The war room, buried deep under the Architects' hidden base, buzzed with cold, flickering light.
Holographic screens covered every inch of the walls, flashing maps, charts, and surveillance feeds. It looked impressive, but tonight, the room smelled like fear.
And the reason for that fear was floating right in the center of the room:
A big glowing map, blinking red dots crawling across Halewick and slipping into nearby towns like a bad rash.
Each dot meant trouble.
Each dot meant someone had woken up—someone who now remembered things the Architects had worked very, very hard to erase.
Nilgiris stood there, stiff as a statue, fists clenched tight behind his back. His face didn't move, but you could almost hear the rage crackling under his skin.
He leaned toward the map and spoke in a low voice that could freeze a river:
"Containment failed. The infection is spreading."
The Syndicate members—coders, engineers, shadow agents—pretended to be very interested in their shoes, the walls, the air... anything but Nilgiris. Nobody wanted to be the one to tell him what he already knew.
But someone had to, and that someone was Asher—senior Architect, strategist, and probably the only guy in the room who liked living dangerously.
He cleared his throat like a man about to walk into traffic.
"The Lighthouse isn't just leaking information," Asher said carefully.
"It's waking up emotions too. Memories people feel—not just facts we wiped. It's like... emotional glue. We can't just scrub it out anymore."
Nilgiris' face didn't even twitch.
Coldly, he said:
"Then we erase it. All of it. Permanently."
At his words, another screen blinked to life nearby. It wasn't full of cheerful graphs and success metrics—nope. This one showed something worse:
Phase Aether.
A backup plan so brutal even the people who built it hoped they'd never use it.
Phase Æther meant memory wipe at turbo speed:
Nanobots in the air.
Weird frequencies in your dreams.
Brain-melting fear triggers hidden inside TV jingles and social media posts.
In short, it was like pouring gasoline on a campfire to put it out.
Nilgiris didn't blink.
He just growled:
"Deploy Phase Aether. Start with Halewick. Let them remember just enough to scare themselves silly. Make them wish they could forget again."
The room went even quieter, if that was possible. Some of the younger coders shifted uncomfortably, clearly wondering if today was a good day to quit and become goat farmers.
Asher, being the only one brave—or dumb—enough, spoke up again:
"Phase Aether's messy, sir.
Really messy.
Memories are connected.
One town goes, others might follow. We might break a lot more than just Halewick."
If they pulled this trigger, the whole world might end up slightly brain-fried.
Nilgiris' mouth twisted into something that might have been a smile if you squinted hard enough.
"Do it anyway," he said.
"And find the source of The Lighthouse. Destroy it.
And whoever built it—make them wish they were never born."
The room exploded into frantic motion. Orders were shouted, black ops teams were mobilized, and frequency jammers powered up across Halewick.
On the internet, things got even weirder:
News articles popped up about "mass hallucinations" and "crazy conspiracy theories."
Social media bots flooded timelines with confusion, cat videos, and just enough fake science to drown out the truth.
In the middle of it all, Nilgiris watched.
He let a thin, humorless smile tug at the corner of his mouth.
He muttered under his breath:
"Let them turn against their own memories. Let the fire burn itself out."
But deep down, he knew it wasn't that simple.
This wasn't just hackers or rebels messing around.
This wasn't just another annoying leak they could patch up with lies.
The Lighthouse was old.
It was deep.
It was stubborn.
It wasn't living in the internet or in archives.
It lived in people—their bones, their blood, their hearts.
And the more the Architects tried to erase it,
the brighter it would burn.
Somewhere out there, in the cracks of their perfect world, real resistance was waking up.
Not with guns.
Not with bombs.
But with something far more dangerous:
Memories.
And no firewall in the world could stop that.
But even as the war room spun into organized chaos around him, a seed of unease burrowed deep in Nilgiris' gut.
For all his power, all his certainty, something gnawed at the edges of his mind:
This wasn't just another hack.
Not some rogue data cluster or grassroots rebellion.
The Lighthouse was something older.
Deeper.
Stronger.
It wasn't just about information.
It lived in blood and bone and spirit.
It was something primal—an inheritance that no amount of technological tampering could erase.
And the more they tried to crush it,
the brighter The Lighthouse would burn.
Somewhere, far beyond their monitors and war plans, the first true resistance was stirring.
And it would not go quietly.