Red Owl approached, his gaze piercing. "The spirits have spoken to you. They do not choose lightly."
Britt nodded slowly, the weight of the Nasu's despair still pressing upon his soul. "I saw... darkness. A being lost in pain, stripped of everything."
The elder placed a reassuring hand on Britt's shoulder. "Come, rest. The journey of the spirit is taxing."
As Red Owl's hand rested on Britt's shoulder, a surge of energy coursed through him. The world around him blurred, the campfire's glow fading into darkness. Britt felt himself being pulled once more into the realm of visions. He stood in a vast, desolate landscape—the remnants of Unterra's collapsed citadel. The air was thick with sorrow, the ruins echoing with whispers of the past. Halal knelt at the shattered remnants of the throne he once ruled.
"If power cost her freedom, I want no part in it," Halal declared, laying down his blade.
A soft light emerged, coalescing into the form of Wafu. She approached Halal, her touch gentle as she placed a hand on his chest. A shard of his former power returned, illuminating the darkness around them. Suddenly, a jarring sensation gripped Britt. The vision fractured, and he found himself back in the Comanche tent, gasping for air. The tribe gathered around, their eyes filled with reverence.
"You walked in the world of ghosts and gods," an elder whispered.
Britt could still feel Wafu's presence, a thread connecting him to the vision. He turned to Halal, whose voice echoed in his mind.
"That… was memory."
The light faded like breath on a mirror—soft, retreating, and wrong.
Then came the static.
It wasn't just sound. It was texture, clinging to Rico's skin like dead pixels in a warm bath. His boots landed not on blood-soaked soil or scorched battlefield but cold metal—slick, humming faintly.
The portal around him shimmered, unfinished. It flickered like a memory skipping between frames. His breath fogged in the air, but the room wasn’t cold.
Rico blinked.
1864 was gone.
Replaced by steel walls, pulsating LED lines, and a silent hum he knew too well.
The SIMNET Core.
But something was off. The smell of ozone hung too thick. The red standby lights pulsed like they had a heartbeat, and the air itself felt...surveilled.
His hands trembled slightly—residual tremors from the peyote, maybe. Or maybe it was the fact he had just watched his entire reality collapse like a corrupted simulation… again.
He stepped forward—and that’s when he noticed he wasn’t alone.
A man stood at the terminal console, half-lit by its glow, wearing a dark gray tech jumpsuit, fingers twitching across the screen.
He was young. Late twenties. Sharp jaw. Nervous eyes. A badge that read: Simtech | P. Fales.
Rico cleared his throat.
The tech jumped—visibly startled—then tried to play it off with a half-salute.
“Sir! Didn’t realize you'd, uh… re-materialized already.”
Rico’s eyes narrowed.
“Yeah? Didn’t realize I was supposed to de-materialize at all.”
Fales scratched behind his ear, clearly buying time.
Rico took a step closer. His boots made a soft clink on the grated floor.
“What the hell just happened in 1864?”
Fales gave a nervous chuckle that didn’t reach his eyes. “Ah, well—minor data defragmentation. Could be regional server conflict. Some solar flare interference. Cross-dimensional packet loss. Standard stuff.”
“Try that again in English.”
The tech swallowed.
“You glitched out, sir.”
Rico’s jaw clenched. “I noticed.”
“I mean—fully. We lost your anchor. Your vitals dropped out. SIMNET began rewriting the local timeline. You were about to become part of it—permanently. I barely rerouted the pulse in time.”
“You?”
Fales hesitated. “Everyone else cleared out. Director Schilling ordered an evac ten minutes before your spike.”
“Of course he did.”
Rico turned, scanning the room. The console hummed.
The main screen read:Phase Protocol 641018 Ready.
His eyes drifted to a corner security cam—its lens cracked and dark. The observation deck above was empty.
“Where is Schilling?” Rico asked.
The tech hesitated again. “Uh… unavailable.”
“Unavailable, or hiding?”
Fales didn’t answer.
The silence stretched like wire.
“Elijah watches when Schilling walks away.”
Halal’s voice echoed in Rico’s mind, deep and cold.
“A deal was made in your absence.”
Rico took another step toward the console, eyes sharp.
“You wanna tell me what kind of deal Schilling made while I was gone?”
“I’m just a tech, man,” Fales muttered, tapping the screen. “They don’t tell me anything. I just patch the neural weave and reroute overflow.”
“But you saw something.”
Fales’ eyes flicked up—just for a second.
Then down again.
“There was a flash feed... an override channel I’d never seen before. Logged in from an external source. Tag said: ELI-J. Not standard. Not in the database.”
“Elijah.”
Fales nodded, almost imperceptibly.
“Schilling didn’t argue. He just... complied. Then he left. Told us to evacuate core personnel and leave only one tether operator in case of anchor retrieval.”
“Which is you.”
“Lucky me.”
A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.
Rico paced. The fluorescent lights above buzzed unevenly.
“Is this feed still live?”
“No, it auto-scrubbed. Just gone. Like it was never there.”
“Except it was.”
