Chapter 7
Morning came too quickly.
Or maybe it hadn’t come at all.
Sofia wasn’t sure which.
The city beyond the glass hadn’t changed so much as it had dimmed, the endless grid of lights softening into a gray-blue haze that stretched to the horizon. Somewhere far below, movement had already begun—cars threading through streets she couldn’t hear, people moving through a world that felt impossibly distant from where she stood.
She hadn’t meant to wake up.
In fact, she wasn’t entirely sure she had slept.
The apartment—if that was even the right word for it—was too quiet. Not the comforting kind of quiet she knew from the desert, but something deeper. Engineered. The kind that pressed in just enough to remind her that every detail of this place had been decided long before she arrived.
She pushed herself upright from where she had drifted off on the edge of the bed, one hand instinctively reaching for her notebooks.
Still there.
Good.
Across the room, Sam was already moving—showered, dressed, energized in a way that didn’t seem entirely fair given the timeline.
“You get any sleep?” Sam asked, not looking up as she adjusted the cuff of her sleeve.
“Some,” Sofia lied.
Sam smirked. “You didn’t.”
Sofia didn’t argue.
Instead, she crossed to the window.
The glass stretched from floor to ceiling, uninterrupted, framing the city like something curated rather than lived in. For a moment, she forgot why they were here—forgot the jet, the rush, the conversation in the car.
Forgot everything except the scale of it.
“You could get used to this,” Sam said from behind her.
Sofia didn’t turn.
“Yeah,” she said quietly. “That’s what I’m worried about.”
A soft chime cut through the room—subtle, almost polite.
Sam glanced toward the entryway, where a panel inset into the wall had come to life.
“Timing,” she said. “That’ll be our ride.”
Sofia exhaled slowly, her grip tightening just slightly on the edge of her notebook.
No time to think.
Probably for the best.
The car was already waiting when they stepped outside.
Same precision. Same silence. Same sense that nothing in this process was reactive.
Everything had been arranged.
The ride into Manhattan unfolded in fragments—steel and glass rising around them, streets tightening, the city pressing closer with every block. Sofia tried to follow it, to make sense of the scale, but it slipped past too quickly, too layered, too alive.
By the time the car slowed again, she had lost her bearings completely.
Which, she suspected, might also be the point.
Sam leaned slightly toward the window.
“Well,” she murmured, “that’s… not subtle.”
Sofia followed her gaze upward.
And upward.
And—
For a moment, the building didn’t seem real. Just a sheer wall of glass and structure disappearing into the low morning haze, its upper floors lost somewhere above visibility.
Halvorsen Global Holdings.
Inside, the transition was immediate, security without friction met them instantly.
Movement without pause. People who didn’t ask questions because they already had answers.
They were expected, a man in a tailored suit met them before they reached the elevators.
“Ms. Roche. Ms. Petrov,” he said smoothly. “The team is assembled and ready for you.”
Sofia blinked. “Already?”
He offered a polite smile. “They’ve been waiting since six.”
Sam shot her a quick glance—half amusement, half warning.
“Welcome to Halvorsen’s world.” Sam whispered.
The meeting room had the feel of something designed to impress engineers who had already seen everything. Glass walls, clean lighting. A long central table surrounded by modular workstations that were already awake with data—screens pulsing, ready to interpret the technology that Sofia didn’t yet trust anyone else to interpret correctly.
A dozen engineers sat waiting, some leaned forward, some didn’t blink.
All of them were looking at her.
And Sofia wasn’t used to that.
Sam stood slightly behind her, quiet for once, letting the room settle around them.
“Alright,” one of the engineers said after a moment. “We’ve reviewed the preliminary output you sent over from Nevada. The signal pattern is… unusual.”
Sofia nodded once, as if confirming something only she could see.
“It’s not unusual,” she said. “It’s just incomplete.”
A few brows lifted.
She stepped closer to the central display, where the waveform from the desert test was still frozen—soft oscillations, ghostlike repetition layered beneath the primary signal.
“This system,” she began, “doesn’t scan in the way you’re used to thinking about scanning.”
She tapped the screen once.
The waveform expanded.
“It doesn’t emit a broad field. It doesn’t radiate. It doesn’t even really ‘search.’”
She hesitated—not for lack of knowledge, but because she was trying to find the simplest truth inside something she had never fully explained out loud before.
“It listens,” she said finally. “But not to air. Not to electromagnetic noise.”
She zoomed further into the signal.
“To pressure.”
A pause.
One of the engineers leaned forward slightly.
Sofia continued.
