Skin Walker Ranch New Season Leak!

Dr. Travis Taylor, a man with deep ties to the Department of Defense and NASA, who sees this artifact as a global security threat. He wants to call the FBI. But what led Brandon to using LAR to locate Travis? Why did Brandon Fugal bring a team of lawyers? Why did he ask the national security to come with a warrant? Why was Travis taken under custody? The next season of The Secret of Skinwalker Ranch is slated to debut this April, but a darkness is gathering behind the scenes that the History Channel won’t or can’t show you. While the cameras were rolling, something changed. As is typical with the ranch, official statements remain buried under ironclad NDAs. But the locals tell a different story. They speak of a silent motorcade, a line of blacked out SUVs with no plates, idling for hours at the perimeter fence like vultures waiting for a kill. A terrified insider has finally broken the silence and the news is grim. This season has been gutted.
The most groundbreaking reality shattering discoveries have been forcibly shelved by outside interests.
You are being fed the scraps, the insignificant glitches, while the true horrors are being scrubbed from the digital drives. But we know what happened during a recent night of filming. We know what they saw when the sensors didn’t just spike, but screamed.
This is the truth. They tried to bury.
Travis Taylor adjusted his cap, squinting against the Utah sun as the drill rig groaned. Beside him, Thomas Winterton looked uneasy. Thomas had a sense for the land. A biological early warning system developed through years of strange headaches and unexplained scars. It feels tight, Travis. Thomas muttered, wiping grit from his neck.
Like the air is being stretched. It’s the 1.6 frequency, Thomas. It spiked 400% since we broke the Khiche layer, Travis replied, his eyes glued to a handheld spectrum analyzer. Whatever is down there, we just woke it up.
Suddenly, the drill rig screeched, a sound of metal on metal that set Travis’s teeth on edge. The engine stalled. The silence that followed was even worse. From the bore hole, a faint rhythmic thrum began to emanate. It wasn’t a sound. It was a pressure in the chest. Travis ran to the edge. Nestled in the red dirt, caught in the teeth of the drill, was a fragment of something impossible. It looked like obsidian, but it swallowed the sunlight instead of reflecting it. “Don’t touch it,” Travis yelled as Thomas leaned in. Back in the command center, Eric Bard was already watching the data streams. His face turned ghostly pale. The monitors weren’t just showing radio waves anymore. They were showing a digital handshake. The artifact was identifying itself to the ranch’s internal servers.
Eric whispered to the empty room, “It’s not an object. It’s an operating system.” 30 minutes later, the argument that would tear the team apart began.
Travis burst into the command center.
The black stone in a leadlined bag.
Eric, get Brandon on the line. But do it on the encrypted satphone. Travis barked. And then I need you to give me the direct patch to the FBI’s field office in Salt Lake. This isn’t a ranch mystery anymore. This is an intrusion.
Eric didn’t move. He kept his hands hovering over his keyboard like a protective parent. The FBI. Travis. Are you kidding? We called them. And they put a fence around this place that NASA couldn’t get through. Everything we’ve worked for, Brandon’s investment, our data, it all goes into a black box. This is a transponder, Eric,” Travis shouted, slamming his hand on the desk. “Look at the telemetry. It’s talking to the GPS constellation. It’s mapping our military assets. If I don’t report this, I’m violating my oath. This is a national security event. This is a scientific breakthrough,” Eric countered, standing up. The two men, usually a seamless team, stood inches apart, the air between them thick with the stretch Thomas had felt earlier. If we give it to the bureau, the world never hears about it. We have to tell Brandon. We have to keep it here. The tension in the command center was so thick, it felt like a physical weight, rivaling the strange atmospheric pressure rolling off the mesa. Travis Taylor and Eric Bard were locked in a visual stalemate.
Travis’s hand hovered over his cell phone, his thumb twitching near the contact for a high-ranking official he’d worked with during his time at the UAP task force. “You’re thinking like a bureaucrat, Travis, not a scientist,” Eric said, his voice dropping to a dangerous icy whisper. “You know exactly what happens when the alphabet agencies get their hands on anomalous materials.
