He never mentioned it to the Major. And two weeks later, when they found Node 14's backup storage corrupted beyond recovery, he signed the report without comment.
> ISF WATCHKEEPER 4 // LOGIN // PRIORITY ALPHA // YOUR TURN IS OVER.
The screen flickered. For a split second, Singh saw something that wasn't a login prompt—a grainy black-and-white image of a corridor he didn't recognize, lined with five empty chairs. And in the sixth chair, a figure in an ISF uniform, head tilted back, eyes open. isf watchkeeper 4 login
> UNEXPECTED QUIET DETECTED. ZONE 7 THERMAL SHADOW. LOG CONFIRMED.
Through the static, a low, rhythmic thrum —too slow for a heartbeat, too regular for wind. Then a sound like stone grating on stone. Then nothing. He never mentioned it to the Major
He pulled up the raw feed from Node 14, the silent one. Last packet: 02:13. Thirty seconds of infrasound recording before the node went dark.
> Who is sending this?
The concrete operations room was a tomb of stale coffee and low light. Watchkeeper Singh rubbed his eyes for the third time in ten minutes. The clock on the wall read 03:47. Somewhere in the disputed badlands four hundred kilometers away, a sensor node had stopped talking, and if it wasn't back online by 04:00, protocol demanded he wake the Major.