Someone tried the handle again.
David stepped away from the door.
The handle turned slowly, stopped, then turned back.
Whoever was outside wasn't trying to break in.
They had a key.
David looked at the old tape recorder on the desk. The reels had stopped, but the power indicator was still glowing.
He took the tape from the machine, slipped it into his jacket, and moved toward the door.
“Who's there?”
No answer.
He waited.
Then came three knocks.
Not loud. Not hurried.
Three deliberate taps against the metal.
David recognized the rhythm.
He had heard it at the beginning of the night, beneath the floor of Vault C.
He backed away.
“I'm not opening this door.”
A man's voice came from the corridor.
“David.”
His father.
“Open the door.”
David almost moved toward the handle.
Then he remembered the call.
Whatever you hear, don't answer it.
He had assumed his father meant the voice in the walls.
Now he wasn't so sure.
“Dad?”
“Open the door. We need to leave.”
David approached, stopping just short of the handle.
“Tell me what happened to Mom.”
A pause.
“Not here.”
“You said that on the phone. You said it when I asked about Station Nine. You said it when I found the photograph.”
“David, please.”
“Was she alive when you brought me here in 2001?”
Silence.
David pressed his palm against the door.
“I'm not opening it until you answer me.”
For several seconds, the only sound was the low hum of the electrical system.
Then his father spoke.
“Yes.”
David closed his eyes.
One word.
Twenty-five years of lies, and one word was all his father had given him.
“Why did you tell me she died in 1999?”
“I was trying to protect you.”
“From Mom?”
“No.”
“Then from whom?”
His father didn't answer.
David stepped away from the door.
“You keep saying you were protecting me. But you brought me here. You brought me to the place where she was being held.”
“I didn't know what they would do.”
“Who are they?”
“David, you need to understand something. The people who built this station weren't the people who controlled it.”
David stared at the recorder.
“What does that mean?”
“It means there are records here that were never supposed to exist. Things that were hidden because nobody knew how to explain them.”
“Explain what?”
“Signals. Events. People who remembered things that hadn't happened yet.”
David felt a chill move through him.
He thought of the Geneva prediction.
The date on the paper.
October 28, 2026.
Twenty days after the transmission had called his name.
“Is that why Mom was here?”
“I don't know.”
“You're lying.”
“I know what I saw, David. I don't know what it meant.”
The handle moved again.
This time, it turned all the way down.
David backed toward the desk.
“Dad, if that's really you, tell me something only you would know.”
The silence that followed was long enough to become an answer of its own.
Then his father said, “When you were little, you used to wake up screaming about a room with no windows.”
David frowned.
He remembered nightmares from childhood. He remembered his father sitting beside his bed, telling him they weren't real.
He didn't remember a room.
“You told me there was nothing to be afraid of,” David said.
“I told you that because I wanted you to sleep.”
“What happened in that room?”
“I don't know.”
The handle returned to its original position.
Then came the sound of a key sliding into the lock.
David grabbed the metal chair and wedged it beneath the handle.
“Stop!”
The key withdrew.
Footsteps moved away from the door.
David stood perfectly still, listening until they disappeared.
He waited another minute before approaching the door.
There was no sound from the corridor.
He crouched and looked beneath it.
The strip of light outside had vanished.
Whoever had been standing there had turned off the corridor lights.
David returned to the desk and examined the archive-room floor plan. He needed another way out, but the only marked exit was the door he'd just blocked.
He studied the drawing more carefully.
The room had originally been designed as a communications archive. Its equipment layout included a cable channel running behind the cabinets, connecting the room to the main tape vault.
It wasn't an exit.
But it might lead somewhere he could reach without opening the door.
David pulled the filing cabinet away from the wall. Dust fell from its base as it scraped across the floor.
Behind it, he found a metal panel secured by four screws.
He used the screwdriver from the maintenance kit to remove them.
The panel came loose.
Beyond it was a narrow service passage filled with cables.
David shone his flashlight inside.
