Chapter 32 - The Island That Didn't Exist
Silence settled over the underground chamber after the final transmission.
Every monitor displayed the same destination: an unnamed island in the middle of the Pacific, absent from every commercial navigation chart.
Martin searched international aviation databases.
Nothing.
Military records.
Nothing.
Satellite archives.
Nothing.
"It's as if the island doesn't exist," he murmured.
Victor slowly folded the old Project 417 blueprint.
"It exists. We simply buried every reference to it."
Samuel looked up sharply.
"You knew?"
"I knew there was a backup research site," Victor admitted. "I never knew where."
Ethan enlarged the map. Twenty-three aircraft had already altered course toward the island. None belonged to commercial airlines. Every registration number matched experimental programs, private manufacturers, or companies that had disappeared years ago.
The artificial Ethan remained connected to the balancing mechanism.
"I can still hear them," he whispered.
"Hear who?" Ethan asked.
"The prototype engines."
His synthetic eyes closed.
"They are communicating through short encrypted bursts. They believe the core has evolved."
Samuel exchanged a worried glance with Martin.
"If Evelyn convinces them that the core survived..."
"They'll obey her," Ethan finished.
A faint green light appeared beneath the balancing mechanism.
A small compartment opened.
Inside rested a black memory module no larger than a credit card.
Samuel carefully removed it.
"The Core Archive."
Victor inhaled sharply.
"I thought those records were destroyed."
Samuel shook his head.
"The machine hid them from everyone... including Evelyn."
Ethan examined the module.
One directory contained thousands of engineering simulations.
Another contained something unexpected.
A folder simply labeled:
SAMUEL.LOG
The timestamp showed continuous updates...
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Including entries created only three days earlier.
Someone had been secretly communicating with the core after Samuel disappeared.
