“Hello, my son. I’ve been waiting for you.”
Ryan froze.
The voice was familiar, but it didn’t belong to his father. It sounded like Adam.
A faint golden light appeared across the chamber. Ryan turned toward the darkness and saw a man standing beside the broken control panel.
Adam.
His body was covered with black veins, and golden light burned beneath his skin.
“Adam!” Ryan shouted.
Zara raised her weapon. “Stay back! We don’t know if that’s really him.”
Adam looked at Ryan.
“Brother, you must listen. The thing beneath this facility has been using our voices. It wants you to open the seventh lock.”
Father stepped forward.
“Adam, how did you escape?”
Adam laughed painfully.
“You created the prison, Father. You should know that its walls are breaking.”
Suddenly, the floor cracked. Black tendrils erupted around Adam’s feet, pulling him downward.
Ryan reached for him, but Father grabbed his shoulder.
“Don’t touch him! His blood is connected to the heart!”
Ryan pushed Father away.
“I won’t abandon my brother!”
He raised his glowing hand. A golden beam struck the tendrils, forcing them to release Adam.
Adam collapsed beside Ryan.
For a moment, his eyes returned to normal.
“Thank you,” he whispered. “But we have very little time.”
Hamza switched on his emergency flashlight.
“What’s happening to this place?”
Adam pointed toward the enormous wall behind the control panel.
“The door isn’t beneath us anymore. It’s behind that wall.”
Meher’s voice crackled through the radio.
“That’s impossible! The seventh lock is connected to another dimension. If the door opens, the organism will cross into our world completely!”
Elias suddenly groaned.
The golden hand still held him. His body was changing, his face splitting between human and monstrous forms.
“Ryan!” he screamed. “Destroy the device!”
Ryan noticed Elias’s metallic device still connected to the control panel.
He rushed toward it.
But his mother appeared in front of him.
“Don’t hurt him, Ryan. He is your first brother.”
Father raised a weapon.
“Move away from my son!”
She turned toward him.
“You have called him your son for years. But you never told him what happened to the real child.”
Ryan stopped.
“What real child?”
Father’s weapon lowered.
Before he could answer, the wall exploded.
A gigantic circular doorway appeared, covered with seven golden symbols. Six were glowing. The seventh was completely black.
A shadow moved behind it.
Then a small hand pressed against the other side.
A child’s voice whispered:
“Father... why did you leave me here?”
Ryan stared at his father.
And his father began to cry.