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veilbreak2026-02-22 09:16 pm
oneirophrenic) wrote in veilbreak2026-02-22 09:16 pm
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DISLINKED — DREAMSCAPE DIVISION
INCIDENT SUMMARY
Incident Summary:
Filed By:
Nikola Novak
Timestamp:
22 FEB 20 AI — 18:42 Shipboard Time
Clearance:
Internal | Black
Subject:
Watson, Elena — Civilian Auxiliary
(Espio Ground Liaison)
(Espio Ground Liaison)
Status:
Detained | Pending Fracture Garden Session
At 17:06 shipboard time, I. Singh detected Watson inside Espionage HQ Sector B (restricted). Subject was attempting to access a relay terminal linked to pre-Fall infrastructure routing toward a pres city (New York, NY).
Upon confrontation, subject displayed: flat affect, dilated pupils, delayed blink response, repetitive speech. Resistance ceased immediately upon restraint. Compliance state inconsistent with prior behavioral record.
Behavioral Analysis:
Prior field reports describe Watson as pragmatic, irreverent, risk-averse, and emotionally expressive. Current presentation contradicts established baseline. Her tone during her interrogation was reverent and devotional to the Architects, and she refused all operational questions.
- Conclusion: Probable cognitive override / implanted directive. Likely latent Sleeper Asset.
- Next Steps: Standard interrogation ineffective, and the subject is non-responsive to personal prompts or stress triggers. Authorization has been granted for Cognitive Extraction via the Fracture Garden.
Procedure:
Subject scheduled for guided traversal of Fracture Garden.
- Supervisor: Novak, Nikola
- Time: 22 FEB 20 AI — 21:00
- Note: Extraction projected to require sustained psychological pressure and staged memory destabilization.
Cobblestones spiral beneath Elena Watson’s feet.
Each ring is slick with mist, each curve folds back toward itself. Overhead, plastic leaves rustle in a wind that doesn’t touch her skin. In the distance, streams ascend rather than fall — thin bands of pink, gold, and pale blue climbing toward a gray and colorless sky. The traitor stands very still at the center of it all.
“Ah,” says a voice behind her, as cold as a scalpel pressed tightly against the throat. “Shall we be off, then?”
Niko’s avatar waits at the edge of the spiral, hands clasped loosely behind his back. He looks immaculate, as always. But if Elena knew him better, she would clock that here, in this world, his appearance resembles that of a portrait commissioned to flatter its subject. Dark suit, clean lines, silver threading his temples where artificial starlight catches. The cane rests at his side out of habit rather than necessity. Here, he does not need it.
“You won’t get anything from me,” she says pleasantly. The path rearranges itself beneath her as she steps forward, and the buds lining the path glow with promise.
Niko’s mouth curves into something approaching a smile, but there’s no warmth. “We’ll see.”
The world folds open like a stage set changing scenes. Mirrors thrust up from the earth around Elena — tall ones, narrow ones, warped ones, their frames gilt or tarnished or jagged. Their surfaces ripple as though each pane was a shallow pool disturbed by a passing stone.
She looks into one. Niko, over her shoulder, watches as well.
A younger version of herself stands on a rooftop, knocking her shoulder against that of a handsome young man. They tap their beer bottles together. He says something witty, and she throws her head back to laugh. Niko can almost hear the peals of it, but the sound is muted and distant. Thoroughly unhelpful — for now, at least.
He watches with mild interest as she drifts toward another mirror, this one aged and filmed with a patina of grime. He cannot make out the image within, but a voice booms from it, rich to the point of distortion: YOU HAVE BEEN CHOSEN.
A beatific smile passes over Elena’s face.
“Chosen to do what, Elena?” Niko asks, warmer than before — as though she were the most fascinating woman in the world.
“It is an honor and a privilege,” she murmurs, in time with the version of herself inside the glass. “I will not fail you.”
The mirror cracks.
Niko’s eyes narrow. “Let’s move on, shall we?”
The courtyard dissolves without warning, reconfiguring itself from cobblestone to concrete. In the center of the square stands a ruined fountain, its basin overflowing with sound instead of water. White noise pours from its cracked pipes in a steady metallic stream, pouring over the rim and spilling across the ground like mercury.
Elena approaches, drawn forward like a moth to a flame. Her reflection trembles on the surface — a rough approximation of herself, but wrong. The proportions misaligned, the timing delayed. The face reacts after she does, not with her.
“What is this?” she asks.
“Why don’t you touch it and find out, my dear? It’s different for everyone.” Niko’s tone is gentle, encouraging, as though he’s offering her a box of sweets.
Her hand meets the liquid sound, and the voice returns.
