Splinter View: Chapter 3 — November 7, 2025
CHAPTER 3 — “Deck-Hole Discovery”
By the time I finish running the extension cord to the kitchen island, late-afternoon light slants amber through the living-room blinds, thick as syrup. The air inside clings—not humid, not stale, but wrong, like the cabin’s been holding its breath. I tell myself it’s just the spectrometer’s ozone burn, the coiled fiber-optic cables leaching heat into the room. But my lungs don’t buy it.
The sliding glass door rasp-groans as I push it open. A gust of resin-sweet air washes in, and with it the metallic-sap note again, sharper outdoors. Mika trots ahead, nails ticking once on the threshold before hitting sun-warmed planks. The deck lists slightly under her weight; when I step on, two boards dip another centimeter, jolting my knee.
“Add deck repair to Horvenstein’s grant budget,” I mutter, trying for humor. If only budgets could patch reputations as easily as wood. The trees surrounding the cabin toss shadows across the railings, slow as water testing a wound. The air smells of cedar and iron—too sharp, like the aftertaste of a storm or the scorch of a spark.
Mika beelines to the gap we glimpsed earlier—now a gaping maw at my feet. The boards stop abruptly around a rough-cut circle nearly a meter across. At first glance it looks no deeper than hip height, but leaning in reveals a void that drinks light. Bark scars ring the cut, evidence of an oak trunk long since removed, roots likely still coiled beneath.
Mika freezes at the rim. Hackles ripple from shoulders to tail, a silent wave. She releases a low, restrained whuff, belly so tense I can see the muscle line through her fur. I drop into a crouch beside her, phone already up.
Flashlight on. A white cone of LED pierces maybe two meters, then dies against darkness. No soil glints, no root web catches the light. Just black. A chill wind—not the day’s gentle breeze but a directional draft—slides out and lifts the ends of my hair.
“Erosion,” I say. “Tree came out, soil compacted—” The words taste like a lie even as I say them. I’ve used logic as a shield before, but this isn’t logic’s territory. Mika’s growl vibrates through the deck boards, low and wrong, like she’s answering something I can’t hear.
I pick up a dead cedar twig, snap it to half a meter, and drop it in. It falls longer than physics feels comfortable with—one, two, three—and never clatters against anything solid. Sound swallowed whole. My stomach does a slow inversion.
Above us, the brass chimes strike once—CLACK—though the air is dead still. They hang perfectly motionless, yet the sound echoes like a mallet on bone. A second tap replies from inside the cabin, softer, as if something is learning the rhythm.
“Acoustic coupling,” I whisper, but the words taste like a lie. Mika’s gaze never wavers from the hole. Her ears flatten, and for the first time, I realize she’s not growling at the dark. She’s listening to the silence.
Enough. Data later. Nerves now. I stand, wipe phantom dust from my knees, and guide Mika back toward the door. The boards groan under our retreat—but they don’t dip. The deck feels too solid, like it’s holding its breath.
Inside, I tug the slider shut. The latch clicks home, and in the glare of the glass I catch my own reflection: wide-eyed, mouth thin, shoulders hunched. That’s the posture of someone waiting for another inquiry, not another discovery. For a second I look like the photo the faculty page still uses—the one from before everything split open. Behind that reflection, just for a heartbeat, I think I see the hole on the deck floor widen, as if the boards are stretching toward me.
Then it’s only me, Mika, and the faint CLACK of a chime that shouldn’t be moving at all.
░░ TRANSMISSION SEALED ░░
Next Uplink ↳ Chapter 4 — November 11th 2025