They don’t study it for the benefit of mankind. They weaponize it or they bury it in a warehouse in Virginia where it never sees the light of day again. “And you’re thinking like a dreamer,” Travis shot back, his southern draw sharpening with his rising heart rate. “Look at that monitor, Eric. That 1.6 GZ signal isn’t just a handshake anymore. It’s a carrier wave. It is uploading data from our own sensors, your sensors, and sending it somewhere. If that somewhere is a foreign adversary or something even less friendly, we are technically aiding and abetting a breach of national security. Before Eric could retort, the heavy security door hissed open. Bryant Dragon Arnold stepped in, his face set in a grim mask that suggested the situation outside had just gotten a lot more complicated. He didn’t look at the flickering screens or the pulsing obsidian sphere sitting in the leadlined bag. He looked straight at Travis. Put the phone down, Doc. Dragon said.
Dragon, stay out of this, Travis snapped. This is way above security protocols. Actually, it’s exactly my protocol, Dragon replied, crossing his arms. I just got a notification from the perimeter sensors at the main gate.
We’ve got a blacked out Suburban sitting on the public road. No plates. Two men inside just watching. They aren’t local PD and they aren’t tourists. Eric’s eyes widened. Did you call them Travis?
Already? I haven’t hit send yet, Travis defended. Though he looked rattled, but if they’re already here, that means they’ve been tracking the signal from the moment we hit it with the drill.
They don’t need a phone call. They have sigant signals intelligence. They’re probably listening to us right now.
Thomas Winterton walked in behind Dragon, looking pale. He was rubbing his temples, a telltale sign that his previous brain injury was reacting to whatever field the artifact was generating. “It’s getting stronger,” Thomas groaned. “The air, it smells like ozone and old pennies, and the cows are spooking. They’re all huddling near the Homestead 2 fence line, trying to get away from the mesa.” Travis looked at the Obsidian Sphere, then at his team.
The unity that had defined the skinwalker investigation for years was fracturing in real time. Eric,” Travis said, his voice softening but remaining firm. If that thing starts opening a portal or emitting radiation that fries Thomas’s nervous system, I’m not waiting for Brandon’s permission. I’m calling in the cavalry. If you do, Eric said, turning back to his console, his fingers moving with a new frantic purpose. I’m wiping the local cash. I won’t let them take our history, Travis. I won’t.
Outside, the sun began to dip behind the ridges, casting long, distorted shadows across the ranch. Shadows that seemed to move just a little bit faster than the rotation of the earth should allow. The internal line on the desk chirped. A sharp digital trill that cut through the brewing argument like a blade. All eyes turned to the console. The caller ID displayed a highle encryption code used only by the owner of the ranch. Eric hit the speakerphone button before Travis could reach for it. “Brandon?” Eric asked, his voice tight. I’ve been watching the telemetry from the Salt Lake office. Brandon Fugal’s voice came through calm and measured yet vibrating with an intensity they hadn’t heard before. I’m looking at the 1.6 gz spike and the gravimetric distortion readings.
Eric, is it true? Did we actually recover physical debris? Travis stepped closer to the microphone. It’s more than debris, Brandon. It’s a functional device. It’s an obsidian-like sphere and it’s communicating with something in low Earth orbit. We have a blacked out vehicle at the gate and a frequency that’s redlinining our equipment. I’m recommending we involve the National Security Branch immediately. This is out of our hands. There was a long chilling silence on the other end of the line.
The only sound in the command center was the faint thrum of the artifact in its lead bag, pulsing like a dark heart.
“No,” Brandon said finally. The word was flat. Final. Brandon, listen to reason.
Travis began. I am listening to reason.
Travis, Brandon interrupted. For decades, the government has known about the phenomena on this property. They’ve had their chance. They’ve had their secret studies and their black budget programs. And what has the public seen?
Nothing. If we hand this over now, it disappears into a hole and the world stays in the dark. So, what’s the play?
Dragon asked, shifting his weight, his hand instinctively moving toward his radio. The order is this, Brandon said, and the team could almost hear the resolve in his jaw. We are going to move the artifact not to a lab and certainly not to the FBI. Dragon, I want you to escort Thomas and the artifact to the underground bunker at the old homestead.
Eric, I want you to sever our external server links. We are going dark. No data goes out. No signals come in. You want us to hide it? Eric asked, a look of triumph casting a shadow over Travis’s growing frustration. I want you to activate it, Brandon replied. The shock of the command hit the room like a physical blow. Travis, you’ve spent your life looking for the engine behind this.
You have the keys in your hand. I’m not paying for us to be a storage unit for the government. I’m paying for answers.