“When you apply a mechanical pulse into the ground—controlled vibration of specific frequency and amplitude —it doesn’t just dissipate randomly. It travels. It fractures into paths based on density, structure, continuity. Rock behaves one way. Soil another.”
Her finger traced a branching pattern on the display.
“And organic systems behave… differently.” It was as though she was just realizing something new.
Sam’s eyes shifted slightly at that, but she didn’t interrupt.
Sofia tapped again and the waveform split.
“This is where it gets interesting.”
She looked up now, meeting the room for the first time, directly making eye contact with her audience.
“Roots.”
She let the silence that followed amplify the word as a few people exchanged glances.
Sofia didn’t stop, this was it. It was her time to shine, her invention.
She took charge.
“Tree systems, fungal networks, buried organic structures—they form continuous mechanical pathways. Not electrical. Not symbolic. Physical. And the best part is they all communicate with each other.”
She paused just long enough for it to land, barely able to contain her excitement.
“And when you insert data correctly, those pathways don’t just carry it—they guide it.”
A silence settled over the room as Sofia turned back to the display.
“That ‘ghost signal’ we saw in the Nevada test wasn’t interference.”
Her voice lowered slightly.
“It was a return path?”
One of the engineers finally spoke. “From where?”
Sofia shook her head once as she stepped back from the screen. “I don’t know yet. But it means the system didn’t just propagate through the desert.”
She took a slow breath.
“It found continuity through it.” She added as though realizing it for the first time.
Sam finally spoke from the back of the room. “You’re saying it routed through subsurface structures?”
Sofia nodded. “Thats the only possibility, but I wouldn’t say it routed,” she corrected gently. “It connected.”
She gestured again, and the waveform replayed—this time slower, more deliberate.
“It’s not line-of-sight.” Her enthusiasm was starting to build again. “And it doesn’t appear to be range-limited in the way we assumed.” A beat passed as she thought. “It’s topology-limited?”
That word hung in the air a moment longer than the others.
“Or is it?” Sofia exhaled. “In short: if there is a continuous mechanical pathway between two points underground…” She met their eyes again. “…the system can find it.”
The silence that followed was all consuming as the team wrestled with the possibilities presented by this new technology.
“Jordan Keene ma’am,” a young woman wearing thick rimmed glasses had raised her hand. “Are you saying this thing can communicate with plants through their roots?”
“Not so much communicate with them as much as communicate through them.” Sofia corrected. “The transmitter communicates with the receiver by using the signal wave produced by organic materials in the earth as the carrier waves on which it sends its data. The receiver then interprets the data, measuring amplitude, frequency, transmission rate, etc and compares the that against the manifest that the transmitter sends showing the exact data string that was transmitted, sort of a set of expectations to it uses to determine the distance and relative GPS coordinates of the transmitter based on the modulations to the signal as it’s received.”
Sofia pulled her stack of notebooks out of one of her boxes, then looking around the room she asked, “Who do I talk to about getting some copies made?”
As if on que the conference room door slid open and a man in his early twenties stepped in.
“I can get those for you ma’am.” He said as he crossed to Sofia. “What pages do you need copied?”
Sofia giggled shyly, “all of them?”
The man stood still for a long moment as he contemplated the task.
“All of them?” he croaked.
“I need fifteen copies of every page in this box, coalated and sorted by name for each member of this team please.” Sofia seemed to shift gears in a heartbeat, proffering the meekness of someone giving a request for an air of command that surprised even her. “An I need them asap please, none of these scientists will be able to do anything until they’ve had the chance to study my work.”
She turned back to her team as the secretary hurried out the door with his load.
“First order of business, we will be separating into three teams.” Sofia began as she moved back to the front of the room and began reading the nameplates in front of each person. “Team one will be Jordan, Devon, Parker, Natalie and Ethan. Team two, Zara, Tessa, Natahniel, Marcus and Adrian. Team three is Oliver, Nathan Sloane, Lucas, Natalie” she hesitated as she struggled to pronounce the last name, “Okafor?, and Margot.”
Sofia looked around the room, everyone was waiting anxiously for the assignments.
She felt good, like this was where she was supposed to be.
Sofia had always loved field work, she never considered herself the right person to lead a research team, today she couldn’t tell if it was the lack of sleep, her nerves or the project itself but she knew this was where she was supposed to be, leading her team.