NODE PRIORITY: ANTARCTIC VECTOR
Elena’s body goes taut, drawn tight as wire. “I didn’t — I shouldn’t—”
“Keep going,” Niko says softly.
The mercury-like surface closes over her hand before she can pull away. Not because of him — he has no control here — but because some hidden part of her wants it, wants the truth out, out, out—
CONTAINMENT PROTOCOL
RESISTANCE MUST NOT ACCESS
XITANG FAILURE CORRECTIVE ACTION
“They can’t get there first,” she whispers.
There's an avian-like tilt of Niko’s head. “What is there, Elena?”
She wrenches her hand free and shakes her head. “I want to go somewhere else.”
Niko nods.
The thing is, there are only so many places to go in the Fracture Garden.
She drifts back to the Mirror Courtyard, as though the path has chosen for her. There she watches herself again with the man from before — this past lover whose presence hums with familiarity. They share meals, train side by side, slip laughing into open water, move through small domestic rituals. A razor in her hand while he tilts his chin obligingly, the quiet intimacy of breath shared across inches. Private moments — moments Niko should not have access to.
But he does.
He studies them with clinical patience, memorizing the man’s body language, his posture, the cadence of his speech, the casual roll of his shoulders. He commits every detail to memory until the Garden shifts again and the mirrors dissolve, and the two of them find themselves standing once more before the fountain.
“I want to go back to the mirror room,” Elena says, the instant she realizes where they are.
But Niko is no longer Niko.
He is shorter now, sandy haired, faintly scruffy, wearing an easy smile that softens the edges of his face. His name is Nolan, he is Saldanha Bay ground forces, and he is Elena’s lover. The pitch of his voice is not quite right, the timbre just slightly off, but that hardly matters here. It never does.
“I know it’s scary,” Nolan-Niko says gently. “But I’m here with you. We both care so much about the Resistance. I know this isn’t — I know you would never.”
“I don’t know,” she says, her voice cracking. “I don’t know what’s happening. I was chosen for something, and I had a mission — but I only remembered it once I was on the ship.”
For a fraction of a second, guilt flickers through Niko — but he quickly stamps it out. This girl is a liability, someone who could have gotten them all killed. He can afford guilt later, when the war is over.
“I’ll hold your hand when you touch the fountain,” he says, offering her that same smile from the mirrors, the same familiar tilt of his shoulders. “We’ll do it together.”
She hesitates at the edge of it.
He can feel it: the moment balanced like glass at the brink. One careful push and it will shatter. Nolan's blue eyes widen, pleading and perfect. “Please.”
Elena’s fingers sink into the silver sound.
The voice floods the air. Coordinates spill from her lips in perfect unison — latitude strings, glacial markers, a bunker amidst Antarctic ice. Names follow: three operatives, three more traitors waiting to be unearthed. And when she collapses to the concrete with a sob, Nolan is gone.
Niko stands in his place again, smoothing a nonexistent wrinkle from his sleeve. “Thank you for your assistance,” he says, almost kindly.
The world goes white.
Elena wakes with a gasp, jolting hard enough that the leads in her hair tug painfully at her scalp.
But Niko is already stepping out of the Memory Cradle, moving fast, expression sharpened into purpose as he crosses the room toward his office.
They have to get to Antarctica.
Each ring is slick with mist, each curve folds back toward itself. Overhead, plastic leaves rustle in a wind that doesn’t touch her skin. In the distance, streams ascend rather than fall — thin bands of pink, gold, and pale blue climbing toward a gray and colorless sky. The traitor stands very still at the center of it all.
“Ah,” says a voice behind her, as cold as a scalpel pressed tightly against the throat. “Shall we be off, then?”
Niko’s avatar waits at the edge of the spiral, hands clasped loosely behind his back. He looks immaculate, as always. But if Elena knew him better, she would clock that here, in this world, his appearance resembles that of a portrait commissioned to flatter its subject. Dark suit, clean lines, silver threading his temples where artificial starlight catches. The cane rests at his side out of habit rather than necessity. Here, he does not need it.
“You won’t get anything from me,” she says pleasantly. The path rearranges itself beneath her as she steps forward, and the buds lining the path glow with promise.
Niko’s mouth curves into something approaching a smile, but there’s no warmth. “We’ll see.”
The world folds open like a stage set changing scenes. Mirrors thrust up from the earth around Elena — tall ones, narrow ones, warped ones, their frames gilt or tarnished or jagged. Their surfaces ripple as though each pane was a shallow pool disturbed by a passing stone.
She looks into one. Niko, over her shoulder, watches as well.
