"The Thin Place" [part1]

 

The air outside Heathrow was unusually crisp, as if the sky itself had paused to think. Zane Faulkner stood at the edge of the terminal pickup zone, one hand in his coat pocket, the other loosely holding a slip of paper marked with a single word: "Threshold."

Behind him, Eli dragged two bags and mumbled to himself.

“I still don’t get it,” he said for the fifth time since they boarded the flight. “You get a phone call from a government ministry, disappear for an hour, and then we’re flying to London for a ‘conference’ that doesn’t officially exist? Doesn’t that seem... suspicious?”

Zane turned, the ever-present faint smile tugging at his lips. “Suspicion is healthy, Eli. But curiosity? That’s irresistible.”

Eli squinted. “You’re enjoying this, aren’t you?”

Zane didn’t answer. Instead, he nodded toward a waiting black car. No license plate. Tinted windows. The driver stepped out — tall, professional, silent — and opened the back door for them.

They got in without a word.

One Hour Later – Thames Institute for Strategic Anomalies

Set atop a discreet hill outside London, the facility didn’t appear on any public map. From the outside, it looked like a countryside estate. Inside, it was something else entirely.

Marble corridors led to biometric checkpoints. Retinal scanners clicked silently as Zane was escorted through, Eli trailing behind, wide-eyed and increasingly nervous.

They passed through four levels of clearance before reaching a tall steel door. A man in a gray suit turned to them.

“They’re waiting,” he said, then opened the door.

The room inside was circular. A high dome stretched above them, etched with constellations. Around a sleek black table sat the world’s most elite minds — detectives, scientists, intelligence analysts. Each from a different nation. Each watching Zane carefully.

At the far end sat a woman with short platinum hair and ice-blue eyes. Her nameplate simply read:

Commander Ilsa Verrick — Oversight Council, Tier One.

She didn’t rise.

“Mr. Faulkner,” she said coolly. “You’re late.”

Zane smiled politely. “Time bends in odd places these days.”

A few chuckles rippled around the room. Ilsa didn’t laugh.

“Sit.”

Zane obeyed.

Eli tried to sit beside him, but an assistant gently pushed him toward a smaller chair at the edge of the room. “Observers sit there,” she whispered.

Eli grumbled. “Observer? I’m the emotional support system, thank you.”

Ilsa ignored him and gestured to the large screen behind her.

Images flashed — children. Spirals. Geographic maps.

Then: blinking lights. Vibrating air. Silhouettes in static.

Zane’s eyes sharpened.

“We’ve seen these,” he said.

“Yes,” Ilsa replied. “But now they’re global. And accelerating.”

She tapped the table. “We’ve logged over 113 cases in the last 72 hours. All identical. Children disappearing and returning after six months. Unaged. Slightly altered.”

A detective from Sweden leaned forward. “Our lab reports show temporal anomalies in their cellular structures. Almost like quantum phase interference.”

A woman from Tokyo added, “Some of the returnees no longer register on thermal scans.”

Ilsa turned back to Zane. “You were the first to identify the spiral symbol as a code. You mapped it into a resonance field. That information was... intercepted. And whatever’s watching us — it knows you saw the pattern.”

Zane remained still. “Then I assume you didn’t bring me here for tea and applause.”

“No,” Ilsa said. “We brought you because the spiral has opened.”

The room fell silent.

Zane blinked. “Define ‘opened.’”

The screen changed again — now showing footage of a crack appearing mid-air over a deserted valley in northern Mongolia. Not visible to the naked eye, but under specific filters — a warping tear in the light itself. A thin place.

“We believe this is where the barrier between dimensions has weakened,” Ilsa said. “And something is trying to come through.”

Zane stared. “Have you sent anyone inside?”

Ilsa’s voice was cold. “We sent a drone. It disintegrated.”

Zane’s smile faded.

Eli, watching from the side, muttered, “Told you this was going to be bad.”

