The Black File returns from Silph-9 and is met with silence. No command. No medals. No reprimands. Just a curt "mission complete" stamp and a reclassification of everything they saw. The official record says nothing happened. Worse — it says it never could have. Elias begins to feel the weight of a lie too large to carry.
----
There was no procession when they landed.
No medical team.
No Commissar.
Not even a tech-priest to retrieve Lirae's shattered servo-skull.
Just a message pinged to Volst's slate:
"Report to Quarantine Bay 12. Debrief will be transmitted. Silence enforced."—Command Signature: Unknown
Quarantine Bay 12 wasn't even sealed.
It looked more like a storage shed than a debrief room. Steel benches. Fold-out cots. Three dataslates left charging on the wall.
Volst tossed hers aside the moment it blinked on.
Bit refused to sit. He was upside-down on a vent within two minutes.
Malk tried to light a lho, forgot it was banned in quarantine, and muttered something sacrilegious under his breath.
Elias sat alone in the corner.
He hadn't spoken since the mirror-eyed thing vanished on Silph-9.He hadn't dreamed since either..
It just waited.
His dataslate vibrated.
One message.
No sound.
No return address.
He opened it.
A single file.
"OPERATION ECHO-4: INTERNAL TRAINING RECORD."
Inside, the official report read:
"Recon Team: 5 personnel.Location: Simulated Threat Environment.Result: Team performed adequately under simulated stressors.Outcome: No casualties. No anomalies."
Then a note in smaller script:
"Do not discuss your participation. Do not acknowledge deviation. Do not seek clarification."
Volst was the first to say it aloud.
"This isn't a cover-up."
Elias looked up.
She stared at the wall, jaw tight.
"This is an erasure."
Lirae muttered to herself in code, like she was praying to a logic loop.
Bit dropped from the ceiling and crept toward the corner, tilting his head at Elias.
"They're rewriting the walls," he said, voice low.
"What?"
Bit pointed at the slate in Elias's hand.
"That never happened. But we all remember it. So the lie becomes heavier. The more we carry, the more it sinks."
Malk spat on the floor.
"Sink into what?"
Bit smiled.
"The place underneath."
Elias closed his dataslate.
He said nothing.
But the System whispered:
> Observation Logged: Collective Memory Conflict
> Imperial Data Integrity: Corrupted
> Silph-9 Outcome: Actively Rewritten
> User Reality Anchor: Weakening
Then it added a new line:
> You are the only consistent narrator.
That line stayed on screen for five minutes.
Then erased itself.
Elias opened his journal.
Still intact.
Still real.
He wrote:
"They say it was a simulation.But I have the scar.And I still feel the knife burn."
Across the room, Lirae's cogitator finally rebooted.
She looked up.
Eyes bloodshot.
And said softly:
"Has anyone noticed the dates on the logs?"
Everyone turned.
She held up her slate.
"According to the file, the Silph-9 mission happened eleven months ago."
The room went still.
Malk frowned. "That's not possible."
Volst pulled her own slate. Checked timestamps.
"Mine says the same."
Elias checked his.
Same.
Then the System pinged:
> Temporal Displacement Notice:
> Observed Memory Stream: 7 days
> Documented Duration: 344 days
> Sync Error: UNRESOLVED
No one said a word.
Just sat with it.
And that's when the intercom buzzed overhead.
"You are cleared for reassignment. No further action required. This mission is concluded."
Just like that.
No summary.
No commander.
Just a silence that didn't want to be broken.
And Elias, sitting alone in the corner, clutching the only thing left that felt real:
His journal.
[END OF PART 1]