The Broken Seal

Crown-4 is still online. Its people are missing.Commander Arken Tares leads the elite Amethyst squad into Atlantis's silent station on the hidden Southern Crown, expecting sabotage, casualties, and a hard recovery. Instead, they find intact defenses, clean corridors, and systems that continue to recognize personnel no one can locate.Then the station begins answering in borrowed voices. Valid clearances open the wrong doors. Shadows move apart from the bodies that cast them. Every response risks becoming another authorization for something inside Crown-4 to move farther into physical reality.The deeper Amethyst advances, the clearer the danger becomes: Atlantean priests and scientists activated an older system beneath the station without understanding what state they were changing-or what pressure it had been built to resist.Command wants Crown-4 and its lower circuit preserved. But Arken's weapons can reliably kill the intruders only when they are forced to remain fully physical, and every attempt to save the installation may widen the breach.The mission was to restore a station. Now Arken must choose what Order is willing to sacrifice-and what he refuses to obey.