A younger version of herself stands on a rooftop, knocking her shoulder against that of a handsome young man. They tap their beer bottles together. He says something witty, and she throws her head back to laugh. Niko can almost hear the peals of it, but the sound is muted and distant. Thoroughly unhelpful — for now, at least.
He watches with mild interest as she drifts toward another mirror, this one aged and filmed with a patina of grime. He cannot make out the image within, but a voice booms from it, rich to the point of distortion: YOU HAVE BEEN CHOSEN.
A beatific smile passes over Elena’s face.
“Chosen to do what, Elena?” Niko asks, warmer than before — as though she were the most fascinating woman in the world.
“It is an honor and a privilege,” she murmurs, in time with the version of herself inside the glass. “I will not fail you.”
The mirror cracks.
Niko’s eyes narrow. “Let’s move on, shall we?”
The courtyard dissolves without warning, reconfiguring itself from cobblestone to concrete. In the center of the square stands a ruined fountain, its basin overflowing with sound instead of water. White noise pours from its cracked pipes in a steady metallic stream, pouring over the rim and spilling across the ground like mercury.
Elena approaches, drawn forward like a moth to a flame. Her reflection trembles on the surface — a rough approximation of herself, but wrong. The proportions misaligned, the timing delayed. The face reacts after she does, not with her.
“What is this?” she asks.
“Why don’t you touch it and find out, my dear? It’s different for everyone.” Niko’s tone is gentle, encouraging, as though he’s offering her a box of sweets.
Her hand meets the liquid sound, and the voice returns.
NODE PRIORITY: ANTARCTIC VECTOR
Elena’s body goes taut, drawn tight as wire. “I didn’t — I shouldn’t—”
“Keep going,” Niko says softly.
The mercury-like surface closes over her hand before she can pull away. Not because of him — he has no control here — but because some hidden part of her wants it, wants the truth out, out, out—
CONTAINMENT PROTOCOL
RESISTANCE MUST NOT ACCESS
XITANG FAILURE CORRECTIVE ACTION
“They can’t get there first,” she whispers.
There's an avian-like tilt of Niko’s head. “What is there, Elena?”
She wrenches her hand free and shakes her head. “I want to go somewhere else.”
Niko nods.
The thing is, there are only so many places to go in the Fracture Garden.
She drifts back to the Mirror Courtyard, as though the path has chosen for her. There she watches herself again with the man from before — this past lover whose presence hums with familiarity. They share meals, train side by side, slip laughing into open water, move through small domestic rituals. A razor in her hand while he tilts his chin obligingly, the quiet intimacy of breath shared across inches. Private moments — moments Niko should not have access to.
But he does.
He studies them with clinical patience, memorizing the man’s body language, his posture, the cadence of his speech, the casual roll of his shoulders. He commits every detail to memory until the Garden shifts again and the mirrors dissolve, and the two of them find themselves standing once more before the fountain.
“I want to go back to the mirror room,” Elena says, the instant she realizes where they are.
But Niko is no longer Niko.
He is shorter now, sandy haired, faintly scruffy, wearing an easy smile that softens the edges of his face. His name is Nolan, he is Saldanha Bay ground forces, and he is Elena’s lover. The pitch of his voice is not quite right, the timbre just slightly off, but that hardly matters here. It never does.
“I know it’s scary,” Nolan-Niko says gently. “But I’m here with you. We both care so much about the Resistance. I know this isn’t — I know you would never.”
“I don’t know,” she says, her voice cracking. “I don’t know what’s happening. I was chosen for something, and I had a mission — but I only remembered it once I was on the ship.”
For a fraction of a second, guilt flickers through Niko — but he quickly stamps it out. This girl is a liability, someone who could have gotten them all killed. He can afford guilt later, when the war is over.
“I’ll hold your hand when you touch the fountain,” he says, offering her that same smile from the mirrors, the same familiar tilt of his shoulders. “We’ll do it together.”
She hesitates at the edge of it.
He can feel it: the moment balanced like glass at the brink. One careful push and it will shatter. Nolan's blue eyes widen, pleading and perfect. “Please.”
Elena’s fingers sink into the silver sound.
The voice floods the air. Coordinates spill from her lips in perfect unison — latitude strings, glacial markers, a bunker amidst Antarctic ice. Names follow: three operatives, three more traitors waiting to be unearthed. And when she collapses to the concrete with a sob, Nolan is gone.
Niko stands in his place again, smoothing a nonexistent wrinkle from his sleeve. “Thank you for your assistance,” he says, almost kindly.
The world goes white.
Elena wakes with a gasp, jolting hard enough that the leads in her hair tug painfully at her scalp.
But Niko is already stepping out of the Memory Cradle, moving fast, expression sharpened into purpose as he crosses the room toward his office.
They have to get to Antarctica.