00:00 HOURS – THE EDGE OF NOWHERE
The storm wasn't on any radar.
That was the first warning.
Dr. Elara Voss gripped the cold steel railing of the SSV Chronos as a wall of black water rose before them, towering over the ship's 200-meter frame. The research vessel—outfitted with enough cutting-edge tech to make a Pentagon contractor weep—groaned in protest as the wave slammed into its hull. Saltwater stung Elara's eyes, mixing with the sweat on her brow.
CALIBAN's voice chirped in her earpiece: "Wave height: 22.4 meters. Hull integrity at 89%. Also, your cortisol levels suggest you're deeply regretting signing that Nexus Dynamics contract. Should I play motivational music? My algorithm suggests death metal."
Elara spat seawater. "Shut up, CAL."
Behind her, chaos reigned. Crew members scrambled across the deck, their shouts swallowed by the howling wind. Captain Rios bellowed orders near the bridge, his face a mask of fury and fear. The Chronos wasn't just a ship—it was a floating fortress, built to withstand Category 5 hurricanes. Yet here it was, shuddering like a toy in a bathtub.
This wasn't natural.
Elara knew it. She'd known it the moment Nexus Dynamics greenlit this expedition.
"The Triangle doesn't follow rules," she'd warned them. "It rewrites them."
Now, as another monstrous wave lifted the ship at a nauseating angle, she watched the storm shift.
00:12 HOURS – GLITCH IN THE SYSTEM
First, the compasses went mad.
Elara staggered into the command center, where screens flickered like strobe lights. The Chronos' state-of-the-art navigation system was melting down—not from water damage, but from something worse.
CALIBAN (unusually quiet): "Elara. Look at this."
The main display showed the sea ahead... except it wasn't the sea.
The water had patterns.
Geometric shapes pulsed beneath the surface—perfect hexagons, spirals, fractals—glowing a sickly green before vanishing.
Just like the footage from Flight 227.
Her wife's plane.
Ten years ago.
Elara's throat tightened.
Then—the ship stopped moving.
Not metaphorically. Literally.
The waves still crashed around them, but the Chronos sat perfectly still, as if bolted to an invisible floor.
"What the hell—?" Felix Park, their lead meteorologist, clutched a console, his face pale. "We should be capsizing! The physics—"
The deck lights flared crimson as CALIBAN's voice boomed ship-wide:
"Emergency. Unknown energy signature detected. All personnel—"
The words died as every screen on the bridge changed.
The same symbol appeared simultaneously on every display:
⊏⏜⊐
Elara's breath caught.
She'd seen it before.
Etched onto the wreckage of Flight 227.
Scrawled in her nightmares.
Then—
The sky tore open.
00:24 HOURS – THE DOOR
Reality unfolded.
The storm clouds peeled back like layers of an onion, revealing—
Nothing.
No sky. No stars. Just an endless void of shifting geometric patterns, a living kaleidoscope that made Elara's eyes water. The sea below mirrored it, the waves freezing mid-crash into crystalline sculptures.
Petty Officer Jax, a hardened Navy vet, dropped to his knees and retched. "Make it stop—"
Captain Rios drew his sidearm—as if a 9mm could shoot the fabric of reality.
Then it appeared.
Fifty meters off the bow, hovering above the motionless waves:
A door.
Black metal, twice as tall as a man, covered in those same impossible symbols. No frame. No walls. Just a door, standing impossibly in midair.
The crew fell silent.
Even CALIBAN had nothing sarcastic to say.
Elara stepped forward, her boots crunching on suddenly frozen seawater. Every instinct screamed at her to run.
But she'd spent a decade searching for this.
Her hand reached out—
The symbols flared red.
And with a sound like a universe sighing...
The door opened.
Beyond it stretched a corridor of pulsating light, walls shifting between solid and liquid. And at the far end—
Something moved.
UNKNOWN VOICE (from everywhere at once): "Test Subject: Human Vessel SSV Chronos. Welcome to Protocol."
Then—
The ship lurched forward.
Not by its own power.
Something was pulling them in.