Use the laser arrays. Hit that sphere with everything we’ve got. If it’s a door, I want it open tonight. Travis looked at the obsidian sphere, then at the monitor showing the black SUV at the gate. Brandon, if we trigger this thing and it sends out a pulse, those guys at the gate aren’t going to just sit there.
They’ll breach. Let them, Brandon said.
By the time they get through Dragon and those reinforced doors, I want the data recorded and mirrored to three private satellites.
If they want to take the ranch, let them take an empty shell. But first, let’s see what’s inside that stone. The line clicked off. Travis looked at Eric. The scientific curiosity that had driven his entire career was suddenly at war with his survival instinct. “He’s asking us to kick a hornet’s nest while standing inside it,” Travis whispered. “No,” Eric said, reaching for the controls to the high-powered laser array. He’s asking us to do our jobs. Grab the goggles, Doc.
We’re going live. The cooling fans on the server rack screaming at maximum RPM. Eric had positioned the high-powered class 4 laser, usually reserved for atmospheric testing. On a heavyduty tripod aimed directly at the leadlined bag containing the obsidian sphere. Goggles on, Eric commanded, his voice trembling slightly. Travis didn’t move at first. He looked at the readings on his tablet. The ambient radiation in the room was climbing, not in a linear curve, but in a series of steps that looked like a staircase equal to sum equal tune. Ed grew reflexively his mind to find a mathematical anchor for the madness. Eric Wade, Travis said, the gravitational constant in this room is shifting. My internal sensors are showing a 0.02 g decrease. If we hit this thing with a concentrated photon stream, we might create a localized singularity, Brandon gave the order, Travis. Eric replied, his finger hovering over the execute key. We’re already in the event horizon. There’s no turning back. Dragon stood by the door, his hand on his sidearm, eyes fixed on the monitors showing the perimeter.
Gates been breached, he reported, his voice flat. The Suburban didn’t use a ram. They used some kind of pulse. The gate just folded. They’ll be at the command center in 3 minutes. Do it, Eric. Thomas yelled. He was slumped in a corner, clutching his head. His skin was unnaturally pale, the veins in his temples bulging like blue worms. Eric pressed the key. A beam of pure, coherent violet light lanced across the room. The moment it touched the surface of the obsidian sphere, the lead bag didn’t burn. It disintegrated into fine gray ash. The sphere began to spin. It didn’t roll. It hovered 3 in off the table, rotating with such velocity that it became a blurred silhouette of darkness. Then the sound started. It wasn’t a hum. It was a chorus of voices layered and distorted. Thomas Winterton suddenly stood upright, his eyes rolled back into his head, showing only the whites. His mouth opened and a stream of rhythmic guttural sounds poured out. It wasn’t gibberish. It had the cadence of a language, the syntax of something ancient and mathematical. Kittu on Lil Ki 1.6 numa elish Thomas. Dragon stepped toward him, but a visible ripple in the air like a heat shimmer threw him back against the wall. He’s not speaking.
He’s transceiving.
Travis shouted over the roar of the spinning sphere. He grabbed his digital recorder, shoving it toward Thomas.
Eric, look at the audio spectrum. The peaks in his voice are matching the 1.6 Gaz spikes perfectly. He’s translating the data stream into phonms. Zudra 1,0gat Orion is to Thomas’s voice took on a metallic resonance as if his vocal cords were being modulated by a machine. I’m losing the server,” Eric yelled. The sphere is drawing power directly from the grid. It’s bypassing the breakers.
The lights in the command center flickered and died, replaced by the rhythmic violet pulse of the laser and the terrifying internal glow of the sphere. Thomas began to levitate, his toes barely touching the lenolium floor.
“Travis!” Eric screamed. “The FBI is outside. I see the flashlights. Let them come.” Travis yelled back, his scientific curiosity finally eclipsing his fear. They want to see the phenomenon. Here it is. Thomas’s voice reached a crescendo, a sound that felt like it was being generated inside the brains of everyone in the room. He spoke one final phrase, clear and terrifying.
The sequence is complete. The harvest begins. At that exact moment, the heavy steel door of the command center was blown off its hinges, but it wasn’t a flashbang that blinded them. It was a burst of white light from the center of the obsidian sphere that swallowed the room hole. Chapter 4. The vacuum of silence. The white light didn’t fade so much as it imploded, sucking the sound, the heat, and the very air out of the room. When the FBI agents, clad in tactical gear that bore no official insignia, despite the black suburbans, breached the threshold of the command center, they didn’t find a group of defiant scientists. They found nothing.