Ilsa leaned forward, her voice tight. “We need someone who understands patterns. Who can see what others can’t. We need you.”

Zane stood slowly, pacing around the screen.

“You don’t need soldiers,” he said. “You need interpreters.”

Ilsa didn’t respond.

Zane turned toward her. “Who else is going?”

She tapped her tablet. Three more names appeared on the screen — top-level operatives from Brazil, India, and France. Each a specialist in cognition, anomalies, or multidimensional theory.

“And you’ll lead them?” she asked.

Zane raised a brow. “And if I say no?”

Ilsa’s gaze was unblinking. “Then we send them without a map.”

He looked over at Eli. Then at the others in the room. Then back at the spiral glowing faintly on the screen.

“I’ll go,” Zane said. “But under one condition.”

Ilsa tilted her head. “Which is?”

“I choose the path. And I don’t answer to command while inside the thin place.”

Silence.

Then she nodded once. “Granted.”

That Night – Temporary Quarters, Level 3

Zane stared out the window of his room. The city lights of London twinkled in the distance, oblivious to the war behind veils.

Eli flopped onto the couch behind him.

“Do you trust her?” Eli asked.

Zane didn’t turn. “I don’t trust anyone who never blinks.”

“You realize they’re sending you into a crack in reality, right?”

“That’s why I’m going.”

Eli sat up. “And what if you don’t come back?”

Zane turned, his smile returning — faint, thoughtful. “Then I suppose you’ll have to inherit the corkboard.”

Elsewhere – Unknown Location

In a chamber lit only by floating glyphs, a tall figure observed the surveillance footage of Zane’s briefing.

Another voice, synthetic and cold, crackled through the darkness.

“HE KNOWS.”

The figure nodded.

“THE MAPMAKER HAS ENTERED THE GAME.”

                            ************

The Highlands, Scotland – Remote Launch Site

The wind was sharp and dry as the team stood at the edge of the valley, where frost-covered rocks framed the landscape like ancient teeth. At the base of a low ridge, a perimeter of black pylons hummed softly, encircling a patch of empty air. From a distance, it looked like nothing. But Zane’s eyes said otherwise.

“That’s it,” he whispered. “The distortion zone.”

Beside him stood Dr. Reva Iqbal — Indian anomaly analyst and neuro-temporal theorist — bundled in a thick parka. Her dark eyes tracked invisible currents like a storm-watcher reading wind patterns.

To Zane’s left, Henri Duval, a French ex-intelligence agent with a background in esoteric encryption, adjusted the lens of a scanning monocle. He’d spoken five words since arrival.

And finally, Lucas Vieira, the Brazilian reality-mapping prodigy, paced nervously with a pulse scanner twitching in his hands. “It’s active,” he said, voice tight. “It’s shifting.”

Eli stood farther back near the supply tent, chewing the inside of his cheek. “This is insane,” he muttered. “You people are walking into a glitch in the universe with nothing but clever thoughts and moral courage. Where are the weapons? The exosuits? The backup?”

Zane gave him a light grin. “Reality doesn’t bleed when you shoot it, Eli.”

Ilsa Verrick’s voice came over the comms. “The zone will remain open for seven minutes. After that, the resonance pulse will shut down the field. Either you’re in... or you’re out.”

Zane took one last look at the bleak, beautiful horizon — then stepped forward.

The world blinked.

Just once.

Then he was gone.

The others followed.

Inside the Thin Place

The transition was soundless.

No flash. No shockwave.

Just a sudden absence of all things normal.

They stood on a plain of floating geometry — fields of fractured terrain hanging in midair, like puzzle pieces in a windless void. Nothing above. Nothing below. Just horizonless grey punctuated by occasional pulses of light from impossible angles.

Henri muttered, “C’est... pas réel.”

Lucas checked his scanner. “No magnetic field. No gravity signature. But we’re standing. Breathing. How?”

