Issue #9 “Cut the Signal”

Chapter 9 — The Tower Never Slept

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The tower stood like a rusted sentinel above the treeline, its narrow frame rising past the fogline, barely visible in the dimming afternoon light. Steel, bolts, and bone-cold silence. The trees swayed around it but the tower never moved, like it wasn’t meant to be part of the world below it — like it watched instead.

The three of them stood at its base. The ranger station behind them was locked, booby-trapped with a rigged fire extinguisher and bear spray in case anything followed. The plan was simple: climb, shut down the transmitter, cut the signal calling the infected.

Harper adjusted the strap on his shoulder, wrench still clipped to his belt. He studied the ladder — rusted, narrow, but intact.

Renee had tied her satchel across her chest, light now, stripped down to only what she needed: samples, notes, the folder from the station. Her face was tight. She hadn’t said much since they found the logs with her name on them.

Ethan, as always, brought the blade. But now there was something colder in him. He didn’t look at Renee. Not directly. Not anymore.

“You sure it’s not motion-triggered?” Harper asked, staring up.

Renee nodded. “No sensors. Analog system. Manual kill switch. Whoever built it didn’t want it automated.”

“Convenient,” Ethan muttered. He gave her a sideways look. “Maybe you can explain why your name was stamped on half those test reports.”

“Later,” Harper snapped.

“No,” Renee said. “He’s right.”

She took a breath. “Before this started, I worked with a contractor — private, federal adjacent. We were studying pathogens, adaptive behavior, but I didn’t know it was this. I wasn’t cleared for field data. They used my credentials to assign me without giving full access. I thought I was monitoring. Turns out I was the alibi.”

Silence.

“Okay,” Harper said. “We still shut it down.”

Ethan nodded, once. Grudging, but real.

They climbed.

The ladder groaned under their weight, but it held. Ten feet, twenty, forty. The fog swallowed the ground below. The wind picked up, and with it came sound: the dull hum of the signal, like tinnitus from the bones of the tower itself.

They reached the top platform after twenty minutes — metal mesh under their boots, high enough to see the edges of the county. Lakeshore to the south, dense forest beyond it, and far in the north, just where the trees broke — the shape of another town.

LS-8, though they didn’t know its name yet.

At the center of the platform was a metal control unit bolted to the frame, the transmitter encased in steel, blinking red with a steady pulse.

“Same loop,” Renee muttered. She opened the panel. “Same broadcast packet. Echo Point’s signature, encrypted. Trigger range: 75 miles.”

“That covers everything in the valley,” Harper said. “Including the next sites.”

“They’re not just calling the infected,” Renee said. “They’re activating them. Waking them up.”

Harper blinked. “What?”

“This isn’t just broadcasting a lure,” she said. “It’s broadcasting the key.”

Ethan stepped forward. “You’re saying this is what starts them?”

“Yes,” Renee said. “The blood we saw — it looked dormant. Like it needed something external to initiate full mutation. A sound. A pattern. A signal like this.”

“Like turning on a switch,” Harper said.

She nodded. “And every site — LS-8, LS-9, whatever else comes after — has its own tower. This is the first.”

Ethan looked out across the trees. “How many switches are there?”

Renee looked back down at the console. A set of linked tower logs were visible now — a network map. Echo Point was just one of seven.

“Too many,” she said.

“So shut it off,” Harper said. “Right now.”

Renee hesitated. Her fingers hovered over the power switches.

“There’s a chance,” she said, “that if we cut it, the infected stop moving. Go dormant. But there’s also a chance it sends out a failsafe — a burst command. A last call.”

“What does that do?”

“I don’t know.”

Ethan didn’t blink. “Then kill it anyway.”

Renee hit the switch.

The red light died. The console hummed once — then went quiet. The signal ended.

Below, the trees didn’t move. The wind didn’t change. For five seconds, everything held its breath.

Then Harper felt it — like pressure leaving a room. A psychic weight lifting off the air. No sound. No snarls. No shuffling. The fog hung still.

“It worked,” he said. “I think it actually—”

The tower shuddered.

A low, unnatural frequency pulsed through the frame, a deep vibration that rattled the teeth. Renee cursed and slammed the panel shut.

“What was that?” Harper asked.

“Failsafe,” she said. “Someone else triggered it.”

“From where?”

She turned the screen back on.

The map had changed.

Two nodes had gone red: LS-8 and LS-9.

“New signals just activated,” she said. “Backup towers. Remote switch. It wasn’t just Echo Point — it was a start point.”

“So they’re still doing it,” Ethan said. “They’re still lighting the fire.”

Renee stared at the blinking nodes. “Which means Lakeshore wasn’t containment. It was calibration.”

They descended fast. No talking. Just wind and steel and the knowledge that what was ahead was bigger than they could handle alone.

When they reached the bottom, Renee pulled out her notebook and ripped it in half. She handed one half to Ethan, the other to Harper.

“We split,” she said. “We have to. If we reach LS-8 and LS-9 before the signals spread too far, we might shut them down the same way.”

“You sure?” Harper asked.

“No,” she said. “But we don’t have time for certainty.”

Ethan grunted. “Guess I’ll see what LS-9 looks like.”

“I’ll take LS-8,” Renee said. “Solo.”

“Like hell,” Harper muttered. “I’m going with you.”

She didn’t argue.

They gathered supplies from the station — maps, canned food, batteries, makeshift weapons. When they stepped outside again, the sky was darker. Not from the sun. From smoke — distant columns on the horizon, both north and west.

Something had already started.

Harper and Renee turned toward LS-8. Ethan toward LS-9.

They didn’t look back.

To Be Continued …