Special Agent Marcus Vance stepped over the mangled remains of the steel door, his boots crunching on fine crystalline dust. He raised his tactical light, the beam cutting through a haze of ionized oxygen. “Room clear,” he whispered into his calms, though his voice wavered. But it’s gone. All of it. The command center, which moments ago had been a cluttered nerve center of million-dollar servers, monitors, and cables, was a hollow concrete shell. There were no desks, no chairs, no wires hanging from the ceiling. Even the industrial carpet had been stripped away, leaving bare polished slab. In the center of the room, exactly where the obsidian sphere had been hovering, was a perfect circle scorched into the concrete. It wasn’t black from soot. The stone itself had been vitrified, turned into a glass-like substance that still gave off a faint rhythmic heat. Vance, report. A voice crackled in his ear. We have a massive energy signature on the satellite.
What’s the status of the artifact? The artifact is gone, director, Vance said.
Kneeling by the scorched circle, he reached out a gloved hand. The air above the glass circle was still vibrating.
The team is gone. Taylor Bard Winterton, Arnold. There’s no trace. It’s like the room was professionally vacated in a millisecond. Check the perimeter. The director barked. They couldn’t have moved that much hardware that fast.
Search for hidden sub levels. Vance looked around the empty room. He noticed something small glinting near the vitrified circle. He leaned in. It was Travis Taylor’s cell phone. The screen was shattered, but a single notification was frozen in the glass. A message that hadn’t been sent. It was addressed to Brandon Fugal. It contained only four words. It’s not a rock. The shadow team.
Outside, the second black suburban pulled up to the scorched remains of the gate. A man in a tailored charcoal suit stepped out. He didn’t look like an FBI agent. He looked like an accountant for a world that didn’t exist. He walked past the tactical teams and into the command center. He didn’t look at the empty server racks. He walked straight to the scorched circle and pulled a device from his pocket, a sensor that looked remarkably like the one Eric Bard had built. They didn’t leave, the man said, his voice smooth and devoid of emotion. Vance looked up. What do you mean? The room is empty. Space is empty, Agent Vance. This room is merely elsewhere. The man pointed his sensor at the circle. The device chirped at a specific haunting frequency 1.6 Jug Z.
They are still here occupying the same coordinates, but their phase state has shifted. They are currently experiencing the ranch as it existed 10,000 years ago or perhaps 10,000 years from now. Can we get them back? Vance asked. The question, the man said, a thin smile touching his lips, is whether they want to come back or if they’ve already been replaced. While the air in the command center was still cooling from the phase shift 30 m away in a nondescript office building in Salt Lake City, Brandon Fugal sat in a darkened room. The wall-to-wall monitors that usually streamed live feeds from the ranch were now filled with static and signal lost warnings. He didn’t panic. You don’t build a real estate empire or hunt for interdimensional secrets without a contingency plan. Initiate protocol 7, Brandon said to the empty room. A hidden partition in the wall slid back, revealing a second, more advanced command console. This one wasn’t tied to the ranch’s grid. It was linked to a private constellation of low orbit satellites and a rapid response team stationed at a clandestine airfield in Roosevelt, Utah. Sir, a voice crackled through the comms. It was Cameron Fugal, his brother and trusted adviser. The ranch has gone dark. We’re detecting a heavy militaryra jammer surrounding the perimeter. It’s not the military, Cameron. Not the one on the books, anyway, Brandon said, his eyes narrowing. It’s the shadow team. They’ve been waiting for us to find the key. Now that Travis and Eric have turned it, they’re moving in to seize the lock.
What are your orders? The FBI might be at the gate, but I want our gray team in the air. We’re not losing those men, and we’re certainly not losing the ranch.
The siege of Homestead one. Back on the ranch, the man in the charcoal suit, known only as Director Miller, wasn’t interested in the empty command center anymore. He walked out into the night air, which was now unnaturally still.
Not a cricket chirped, not a blade of grass moved. “Agent Vance,” Miller said, looking toward the mesa. “The phase shift has created a localized bubble.