Fales tapped a button on the console. A pale holographic window opened, displaying real-time vitals, Stroma pulses, and a countdown timer labeled: Final Phase Initialization – 00:17:52
He looked up. “You're due back in just under eighteen minutes. Protocol can’t stall any longer.”
“What happens if it does?”
Fales looked grim. “We lose her. The sim collapses, and real-world drift becomes irreversible. She’ll be gone.”
Rico’s heart knocked twice. Wafu. RJ. And somewhere beyond that, the truth. He stared at the terminal, then at the cracked cam, then back at Fales.
“Why’d you stay?”
Fales blinked. “What?”
“You said Schilling ordered everyone out. You stayed. Why?”
The tech shrugged, but not convincingly.
“Someone had to catch you.”
Rico watched him for a long beat. Then he smirked, dry and sharp.
“Let me guess—you’re not just some simtech intern, are you?”
Fales gave a sheepish grin. “Never said I was.”
“Watch the nameless ones,” Halal whispered. “They carry the weight of unsung truths.”
A soft alarm chirped. The countdown hit 00:12:00.
Fales turned back to the screen. “We’re close. Core’s aligning. Frequency match is holding. She’s waiting.”
Rico swallowed.
He looked at his hands—still steady. Still his. The peyote high had worn off, but the visions hadn’t. They clung to his soul like static.
“You saw it, didn’t you?” Halal said. “The glitch wasn’t random. It was a fracture. Someone tried to rip your code in half.”
“Who?” Rico asked silently.
“Elijah. Or someone who serves him. Schilling’s no longer in control. Not of you. Not of this.”
Rico exhaled through his nose. Everything had changed. Wafu was still inside. Somewhere. Maybe real. Maybe simulated. But if she was waiting—it meant there was a door. And that door was about to close. He looked at Fales again.
“Final check?”
“Stroma core is primed. Sync is tight. Neural tethers show green. Path integrity at 96%.”
“No sign of more glitches?”
“Not yet.”
“Not yet doesn’t comfort me.”
Fales offered a shrug. “Welcome to the edge of god-tech, sir.”
Rico stepped toward the terminal. A warm buzz pulsed beneath the metal beneath his feet. The chamber dimmed. Lights narrowed to a single halo ring above the platform. Fales keyed the final sequence.
“Stroma anchor locking.”
A light bathed Rico’s chest. His vitals stabilized on the screen.
“Mind clear?” Fales asked.
“No such thing.”
“Intent clear?”
Rico looked down. His fists clenched, not in fear, but in recognition. He didn’t need clarity. He needed resolve.
The timer hit 00:00:10.
The humming deepened. The chamber narrowed its light to a vertical beam—like judgment, or salvation.
Fales turned to him. “You ready?”
Without hesitation, Rico declared, "We end this. We get her back."
Halal's voice responded, "And we remember who we are."
Rico stepped back into the light. It wasn’t warm. It wasn’t blinding. It was sterile—a ghost-white glare like a dentist’s lamp magnified across a thousand skies. His boots clicked on nothing, a sound that shouldn't have echoed but somehow did, like it was searching for walls that weren’t there. His hands flexed. His breath was slow. The last thing he remembered was the peyote burning through his chest, etching sigils into his spine. Halal’s voice cracking into his bones. Wafu’s eyes—those ancient eyes—beckoning him back through the veil.
But this?
This wasn’t Wafu. This wasn’t 1864. He blinked once, twice. The air pixelated. Not metaphorically. The space around him tore, jagged lines like screen cracks opening into more cracks. Then the air laughed—a cackling chorus of glitching audio, chopped and screwed, reversed and pitched like old tapes stretched too thin.
"Welcome ba—ba—ba—ack, hero."
The words snapped like a broken neck. Rico spun. No source. No figure. Just a flickering landscape now—like a Wild West saloon painted by a toddler high on static. The floorboards rippled, bulged, turned to dirt, then sand, then disappeared entirely. A staircase to nowhere rose behind him. A train rolled overhead. Then disappeared. Then came back upside down.
He clenched his jaw. "Nah. Nope. This ain’t the real reentry. I saw the sign. I felt her."
More laughter. Deeper now. Layered.
"Feelings ain’t facts, cowboy."
"Wrong line, wrong time."
"Try again. Maybe next cycle."
The voices belonged to them—the Hackers. Not code jockeys. Not digital punks. These were the Others—the parasitic agents built from corrupted memories. The ones who tore simulations apart and rewrote truth into mockery.
"Rico," Halal warned from deep within, "hold your anchor. You're not lost... unless you believe it."
"Don’t trust the images. They feed on your pain."
Images popped into his vision like old browser pop-ups. His mother screaming. Wafu’s face in grayscale. RJ’s tiny hand disappearing into ash. Scenes played at random. His own body hanging from a tree. Laughter. Him holding a sword. More laughter. A child pointing at him, mouthing: It’s your fault. Rico dropped to his knees.
"ENOUGH!"
