The Accusation

My prediction comes true on a Tuesday.

I know it's a Tuesday because I've started keeping a calendar — scratching marks on the wall of Soll's alcove like a castaway, because if I don't anchor myself to something from my old life, I'll lose the thread entirely. Tuesday. March something. The year doesn't matter when you're seven billion light-years from the nearest clock.

Gate Ring 5, Corridor 12 begins to flicker.

I'm in the scholars' chamber when the alert comes. The holographic gate map pulses red — a color I've never seen it display before. The flicker is visible in the data: the standing wave function destabilizing, the resonance pattern developing the same parasitic harmonics I identified in the Ring 3 failure.

"It's starting," I say.

Yneth's container bobs — agitation. "How long?"

"Hours. Maybe less. The degradation is faster than Ring 3 — someone refined their technique."

Brax is already moving. "We can attempt resonance tuning. Manual stabilization."

"It won't work." I pull up the data overlay. "The base frequency has been altered. This isn't natural decay — someone changed the fundamental resonance parameter. Tuning the surface harmonics is like adjusting the knobs on a radio when someone's cut the antenna wire."

"Then what do you suggest, human?"

I don't have an answer. That's the worst part. I can describe exactly what's happening, model it, predict it, quantify it down to the waveform — but I can't stop it. I'm a diagnostician watching a patient die and I don't have the medicine.