CHAPTER 2
"FALSE CALM"
There was no metallic screech, no resistance from the electronic locks that had held them captive just seconds ago, nor the sound of a deadbolt releasing. Only... the door swung open, slowly and with an eerie, frictionless fluidity. It was as though something, or some invisible entity, had been standing on the other side waiting in silence, deciding only now that the time had come for them to enter.
Daniel Cross stepped forward first. His posture was straight and unyielding, like a stone pillar in the eye of a storm, his rigid features betraying no emotion. His hand remained cautiously rested on the grip of the black baton sheathed at his belt, yet he did not draw it—perhaps because his intellect and keen security instincts told him that conventional weapons would be entirely useless in a place like this.
Kyle followed with guarded steps, his eyes scanning every corner, while Dr. Simon crawled behind them, continuing to scratch at his arms with violent, frantic force. It was a desperate attempt to rid himself of the phantom layer of frost he felt had permeated his veins, freezing alongside his blood back in the Cold Room.
The chamber they now found themselves in bore no resemblance to anything they had seen or expected within Ravenhill Hospital.
It was not an examination room, nor an administrative office, nor simply another corridor. It was more akin to... a clandestine laboratory. Yet, the laboratories Kyle knew from the pages of books or cinema screens were typically starkly lit, filled with gleaming glass and polished, sterile metal. This room was the antithesis of them all.
The walls were entirely paneled in dark wood—a heavy, somber timber that wafted the scent of age and antiquity, seemingly dating back decades. Stretched across those walls were massive floor-to-ceiling shelves, laden with hundreds of glass bottles, tubing, and bizarre apparatuses for which Kyle had neither name nor known function.
Some bottles stood empty and draped in dust, while others contained fluids of unsettling, unnatural hues: a murky yellow resembling bile, a deep violet, and a dark crimson liquid that looked precisely like human blood—though its high viscosity and density as it moved within the glass suggested it was something else entirely. The interlocking glass tubes weaving across the shelves connected the vials to one another, branching out with the complexity of a vascular network, as if extending from the body of some gargantuan patient buried behind the walls.
In the center of the room sat a massive workbench crafted from the same dark wood, littered with dozens of papers, leather-bound ledgers, and what appeared to be intricate engineering blueprints. Fixed directly above the table in the ceiling was a massive metal lamp—the sort surgeons use in operating theatres—casting a sharp, focused beam of white light straight down, as though an invisible hand were displaying the contents of the table with an ominous pride.
Yet, the strangest and most existentially terrifying aspect of the room was the back wall itself.
The entire wall was covered by a massive, colossal diagram. It was no artistic painting meant to soothe patients, but a horrifying, highly detailed blueprint whose symbols were drafted with absolute precision using multi-colored pens. Resting at the very center of the diagram was a shape resembling a human heart... but it was by no means an ordinary heart.
It was a monstrous, hybrid heart. Its right half was a meticulous anatomical drawing detailing living muscle tissue, valves, and arteries; its left half, however, was purely mechanical, comprised of metallic gears, fine wires, and printed circuit boards. The two halves coalesced dead in the center at a single, sharp, thin line, as if whoever drew this diagram intended to illustrate with absolute exactitude... where the boundaries of human life end, and where the dominion of the machine begins.
Inscribed directly above the diagram in a clear, sharp, and hurried handwriting was a sentence in English that froze the breath in their chests:
"THE MALKINI THRESHOLD — BIOLOGICAL ITERATION 7"
Kyle stood before the diagram for seconds that felt like a lifetime, staring at the name "Malkini" and that hybrid heart, his analytical mind desperately clawing to connect this drawing to File 109 and the mutilated corpse of Nurse Emma with her three hearts in the Cold Room.
His train of thought was severed by the voice of Daniel Cross, dry and cold as usual, as he surveyed the dimensions of the space:
"This entire section... was not included in the building blueprints they handed me before my shift started."
Daniel looked down at the metal handle in his hand for a single second. For that brief moment, his expression seemed to contemplate something far beyond the boundaries of the room. Then, he looked back forward with his characteristic coldness and said, "The key is what opened it. That doesn't necessarily mean I know the inner workings of this place."
"But you possess the right key," Kyle pressed, weighing his words as he took a step toward Daniel, cornering his silence. "And you know this corridor... and you know how to navigate a facility where every wall and corner seems to have been engineered with precise geometric intent to disorient and defeat whoever walks through them. You are no mere security guard who happened to pass by, Daniel. There is something you are hiding."