The team is still within the 512 acres, but they are vibrating at a frequency our eyes can’t register. To bring them back, we need to increase the 1.6 GAZ output from our own mobile units. We need to anchor them. And if we anchor them incorrectly, Vance asked, watching his men set up tripod-mounted emitters around the scorched circle. Then they return in pieces, Miller said clinically. Or they return as something else. Either way, the artifact’s data is the priority. Suddenly, the sky above the ranch was split by the roar of twin engine rotors. Two unmarked matte black helicopters, Sakorski uh60 seconds, screamed over the ridge, flying low enough to kick up a storm of red dust.
They weren’t government. They carried the discrete logo of a private security firm Brandon Fugal had kept on retainer for this exact moment. “Warning!” Vance shouted into his radio, “Unidentified aircraft entering restricted airspace.” “This isn’t restricted airspace, Agent Vance.” A voice boomed over a long range acoustic device, LRAD, from the lead helicopter. This is private property.
You are trespassing on a designated research site. Vacate the premises immediately or we will engage electronic counter measures. The conflict escalates. Miller didn’t flinch. Vance, take them down. Sir, they’re private citizens. They are interfering with a national security recovery. Miller snapped. Use the microwave emitters, fry their avionics.
As the shadow team turned their high-tech weaponry away from the elsewhere bubble and toward the approaching helicopters, the ranch itself seemed to react. A massive blue white bolt of lightning shot from a clear sky, striking the ground exactly between the two factions. The earth began to tremble. In the spot where the lightning hit, the air began to tear like wet paper. Through the tear, the shadow team and the gray team both saw a terrifying sight. Travis Taylor and Eric Bard, looking like translucent ghosts, were screaming, but no sound came out.
Behind them, the mesa was no longer a hill of rock. It had opened up like a giant metallic eye. The red recording light on the camera didn’t blink. It stayed solid, a tiny crimson eye watching as the world fell apart. The insignificant discoveries the public would eventually see were a joke compared to what was currently happening in the shadows of the mesa. On the official production logs, this night would be recorded as equipment malfunction. No data recovered, but the reality was far more visceral. They weren’t carrying standard tactical gear.
Instead of rifles, they wielded strange overengineered apparatuses that looked like a cross between a microwave emitter and a medical scanner. Step away from the aperture, Dr. Taylor. Vance’s voice boomed through a megaphone, but the sound was distorted. Warped by the gravity-bending field coming from the hole, Eric Bard lunged for his laptop, his fingers blurring as he tried to mirror the data to a hidden server in Brandon Fugal’s Salt Lake City office.
I’m losing the connection. They’re using a wide spectrum jammer. I don’t care about the data, Eric, Travis yelled, pointing at the mercurial fog. Look at the fog. It’s taking shape. As the shadow team closed in, the liquid silver mist began to rise from the ground. It didn’t form a human shape. It formed a mirror. A jagged floating pane of mercury that reflected not the ranch, but a sky filled with three suns and a landscape of crystalline towers. The unseen hand. Vance’s team reached the edge of the site. Secure the asset.
Neutralize the civilians. One of the agents pointed his device at Travis. But before he could pull the trigger, a hand, long, pale, and spindly, like the one in the leaked photos, reached out from the mercury mirror. It didn’t grab Travis. It grabbed the agent. With a sickening wet snap, the agent was yanked forward, his body stretching like taffy before disappearing into the reflection.
Dragon, do something. Eric screamed.
Dragon didn’t hesitate. He pulled his sidearm, but as he leveled it at the shadow team, he realized they weren’t looking at him. They were looking at the sky above the mea. The metallic eye had fully opened. It wasn’t a ship. It was a hole in the fabric of the universe. A beam of light darker than the night around it shot down and hit the command center. The footage, Travis cried out, grabbing the primary camera from its tripod. We have to save the footage. If the world doesn’t see this, we’re just another missing person’s report. But as the shadow team engaged their emitters, the camera’s internal drive began to melt. The insider who would later leak this story was hiding in the brush, filming with a burner phone, watching as the black SUVs, the shadow team, and the skinwalker crew were all enveloped in a blinding violet static. The last thing the burner phone caught was Thomas Winterton, standing at the center of the chaos, his eyes glowing with a cold artificial light, whispering to the wind, “The harvest is no longer coming.
It is here, a legal standoff to a tactical nightmare.” Director Miller didn’t care about the constitutional arguments or the court injunctions anymore. To him, Brandon’s lied wasn’t just a tool. It was a leak in the most classified secret in human history.
