Chapter 4 The Echo Below

Groote Schuur Hospital – Sublevel Access Stairwell – 10:03 PM

The descent felt like it never ended. Each step down echoed not only in the physical space, but inside Siya's chest. The narrow concrete stairwell seemed to shrink the farther they went. Cold air swirled around them, breathing against their necks in slow, rhythmic gusts, as if the hospital itself was exhaling.

Siya swept her flashlight across the wall. The pipes lining the corridor groaned in protest above their heads. Below, dampness stained the stairs with slick patches of algae-green. The deeper they went, the more the walls began to change, brick gave way to older concrete, chipped and blackened with age. Every few steps, new graffiti emerged: spirals scratched deep, sometimes double-lined, sometimes reversed.

Marks, just behind her, breathed steadily, but his voice betrayed tension. "So, how many places in this hospital do you know that aren't on any map?"

"Too many," Siya said. "And they're always the ones where people disappear."

He gave a low grunt. "Comforting."

The hospital's original blueprint, unredacted, had shown a curious blind spot between Groote Schuur's east wing and the old incinerator tunnel. That space was never officially commissioned, yet the Threnody files had pointed there. It was labeled only as: E.W. Chamber. Echo Ward. A buried anomaly.

And now, after everything Jacus had said, and what they'd found in the archives, Siya had no doubt: this chamber was the heart of the nightmare.

They reached a thick, corroded door sealed by a locking mechanism so old it had rusted into place. Faint letters remained on the surface:

E.W. CHAMBER – ISOLATION / DO NOT OPEN

Marks brushed his fingers over the words. "Ever wonder why the words do not open always make people do the opposite?"

Siya didn't smile. "Because what's behind them demands to be found."

She reached into her satchel and pulled out a small pry tool. "Help me."

Together, they forced the lock. It cracked with a sound like bone snapping under pressure. A heavy groan followed as the door creaked open into pitch black.

A wave of stale, metallic air rolled over them.

Siya clicked her flashlight on and stepped inside.

Echo Ward – Entrance Corridor – 10:11 PM

It was like stepping into the body of something dead but dreaming.

The corridor beyond was padded in decaying acoustic foam. Thick black sheets clung to the walls like necrotic skin, flaking in jagged curls. The lights overhead were few, and those that still worked flickered with a dull amber glow. The smell was wrong, part rot, part old chemicals, and something... electric. Like ozone before a lightning strike.

Siya's stomach churned. "This place wasn't just soundproofed," she said. "It was quarantined from reality."

Marks checked his sidearm. "And someone thought this was a good idea?"

"It wasn't just built," Siya said. "It was grown into. The hospital folded it into itself, piece by piece. They didn't want it to exist, but they needed it to."

They passed the first room. A viewing chamber, glass smashed from the inside. On the far wall was a speaker, no controls, just wiring that trailed into the ceiling. Below it, faint scratches in the padding. Siya leaned in, brushing away the dust. The words emerged: Don't sing it.

Marks raised his eyebrows. "Sing what?"

They passed two more rooms. Each worse than the last. One had a bed bolted to the floor, surrounded by mirrors that had been shattered from within. Another had no furniture, only spirals drawn in blood across every wall.

Siya stopped.

The last door was heavy steel. No handle. Just a reader pad, long deactivated. But the Threnody file's map had marked this room clearly.

THRESHOLD ROOM

Marks looked at her. "We breaking into hell now?"

Siya placed her palm on the cold steel. "We're already there."

Threshold Room – Entrance – 10:22 PM

It took them nearly ten minutes to force the door.

The hinges screamed.

Then silence.

The room beyond was round, almost ritualistic in its layout. The walls were padded in thick black, but faded symbols lined them: spirals, eyes, and glyphs that looked like musical notation gone wrong. At the center stood a chair, stainless steel and bolted to the floor, with leather straps dangling from its arms.

Above the chair, hanging like an inverted crown, was a complex structure of microphones, cables, and speakers arranged in a spiral. A resonance cage.

Marks exhaled. "What the hell is this?"

"It's where they channeled it," Siya said softly. "Where they made contact."

She approached the chair, running her hand over the armrest. Dried blood crusted the leather. Her flashlight caught a glint of metal on the floor, a small tag, half buried in dust. She picked it up and stamped into the plate was the following:

Subject: A.N.

Resonance Achieved

Status: ECHO

Siya went still.

Marks read it aloud. "Asanda Ndlovu."

The name echoed in the room.

Siya clenched her jaw.

Her sister hadn't just been experimented on, she had opened something. Whatever happened in this room wasn't just psychological. It had bent reality.

The speakers flickered. Then a whisper broke the silence. "Siya..." It was a girl's voice. Broken and oh so familiar.

Siya froze. "Asanda?"

Another whisper. Then a rising hum, low, vibrating through the walls like the sound of a subway in the distance. The spiral of speakers above the chair began to resonate.

Marks raised his gun. "We need to go. Now."

But Siya didn't move. Something was behind the chair. A shape, too still, too silent, the a girls figure slowly lifted her head, with hair hanging in black, matted strands over her face. Her eyes wide, empty and familiar.

