Volume 1 – Chapter 9: The Edge of Revelation

The silence following the man’s departure had us both rattled, heavy stillness in the air that felt unnatural. I remained at the door, staring at the untouched USB drive laying on the floor. There was a heaviness to what he said, and his tone was so dark, so final, it haunted me.

Since he had left, Rika hadn’t said much. She had paced, rubbed the back of her neck, eyes flickering around the room. It felt like her brain hadn’t fully registered the reality of what had just occurred.

“We have to get moving,” she said more to herself than to me.

I didn’t respond immediately. My mind was still on the man, on the voice that knew our names. It had settled deep into my bones, the feeling of being watched, that something, a predator, was circling us, waiting, biding its time.

“What are we waiting for?” she asked, snapping me out of my thoughts. Her eyes locked on mine, not blinking. “You heard him. We’ve gone over some line, Kaito. And if we don’t work this out, it will get worse. A lot worse.”

I sighed out loud and ran a hand through my hair. My thoughts were whirring, knotting up in a mess. The file. The USB. Whoever this person was, he had an evidently much greater power, much greater assets than we could conceive of.” How had they found us? How did they know we had consulted the file?

“I am not running,” I said emphatically. “Not yet.”

Rika's eyes narrowed. “You think hiding will do the trick? Do you honestly think that, given everything that’s gone down, after that dude... that we can just ride this out? They’re already onto us. You’re playing a very dangerous game, Kaito.”

“I’m not playing anything,” I snapped. “But if we act without deliberate thought, if we act out of fear, we’re going to exacerbate the situation. We need information. We want to know who’s behind this. These people who’ve been pulling the strings with the meteor — they’re not just going to let us walk away from this.”

Rika stepped toward me, her fists balled at her sides. “And how are we going to find them? We don’t even know who they are, what they want, how far this goes. We are walking blind here, Kaito.”

I felt her disappointment, and it reflected my own. I hated not knowing. I hated being this out of control. But there was no choice. We simply had to play the hand we were given.

“We’ll work it out,” I responded. “We have the file. We can analyze it. Look for any clues. There has to be something — something that tells us what comes next.'

Rika shook her head in clear disbelief. “And if it’s a trap? What if opening up the file only makes things worse?”

“We don’t know whether that’s a trap. We don’t know anything yet.” I rose to my feet and dusted off my jacket. “We have to know more. This is our only chance.”

Rika stared at me for a long moment, lips sealed tight. Without a word, she picked up the USB laying on the floor and threw it to me. “Fine. But if this goes bad, I’m blaming you.”

I snatched it, fingers curling around the chilled plastic. Something小 insignificant, but as you flipped it over, it felt like you were carrying the weight of the unknown.

The laptop hummed awake and its dim screen flickered as I plugged in the USB drive. The familiar file explorer window appeared and, sure enough, the folder labeled “Project Eclipse. My hands shook a bit when I tabbed on it.

Within the folder, were a number of files — all of them with names that meant nothing to me. One marked “Phase One,” another “Resource Allocation,” and the last, a video file called “Final Transmission.” I clicked on the video, my heart racing.

The screen flickered briefly to black before revealing an image of a man seated in front of a camera. His cheeks were carved away, hollowed by fatigue or stress, and he appeared to have not slept in days.

The man kept his voice low and hurried, his eyes darting nervously. “If you’re watching this, then we failed you. The project was compromised. The meteor … it’s not what you think. It was never meant to happen this way. We were supposed to stop it. “We were meant to figure out how to stop it, but they —” The video cut to black.

Rika leaned in closer, squinting at the screen. “What the hell was that?”

“Someone was doing it,” I muttered, gazing at the black screen. “Someone was trying to prevent the meteor.” But they failed.”

“Yeah, like no shit,” Rika said. “What’s Phase One? What’s the rest of this? This could all just be junk.”

I clicked on the file called “Phase One” and opened it. This time, it was a document — filled with a hodgepodge of information: coordinates, schematics, dates. Much of it was illegible, too technical to comprehend. But there was a section toward the bottom that I found interesting.

A name. A place.

“Site: Eden Complex. Location: 47°37’N, 15°43’E.”

“Eden Complex?” Rika repeated. “What’s that?”

I didn’t know. But that was the first lead we had. I pasted the coordinates into my phone’s map app, waiting for the little gray dot to load on the map. It was remote — an isolated space far from any major city or well-known research institution.

“This might be important,” I said to myself more than Rika. “If this is where they were working, it could also be where they were hiding something. Something big.”

Rika bent over my shoulder and glanced at the screen. “That’s a hell of a drive. If it’s even still standing. I’m not excited about wandering out there in a haphazard manner.”

“We’ll come up with a plan,” I said, more confidently than I felt. “We’ll figure it out.”

I stood up and reached for my jacket. “We’re headed to Eden Complex.”

We didn’t waste any time. The car was already loaded up, the map marked with our route. Outside the sky was darkening stuff, the sun low, casting the city orange and purple. But there was no one in the city; the streets were barren of life. It felt like the world was collectively taking a breath, waiting for something.

Rika was driving, gripping the wheel, her eyes darting ahead. “This does not feel right, Kaito,” she said after a long silence. “We don’t know what we’re going to walk into. We don’t know if anyone is still out there.”

“I know,” I said, my voice tense. “But we don’t have a choice. We need answers. We need to know who’s behind this, what this project is, and how we can stop it.”

Rika didn’t respond, but her hands clenched around the wheel.

The road ahead, dim headlights piercing the darkness ahead of us. And with every mile we left the city behind, I couldn’t help but feel that someone was watching us. That we were being followed by someone — or something.

But we had no alternatives but to pursue forward.” The answers lay ahead.