Seize the equipment, Miller commanded, his voice as cold as the void between stars and detain Mr. Fugal. He has interfered with a tier 1 national security operation. You can’t do that.
Sterling, the lead lawyer, shouted, stepping in front of Brandon. We are on a live feed. The world is watching.
Miller didn’t even look at him. The world is watching a looped video of a dusty room counselor. We hijacked your uplink 3 minutes ago. You’re talking to ghosts.
The takedown. The shadow team moved with practice terrifying efficiency. Two agents lunged for the liidar tripod while another moved to intercept Brandon. “Dragon, now!” Brandon yelled.
From the shadows of the server racks, Bryant, “Dragon Arnold emerged like a ghost himself. He didn’t use a firearm.
The room was too unstable for a stray spark. Instead, he deployed a high-grade flash suppressant grenade. A wave of heavy pressurized gas filled the room, making it impossible for the shadow team’s electronic optics to lock on.
“Brandon, get the drive!” Dragon barked, his voice muffled by his own tactical mask. Brandon grabbed the lead tablet, his fingers scrambling to initiate a local download of the phase shifted data. On the screen, the green silhouette of Travis Taylor was screaming, his hand still extended toward the physical world. The lidar was picking up a massive surge in the 1.6 Kaz signal. The ghosts were fighting back from the other side. The force of the veil. As an agent tackled Brandon, the lidar tablet hit the floor, its screen cracking. The impact caused a momentary feedback loop in the laser pulses. The green silhouette of Travis on the screen didn’t just flicker. It erupted. A shock wave of pure kinetic energy blasted outward from the scorched circle. It wasn’t an explosion of fire, but an explosion of gravity. The agents trying to seize the equipment were thrown backward into the walls. The hazmat chemicals they had used to scrub the floor suddenly rose into the air, forming a swirling iridescent vortex.
It’s a localized vacuum. Brandon gasped, pinned to the floor by the pressure.
Miller stood at the edge of the room, his charcoal suit fluttering in the unnatural wind. He looked at the Lear tablet, which was still projecting a holographic image into the center of the room. Travis was no longer just a silhouette. He was becoming solid. But he wasn’t alone. Behind the ghost of Travis, something else was emerging from the phase shift. It was tall, spindly, and its skin had the texture of wet parchment. It looked exactly like the creature from the leaked photos, its long fingers wrapping around Travis’s shoulders. They aren’t trying to come back, Miller whispered, a look of genuine awe crossing his face. The ranch is digesting them. The final stand.
Dragon grabbed Brandon by the collar, hauling him toward the back exit. We have to leave the equipment, Brandon.
The mesa is venting. If we stay here, we go into the phase with them. I’m not leaving, Travis. Brandon fought back, his eyes fixed on the lead screen where Travis’s eyes were now locked onto his.
One of the shadow team agents recovered and leveled a sonic weapon at Brandon.
Drop the drive, fugal. Last warning. The agent never got to fire. The creature behind Travis reached through the veil and touched the back of the agent’s head. The man’s helmet didn’t break. It simply turned into dust. The agent collapsed, not dead, but unmade. his physical form reverting to a pile of base elements. “Move now!” Dragon screamed, literally throwing Brandon through the heavy steel doors as the command center began to implode under the weight of the 1.6 K8 Z surge.
Outside, the ranch was no longer dark.
The sky above the triangle was a swirling nebula of violet and gold. The gray team helicopters were falling from the sky, their electronics fried by the pulse. Brandon looked at the LAR drive in his hand. It was the only thing left of his team. And on the screen, a final message had been burned into the pixels by Travis’s proximity. He Ice, not Thomas. The dust from the imploding command center hadn’t even settled when a figure emerged from the violet haze.
He walked with a strange rhythmic gate, too precise, too fluid. It was Thomas Winterton.
Dragon instantly leveled his sidearm, his finger tightening on the trigger.
Stop right there, Thomas. Don’t take another step. The man who looked like Thomas stopped. He didn’t flinch at the weapon. He didn’t look at Dragon. His eyes, usually a warm brown, were now a flat, reflective silver, mirroring the chaotic sky above. “Dragon, put the gun down,” Brandon whispered, his heart hammering against his ribs. He looked at the lead drive in his hand, then back at the figure. “That’s not Thomas.” “The deal of the uenta.” “You are observant, Mr. Fugal,” the entity said. The voice was Thomas’s, but the cadence was wrong.
