PART 25
The interior of the concrete dome was vast and dark,
the only light coming from the green and red indicator lamps of ancient military computers that lined the walls.
In the center of the floor was a deep,
circular pit,
and suspended over it by heavy steel cables was a metallic sphere that looked like an old atomic bomb.
But it wasn't a bomb;
it was the casing for the fourth node,
and from within the sphere came a low,
pulsing roar that sounded like a million voices screaming at once.
"It's a memory dump,"
I realized,
walking toward the edge of the pit,
feeling the hot air rise from the darkness below.
"Every secret,
every betrayal,
and every fear from the Cold War was archived here to keep it from poisoning the public consciousness."
Daniel stood near the entrance,
his flashlight beam cutting through the dust,
revealing rows of skeletal remains sitting at desks,
their bony fingers still resting on old telegraph keys.
They weren't killed by radiation;
they had simply been forgotten by the system,
left to rot when their operational cycle was completed.
The electronic transponder in my hand began to beep frantically,
the numbers on the digital screen shifting too fast to read.
"To align this node,
you have to open the sphere,"
Arthur's voice echoed from the entrance,
though he had remained outside the dome.
"You have to let the secrets pass through you,
Amelia,
to filter out the noise and validate the core data."
"Don't do it!"
Daniel shouted,
running toward me as I climbed the metal cat-walk that led to the suspended sphere.
"It will erase your mind,
Amelia,
you can't handle eighty years of human hatred!"
I didn't listen,
because the countdown in my head had reached ten seconds,
and the walls of the concrete dome were already beginning to crack under the immense pressure.
I reached out and touched the cold metal of the sphere,
and immediately,
the world exploded into a kaleidoscope of black and white images.
I saw soldiers marching through the snow,
I heard the static of encrypted radio transmissions,
and I felt the absolute,
paralyzing terror of a world on the brink of total destruction.
The thoughts tore through my brain like shrapnel,
shattering my own memories of childhood,
of my mother,
and of the lighthouse,
replacing them with the cold,
clinical logic of military strategy.
"Amelia!"
Daniel's voice pierced through the screaming in my head,
a single,
bright wire of human emotion in a sea of digital static.
I looked down and saw him climbing the cat-walk toward me,
his face twisted with fear and determination,
his hand reaching out to pull me away from the sphere.
I used my left hand,
the marble-cold hand,
to push him back,
and a wave of kinetic energy threw him off the cat-walk,
sending him crashing down onto the concrete floor below.
He didn't move,
May you like
and a dark pool of blood began to form beneath his head,
staining the red desert dust that had settled on the floor.
