Chapter 166: Silence Across the Sea
Nobody spoke after the lights vanished.
The darkness stretching across Basa’s skyline felt unnatural.
Even from several kilometers away, the city had always announced its presence. Floodlights illuminated the perimeter walls. Hangars remained active throughout the night. Apartment districts glowed with thousands of windows while construction sites continued working beneath portable towers that turned darkness into daylight.
Now...
Nothing.
The city had disappeared.
Ryan stared toward the horizon.
"...That’s impossible."
The officer standing beside the disabled military truck swallowed.
"Sir, the lights came back for maybe two seconds."
"And then?"
"They all died again."
Adrian looked toward Samuel.
"What would cause that?"
Samuel slowly shook his head.
"I don’t know."
He hated saying those words.
Normally he could explain almost any technical failure. A damaged power station. A cyberattack. A failed transformer. Communications interference.
This...
This wasn’t behaving like any known system failure.
"It doesn’t make sense," Samuel admitted.
"The blackout reached multiple countries."
"It shut down vehicles."
"It disabled aircraft."
"And then..."
He looked toward the silent skyline.
"...it partially recovered before shutting down again."
Marcus stepped beside Adrian.
"We should return immediately."
"I know."
"The city needs you."
Adrian didn’t answer immediately.
His eyes remained fixed on the darkness beyond the hills.
Basa wasn’t simply a military headquarters anymore.
Nearly half a million people lived behind its walls.
Families.
Hospitals.
Schools.
Factories.
Food warehouses.
Water purification plants.
If the blackout had affected every critical system...
The consequences could become catastrophic within hours.
He turned toward Marcus.
"Move."
The captain didn’t waste another second.
"All Atlas personnel!"
Every operator immediately reacted.
The column reorganized almost automatically.
Point men moved ahead of the convoy while rear security spread farther apart to compensate for the lack of electronic surveillance.
Without drones.
Without radios.
Without thermal cameras.
The soldiers returned to something much older.
Discipline.
Hand signals.
Visual confirmation.
Training.
Marcus looked toward two reconnaissance operators.
"Motorcycles."
"They’re dead, sir."
"I know."
He pointed east.
"Run."
The two men immediately sprinted ahead along the road.
Their job was simple.
Reach Basa before everyone else.
Warn the outer checkpoints.
Confirm the situation.
Ryan climbed back into the truck.
"I never thought I’d miss analog technology this much."
Samuel sat beside him with the notebook resting on his knees.
"I still don’t understand why the engine works."
Ryan looked toward the old dashboard.
The truck continued rumbling along the broken road despite everything surrounding it having failed.
Military vehicles.
JLTVs.
Drones.
Communications.
Every electronic system had stopped.
Yet this rusted delivery truck continued moving as though nothing had happened.
Ryan frowned.
"...Kenji."
The old professor looked up.
"This truck."
"Yes?"
"Why does it still work?"
Kenji glanced toward the dashboard.
"Because it was built before everything became computerized."
Samuel immediately looked toward him.
"It’s mechanical."
"Mostly."
Ryan blinked.
"You’re telling me this old piece of junk is outperforming modern military equipment."
Kenji smiled faintly.
"It was never junk."
Samuel leaned forward.
"Did you know this would happen?"
"I suspected."
"How?"
Kenji looked out the window.
"Project Eden stopped trusting digital systems many years ago."
Ryan frowned.
"Because of the Seed?"
Kenji nodded once.
"We didn’t understand why then."
"But eventually..."
His voice became quieter.
"...we noticed a pattern."
Samuel waited.
"The closer we operated to the anomaly..."
"The more unreliable modern electronics became."
Silence settled inside the truck.
Ryan slowly looked toward Adrian.
"You hearing this?"
"I am."
Kaguya hadn’t spoken since leaving the village.
Now she finally looked toward Kenji.
"That wasn’t in the reports."
Kenji smiled sadly.
"Very little of Project Eden survived in official reports."
"You concealed it."
"We tried."
"Why?"
"Because panic would’ve spread faster than understanding."
Kaguya studied him carefully.
"You expected something like this."
"No."
Kenji looked toward the notebook.
"We expected something much worse."
The truck continued moving through the countryside.