Asanda was a live, barely, but alive.

Threshold Room – 10:26 PM

"Asanda?" Siya's voice barely escaped her throat. It trembled, not from fear, but from recognition, the kind that strikes at the deepest part of the soul, where logic ends and memory begins.

The girl on the floor shifted slightly, arms curled around her knees, head bowed as if shielding herself from some unseen storm. Her hair was long, uneven, and crusted with filth. Her skin was pale, waxen, almost translucent under the flickering lights.

Then, slowly, she looked up, her eyes were bloodshot, sunken, and locked onto Siya's with a strange flicker of familiarity.

It was Asanda, but she was not whole.

Marks whispered behind Siya, "She's been down here this whole time?"

"No," Siya breathed. "They moved her. Hid her here, after Valkenberg."

She stepped forward carefully, but Asanda flinched at her movement, jerking away as if expecting pain. The resonance from the speakers above grew subtly louder and a background hum just beneath the threshold of human hearing.

"Asanda, it's me," Siya said softly. "It's Siya. I found you. You're safe now."

Asanda blinked slowly. Then her lips moved. But no sound came. She mouthed something again.

It was a single word.

"Run."

Siya's heart stalled.

Marks noticed it too. "What did she say?"

Then Asanda turned, her gaze not at Siya, but toward the wall behind the chair. And that's when they heard it.

A sound like stone cracking under pressure. The wall shifted. Its surface flexed, rippling like stretched fabric, though it was solid concrete just moments ago.

And then... it opened. It wasn't a door. Nor was it a break. But a mouth, a spiraling wound in space, slowly unfurling like a camera aperture.

Marks backed up, gun raised. "What in the hell-"

A gust of warm, foul-smelling air whooshed from the opening, smelling of blood and burnt plastic. Siya could barely keep her footing. The spiral of microphones above the chair sparked violently, then exploded in a cascade of black sparks.

Asanda screamed.

The sound was wrong, it was backward. It echoed and reversed itself at once, like a cry looped in on itself through broken speakers. Asanda clutched her head, convulsing.

Siya rushed forward. "Grab her!"

Marks sprinted across the room and together they hoisted Asanda up. Her body was weak, trembling, but conscious.

"Don't look at it!" Siya shouted.

Behind them, the mouth widened. Something was trying to come through.

From the center of the spiral, beyond the impossible wall, came fingers. Long. Too many joints. Not flesh, but some kind of obsidian material, glossy and veined with pulsating light. They curled forward, stretching blindly into the room.

Asanda moaned. "It's coming back. You have to close it."

Marks stared, frozen. "How?!"

Siya remembered the counter-spiral they'd seen earlier. The one smeared in ash and oil.

"Reverse the pattern!" she shouted. "It has to be undone!"

Asanda nodded weakly. "The floor... the blood..."

Siya knelt, fumbling through her satchel. She pulled out the small vial of charcoal powder they'd taken from Jacus's room earlier, originally used in protective sigils around his bed.

She emptied the contents across the floor and, with shaking hands, began to draw a reverse spiral, one opposite of that which was hanging above them.

"Keep it back!" she yelled.

Marks fired at the reaching fingers. The bullets struck with dull, wet cracks. The thing recoiled, but didn't stop. The wall around the mouth began to bleed, not blood, but black fluid that hissed when it hit the floor.

Siya traced the final arc.

Asanda, still barely standing, placed her trembling hand in the center of the reversed spiral and the speakers erupted in white noise. A low thrum pulsed through the room, then silence.

The spiral on the wall began to retract and the mouth closed.

The fingers jerked once, then were sucked violently back into the void. The opening sealed with a grinding moan, leaving behind only cracked concrete and the faint outline of a spiral scar burned into the wall. Then the lights died. All of them. Total darkness.

Siya's flashlight flickered, barely alive. The emergency beam illuminated only their faces. Asanda's was drenched in sweat. Marks' was pale and shaking.

Then Siya whispered, "We need to get out. Now."

Groote Schuur – Maintenance Tunnels – 10:53 PM

They carried Asanda between them, through the winding under-tunnels. Siya knew the paths vaguely, having studied the old plans, but even she had trouble navigating in the dark.

Asanda mumbled the same words over and over: "It's still here... not done... didn't close... not all the way..."

Marks glanced at Siya. "She's not just traumatized. She's been infected with something."

"Not possessed," Siya said, "but touched. She was a vessel for whatever was behind that wall. It left something in her."

The further they got from the Threshold Room, the less the air vibrated.

They reached the service hatch that led back into Groote Schuur's east wing. A pair of orderlies passed by above, oblivious to the hidden world beneath their feet.

Siya turned to Marks. "No one can know about this. Not yet."

He nodded. "But what do we do with her?"

They looked at Asanda, now unconscious again, but breathing steadily.

"We get her out of here," Siya said. "We get her safe. Then we find out how far this spiral really goes."

She looked back at the sealed hatch behind them. And for a moment, just a flash, she thought she saw it again: A spiral, etched faintly into the metal, that was still turning, still alive.