Fracture

Light and shadows once again collapsed with a thunderous crash—the spacious hall and the enormous apparatus at its far end abruptly shattered into countless fragments of light and shadow, then avalanche-like collapsed once more into the form of a dim cavern. Everything seemed like a fleeting dream, a distorted projection of another Real World onto the current dimension.

Yet Duncan knew that he had truly "seen" it, and he could still see it now.

He looked into the depths of the dim cavern and blinked several times—at every exceedingly brief instant, each time he blinked, he could see something emerge at the very moment his eyelids closed and darkness descended: that grand hall.

He gradually realized that two layers of reality overlapped here, deep beneath Holy Land Island. The "reality" on the deeper layer could not be observed through ordinary means, but it appeared during the 0.002 seconds of each of his blinks.

For no apparent reason, the unit "0.002 seconds" surfaced in Duncan's mind, and he was certain that it was the exact duration for which he saw that hall every time he blinked—an instant nearly impossible for human eyes to capture, yet enough to register in his perception.

He turned around and looked at the "relief" on the wall beside him. In the instant of his next blink, he saw a lifelike avian creature appear inside a specimen containment tank. Then darkness surged forth, reality switched, and it became a relief on the wall once more—a savage, twisted Death's Herald.

Alice seemed to notice the change in Duncan's expression and immediately became worried. "Captain? Are you all right... You suddenly look so serious..."

"...LH-01 did not manage to place everything in the database into the shelter. Those that failed to generate during Genesis remained in the original 'hatchery,'"