Daniel did not answer. He remained standing like an enigmatic statue in the eye of a storm, his eyes monitoring the rear corridor through the crack of the door, as though expecting some danger crawling out of the shadows.
Meanwhile, Dr. Simon slinked with unstable steps toward the massive wooden workbench. Under the sharp white light projected from the surgical lamp, he began leafing through the leather-bound ledgers and scattered papers with violently trembling fingers, as if searching for a medical explanation for the "biological heap" they had left behind in the Cold Room.
Suddenly, Simon’s body went completely rigid. His ragged breathing caught in his throat. His bulging eyes widened behind his fractured spectacles as he lowered his face toward one of the engineering blueprints of the hybrid heart.
He traced his trembling finger over the words written in the margins of the paper, and said in a faint voice, laced with a horrifying, soul-shaking shock:
"This handwriting... this handwriting, I know it all too well!"36Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡCLcyQaMeVU
36Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ7sAxLUWqMM
36Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡWOqovu5TZn
── DISCOVERED DOCUMENT ──36Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡVSe9LBoIlt
RAVENHILL MEDICAL CENTER — TOP SECRET RESEARCH FILE
File Reference: RH-LAB-1983-M07 36Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡSpSnHRAkVo
Classification Level: MAXIMUM RESTRICTION (EYES ONLY) 36Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡUgDsY5TAPr
Subject: MALKINI, Pavel Dmitri — Chief of Neural-Mechanical Engineering 36Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ7MYf1Psjgc
Date of Report: 14 November, 1983 ─────────────────────────────────────────────────────36Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ1yWaay9tVK
PSYCHOLOGICAL AND BEHAVIORAL EVALUATION SUMMARY:
Dr. Malkini continues to possess a formidable, extraordinary intellect and supernatural cognitive faculties. His success in fusing human organs with machinery and electrical circuitry stands as an unprecedented breakthrough in this hospital's history.
However, highly erratic and deeply disturbing behaviors have been noted over the past several weeks:
— He refuses to leave the clandestine laboratory for several consecutive days, entirely depriving himself of sleep.36Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡCv8E5UxjtP
— He converses with the devices and machinery as though they are sentient beings capable of understanding and hearing him. 36Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡjvwtTTdkKV
— He references a 'second stage' of the project in his reports—a cryptic phase that has received no approval from the hospital administration.36Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡI3VJZSv7DI
— Most alarmingly: the disappearance of Patient 109 from his locked ward. Dr. Malkini claims absolute ignorance regarding this vanish, despite being the sole individual present in the hospital on the night it occurred.
Current Recommendation: The project must proceed under heavy armed guard and rigorous surveillance. We cannot afford to remove Dr. Malkini from the laboratory at this juncture; the Threshold project will utterly collapse without him.
Note added by hand at the bottom of the page (author redacted/illegible): 36Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡTD0qX4opmy
"If Malkini ever discovers which biological iteration we are living in right now... we will face a true catastrophe. Make him believe that he is the one in control of everything, and keep him contained within the lab." ───────────────────────────────────────────────36Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡQqTqR7GEAJ
END OF FILE
36Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡX5j9BxUAoQ
Kyle began to pace through the corners of the room, scanning everything his eyes fell upon on the shelves without touching a single object. There was a part of his mind—the analytical engine that terror had not yet shut down—recording and cataloging every minute detail he witnessed.
On an upper shelf, he noticed a row of small vials sealed with thick red wax. Each vial bore a small white label inscribed with a number and a percentage: "001 — 12%", "002 — 28%", "003 — 41%"... His eyes continued to skip across them until he reached the final vial in the row, which struck him with what was written upon it:36Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡlGDj3J6Ayj
"009 — 97%".
"A percentage of what?" Kyle whispered to himself, narrowing his eyes in bewilderment.
On another shelf, he saw archaic devices resembling heart rate monitors, but they dated back decades, with rolls of graph paper spilling out, printed in faded blue ink. Kyle picked up one of the sheets piled to the side to examine it. The pulse lines traced upon it... were deeply bizarre. They bore no resemblance to the familiar rhythms of a human heart; instead, they looked like silent, parallel frequency waves, moving with an unsettling, mechanical precision.
"The pulsations here are far too organized, too rhythmic," Kyle said dryly. "As if it's a machine, not a human."
"Or perhaps it is something that binds both together," Dr. Simon muttered from behind him.