On both sides of the road, abandoned farms passed beneath the moonlight while Atlas operators maintained their defensive positions around the convoy.
Nobody relaxed.
Not even slightly.
Without communications, every shadow looked more dangerous.
Marcus jogged beside the driver’s window before tapping twice on the door.
The driver slowed.
Marcus climbed onto the running board.
"Commander."
"What is it?"
"I don’t like this."
Ryan almost laughed.
"You’ll have to be more specific."
Marcus ignored him.
"No infected."
"No wildlife."
"No civilians."
He looked toward the dark fields surrounding them.
"It’s too quiet."
Adrian noticed it too.
Usually the countryside contained movement.
At night the infected wandered.
Animals crossed abandoned roads.
Wind carried distant sounds from ruined towns.
Tonight...
Nothing.
It was as though the entire world had paused.
Samuel looked out the rear doors.
"Maybe the blackout affected more than electronics."
Ryan looked toward him.
"What does that mean?"
"I don’t know."
"And I don’t like saying that anymore."
Before anyone could answer...
A deep roar echoed somewhere far across the plains.
Every Atlas operator immediately stopped.
Marcus jumped off the truck.
Weapons rose.
The convoy halted.
The sound came again.
Longer this time.
Lower.
Not mechanical.
Not human.
Ryan slowly looked toward Kaguya.
"...Zombie?"
She shook her head.
"No."
Marcus scanned the darkness through binoculars.
"I don’t have visual."
The roar came a third time.
This time it seemed much closer.
It rolled across the countryside like distant thunder before fading into silence.
One of the younger operators whispered quietly.
"I’ve never heard anything like that."
Neither had Marcus.
Adrian stepped down from the truck.
The sound disturbed him for a different reason.
Every infected they had encountered over the past year behaved predictably.
Some ran.
Some hunted.
Some climbed.
Some mutated.
But they all shared one thing.
They made noise because they were hunting.
This roar...
Didn’t sound like hunting.
It sounded like...
Communication.
Kenji closed his eyes.
"...No."
Everyone looked toward him.
His face had gone noticeably paler.
"Kaguya."
She immediately understood.
"No..."
Kenji nodded slowly.
"It heard it."
Ryan frowned.
"What heard what?"
"The signal."
Nobody moved.
Nobody even breathed loudly.
Marcus looked between the two Japanese survivors.
"What are you talking about?"
Kenji slowly opened the notebook.
His hands trembled slightly for the first time.
He turned several pages until he found an old photograph taken inside the underwater facility.
The image showed a massive circular chamber.
Researchers in diving suits stood around an enormous black structure that disappeared into the floor.
Across the bottom of the photograph someone had written one sentence in faded ink.
**FIRST RESONANCE EVENT**
Adrian looked toward him.
"What is resonance?"
Kenji didn’t answer immediately.
Instead, he looked toward the dark horizon where the roar had come from.
Then he quietly said the words none of them expected.
"...The blackout wasn’t the attack."
Ryan frowned.
"What?"
Kenji slowly closed the notebook.
"It was the alarm."
A chill passed through everyone present.
Marcus tightened his grip on his rifle.
"What alarm?"
Kenji looked directly at Adrian.
"The one warning us..."
Another roar echoed across the countryside.
This one was much closer.
Louder.
Strong enough that several birds suddenly burst from the nearby trees and disappeared into the night sky.
Atlas operators instinctively spread farther apart.
Every rifle pointed toward the darkness.
Marcus listened carefully.
Then his expression changed.
"Commander."
Adrian looked toward him.
"...There wasn’t just one."
The captain slowly raised his binoculars toward the northern hills.
"I counted three."
Nobody spoke.
Then...
A fourth roar answered from somewhere behind them.
The convoy had stopped in the middle of an empty highway.
The sounds had come from four different directions.
Marcus lowered the binoculars.
His voice remained calm.
Too calm.
Marcus was already moving before anyone else reacted.
"Defensive formation!"
His command echoed across the highway.
Atlas operators immediately abandoned the loose convoy and formed a circular perimeter around the truck. Kneeling riflemen covered the open fields while others climbed the shallow embankments on either side of the road to gain a better vantage point.
Without drones.
Without thermal optics.
Without communications.
They were relying entirely on their eyes and ears.
Adrian stepped beside Marcus.