The world froze. Everything mid-glitch. Like a video paused on a corrupted VHS. His breath ragged. His heartbeat like war drums. Then—The whole damn scene broke. Shattered. Not like glass. Like film. Cells of reality tore apart, reels disintegrating, the sound of the tape flapping like a flag in a hurricane. A silence dropped—total. Thicker than death. He wasn’t standing anymore. He was in the void. Alone.
The void breathes. Not air, but memory. It seeps through cracked time like blood through gauze. Britt floats—no, drifts—not alive, not dead, just caught. Caught in the void to Lethe. He knows this place. Not by name, but by taste. The metallic bitterness of forgetting. The weightlessness of everything he once was dripping out of him in reverse time. Around him, the world ripples, shapeless and gray.
Then the pulse comes. Not a sound. A hum. Then a tremor of light, resonating through the ash. Halal enters. He doesn’t walk. He radiates. Like a memory remembered by the soul before it learns language. Britt tries to speak, but the words aren’t his. They never were. Halal speaks through him.
And with the breathless stillness of eternity, Halal delivers a series of three-lined riddles in eleven stanzas.
- I am the cipher in your breath, The hush before the fall of sound, The echo time forgets.
- I am the flame that eats the code, The path unwalked yet walked before, A loop that loops alone.
- I am the child beneath the tree, Who watches war and calls it play, While roots bleed rust and bone.
- I am the father who forgets, The son who never met his name, The wound that will not scar.
- I am the mirror cracked by truth, The laugh that breaks a century, The kiss before the war.
- I am the spark beneath your skin, The script you wrote but never read, The light that hides in code.
- I am the mother turned to myth, The silence in the soldier's eye, The lullaby of ghosts.
- I am the sword that sings of peace, The lion teaching lambs to hunt, The love that cuts too deep.
- I am the key within the dream, The lock that fears to be unlatched, The door you always knew.
- I am the river you must drink, The thirst that makes you whole again, The drowning that redeems.
- I am the question you became, The answer buried in your scream, The name behind the veil.
The words don't just settle in Britt's mind—they burn. Around him, Lethe bends, reacting. A tree made of rifle barrels grows before him. Laughter echoes. A shadow dances. A child looks away. He begins to understand. Not the meaning. But the message. And then, like breath caught in a throat—He is pulled. The world shudders. A pulse surges. Lethe rips away. Britt gasps, lungs reborn. Metal groans. Lights flicker. The Core pulses like a second heartbeat. A terminal flashes red. Alarms whisper warnings.
"We end this," he says, voice cracked with something more than resolve. "We get her back."
Halal hums from within.
"And we remember who we are."
A fan clicks lazily overhead. The television flickers—gymnastics finals, it’s the XXIII Olympiad Summer Olympics in 1984. A little baby gurgles, chewing on his fingers. Wafu sits beside Britt on the floor, cross-legged, hair wrapped in a purple scarf. She smiles, but not with her eyes. Something else is there. Something ancient.
"They're sticking that landing better than we ever could."
Britt nods. "Balance beam’s a bitch."
She chuckles. The moment is normal. Too normal. Then, the knock. Three taps. Measured. Mechanical. Wafu freezes. The baby stops. Britt doesn’t speak. Neither does she. Their eyes meet. A breath. A subtle nod. Her hands gently wrap the baby in a navy blanket. The letters "RJ" are embroidered in gold thread. She places him in a wicker bassinet, every motion deliberate. Britt stands. The air feels thicker now. Halal whispers inside.
“You know what comes. The question is not if... but will you face it or flee?”
Wafu reaches out. Her fingers brush his hand. She wants to say no. He feels it. But she nods. Once. He walked slow, steady. Each step toward the door is a memory sharpening into a blade. Another knock. As he neared the door, something caught his eye—a mirror tucked into the hallway’s corner, half-covered in dust and the yellow light of a dim lamp.
He turned, instinctively, and froze. The reflection didn’t show Britt Johnson. It showed another man—shorter fade, broader shoulders, deeper-set eyes. A scar traced down the left side of his neck. Not recent. Not Britt’s. Rico blinked, heart knocking twice in his ribs.
“This isn’t just a trap,” Halal whispered from deep within. “It’s a test of remembrance.”
The knock came again. Three sharp raps. He reached the door. Breathed in once. Opened it. Two men stood there. Identical suits. Crisp black ties. Flat eyes that didn’t blink. The taller one stepped forward.
“Malcolm Jacobs?”
Rico hesitated—not in confusion, but in acceptance. He looked back once—Wafu stood by RJ, still, arms wrapped around herself like a prayer. Her face unreadable. He turned back to the men. And nodded. No more words. A canvas bag was pulled down over his head—rough fabric scratching across his ears, muffling the moment. Hands gripped his arms. Quick. Professional. Not violent, but final. He stumbled forward. One step. Two. The sound of the door shutting behind him was like a lid sealing over a life. Darkness closed in—not total, but breathing. Heavy. As if memory itself was watching.
Somewhere behind the silence, the riddle plays again.
“I am the question you became… The name behind the veil.”
And the gold-stitched initials shimmer in the dim light. RJ.