“Team one you will be on the transmitter, team two the receiver.” She paused just long enough to ensure everyone was listening. “Team three you are on data interpretation. I have been developing a thesis that this device can do a lot more than just calculate distance and direction, I think we can use this to map underground. That ghost signal from the desert test should not have been possible but did you notice,” she paused as she pointed at the screen to highlight a shadow surrounding the signal wave, “I think this is the chasm itself and if that’s the case then we might be about to replace GPR all together!”
“Tessa Morgan,” a young woman spoke up, “how does it work ma’am? I mean I know what you explained about it,” she paused to find the right words. “but how?”
“The mechanics?” Sofia asked. “That’s why you all are here, your task is to change the tools. Right now we have the main receiver plate,” she strained as she lifted the plate out of the box, “nearly eighteen pounds, needs to be lighter.” She reached back in and grabbed the set of spikes, the light glistened off the polished ceramic surfaces as she held them up. “A ceramic exo-shell housing a copper alloy core specifically designed to detect more than just RF and EMF, they can sense sound, movement, magnetics, RF, microwaves, ultra-violet, gamma rays and even x-rays and transmit it to the computer for interpretation.”
She set the spikes on the table and moved to another of the boxes she had brought.
“This,” Sofia lifted out a backpack and set it on the table, then a telescoping rod with a carbon fiber tip. “Is the transmitter pack.”
“Looks heavy.” One of the team members said.
“That is why you are here Devon,” she looked at the other members of team one. “You will be making this lighter, easier to use and more efficient.” She unzipped the pack and slid a wire connector out then screwed it onto the end of the telescoping rod before continuing.
“When the tip of this rod is driven into the ground it transmits low voltage ELF signals on an exact set of frequencies but it has a voracious appetite for power, my biggest limitation in the design. The main flaw really…” Sofia paused as the thought of her invention being flawed wrinkled her brow. “We need it to use less power, or something…” she trailed off as her thoughts ran away chasing the answer.
“Power consumption ma’am?” Devon said, “HBH has some answers to that question in development already. I just came off a team where we were developing a micro-reactor that can provide enough power to run a large home, it’ll fit in the bottom half of that pack with room to spare!”
“Phenominal!” Sam exclaimed looking over at Sophia. “I’ll shoot Halvorsen an email to request one.”
Sophia smiled, realization of her dreams coming to fruition in real time.
“Field trip?” She said suddenly. “We arranged a few cars to take us to Central Park so we can run your first real world test and get a feel for exactly what you are working on.”
HGH had arranged a large passenger van for the trip, slightly cramped but large enough for the whole team to travel as one group. The sun splashed its bright warmth across the small patch of grass that the transmitter was to be set up in as team one clambored out with one of the two boxes of equipment.
“Set up on this corner,” Sophia instructed, “we will set up the receiver in the opposite corner of the park. That should give us what, about two and a half miles?”
“Give us about twenty minutes for traffic before we get to our corner.” Sam added quickly. “I’ll shout on the radio when we’re in place and ready.”
“Ten-four!” Parker shouted.
Parker had taken an early leadership role within his team already, handing his team members each an assignment as they filed after him into the park. Sophia was grateful for him as they drove around the park to the opposite corner to begin setting up the receiver equipment and connecting the computer.
“Team one ready when you are.” Parker’s disembodied voice crackled over the radio.
“Team two is ready to receive.” Zara responded in turn.
“Data analysis is ready.” Jordan said as she connected the final ethernet cable from her laptop to the receiver laptop.
“Commencing transmission at seven point zero zero.” Parker announced as the screen on the receiving computer began flooding with data. “Moving up one herz per ten seconds to forty herz.”
“Copy.” Jordan announced as she mashed the push to talk button on her radio.
“Check this out!” Marcus shouted, pointing to the receiver plate where the wires connecting the ground rods to the receiver plate had begun glowing a soft azure.
“That shouldn’t be doing that.” Sophia whispered as she reached for the wire.
“Don’t touch that!” Sam snapped, grabbing Sophia’s wrist.
Sophia froze as though suddenly snapped back to reality.
“Right,” she mumbled, “dangerous… Team two, any thoughts, can we take some readings?”
“Already on it ma’am.” Zara and Jordan were rifling through a set of duffle bags for the right scanners. Standing up Zara added, “Jordan grab those couplers please.”
Zara methodically attached the wires between the couplers and scanner as Jordan made the final connection to the computer and the screen flashed to life as data streams filled it.
“Electro-magnetics?” Oliver asked pointing to a column of data. “Look here.”
“Yeah but this one,” Margot reached passed him and touched the screen. “That is out of frequency range for magnetics, that’s light!”
“Magnetics, electricity, light…” Sophia mind drifted back to the formation where Victor’s office chair used to be in the desert. “It’s him Sam.”