"Distance?"
Marcus kept scanning through his binoculars.
"Impossible to tell."
"The echoes are distorted."
"They’re using the terrain."
Another roar rolled across the plains.
This one lasted longer.
It rose in pitch before abruptly cutting off, as though something had answered from even farther away.
The silence that followed felt even worse.
Ryan quietly loaded another magazine into his rifle.
"I don’t like this."
Samuel glanced toward Kenji.
"You’ve heard them before."
It wasn’t a question.
Kenji nodded slowly.
"Only once."
"When?"
"The day we lost the Kirishima."
Every soldier within earshot froze.
Ryan looked at him.
"Those sounds were there?"
"Yes."
"What are they?"
Kenji looked toward the distant hills.
"We never confirmed."
Marcus lowered his binoculars.
"Give me your best guess."
The old professor closed his eyes.
"They’re not infected."
Nobody liked that answer.
Kaguya folded her arms.
"I’ve traveled across Japan."
"I’ve encountered every recorded mutation."
"I’ve never heard anything resembling that."
Kenji nodded.
"Neither had we."
Samuel looked back toward the notebook.
"You called this an alarm."
Kenji exhaled slowly.
"Because that’s exactly how we interpreted it."
He opened the notebook once more and turned to another weathered page.
Instead of diagrams or photographs, it contained handwritten notes.
Most had faded with age, but several lines remained readable.
Ryan leaned closer.
"What does it say?"
Kenji traced a finger beneath the Japanese writing before translating aloud.
Subject remains dormant.
Acoustic resonance detected immediately following transmission event.
Unknown biological responses recorded within a two-hundred-kilometer radius.
Samuel’s expression darkened.
"Biological responses."
"What does that mean?"
Kenji looked at him.
"It means living organisms reacted."
"The infected?"
"We didn’t know."
Marcus interrupted.
"Can we assume they’re hostile?"
Kenji answered without hesitation.
"Yes."
The certainty in his voice silenced everyone.
No speculation.
No uncertainty.
Just one simple answer.
Yes.
Adrian looked toward the dark countryside.
"We keep moving."
Marcus nodded immediately.
"Agreed."
Stopping on an exposed highway while unknown threats closed in from multiple directions was a recipe for disaster.
The convoy began moving again, this time at a faster pace.
Atlas operators jogged alongside the truck despite the exhaustion already weighing on their bodies. Sweat mixed with dust while every pair of eyes searched the darkness beyond the road.
The moon disappeared behind thick clouds.
Visibility became even worse.
The only light came from handheld flashlights covered with red filters to preserve night vision.
Then...
One of the point men suddenly raised his fist.
The convoy stopped instantly.
Marcus moved forward.
"What is it?"
The operator pointed toward the asphalt ahead.
"There."
Several beams swept across the road.
Deep grooves scarred the pavement.
Not tire marks.
Not cracks.
Something had gouged through the asphalt itself.
Marcus crouched beside one of them.
The trench measured nearly twenty centimeters deep and stretched across both lanes before disappearing into the grass.
Ryan whistled quietly.
"Those aren’t claw marks..."
Samuel knelt beside Marcus.
"No."
"They’re too wide."
He brushed away loose gravel with his glove.
Whatever had made them had pressed downward with incredible force, crushing the road instead of slicing it cleanly.
Marcus looked toward Kenji.
"Animal?"
Kenji stared at the tracks for several long seconds.
When he finally spoke, his voice had become almost a whisper.
"...No."
Kaguya’s eyes narrowed.
"You’ve seen them before."
Kenji never looked away from the damaged asphalt.
"I saw what they left behind."
Another silence settled over the convoy.
Even the wind seemed to stop.
Far in the distance, another roar echoed across the countryside.
This time...
It was answered almost immediately.
Then another.
And another.
The sounds spread across the night like ripples through still water.
Marcus slowly stood.
"They’re getting closer."
Adrian nodded once.
"Move."
Nobody argued.
The convoy resumed its advance, disappearing into the darkness as the haunting calls continued to echo from every direction.
Behind them, unnoticed by every Atlas operator...
One massive footprint slowly filled with rainwater beside the edge of the road.
It was nearly twice the length of a human boot.
And whatever had made it...
Was following them.
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