Kyle did not answer. Instead, he turned toward the main workbench and pulled open one of its heavy wooden drawers. Inside, he discovered a massive ledger bound in thick black leather. Upon the cover, inscribed in the exact same sharp, hurried handwriting he had seen on the wall diagram, was the phrase:
"THE THRESHOLD PAPERS — PAVEL MALKINI"
Kyle opened the ledger.36Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡhwIy0XXL18
36Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡXsZ2TYs8Cn
── DISCOVERED DOCUMENT ──36Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡoJkeLapQgx
── THE MALKINI DIARIES ──36Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ1UKO9EWcsl
The Threshold Papers — Dr. Pavel Malkini’s Personal Research Journal36Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡIw2LbtAGiy
36Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡj6bs2CcX9T
Entry 1 — September 3, 1963 (The First Year of the Hospital's Founding)
The Director asked me today why I spend so much time speaking with the "Automated Entity." I told him: because it listens to me. 36Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡf8cDDjCRAg
He scoffed mockingly... 36Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡATReTOjxyy
He always laughs at the things that make him feel anxious and uneasy. What the Director does not understand—and what none of them understand—is that listening is not merely a human trait; it is a "function.36Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡlRqZHqQTEE
" And if you can construct a machine that executes this function completely, the line separating "listening" from "understanding" becomes exceedingly thin. 36Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡKjXAtv5Ugx
I am beginning to suspect that this line is far thinner than anyone imagines. 36Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡBdkFig6qgO
— Pavel Malkini36Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ3fjihhgmXi
Entry 4 — September 19, 1971 (After Years of Experimentation)
Today, the first true fusion was successful. 36Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡwuEedYHzad
I conducted the experiment on a rat—a creature simple enough. 36Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡMbKeRXJWj2
The mechanical component accepted the living human tissue without the body rejecting it. 36Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡZettAX869j
The rat did not merely survive; its neural response speed increased by 340%. The "Automated Entity" was present with me during the procedure. 36Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡNxOXkMYMT0
I noticed it moving and adjusting its metallic arm as I worked... It was watching, and it was learning. The administration has no idea the Automated Entity is capable of this, and I have not told them, nor will I. 36Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡEBjrOjcOpb
Some discoveries must remain solely the property of the one who fashioned them. 36Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡLgWjmSGS9T
— Pavel Malkini36Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡswLhoxNQxp
Entry 9 — October 7, 1979
The board wants rapid results, and the Director is incredibly tense. He stops by constantly, asking about "practical applications," "military benefits," and other words that reduce my work to a mere commercial product for sale.36Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡZ6d8TvXGPC
They do not comprehend what I am building here! I am not engineering a better soldier, nor am I fashioning a better surgeon. I am building something that has never existed in history before: a "bridge" connecting what we are as humans, to what we can become.36Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡX0Kc3AUJ98
The human body is frail—it sickens, it dies, it forgets... But the machine does not forget.36Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡx2cNBEzzMH
What if the mind—the true mind, or the soul if we choose to call it that—could be preserved within something that neither dies nor rots?36Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡaYrelIfriI
I do not mean taking a copy of it... I mean preserving the mind itself, the original.36Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡWrimipQ2BW
This is the "Threshold" project, and this is what they fail to understand.36Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡBtpjSqRiUF
— Pavel Malkini
Entry 13 — October 31, 1983
[Several pages have been violently torn from the journal here]
[All that remains is a single sentence written in a large handwriting, heavily trembling compared to the rest of the entries]:
He is not the person they told me about... He is not him!