“Who?”Adrian asked. “Are picking up something you’ve seen before?”
“Soph…” Sam started.
“Sam!” Sophia snapped as she spun on her heels to face her. “Don’t start. I know it impossible, but I know it’s him.”
“She is talking about Victor Mikhailov.” Sam said in a clinically detached tone as she leveled her gaze at Sophia. “Which is impossible because he died right in front of both of us.”
“I know.” Sophia said softly, her eyes falling to her toes.
“In the desert,” Sam began “at the project site. We discovered a crystaline formation that seemed to have grown exactly where Victor’s chair sat in front of the desk in his field office, it glows exactly like those wires are glowing now.”
“Alright guys,” Sam announced over the radio, “break it down and pack it up, we’ve got our data for today’s excersize.”
“Ten four ma’am.” Came the reply.
The trip back to HGH headquarters was filled with excited conversations, everyone anxious to share what they observed during the test, comparing notes with one another and theorizing about the whole experience.
“How’d you come up with this ma’am?” Nathaniel asked as Sophia entered the conference room. “I mean as a kid? I was advanced, but this is genius ma’am, right up there with Nicola Tesla himself!”
“You know Tesla?” Sophia paused, a slow smile etching her face.
“Oh god,” Sam sneered with a laugh. “You had to say that name, didn’t you.”
“Huh?” Nathaniel was clearly confused.
“Let me explain.” Sophia began. “Nicola Tesla was my childhood hero.”
No one in the room was expecting it.
“Yes, I was a nerd from the time I was big enough to hold a scientific journal.” Sophia suddenly felt a flush of shy embarassment rush to her cheeks. “When I was little and we lived in Romania, we didn’t have much. I mean we didn’t go hungry, but when it came to entertainment, mom and dad were never able to satisfy my craving for discovery so I turned to the library.”
“The only six year old to take herself there too!” Sam laughed.
“Six?” Devon asked. “Seriously?”
“Yes.” Sophia said easily. “By the time I was in middle school I had read Tesla’s complete works, and by high school I had committed his entire Colorado Springs experiment to memory.” She paused to let her words land. “Freshman year I tried replicating his transmission experiments myself, but again who has the money to build giant coil sets as a teen, right?”
A collective laugh filled the room as she continued. “But I found something that Tesla missed, and the secret lies in the Schuman Resonance. He was trying to force power into the ground, using specific frequencies to create resonances of their own in hopes of being able to collect said electricity for use in a home. What he miscalculated was the cost of pumping that much electricity into the earth, then trying to pull it back out creates too much loss to be efficient enough for production.”
“And you figured out how to overcome it?” Ethan asked.
“Not overcome it,” Sophia corrected, “but to piggy back on it and work with it.”
Confusion washed through the room as the silence filled the air.
“No?” Sophia asked. “Maybe this way. Think of the Schuman Resonance like a carrier wave.” She paused to look around the room. “A very powerful carrier wave, but a carrier none the less.”
“Like in RF?” Parker asked.
“Exactly like in RF.” Sophia nearly shouted in her enthusiasm. “You see Nicola Tesla had the right idea, just the wrong application. Instead of trying to force or overpower nature I found a way to use it, talk through it and co-exist within the ecosystem in espouses. Just like a computer sends a packet of information out on a carrier wave, that laptop attached to the receiver is sending packets of data at seven point eight three herz.”
“The base frequency.” Parker scratched his head.
“The most powerful frequency.” Sam corrected.
“And the frequency that carries my data packets from point A to point B. “ Sophia added.
“So instead of trying to inject the earth with high voltage electricity that isn’t matched to it,” Sophia drew a large circle with a couple arrows poking into it on the white-board at the front of the room as she spoke. We inject data packets that ride the earths natural frequencies,” She drew another circle only on this one she drew wavy lines through it then she made dots in the troughs of the wavy lines.
“And the Schuman Resonance frequencies carry it.” Marcus said with a satisfied smile.
“Exactly!” Sophia smiled.
“So how far can you get with it?” Lucas spoke up for the first time. “I mean, what’s the tested range?”
Sophia smiled nervously as she admitted, “As of today around two and half miles.”
“Umm,” Lucas said, “today?”
“We were teen age girls from poor families building a science fair project,” Sam stepped in, “we didn’t even have a car back then to drive between the test locations if we would have wanted to.”
“So really this is just a prototype then?” Tessa asked.
“Is anything that is still in development more than a prototype?” It was more of a statement than a question despite Sophia’s tone.