Chapter 10 - The Gray Hand
The severed appendage didn't bleed. Where Vance’s toolbox struck, the gray material shattered into millions of tiny, crystalline shards that clattered against the floor like frozen salt. A sharp, piercing shriek—not human, but sounding like the screech of tearing metal mixed with the cry of a distressed bird—ripped from behind the white door.
Mark stumbled backward, snapping out of his trance as the sound hit him. He blinked hard, staring down at the glittering salt-like shards scattered across the wood.
"What... what did you do?" Mark breathed, clutching his head as a blinding migraine flared behind his eyes.
"Saved your life," Vance panted, dropping the toolbox and pressing his bare hand against the smoking junction box to manually ground the circuit. The blue laser grid flared back to life with an angry hum, sealing the crack in the door shut once more. The room fell instantly quiet, save for the heavy panting of the three humans and the whimpering dog.
"That wasn't a recording," Mark said, his voice shaking with a terrifying realization. He looked at Vance, his eyes wild. "That thing... it had my sister's ring on its finger."
Vance stopped working on the wires for a fraction of a second. He didn't look up. "The chamber doesn't just mimic voices, Mr. Miller. It harvests biological residue from the people who lived in this building decades prior. If your sister lived in this district before the 1974 restructuring... her genetic imprint was cataloged into the municipal foundation."
"Cataloged?" Sarah interjected, her voice trembling with rising fury. "You make it sound like people were lab rats! Are you telling me the city built housing complexes directly on top of... of what? Genetic storage facilities?"
"I'm telling you that downtown was built over an experimental subterranean research zone after the blackout of '73," Vance said, finally standing up and wiping soot from his canvas jacket. He looked at Mark with a cold, professional pity. "And some of the subjects weren't successfully evacuated before the concrete was poured."
Mark stared at the white door, the anger finally replacing the grief in his chest. "She was ten years old when she disappeared," he said softly, his voice trembling. "My parents were told she wandered into the woods during a thunderstorm. They searched for weeks."
"The woods were paved over six months later," Vance said quietly. "Welcome to your new home, Mr. Miller. Now, help me barricade this door before the municipal maintenance crew arrives to permanently weld it shut."
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Before anyone could move, a heavy, rhythmic banging started up from inside the walls of the kitchen, coming from a completely different direction.
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