity.
A voice. Deep. Resonant. Not from any speaker.
It came from inside Zak.
“You have reached too far. The balance is shifting.”
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He staggered back, hands gripping the console. The voice wasn’t heard—it was understood, felt, embedded in his bones like ancestral memory. It bypassed cognition. It spoke directly to the fabric of being.
The QSE flared again. The lights dimmed to nothing. A new vibration cut through the chamber—not from machinery, but from the very space around them. The structure of the room began to blur at its edges. Geometry twisted. Reality bent.
The guards on the observation deck raised their weapons. Engineers scrambled away from the console. Panic buzzed just beneath the surface.
Then—
A tear in space.
Not visual. Not metaphorical. A genuine fracture in causality itself opened at the far side of the chamber. It pulsed with light that bent time and dark that devoured thought.
And from it—something stepped through.
Not flesh. Not code. Something in between.
The Entity.
Zak’s pulse surged. He recognised the silhouette. It was the force he had encountered in the harmonic realm—the sentient design that had once tried to rewrite reality’s very syntax.
Now, it was here.
In the real world.
Dr Raines stumbled back. “What the hell is that?!”
Zak didn’t answer.
He already knew.
This wasn’t an apparition.
It wasn’t divine.
It wasn’t Dominion’s creation.
It had always been there—waiting.
The Entity drifted forward, weightless, boundless. Its gaze locked on Zak. No eyes, yet every part of him felt seen. Measured. Weighed.
“You are not the first to open the gate,” it said. Its voice echoed with the cadence of dead civilisations. “But you may be the last.”
The QSE pulsed again—stronger. Feedback rippled outward. The ground trembled. Warning alarms flashed red.
QSE STABILITY COMPROMISED
NON-HUMAN INPUT DETECTED
SOURCE: UNKNOWN
Connors yelled something incoherent. Chaos spread through the control room. Engineers shouted over each other. Lights failed. Air thickened.
Zak stepped forward, steadying himself.
Then—another surge.
The QSE began to divide into two distinct projections. One side: Dominion’s control schematics—energy monopolies, planetary oversight, surveillance infrastructure.
The other: a blank construct.
Unwritten.
Unclaimed.
Potential.
The Entity spoke again. “You are the anchor. The convergence is bound to your decision.”
Zak’s throat tightened. “You’re telling me I decide what happens next?”
A pause. Then:
“You already have.”
Zak looked to Raines—who stood paralysed. Then to the staff, wide-eyed and trembling.
This wasn’t about understanding the QSE anymore.
It was about mastering it—or releasing it.
Zak’s hand hovered over the console. The light beneath his fingers pulsed in sync with his own pulse.
And the Entity whispered—
“Choose.”