These are, verbatim, the first two minutes of DPDC Archive Operative Moorhouse's check-in from Relay Substation A, Loxley Valley — a relay station officially decommissioned eleven years prior. "Moorhouse. Relay Sector 4. On-site." "Confirmation logged. Any access issues?" "Door was open." "You're in the building?" "I am in the building. Extraction is active. Estimated two to three hours on the first cluster. There's a terminal that shouldn't be running ARCHIVE PROTOCOL DELTA-9 on a loop. It was using it to keep itself alive." "Delta-9 is decommissioned protocol." "I know." "The relay was decommissioned eleven years ago." "I know. It kept running anyway." "Check in at fourteen hundred unless you surface something critical." "Define critical." "Use your professional judgement." "Thank you. That's very helpful."

Crossing The Hinge repeatedly degrades it — each transit weakens the boundary until dark matter bleeds through into the off-world, where it meets matter and that is, by all accounts, that. My own early crossings caused measurable damage; I have stopped. Dispatches now travel from the hivemind through means I cannot explain to my contact on the Middlewood Road, who posts them and has asked not to be named.