NOVEL WEB Chapter 3: Securing the Cube
The Chairwoman's voice was cold, calculated. "We'll respond as we always have. With control."
Hours passed. The object remained stationary, its energy readings fluctuating but never stabilizing. Scientists and military officials scrambled to interpret its nature, but every test returned inconclusive. Theories grew wilder with each failure—a rogue artifact, a dimensional anomaly, a harbinger of some distant intelligence.
At Prime Astronomical Research Station, the cube loomed impossibly large in the night sky, a shard of pure blackness that devoured starlight and reflected only faint ripples of shimmer, like disturbed water. Its presence weighed heavy, an unnatural silence enveloping the sky above Prime Planet.
It pulsed erratically, flashes of cold light that sent tremors through the ground below. Cities far and wide fell into uneasy slumber under its shadow, and the scientists at the station watched helplessly, their screens and readings choked with confusion.
On the surface, news of the anomaly was buried beneath official reassurances—an unexplained astronomical event, a celestial oddity, no immediate threat. Yet unease gripped the population. Whispers spread in hushed voices—of dreams, strange ones, shared by too many to dismiss. Dreams of a vast shadow watching, of voices without language speaking truths they could not remember.
In a sealed chamber of steel and glass, military leaders and top scientists stood in tense silence before flickering holograms of the object. The Chairwoman presided over them, unmoving and unreadable, her gaze fixed on the projections.
"Report," she commanded.
A frail scientist stepped forward, pale and wrung dry from days of work without sleep. His voice trembled despite his effort to control it. "The cube… it's scanning, Chairwoman. We believe it's searching for something."
"Searching?" one of the generals snapped, his fist clenching against the table. "Explain."
"The pulses. They're deliberate now," the scientist said, swallowing hard. "Growing more focused. We believe it's targeting magnetic anomalies on the planet's surface. It's not random. Whatever it's searching for… it's here."
The room fell into uneasy silence, the weight of the admission sinking into each mind.
"Is it a threat?" another general asked, his voice brittle.
"We don't know," the scientist replied, his tone apologetic, yet firm. "But we don't believe it's passive."
The Chairwoman's expression did not change, but her voice carried the weight of an empire. "Bring it down."
At midnight, Prime Planet's orbital weapons array activated. In a synchronized flash, beams of focused energy lanced through the void, converging on the cube. Light surged across the heavens in silent fury, blinding as a second sun. Across Prime Planet, people watched from their windows and fields, awestruck and terrified as the night itself burned.
The cube absorbed it all.
Each blast rippled across its surface like raindrops on glass, shimmering for brief moments before vanishing. Scientists shouted reports into earpieces, their screens erupting in chaos as energy feedback surged through their systems. For long, breathless minutes, the cube held its place, immovable and untouched.
And then it fell.
The pulse that emanated from the cube was not a sound but a presence—a deep, resonant vibration that rattled buildings, shattered windows, and dropped communication systems planet-wide into static. Then, with impossible speed, the cube plummeted toward the surface.
It hit in a barren, uninhabited expanse, shaking the earth for hundreds of miles. Clouds of dust and ash billowed skyward, the shockwave radiating outward with enough force to flatten the surrounding landscape. Cities as far as the horizon reported tremors; power grids flickered, and the ground itself groaned beneath its weight.
Within hours, containment forces arrived at the crater, sweeping the area with mechanized drones and armored soldiers. At its center, the cube sat half-buried in molten earth, cold and unmoving, its black surface pristine and unmarred despite the violence of its fall. Probes could not penetrate its depths. Sensors sent back corrupted data. Every attempt to analyze it—to crack it, scan it, or shift it—was met with silent refusal. Machines brought too close failed outright, their circuits fried. Human observers suffered migraines and restless nightmares after only minutes in its presence.
"It's inert," one lead scientist reported to the Chairwoman days later, standing at the edge of the crater in a protective suit. "We… we can't even scratch it. It's like it's waiting."
"Seal it," the Chairwoman replied, her voice colder than the wind that swept across the barren plain.
Over the next year, an enormous containment facility was built around the crater, a fortress of reinforced steel and concrete designed to isolate the cube from the world. It was sealed, secured, and forgotten. The Chairwoman ensured no whispers of its existence reached the public. Only the highest levels of government remembered the object that had fallen from the stars.
Time moved on.
Cradle Planet remained a dead world, quarantined and avoided, its surface silent save for the winds that swept across its broken cities. Officially, it was deemed irrecoverable—a tragedy too dangerous to touch. In secret, the government dispatched recon teams, elite soldiers and scientists equipped with the best technology Prime Planet had to offer. Each mission ended in failure. No one returned. Signals vanished. The planet, it seemed, swallowed them whole.
The Chairwoman entertained proposals to destroy it—to obliterate Cradle Planet from orbit and remove the threat once and for all—but the risks were too great. Scientists warned of unintended consequences, of debris drifting across space, carrying the infection to other worlds. Worse, some whispered that the cube, even dormant, might not tolerate such an act. And so the government watched and waited, the world turning quietly beneath its gaze.
Ten years passed.
For most, the events surrounding the cube and Cradle Planet faded into myth, stories whispered in dark corners and half-forgotten news archives. Life on Prime Planet continued, with its wars, its progress, its dreams of a brighter future. The containment facility, an empty monument to the unknown, stood silent and unused, its purpose forgotten by all but a few.