That night, the estate itself seemed to call them. Ethan goaded, teased, pushed, until Ryan agreed. The elevator recognized their prints and scanned their eyes with a soft chime, as though Daniel himself had prepared for this moment.

The descent was long. The walls grew colder with each passing floor, and the faint hum of machinery vibrated in their bones. Lights flickered on in sequence, guiding them deeper. The air smelled faintly of ozone and oil. It felt less like a basement and more like a descent into the heart of something alive.

The first chamber opened with a groan of hydraulics, vast as a cathedral. Shadows pooled in the corners, banished only when the overhead lights flared to life. Machines hung in frames like predators frozen mid-pounce. Drone skeletons suspended from rigs, wings half-unfurled; robotic arms poised over workbenches; holographic blueprints still flickering, as though awaiting Daniel’s touch. Ryan stopped to watch a projection of a jet unfurling itself into schematics and back again, like a bird flexing its wings.

A faint whisper echoed across the chamber, too soft to form words, as though static crawled through the walls. Ryan froze. Ethan stiffened, his bravado slipping. “Did you—” Ryan began, but Ethan cut him off with a shrug. “Just machinery,” he said, though his voice lacked conviction.

Ethan ran his hands over a gauntlet resting on a table. The glove hummed, and a drone stirred in its harness, eyes lighting for a moment before dimming again. “Wow,” Ethan whispered. “It’s like Batman’s garage.”

The second chamber pulsed with green light. Rows of hydroponic tanks lined the walls, each containing plants threaded with luminous veins. Leaves trembled though no air moved, and roots sparkled faintly with embedded sensors. “Biotech,” Ryan murmured, awe slipping through his grief. “He was merging life with machine.” Ethan plucked a glowing leaf, watched it heal the tear instantly, then shoved it into his pocket with a grin.

The whisper came again, closer this time, a ripple like breath against the ear. Ryan’s skin prickled. Ethan laughed too loudly, covering his own unease. “Ventilation,” Ryan muttered, but neither believed it.

The third chamber bore the scars of trial and error. Walls charred black, scorch marks clawing across the floor. Tables were littered with broken prototypes—fractured glass, twisted alloys, shattered lenses. A steel target dummy stood riddled with holes. Whatever tests had been run here, they had not always gone to plan. Ethan picked up a cracked orb that shimmered faintly; when he cupped it, the air bent, bending Ryan’s arm out of alignment for a split second. Ethan laughed. “You see that? Invisible cloak, maybe.”

Ryan’s unease deepened. “Or another way to get ourselves killed.”

The whispers responded, faint but distinct—like syllables half-formed, echoing in a language neither recognized. Ryan set down a journal with shaking hands.

They pressed on, their footsteps echoing in the vastness. The labyrinth unfolded in levels—labs, testing grounds, storage vaults. The walls seemed to sigh with power, aware of their passage. Cameras followed them, and the lights always came on one step before they entered a room. It felt less like they were exploring and more like they were being guided.

Finally, they reached the heart of it: a circular chamber humming with resonance. In the center, encased in glass and threaded with containment coils, rested something unlike anything else. Sleek. Seamless. It bent the light around it, warping its own reflection. The hum was not sound but pressure, a presence in the bones.

The whispers swelled, not loud but urgent, and for the first time Ryan thought he heard a word—his mother’s name. Ethan’s eyes widened; he whispered, “I heard laughter.” Both recoiled, shaken, before their gazes fell again on the object in the chamber’s heart.

Ethan pressed his hand to the glass. His breath fogged the surface. “This is it,” he whispered, reverence replacing bravado. “This is what he was hiding.”

Ryan’s chest tightened. He could feel the wrongness and the beauty of it. “It’s dangerous,” he said softly.

As if answering, the Device pulsed. Light rippled through the chamber, bending air like heat over asphalt. For a moment, Ryan saw something impossible: a fractured vision of a city skyline at dusk, towers crumbling and rebuilding all at once, like time folding over itself.