Chapter 5: Charon's Scythe

Chloe stared at the computer screen with the kind of silence that preceded either acceptance or complete psychological breakdown. The numbers didn't lie—Elias's account balance showed a gain of over $130,000 in a single trading day, all from a stock purchase made twelve hours before any public announcement.

"This is impossible," she said finally, her voice barely above a whisper.

"I know."

"You bought this stock because of a news report?"

"A news report that aired before the company made any announcement. Before anyone outside their boardroom knew about the breakthrough." Elias pulled up his DVR recording of the previous night's broadcast. "Watch her face when she delivers the story."

They sat together on his worn couch as Brenda Vance filled the screen, her professional smile intact but her eyes carrying that now-familiar plea for help. When she reached the Nexus Technologies segment, Chloe leaned forward, studying the subtle tremors and micro-expressions that Elias had learned to read like a desperate form of morse code.

"She looks... scared," Chloe admitted.

"She's terrified. Every night, she broadcasts events that haven't happened yet, and every morning, reality reshapes itself to match her words." Elias fast-forwarded to show her the footage of his dead tomato plants, then pulled up news articles about the gas leak that had nearly killed his neighbors. "Three days of perfect predictions. Three days of impossible coincidences."

Chloe absorbed the evidence with the methodical attention she brought to real estate contracts—checking details, looking for inconsistencies, testing the foundation of what she was being asked to believe. But the money was real, the timing was undeniable, and her brother's meticulous documentation painted a picture that defied rational explanation.

"If this is true," she said slowly, "if somehow this news broadcast is... what? Controlling reality? Then we need to tell someone. The FCC, the police, the—"

"Who would believe us? You didn't believe me yesterday."

"Yesterday you didn't have a hundred and thirty thousand dollars of proof."

They were interrupted by the familiar musical sting that preceded Channel 7's breaking news alerts. Both of them turned toward the television, where Brenda Vance had appeared for an unscheduled broadcast. Her usual composure had cracked further—the tremor in her hands was now visible even to casual observation, and her smile looked more like a grimace of pain.

"We interrupt our regular programming with breaking news," she said, and the static whisper beneath her words had grown loud enough that even Chloe could hear it. "Federal communications authorities are reporting cascading failures in cellular and internet infrastructure across the Pacific Northwest."

The camera cut to a map showing red zones spreading outward from major cities like digital infections. Seattle, Portland, Vancouver—all highlighted in warning colors that pulsed with ominous regularity.

"Initial reports suggest the failures began approximately twenty minutes ago and are spreading at a rate that has baffled telecommunications experts," Brenda continued. The terror in her eyes was no longer subtle—it blazed with the intensity of someone watching their own execution. "Affected areas are experiencing complete loss of cellular service, internet connectivity, and in some cases, landline telephone systems."

Elias grabbed his phone. No signal. The WiFi icon on his laptop showed no available networks. They were already inside the expanding dead zone, cut off from the outside world with the precision of a surgical strike.

"Emergency services remain operational through dedicated radio frequencies," Brenda said, but her voice had begun to develop a mechanical quality, as if the words were being fed to her through some internal broadcast system. "Citizens are advised to remain calm and avoid unnecessary travel until the situation is resolved."

The camera returned to Brenda, and what Elias saw made his blood freeze. Her pupils had begun to dilate and contract in rapid, synchronized pulses—not the natural response to changing light, but something rhythmic and artificial. The static beneath her voice was now audible as a constant electronic hum.

"In related news," she continued, and Elias could see her fighting against the words even as they emerged from her mouth, "NASA's Deep Space Monitoring Division has reported an unprecedented astronomical anomaly."

The screen filled with telescope imagery of a massive asteroid, its surface pocked with craters and scarred by eons of cosmic bombardment. But something was wrong with its trajectory—the orbital path shown in the animation curved in ways that defied gravitational mechanics.

"The asteroid designated 2087-CS, previously in stable orbit around Jupiter, has inexplicably altered course and is now on a trajectory that will bring it into the inner solar system." Brenda's voice had become completely monotone, all pretense of human inflection abandoned. "The object, measuring approximately fifteen kilometers in diameter, has been redesignated 'Charon's Scythe' by the international astronomical community."

Fifteen kilometers. Elias felt the number settle into his consciousness like a death sentence. The asteroid that had killed the dinosaurs was estimated at ten kilometers. Charon's Scythe was fifty percent larger.

"Current calculations place the object's closest approach to Earth at fourteen months from today," Brenda continued, her eyes now pulsing with that unnatural rhythm in perfect synchronization with the static. "However, NASA officials emphasize that trajectory calculations for objects of this size and distance remain subject to significant margin of error."

The broadcast cut to a hastily assembled press conference where a visibly shaken NASA administrator attempted to address a room full of shouting reporters. The audio was garbled by interference, but fragments came through: "...never seen orbital mechanics like this..." "...appears to be accelerating without external influence..." "...cannot rule out impact scenario..."

When the camera returned to Brenda, she was no longer recognizably human. Her pupils had dilated completely, turning her eyes into black voids that seemed to absorb the studio lights. When she spoke, the words emerged with the perfect cadence of a computer-generated voice.

"This has been Channel 7 News. Stay safe, and we'll see you tomorrow."

The screen went black.

Elias and Chloe sat in absolute silence, the weight of what they'd witnessed pressing down on them like a physical force. The communications blackout, the impossible asteroid, the complete transformation of Brenda Vance from terrified human into electronic puppet—it painted a picture of a threat so vast and alien that human understanding seemed inadequate to process it.

"The money," Chloe said finally. "The stock profits. It wasn't a reward, was it?"

"No," Elias replied, his voice hollow with realization. "It was payment. Payment for watching. For bearing witness to... whatever this is."

"But witness to what? What does it want?"

Elias thought about the progression of broadcasts—from local anomalies to personal threats to financial opportunities to global catastrophe. Each story had escalated the stakes while simultaneously isolating him further from the world of people who might help or believe him. The tomato blight had been a demonstration. The gas leak had been a warning. The stock tip had been seduction.

And now, with communications severed and an impossible asteroid bearing down on Earth, the true scope of the phenomenon was finally revealing itself.

"I think," he said slowly, "it wants an audience. Something is rewriting reality, and it needs someone to watch it happen. Someone to record the process. Someone to understand that what everyone else thinks is random catastrophe is actually... performance."

Outside their window, Seattle continued its normal evening rhythms, unaware that its cellular towers had gone silent and its internet connections had been severed. Unaware that somewhere in the darkness between Jupiter and Mars, a fifteen-kilometer messenger of extinction was accelerating toward them with impossible physics.

But in Elias's apartment, surrounded by notebooks full of documented impossibilities and a sister who finally believed him, the performance continued. The signal had revealed its endgame, and they were the only audience left who understood they were watching reality itself being written, edited, and prepared for its final act.

Tomorrow, the rest of the world would wake up to news of the communications failure and the approaching asteroid. They would scramble to understand and respond to threats that seemed to emerge from nowhere.

But Elias knew better. These weren't random disasters—they were the opening movements of something vast and methodical, something that had been using Channel 7's broadcast to prepare the stage for humanity's final scene.

The only question left was whether there was anything two witnesses in a darkened apartment could do to change the script before the curtain fell.