Zane took a step forward and watched the ground ripple gently beneath his feet — like walking on thought.

“This isn’t a place,” he said. “It’s a concept given structure.”

Reva narrowed her eyes. “A simulation?”

Zane shook his head. “Worse. An interface.”

Far ahead, something shifted — not movement, but change. A section of the space folded inward, forming a corridor of pulsing arcs. Like a throat opening in a great machine.

“This way,” Zane said.

Thirty Minutes Later

The team moved cautiously through the shifting architecture. Shapes rearranged around them, responding to proximity. At times the path became a staircase; other times, a tunnel of refracted glass.

Then they reached the first anomaly.

A child.

Sitting cross-legged in the center of a platform, humming. Dressed in 1970s clothing. No expression. Not breathing — but not lifeless either.

Henri stopped. “Is that one of the missing?”

Zane stepped closer. “No. It’s older than any of the recent cases.”

He crouched, eyes scanning the ground. A spiral was carved beneath the child — glowing softly.

Reva tapped her wrist device. “Bio-scan says... no heartbeat. But neurons are firing. He’s dreaming.”

Lucas muttered, “What kind of dream holds a body together for fifty years?”

The child suddenly jerked upright. His eyes opened — pitch black.

And he spoke.

But not in words.

In frequencies.

Each syllable was a pitch, a vibration, a mathematical rhythm.

Zane felt his teeth buzz.

“It’s a message,” he said, standing. “He’s a recorder.”

The boy’s mouth moved faster and faster, emitting impossible tones until suddenly — he stopped.

Collapsed. Dust.

Gone.

Reva whispered, “That was a broadcast. A living archive.”

Zane turned to the others. “We’re not the first to enter this place. But we may be the first to understand it.”

Deeper Inside – The Memory Chasm

They came to the edge of a vast canyon — miles wide, filled with floating fragments of memory: scenes from childhoods, moments from lives that didn’t belong to any of them. A carousel spinning in fog. A birthday candle blown out in reverse. A scream that never ended.

Lucas pointed. “That’s Clara. The girl from Argentina.”

Zane followed his gaze. One of the floating memories showed a girl in a yellow dress chasing a balloon — except it moved in reverse, like time had inverted.

Henri frowned. “Are these... the originals?”

“No,” Zane said. “These are rejections. Failed copies. Echoes.”

Reva knelt and touched one of the glowing platforms. “This place sorts them. Keeps the ones that align with... something.”

Zane felt a chill. “With a pattern. That’s why they kept sending them back. Adjusting. Learning.”

Suddenly, alarms blared in their comms.

Ilsa’s voice came through — distorted.

“—lost contact—pulse destabilizing—exit portal compromised—”

Zane’s eyes snapped to the sky.

A crack had formed — not in the Thin Place, but above it.

Something was looking in.

Not a being.

A structure.

A wheel of black angles, watching like an eye.

“We’re not alone anymore,” Zane said. “They’re watching their experiment... evolve.”

Reva turned to him. “Can we get out?”

Zane looked at the landscape — then down at the spiral carved into the floor beneath his feet.

“No,” he said. “Not the same way.”

Command Room – Earthside

Ilsa Verrick stared at the blinking red lights across the console. The portal was collapsing — early. The energy field had spiked beyond safety thresholds.

The technician beside her paled. “We’re losing them.”

“Maintain resonance as long as possible,” she snapped. “Do not shut it down.”

“They knew we were watching,” whispered another aide.

Ilsa's fingers tightened on the console. "No... they let us."

Inside – Final Minutes

Zane gathered the team into a tight circle.

“Listen,” he said. “We don’t need to escape. We need to transmit.”

Henri blinked. “Transmit what?”

“A map,” Zane replied. “Of this place. Its logic. Its patterns. We upload it through the metronome’s resonance field.”

Reva nodded. “The frequencies we recorded — we can invert them. Send a code outward.”