It sounded like a recording being played at slightly the wrong speed. The biological shell you call Thomas is currently archived along with Dr. Taylor and Mr. Bard. They are being held in the buffer. The buffer? Brandon stepped forward, ignoring Dragon’s warning. You mean the phase shift? You mean the elsewhere coordinates are finite? The imposttor, Thomas said, tilting his head. The energy required to maintain their molecular integrity in the harvest zone is immense. They are leaking, Brandon. Their memories are dissolving into the 1.6 JZ carrier wave. In three of your minutes, they will be nothing but background noise. The entity pointed a long, too steady finger at the cracked lead drive. That device contains the anchor. You recorded the harmonic resonance of their souls when the door opened. Give me the drive and I will use the resonance to pull them back into this frequency. The price of a soul. And if I give it to you, Brandon asked. What happens to the ranch? What happens to the invitation? The invitation is for us, not for you, the entity replied. If we have the anchor, we can stabilize the bridge. We won’t need the mesa anymore.
We can move freely. Brandon, don’t.
Dragon hissed. He’s asking for a key to the front door of our world. If they can move freely, the harvest isn’t just a ranch mystery anymore. It’s everyone.
Brandon looked at the drive. On the shattered screen, he could still see the green flicker of Travis Taylor, his friend, a man who had dedicated his life to the truth. If he kept the drive, he had the evidence to change history, but his friends would evaporate into digital static. If he gave it up, he saved his men but potentially doomed his species.
I need a guarantee, Brandon said, his voice trembling. There are no guarantees in the Uinta, Brandon, the imposttor, Thomas said, stepping closer. The air around him smelled of ozone and ancient dust. There is only the trade. The data or the lives from the darkness behind the entity. Director Miller and the remnants of the shadow team emerged.
They weren’t attacking. They were watching, waiting to see which way the billionaire would jump. Miller looked terrified. For the first time, the government didn’t have a seat at the table. The decision. Brandon looked at the sky where the metallic eye was beginning to pulse in sync with the drive in his hand equal to 1.6. Brandon looked at the power of 9. The frequency was everywhere now. It was in his teeth.
It was in his blood. Dragon, Brandon said softly. Cover me. Brandon, what are you doing? Brandon didn’t answer. He walked toward the imposttor Thomas holding the drive out like a peace offering, but as he reached the entity, he didn’t hand it over. He smashed the drive onto the vitrified ground and poured a bottle of high conductivity cooling gel retrieved from his vest directly into the cracked circuitry. I’m not trading, Brandon roared. I’m overloading the anchor. The cooling gel hit the exposed glowing circuitry of the Lear drive and hissed like a dying serpent. For a microscond, there was a localized silence so absolute it felt like the world had held its breath. Then the laws of physics revolted. The 1.6 Gaz frequency didn’t just spike. It collapsed into a gravitational sinkhole.
Get back. Dragon screamed, tackling the lawyers toward the shelter of the black SUVs. The smash drive became the eye of a hurricane. A violent unseen force began to pull the air, the dust, and the very light toward the vitrified circle.
The impostor Thomas let out a sound, not a human scream, but a digital screech of corrupted data as his biological shell began to pixelate and dissolve into the vortex. The re-entry. Suddenly, the veil tore open. It didn’t look like a door.
It looked like a jagged wound in the air. Two bodies were spat out of the rift with the force of a high-speed collision. Travis Taylor and Eric Bard hit the desert floor, tumbling through the red dirt. They were covered in a thick translucent slime that shimmerred with the same oily iridescence as the mea’s eye. “Travis! Eric!” Brandon lunged forward, shielding his eyes from the violet glare. Travis gasped for air, his lungs sounding like they were filled with water. His skin was unnaturally cold and his pupils were blown wide, reflecting stars that weren’t in the Utah sky. Eric was shivering violently, his hands clutching a piece of equipment that had been fused into his very palms.
A hunk of the obsidian sphere that had melted into his flesh. The something else. We got them, Dragon breathed, moving to help Travis up. We actually got them back. Don’t touch me. Travis wheezed, his voice sounding like two stones grinding together. He crawled away from Dragon, his eyes fixed on the rift, which hadn’t closed yet. It’s not over. We didn’t come back alone. The vacuum didn’t stop once the men were through. The anchor Brandon had overloaded was still pulling, but instead of sucking things in, it was now acting as a tether for something trying to crawl out. A hand times the size of a human’s composed of shifting shadows and solidified static gripped the edge of the dimensional tar. Then another. The ground beneath the ranch began to groan.
