A rhythmic tapping began on the recording. It sounded like fingernails on glass, but the tempo was too fast, too precise. It was Morse code. Elias pulled up a translator on his second monitor.
Elias reached for the power cord, but his hand froze. From the shadows beneath his desk, he heard it: the rhythmic, hyper-fast tapping of something crystalline against the floorboards. The "Pack" wasn't just data. It was a delivery system. SPECIAL1192_PACK4.rar
Elias played the audio file. At first, there was only the low hum of the station’s life-support systems. Then, a voice—thin and terrified—whispered, "It’s not growing. It’s assembling." A rhythmic tapping began on the recording
The second photo, taken only three minutes later, showed the glass of the tank spider-webbed with cracks. The crystals were gone. In their place was a shimmer in the water—a distortion that looked like a glitch in reality. Elias pulled up a translator on his second monitor