Lucas was already adjusting his gear. “But we’ll have to stay inside while it transmits.”

Zane met their eyes. “Yes. We may not leave. But the knowledge will.”

Eli’s voice suddenly broke through on comms. “Zane, the lights here just blinked. I saw your face. On every monitor. For a second.”

Zane didn’t smile this time.

“Tell them,” he said. “Tell them the place isn’t a trap. It’s a mirror. And someone’s trying to crack it open from the other side.”

The last thing Zane saw before everything went white — was the spiral closing.

And this time...

no gap.

                           *************

Geneva – Underground Briefing Hall, Four Days Later

The hall was deep beneath the surface, protected by blast doors and surveillance filters designed to block every known frequency. And yet, everyone inside felt watched.

Zane sat at the long metal table, surrounded by the most powerful intelligence minds on Earth. A circular screen above displayed a slow-turning spiral. The same spiral.

Ilsa Verrick sat to his left. Across from them, the Director of UN Temporal Research, Commander Reiko Sato, folded her arms. “You entered an unstable interdimensional construct without clearance, nearly destabilized the resonance protocol, and transmitted a signal we don’t fully understand. Why?”

Zane met her gaze, calm as ever. “Because waiting any longer would’ve been suicide. They were escalating. We had to show we understood their pattern.”

Commander Sato wasn’t impressed. “And what did it accomplish?”

Zane slid a chip across the table. “A mirror map of the Thin Place. Energy flows. Geometric logic. A diagram of a non-linear consciousness.”

Silence.

Then Reva added softly, “We also confirmed it’s not isolated. There are others. Interconnected points.”

Commander Sato leaned forward. “Gateways?”

Zane corrected her. “Weaknesses.”

At the back of the room, Eli shuffled nervously. “Do we tell them about the eyes-in-the-sky part or are we pretending it was metaphor?”

Lucas spoke up. “You should tell them. We all saw it. Something was looking in.”

Henri nodded. “And it blinked.”

The room went cold.

Ilsa turned to Sato. “We’ve reviewed Zane’s recording. The construct isn’t just alive — it’s observing. Reacting. We believe it is attempting communication through pattern disruption.”

Sato stood and pointed to the screen. “Then explain this.”

The spiral rotated faster.

“This signal appeared on every child’s monitor, every unstable subject, every frequency band simultaneously — four minutes after Zane's transmission. We didn’t trigger it. They responded to us.”

The spiral abruptly stopped on screen.

Then split.

And a new symbol formed: a sigil resembling a folded hourglass.

Lyra, seated quietly near the edge, spoke for the first time. “That’s new. We’ve never seen that shape before.”

Zane stood, eyes locked on it. “It’s not a warning.”

Eli whispered, “Then what is it?”

Zane replied, “It’s an invitation.”

Classified Airfield – Northern Europe – Later That Day

As jets roared in the distance, the new global task force assembled. An elite team — chosen from nine countries — prepared to deploy. Their objective: investigate the next gateway site, discovered using the uploaded geometry from the Thin Place. The location: a mining tunnel in northern Greenland, sealed since 1981 after an unexplained cave-in.

Zane reviewed the thermal scans. “We’ll enter from the collapsed shaft. Subsurface resonance is spiking again. They’ve opened another mirror.”

Lyra frowned. “If they invited us, what’s the catch?”

Zane didn’t answer.

Eli muttered, “There’s always a catch.”

Inside the Tunnel – 48 Hours Later

Darkness swallowed sound.

They moved through winding paths, deeper into the Earth than any human should ever go. The walls pulsed faintly — not light, but remembrance. Echoes of other footfalls. Other attempts.

Then, they reached it.

A smooth chamber. Stone melted into glass. At the center — a structure that didn’t fit geometry. Floating shards, suspended midair, rotating with precision.

Zane stepped forward.

A whisper filled the space. Not a voice. Not sound.