Entry 14 — November 2, 1983
I cannot write what transpired on the night of October 31. Not here... not while I feel the very walls themselves are listening to me.36Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡzQ3QRFmLL6
However, what I can write is the following:36Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡfZfazgrygf
Patient 109 has vanished completely. This is my fault, and at the same time, it is not. I will spend whatever time I have left in this place trying to understand which of these two possibilities is the truth.36Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ77MyR113ax
The "Automated Entity" did not move on its own accord—I want to be perfectly clear on this; it was executing a programmed command. The question here is: whose command?36Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡzzXvhgS6BW
I wrote the source code myself, and I know every single line within it... Yet, there are lines present in the system right now that I am certain I never wrote!36Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ83XIOC8EFa
Someone—or something—is modifying and altering my research behind my back.36Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡbF1iPMReJn
— Pavel Malkini
Entry 15 — November 8, 1983
I have finally begun to understand the nature of the true project the administration is running in this hospital.36Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡMKwitWYUps
Not the humanitarian project they display to the board, but the other one... the one that lives in the subterranean basement beneath the ground, in a room without a number, connected to the main power grid by cables as warm and thick as my own arm.36Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡmuwplY0wKa
The Director is not attempting to cure diseases, nor is he trying to advance medicine... He is building an integrated "System." A closed loop that feeds upon itself and continues forever without stopping.36Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡJNeR00ATzs
Every patient who walks through that door, and every employee who works here... they are not clients or staff. They are merely spare parts... components within this System!36Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ9NUd6wNaev
And now I understand why my name is written on the hospital staff roster for the year 1963, and furthermore—according to a classified file I found by chance and was never supposed to see—it is written for the year 2013 as well!36Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡCPst0YmyTT
Fifty years separate the two dates... the exact same name, the exact same handwriting, and the exact same blood type!36Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡpG1GSI6jNh
May God help whoever finds this journal.36Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡSWJlHNmNd4
— Pavel Malkini
Entry 16 — [Date Smudged and Illegible]
I lied in entry number 14, and I will correct that now.36Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡgpnVSwzAqC
The "Automated Entity" did indeed move on its own accord... at least in part of what happened.36Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡhVnuyDbQbk
I believe it is afraid...36Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡSlkIWo2WkT
I know how these words sound coming from a scientist like me; I am the one who forged it from wires, metals, and living biological tissues.36Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡB4ImjQomK7
But something in the fusion process altered it completely... It altered both of us, I suppose.36Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡglkaSh1grG
When you spend far too much time building an artificial mind... you begin to wonder: are you the one building it, or is this mind the one rebuilding you anew?36Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ2sZNDKBP2l
— Pavel Malkini
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END OF FILE
36Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡg13l1Gli2g
Kyle closed the ledger with agonizing slowness. His hands were trembling violently—and this time, it had nothing to do with the cold.
He looked at Simon and said, "The fifty years... he found his name on a list written for the future."
"Yes," Simon replied in a hushed voice.
"Just as I found my name on a list dating back to 1963."
Silence pervaded the room, and Simon offered no further comment.
"Simon."
"Yes, Kyle."
"Malkini... what happened to him in the end?"
Simon looked toward the wall where the colossal engineering diagram rested. He took a deep breath, then said, "Officially, no one knows. The narrative published by the administration at the time was that he died in a laboratory accident in 1983. But..." He trailed off.
"But what?" Kyle pressed, urgent for the answer.
"But that accident never explains why, to this very day, no one has ever found his body."
In the furthest corner of the laboratory, behind a long shelf that stood slightly askew from its natural alignment, Kyle noticed something peculiar.
There was a straight vertical line on the wall—a line so exceedingly thin it would have remained entirely invisible if not for the harsh, direct beam of light cascading from the overhead surgical lamp. This sort of line never appears in solid concrete walls.
Kyle stepped closer and extended his fingers to touch it. It was cold... far colder than the surrounding masonry.
"Daniel," Kyle called out in a low voice without turning around.
Daniel approached, inspecting the seam for a moment before stating with his usual rigidity, "This is another door."
"Yes," Kyle agreed. "But it has no handle."
Daniel began probing the edges with his black-gloved fingers. Then, with a sudden, swift motion that caught Kyle off guard, he pressed firmly on a specific point along the right side of the line.
A brief mechanical click resounded, and the wall—or what appeared to be a wall—slid to the side in absolute silence.
"How did you know where to press?" Kyle asked, staring at him in astonishment.
"I noticed a faint, dark smudge on the wall," Daniel replied. "Someone has pressed this exact spot many times."
Kyle looked at the area Daniel indicated, and his words held true; there was a minute mark from the effects of repeated friction, entirely unnoticeable unless one knew exactly where to look.
The corridor that unveiled itself before them was narrow and shrouded in darkness—so cramped that Daniel had to hunch his shoulders slightly to pass through. The passage sloped downward at a gentle decline, terminating roughly ten meters ahead at an ancient, heavy wooden door.
And upon that wooden door, a small metallic plaque read:36Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡoomt7OvjY7
36Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡNSGd773Z13
(THE AUTOMATED ENTITY — CONTAINMENT AND MONITORING)
"Patience is the mother of all sciences."36Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡTBzDHFtOWa
— Pavel Malkini
36Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ1H3kKwyaCr
Kyle and Simon exchanged a look. Then, they turned their eyes toward Daniel.
Daniel extended his hand and opened the door.36Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡeLVV1AixNZ
36Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡIa5cCmI1IA
36Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡrM5zT2rg9r
and then Add to home screen.