Brad Zaxxon's Arc

Chapter 7 of 7

Brad turned the vehicle back toward camp, the guard's warning still sharp in his mind. The sublevel pulled power in patterns he'd measured himself—consistent, active, purposeful. If that signature drew attention the way the guard described, then every step closer to opening it became a risk he couldn't ignore. He spotted the old watchtower three miles from the factory perimeter, its rusted railings still holding despite the broken windows. Brad climbed to the top platform with his modified pip-boy and a clipboard, settling in as the sun dropped toward the horizon. The factory's silhouette stood dark against the fading light, and he powered down the ham radio completely before checking the standard radiation counter. The baseline reading held steady for twenty minutes, then jumped. Not much—just enough to notice. He marked the time on graph paper, watching the numbers climb and fall in a rhythm that matched nothing natural. Two hours later, the pattern shifted. The power draw spiked higher than anything he'd measured before, then dropped to almost nothing for six minutes before climbing again. Brad tracked each change on the clipboard, his pen moving faster as the readings refused to settle into the stable consumption he'd documented all week. Whatever was down there wasn't just running—it was doing something different tonight. He thought about the procurement files in his pack, the phrase "iterative consciousness housing" circling back as he watched the numbers spike a third time. The guard's warning about electromagnetic hunting made every reading feel like a countdown. Brad packed the clipboard and descended the watchtower as full dark settled in, leaving his ham radio powered down. The factory stood silent across the distance, but the pip-boy's counter told a different story—something inside had changed its behavior, and he'd captured enough data to prove it. He couldn't share this at the trading post, not yet, but Chen would understand the pattern when he returned. The question wasn't whether to investigate the sublevel anymore. It was whether they could get inside before whatever was drawing that power decided to do something worse than change patterns in the dark.