Just a thought. Projected. Ancient. Curious.

"WHY DO YOU KNOCK?"

Reva gasped. “It’s inside our minds.”

Zane spoke aloud anyway. “Because you opened the door.”

"YOU BREACHED THE STILLNESS."

“Because you took our children.”

"WE SAVED THEM."

Zane’s fists clenched. “You replaced them.”

"THEY COULDN'T RETURN. WE SENT VERSIONS. LESS... FRACTURED."

Henri whispered, “Oh my God…”

The air thickened. Everyone felt it. Time slowing. Space stretching.

Eli dropped to one knee. “Something’s wrong. My memory’s—”

Zane grabbed his shoulder. “Focus on now. Just now.”

And then — a flash.

A vision, implanted in all of them.

Not a place.

A machine. Bigger than Earth. Hidden in the folds of time.

Fueled by memories.

Harvested from realities too fragile to survive.

They weren’t being invaded.

They were being sampled.

Humanity — as a code set. A backup drive.

“Turn it off,” Lucas gasped. “TURN IT OFF!”

Zane stepped forward, into the projection field.

“You’re copying us,” he said. “Why?”

The voice answered.

"BECAUSE YOU'RE FADING. YOU CANNOT SEE IT YET. BUT TIME HAS SPLIT. YOU ARE THE GLITCH. WE ARE THE RESTORE POINT."

Zane’s voice turned sharp. “Then restore this.”

And he threw the metronome into the center of the field.

It struck a shard — which shattered.

And everything froze.

Light collapsed inward.

And they were back — standing outside the tunnel.

No memory of how they got there.

Only one thing in Zane’s hand.

A single photograph.

Of all of them.

Standing inside the structure.

Smiling.

But the photograph was dated:

August 8, 2035.

Ten years from now.

                        
                          ************

Geneva – Three Days Later

The photo lay on the table, untouched.

A smiling group.

All alive. All wrong.

Lyra stared at it. “We weren’t smiling. We were terrified.”

Zane nodded. “Which means this picture wasn’t taken… it was written. Projected.”

Ilsa Verrick sat opposite them. “By whom?”

Zane looked at her. “By whatever is inside the spirals.”

They were back in the underground war room. But this time, no one spoke over each other. The silence was reverent. Terrified.

Eli leaned against the wall, arms crossed. “So what? They’re time-travelers? Memory harvesters? Ghosts of the future?”

Zane tapped on the glass display, bringing up a map of Earth. “No. They’re something we don’t have a word for. A convergence of will, intelligence, and pattern. And they’ve been recording us longer than we’ve been recording ourselves.”

A pause.

Then Lyra asked, “So why show us this? Why the photo? The countdown? The invitation?”

Zane turned to the screen and typed a command.

The spiral reappeared — this time animated. It pulsed once every four seconds. But now, the gap at its end was closing. Pixel by pixel.

“It’s not just a spiral,” he said. “It’s a clock.”

Redgate Island – Return Site Alpha

The team returned to the island where the original schoolhouse had appeared. But this time, the coordinates led them underground.

A staircase, freshly carved into the bedrock, spiraled downward. Smooth walls. Cold air. No dust.

Zane led the way, his breath shallow. Lyra followed, whispering into her comms. “Still no signal. This place is in blackout.”

They reached the bottom.

A door waited.

Glass, steel, and something glowing faintly beneath its surface — like veins of frozen light.

Zane touched it.

It dissolved into mist.

Inside was a chamber unlike any they’d seen.

No machinery. No alien symbols.

Just children.

Floating midair, asleep. Dozens of them. Encased in light.

Eli staggered. “Maya… Dylan… Emily… Clara… they’re all here.”

Lyra gasped. “Unaged. Unmoving. Like statues.”

Zane walked to the center and raised his voice. “You said you preserved them. Why?”

The voice came again. Calm. Deep. Familiar now.

"BECAUSE YOU FORGOT THEM."