The very tectonic plates shifting as a massive non-ucuklitian shape began to squeeze through the opening. It wasn’t the spindly gray creature. It was something older, something the utes had warned about for centuries. It was a mass of shifting geometry and predatory intent. A hitchhiker that didn’t just follow you home. It swallowed your reality. The contagion. Director Miller.
Fire the emitters. Brandon shouted toward the shadow team. But Miller was paralyzed. He was staring at Travis Taylor. Specifically, he was staring at the way Travis’s shadow didn’t match his body. While Travis was slumped on the ground, his shadow was standing upright, elongated and jagged, reaching toward Miller with clawed fingers. The phase shift didn’t end. Eric Bard croked, looking at the obsidian fused to his hands. We brought the elsewhere with us.
We’re the bridge now. As the massive entity from the rift let out a low frequency hum that shattered every window in the command center, the Thomas impostor now. Just a flickering hologram, smiled at Brandon. You wanted your team back, Mr. Fugal, the entity whispered. But you didn’t check the manifest. You just invited the entire harvest to dinner. The entity’s massive shadow geometric form was now halfway through the rift, its sheer mass displacing the desert air with a sound like grinding glaciers. The ground beneath the triangle was liquefying into a slurry of red sand and static. Travis Taylor stood up, his legs shaking, his eyes reflecting the impossible violet light of the elsewhere. He looked at his hands. They were translucent, the bones visible as glowing filaments of 1.6 6 GHz energy. He wasn’t just a man anymore. He was a walking transmitter.
It’s a balanced equation, Brandon,” Travis said, his voice echoing with a haunting multi-onal resonance. The universe doesn’t like a vacuum. To pull us out, you created a debt. That thing is the interest. It’s the hitchhiker’s progenitor. If it fully manifests here, it won’t just stay on the ranch. It’ll use the global satellite network to phase shift the entire planet into the harvest zone. The decision of the scientist. We can fight it, Travis, Brandon yelled, grabbing Travis’s shoulder. His hand passed halfway through Travis’s coat, feeling like he’d plunged it into a bucket of ice water.
We have the great team. We have Miller’s tech. We can anchor it here. You can’t anchor a god, Brandon, Travis replied with a sad, knowing smile. He looked over at Eric, who was staring in horror at the obsidian fused to his palms.
Eric, the obsidian in your hands. It’s the remote. You have to be the one to seal it from this side. I have to be the one to pull it from the other. No. Eric choked out. Travis, you won’t survive the collapse. The pressure in the buffer will shred your molecular structure. I’m already shredded, Eric. Look at me.
Travis held up his arm. The skin was beginning to flake off into light. Then, with a sound like a thunderclap in a vacuum, the rift snapped shut. The silence that followed was deafening. The We’re here. We’re not leaving you. The signal fluctuated, a burst of static washing over the screen before the Morse resumed. T I M E I T I F E R. Eric, look at the GPS pings. Brandon whispered, his face draining of color. The monitor showed the ranch’s perimeter sensors. In the last 10 minutes, the distance between Homestead 1 and the mesa had decreased by 6 in. Parasite or allure?
Miller smiled. And for the first time, his jaw opened wider than humanly possible. The skin stretching like thin rubber, spans dimensions requires something much more refined.
Information, observation, fear. Miller stepped closer. Security guards began to scream. The red Utah dirt was no longer solid. It had turned into a thick, viscous membrane that was slowly pulling the black SUVs downward. The vehicles weren’t sinking into mud. They were being absorbed. “We have to get to the brain,” Brandon shouted, grabbing his tactical bag. “It was looking down at them, hungry for the final bite of their existence.” “Into the tunnels!” Brandon commanded. “If we’re voice spoke, but it wasn’t his voice. It was a terrifying fusion of his own Travis’s and the ranch began to take his. Brandon watched in horror as the obsidian shards in Eric’s hands began to spread, crawling up his arms like a plagues were already turning into the silver mercury fog. He looked at Brandon, his eyes clear for one final second. Tell Travis I’ll see him in the buffer. With a final agonizing scream of digital and biological static, Eric slammed his entire weight into the spire, discharging every memory he had ever owned in a single catastrophic burst of humanity. Well, I hope you like the story. Take care and be safe.