The alley behind Eastgate Market reeked of fried coolant and broken promises.
Lucas crouched beside the collapsed signal post, wiping grime from a shredded wire bundle with the corner of his sleeve. Above him, the neon sign of a half-dead clinic blinked erratically. The techs had already left. The civilians were kept back by a low-voltage drone perimeter.
Only Lucas and Talia remained—and the silence between them was getting louder.
"So, are we gonna talk about it?" Lucas asked without looking up.
Talia didn't answer right away. She stood, arms crossed, watching the flicker of static pulses on her wrist console.
"Talk about what?"
"Mike," Lucas said, tapping a broken relay. "He ditched us with a bad excuse and hasn't answered his comms in hours."
Talia exhaled, frustrated. "You don't know that something's wrong."
Lucas looked up. "I don't. But I feel it."
Encrypted Echoes
The Eastgate post had gone offline three hours ago. CPOA sent them to check for routine damage.
It wasn't.
Talia had traced the disconnection to a deeper issue—a burst of untraceable energy that fried all nearby tech. Power relays. Cameras. Even pocket devices.
"A localized EMP?" Lucas asked.
"Not quite. It was... patterned. Look."
She flipped her console around.
Across the screen were rhythmic waves of static. A repeating pulse.
Lucas squinted. "That's not noise."
"It's a message."
She tapped to auto-translate using Cultic Cipher Layer B—something she'd installed months ago without reporting it.
The pulse decoded into a single phrase:
"The Flame Stirs. Resonance Activated."
Lucas's mouth went dry.
"They're tracking him."
The Watcher
Unseen from above, a mechanical hawk hovered silently—eyes zooming on the two agents. Data streamed from its wings in ultraviolet pulses.
It relayed back to a cult node buried in a sewer under Eastgate Square.
There, a group of cloaked cultists gathered around a ritual plate.
The projection of Mike's face flickered above it, superimposed over Vyre's.
"Resonance confirmed," one whispered.
Another nodded. "The memory link holds. We only need to wait."
Meanwhile, Lucas Makes a Call
Talia typed rapidly into her device, decrypting more lines of the strange pulse.
Lucas paced nearby, tapping a burner comm to check Mike's location. Nothing. Again.
"Still blank?" Talia asked.
Lucas's jaw tightened. "He's not just off the grid. He's ghosting us."
He paused. Then muttered:
"You know what's weird? The first time I met Mike, I saw him dodge a stun mine by instinct. A second before it even armed."
Talia raised an eyebrow. "Reflex?"
"No. Something else. Like he knew it would go off. Like he's lived it before."
Talia looked down.
"The Hive deals in memory."
"You think he's one of them?"
She didn't answer.
Back to the Archives
As they returned to HQ, Talia requested quiet access to the agency's mission memory logs—specifically all early contact reports on Hive-linked events.
She scrolled until she found a flagged incident from twenty years ago.
"Subject: M. Callahan. Age: Unknown. Incident Level: E-Class. Outcome: Memory Suppression Ordered."
Her blood ran cold.
She looked up at Lucas, eyes wide.
"He was involved before any of us even knew his name."
Lucas stared at the file.
"Then we were never assigned to him by accident."
Final Scene – Nightfall
The skyline of Gravemarch burned orange in the polluted dusk.
Lucas stood on a rooftop, Talia beside him, both watching as a burst of energy flickered faintly to the north.
Talia raised her scanner. "That's not lightning. It's resonance."
Lucas clenched his jaw.
"He's awake. And he's not alone anymore."