Clear Water, Hidden Danger

Chapter 15 - The New Order

The first full night under structure began at 2300 hours.
Three-hour rotations. Two-man teams. Lin on comms and cameras.

The schedule was tight but fair—Wolf and Rourke on north, Hawk and Burns on south, Stacks on west with Neal floating between zones. I took the armory watch with Lin, monitoring the feeds while the hum of the generators filled the quiet.

The plant had changed since the convoy arrived. There was order now—patrols moving like clockwork, radios chirping alive every fifteen minutes with status checks. North clear. South holding. Fence line steady. The voices were firm, confident, as if discipline alone could keep the world from slipping back into madness.

Mark’s absence lingered like a missing frequency in the hum.

By 0200, I left Lin watching the screens and stepped out into the yard. The air was warm, but clean, and wide open now that the fog had burned off. The moon hung low, white against the tanks, and the crunch of boots on gravel carried like whispers.

Wolf’s voice came from the north post. “Rotation in ten, RJ.”

“Copy that,” I said. “Anyone need relief?”

Rourke raised a hand, rubbing his eyes. “Been up since yesterday. I’ll crash first if that’s alright.”

“Go,” I said. “Two hours, tops.”

He nodded, handed his rifle to Stacks, and headed toward the bunks. The rest of us stayed in the quiet, scanning the tree line. The stillness had weight—thick and expectant, like air before a storm.

At 3:18, the storm came.

The ground shivered first, soft as breath. Then the metal tanks began to hum—a low vibration that climbed through the soles of our boots. Lights flickered twice. The hum deepened.

“Pulse!” Lin’s voice cracked through the comms. “Repeat—pulse incoming!”

“Ear protection!” Neal’s command tore across the yard.

The wave hit hard. The vibration ran through concrete and bone, turning the air into a living thing. It lasted a full minute and ten seconds, long enough to rattle every bolt in the walls.

Then silence—snapped back fast and violent.

The first scream shattered it.

High, ragged, almost human. Then another. Then several—rising from the woods north of the plant, the sound of something trying to remember how to speak.

“Movement on north fence!” Lin shouted. “Multiple heat signatures—fast movers along the line!”

Wolf braced his rifle. “I’ve got visuals—tree line’s moving!”

“Hold fire!” Neal ordered. “No shooting unless they breach!”

The screeches grew louder, crawling along the perimeter. Metal groaned. Something beyond the floodlights dragged claws—or something like them—across the chain links. Sparks flared once, brief and orange.

Inside, chaos rippled through the halls—children crying, parents shouting over the noise. I ran to the control room where Alex crouched beside Gabriel and the others, wrapping blankets around them.

“It’s okay,” she whispered, rocking Marie. “It’s just noise, mija.”

Gabriel clung to her. “They sound closer.”

“They are,” I said quietly. “But they won’t get through.”

Alex looked up, searching my face. “How long will it last?”

The radio cracked again. Lin’s voice was thin, stretched. “Screeches moving down the fence line—about two hundred meters apart. No breach yet.”

Neal: “Keep visuals. If they sync with the pulse again, mark the times.”

“Copy.”

The noise didn’t stop—it migrated. Sometimes near, sometimes far, circling the perimeter like a slow hunt. Every few minutes, the fence shook with dull impacts that made the camera feeds blur.

No one slept.

By 0400, it had been more than an hour since the pulse. The screeches still came, rising and falling in a broken rhythm.

1:23. That’s how long it lasted before fading.

When it finally went quiet, the only sound left was the faint ticking of the floodlights and the ragged breathing of the men still gripping their rifles.

Neal’s voice broke the silence. “Report in.”

Wolf: “North line clear.”
Stacks: “West clear.”
Hawk: “South holding.”
Lin: “All cameras stable. No breach.”

Alex sat against the wall, the kids asleep in her arms. Her eyes stayed open. “They’re testing us,” she said softly.

“Yeah,” I said. “And they’re learning.”

Even in the quiet, I could still feel it—the hum buried under the concrete, slower now, like it was resting between breaths.

Outside, the moonlight glinted off the fence where the fog once hid everything. The ground was still trembling, faint but steady.

The new order had begun.
And somewhere in those dark trees, the next one was already waiting.