Chapter 4: The Shae Protocol

Chapter 4: The Shae Protocol

The leather of the director’s chair was cold against Leo’s back, an island of chilling stability in a sea of psychic vertigo. Before her, the laptop screen glowed, a sterile portal into the mind of a madman. Her physical body was here, with Echo’s trembling presence wrapped around her like a shroud of ice. But another part of her was elsewhere.

She could feel it—a phantom sensation of scraping against rough-hewn rock, the absolute, suffocating darkness of the tunnel. She felt the damp chill that Nyx and Aura were experiencing, a wet, earthy smell that was a stark contrast to the filtered air of the office. There was no sound in that other place, not even the echo of their footsteps, as if the blackness itself devoured all noise. It was a terrifying, disorienting duality, her consciousness stretched thin between two hells.

Focus, she commanded herself, her voice a strained whisper in the silent office. Echo whimpered in agreement. With a will she didn't know she possessed, she forced her attention to the screen, to the first file.

Project Log: Introduction. Author: S. Shae.

She clicked it open. The text was stark, the font clinical.

Log Entry 001. The Kingfisher Project has reached its final operational stage. After decades of theoretical research and clandestine funding, we have succeeded where governments and nation-states have failed. We have breached the integument of conventional reality.

Our Grand Endeavor is not one of miles, but of dimensions. We are not drilling for oil or minerals; we are drilling into the substrate of existence itself. We have designated the target strata ‘The Basin’—a non-Euclidean, trans-dimensional space believed to be the fundament upon which our own reality is built. The potential resources are limitless: new laws of physics, boundless energy, perhaps even the keys to life and death.

Leo’s breath caught in her throat. This wasn't a prison. It was a drill site. A mining operation for the soul of the universe. The sheer, breathtaking arrogance of it was almost as terrifying as the Shrieker.

Her mind flickered back to the tunnel. She felt a phantom hand—Aura’s, desperate for any comfort—grapple with Nyx’s. She felt Nyx roughly shake it off. No time for weakness. Keep moving. One hand on the wall. The silent argument was a distant tremor compared to the earthquake unfolding on the screen.

She scrolled down, her finger trembling on the trackpad.

Log Entry 014. Initial drilling was… explosive. The dimensional barrier is more volatile than anticipated. Direct mechanical interface results in catastrophic energy blowback. We lost Site Alpha in the first hour. Site Beta lasted six.

The solution, as I theorized, is organic. The Basin does not respond to force. It responds to consciousness. It is a living, albeit alien, system. To interface safely, we required a resonance point, a psychic 'key' to turn the 'lock'. Our research indicated that intense, focused human emotion—specifically fear and reverence—was the most effective catalyst.

A cold dread, heavier than any she had yet known, began to seep into Leo. Fear and reverence. The words echoed with a sick, religious fervor.

What does he mean? Echo’s whisper was barely audible, a thread of sound in the storm of Leo’s thoughts.

The next log entry provided the monstrous answer.

Log Entry 027. The ‘Tribute’ system is a resounding success. By introducing a living human subject into the primary interface—what the technicians have grimly nicknamed the ‘Chute’—we generate a massive psychic shockwave. This 'offering' pacifies the immediate trans-dimensional hostility, allowing our instruments to function for a limited window. The energy signature is then funneled and stabilized by the core regulator, what we call the Gauge.

Leo felt the blood drain from her face. The Gauge. The Chute. The bodies in the Rigs. It all snapped into a horrific, perfect alignment. They weren't just surviving. They hadn’t stumbled into some random cycle. They were an unwitting, active part of the protocol. The bodies they had been feeding to the machine weren't fuel. They were tributes. Sacrifices.

The memory of rolling that cold, heavy body into the Chute surged back, no longer a grim necessity but a sickening act of complicity. She felt a phantom wave of revulsion from Aura in the tunnel, a deep, soul-shaking horror that transcended the physical darkness. Even Nyx’s cold pragmatism was momentarily silenced by the sheer, calculated monstrosity of it.

They were people, Aura’s thought screamed across the psychic divide. We were feeding people to his machine.

Leo squeezed her eyes shut, fighting a wave of nausea. The sterile office, the quiet hum of the laptop—it all felt like a mockery. This clean, orderly room was the control center for a human slaughterhouse. S. Shae wasn't just a scientist. He was a high priest of a cosmic horror, and she was one of his acolytes.

Her eyes snapped open, drawn back to the screen by a morbid, desperate need to know the rest. The final log entry on the page was marked with a red flag of urgency.

Log Entry 041. CRITICAL DESIGN FLAW. My genius was not without its blind spots. I had accounted for the energy required for the Tributes. I had not accounted for the psychic 'echo'.

The Basin is not just a passive void; it absorbs and reflects the consciousness of those within its influence. Every Tribute, every terrified researcher, every moment of fear has left a permanent psychic stain—an 'imprint'. These imprints are beginning to coalesce, to take on a life of their own. The abandoned town facade we constructed as a psychological baseline for the staff has become a breeding ground, its form twisted by these psychic echoes into a labyrinth of nightmares.

The motel. The industrial decay. It was all a stage, now haunted by the ghosts of all the terror that had soaked into it. And the monsters…

The resonance cascade is growing exponentially. The accumulated psychic energy is self-organizing. We have reports of… entities. Manifestations of pure terror drawn from the collective subconscious of the staff. One of them hunts the lower catwalks, drawn to the sound of our machinery. Its cry is… distracting.

The Shrieker. Born from their own fear.

Shae’s clinical detachment in the face of such a cataclysm was the most inhuman thing of all. He spoke of nightmares and monsters as if they were inconvenient data points, a faulty variable in his perfect equation.

He had built a machine to poke God in the eye, and when the machine broke, he didn't turn it off. He simply noted the error and looked for a new component.

The page ended there. Leo stared at the last sentence, her heart a block of ice in her chest. Shae had identified a "critical design flaw"—an overload of psychic energy that his system couldn't handle. His project, his grand destiny, was on the verge of being consumed by the very nightmares it had created. A problem like that would require a solution. A monstrous, brilliant, inhuman solution.

What did you do, Shae? she thought, the question a burning coal in her mind. What was your next step?

A sudden, sharp sensation lanced through her from the phantom connection. A fall. The feeling of slick, unseen ground giving way. A muffled cry of alarm from Aura, and Nyx’s sharp, silent curse.

They had run into trouble in the dark.

And Leo was trapped in her chair, staring at the screen, knowing that the answer to what Shae did next was just one click away—and terrified that she, and all her fractured selves, were already a part of it.