He could hear the ventilation system running somewhere beyond the walls. The passage was cramped, but large enough to crawl through.
He took the photograph and the tape from his jacket, checked that his phone was still in his pocket, and climbed inside.
Before pulling the panel closed, he looked back at the room.
The recorder sat on the desk.
For a moment, he considered leaving the tape behind and returning for it later.
Then he remembered his mother's voice.
My husband.
He wasn't leaving the only physical evidence he had of her being alive in 2001.
He closed the panel and crawled forward.
The passage ran behind the walls of the station, occasionally widening around junction boxes and rusted conduits. Twice, David had to stop to manoeuvre around collapsed sections of insulation.
After several minutes, he found a ladder leading upward.
He climbed until he reached a small hatch.
Beyond it lay the main tape vault.
David pushed the hatch open and emerged between two rows of storage racks.
The vault was empty.
He checked his phone.
03:46.
Less than forty minutes had passed since he'd first heard his mother's voice.
It felt like hours.
He made his way to the stairs and climbed to the control room.
The corridor lights were on again. The security monitors had resumed displaying the perimeter cameras.
On the main screen, a vehicle stood beside the access gate.
His father's car.
David checked the time stamp on the feed.
03:44.
He zoomed in.
The driver's door was open.
Nobody was visible.
David called his father.
The phone rang once before connecting.
“Dad?”
No answer.
“I'm in the control room. Where are you?”
A faint rustling came through the speaker.
Then his father spoke.
“Are you alone?”
David looked at the empty corridor.
“Yes.”
“Good. Listen carefully. I need you to do exactly what I say.”
“Where are you?”
“Outside.”
“Your car is at the gate. Where are you?”
His father breathed into the phone.
“David, I made a mistake bringing you here.”
“That's not an answer.”
“No. It isn't.”
For the first time that night, his father's voice sounded less frightened than exhausted.
“I thought if you never remembered, you could live a normal life.”
David tightened his grip on the phone.
“Remember what?”
A long pause.
“Your mother wasn't the only person we lost.”
David glanced at the security monitors.
One of the perimeter cameras had gone dark.
Then another.
His father continued.
“There was a night when the station received a transmission that shouldn't have been possible. Afterward, people began reporting memories of events that hadn't happened. Some of them remembered the same things. Others remembered completely different lives.”
“Was Mom one of them?”
“Yes.”
“And me?”
His father didn't answer.
David felt his stomach tighten.
“Dad?”
“I have to go.”
“Wait. You said you were outside. Why can't I see you?”
The line crackled.
Then his father said something David could barely hear.
“Because I'm not the one standing at the gate.”
The call ended.
David stared at the phone.
On the security monitor, the driver's door of his father's car was still open.
A figure stood beside it.
The image was grainy, but the person appeared to be wearing a dark coat. Their face was turned away from the camera.
David switched to the next feed.
The figure was there too, visible near the perimeter fence.
He switched again.
The figure appeared beside the station's main entrance.
David stopped moving.
That camera was pointed directly at the control-room door.
He looked up from the screen.
Beyond the glass, at the far end of the corridor, stood a man in a dark coat.
The man was looking straight at him.
David couldn't see his face clearly.
But he recognized the coat.
He had seen it before.
In the photograph from June 17, 2001.
The man raised one hand and placed it against the glass.
David's phone vibrated.
A message from his father appeared.
DO NOT LET HIM SEE THE PHOTOGRAPH.
David slowly reached inside his jacket.
The photograph was still there.
When he looked back at the corridor, the man had disappeared.
On the security monitor, the timestamp changed.
03:14:08.
David checked his phone.
03:47.
The clock on the wall above the console still read 03:14.
And from the speaker behind him, a voice began to speak.
His own voice.
“Station Nine, this is Miller.”
David turned toward the console.
“Do not allow the child to leave the perimeter.”
The transmission stopped.
For several seconds, David could hear only his breathing.
Then the console printed a single line.
OCTOBER 9, 2026 — 03:14.
YOU HAVE BEEN HERE BEFORE.