Zane froze.

"YOU LOST YOUR CURIOSITY. YOU SACRIFICED INNOCENCE FOR PROGRESS. WE HELD ON TO WHAT YOU DISCARDED."

Lyra whispered, “You mean memory?”

"NOT JUST MEMORY. POSSIBILITY."

They turned as the far wall shimmered.

A portal formed — not fiery, not loud.

Just a window.

Showing another world.

Not a different Earth — the same Earth, made of what could have been.

Children laughed. Cities floated. Technology pulsed with life and empathy.

A world where creativity hadn’t been lost to logic.

Zane stared in silence.

The voice continued.

"YOU ARE APPROACHING THE THRESHOLD. YOUR TIMEFOLD IS CLOSING. ONE PATH WILL SURVIVE. THE OTHER WILL BECOME LEGEND."

Eli asked, “Wait — are you saying this is a test?”

"NO. A CHOICE."

The portal narrowed. The chamber dimmed.

Zane understood.

“This isn’t about invasion,” he said softly. “This is about selection.”

Lyra turned. “You mean… they’re choosing which version of Earth continues?”

Zane nodded. “They’ve sampled. Compared. And now… they’re deciding.”

Silence.

Then the children began to descend. Slowly. Floating downward like feathers.

Their eyes opened — not afraid.

Smiling.

Unchanged.

Zane touched Maya’s arm.

She whispered, “I had the longest dream.”

Back in Geneva – Emergency Summit

The world had changed in three days.

The children were returned.

Unharmed.

But every one of them carried strange memories. Dreams of impossible cities. Of spirals in the sky. Of Zane’s face.

They remembered him.

Every government demanded answers. The summit chamber buzzed with voices in dozens of languages.

And Zane stood at the center of it all.

Lyra beside him. Eli behind him.

Ilsa Verrick raised a hand.

“Zane Faulkner, you’ve seen what no one else has. Spoke with them. You understand them better than we do. Tell us plainly: Are we at war?”

Zane shook his head. “No.”

“Then what are we?”

Zane took a breath.

“You’re at the end of a test you didn’t know you were taking.”

Confused murmurs.

He continued, “The spiral is a selector. A filter. It identified the most imaginative minds, the purest instincts — not to destroy them, but to preserve them. Because we stopped preserving them ourselves.”

“They didn’t take our children to harm them. They took them to compare what we were… to what we’ve become.”

Ilsa narrowed her eyes. “And their conclusion?”

Zane looked at the spirals displayed on the wall.

“They’re still deciding.”

That Night – Zane’s Apartment

The corkboard was gone.

In its place: a map of the world, lit by red points.

New spirals had stopped appearing.

Time had slowed.

And yet… the sky above still shimmered occasionally.

As if reality was watching itself.

Lyra sipped tea. “If they decide against us… what happens?”

Zane replied, “We vanish.”

Eli sat beside the window. “Just like that?”

“No. Not violently. Just… erased. Rewritten. Like a dream fading.”

Lyra asked, “And if they choose us?”

Zane looked down at the metronome on his desk.

“It resets. The spiral opens again. The next era begins.”

She was quiet a moment.

“And what makes the difference? What tips the scale?”

Zane finally smiled — just a little.

“Stories.”

Eli blinked. “What?”

“Stories. Belief. Imagination. How we treat wonder. Whether we still see the world as full of magic — or just machines.”

Lyra looked at the sky. “Then let’s give them a story worth choosing.”

Final Scene – Unknown Location

In a darkened observatory far from cities, a man watches the sky.

A small red spiral glows on his wrist — pulsing slowly.

Behind him, a voice speaks.

“Has the decision been made?”

The man doesn’t answer.

He just presses a button.

The spiral stops pulsing.

A green light shines.

And high above Earth, a ripple of golden light travels across the stars — toward the thin place.

             🔸 TO BE CONTINUED 🔸