The turnoff for the Siren's Rest was a gaping wound in the highway, half-swallowed by sand and neglect. The Leviathan's tires crunched over broken asphalt and the bones of some long-dead animal as Silas steered it onto the decaying side road.
The lullaby was stronger here. A clear, sweet melody that wormed its way into his thoughts. It spoke of warmth, safety, and a soft bed. It spoke of everything that no longer existed.
Lies. All of it.
[WARNING: MENTAL INFLUENCE DETECTED. INCREASING INTENSITY.]
[SYSTEM IS APPLYING COUNTER-FREQUENCY MENTAL SHIELDING.]
[HOST'S EMOTIONAL STATE WILL BE SUPPRESSED FOR OPTIMAL PERFORMANCE.]
Silas felt a cold clarity wash over him. The sweet nostalgia the song was trying to evoke just… died. It became just noise. A tool used by a predator. His grip on the wheel tightened. Good. He didn't need emotions. He needed a clear head and a steady hand.
The motel appeared out of the gloom a mile down the road. It was a classic U-shaped, single-story relic from a dead era. The neon sign flickered erratically, its buzz the only sound besides his engine and the wind.
SIREN'S REST MOTEL
The VACANCY part was dark. The AGONY he'd seen earlier was gone. Now, only a single word flickered in pulsing red:
REST
He pulled the Leviathan to a halt in the center of the cracked parking lot, positioning it to face the road for a quick escape. He killed the engine. The silence that followed was heavy, unnatural.
The lullaby stopped.
Nothing moved. No shuffling shapes in the shadows. No whispers on the wind. Just a dozen motel room doors, all closed. A dozen dark, unblinking eyes.
The System scanned the area.
[ANALYZING ENVIRONMENT…]
[MULTIPLE LOW-INTENSITY ENTROPY SIGNATURES DETECTED WITHIN STRUCTURES.]
[PRIMARY SIGNATURE DETECTED: ROOM 7.]
[SOURCE PROFILE: CLASS-3 PSYCHIC RESONATOR. LURE-TYPE.]
Room 7. The center of the U. The spider at the heart of the web.
Silas grabbed his Resonance Pistol and a heavy, pry-bar-like tool he'd reconfigured from the suspension of a wrecked car. He wasn't going in blind.
He stepped out of the truck. The air here felt thick, heavy with the psychic stench of old despair. He ignored the main office and started with Room 1.
The door was locked. He didn't bother trying the handle. He jammed the pry bar into the frame and put his weight into it. Metal screamed. Wood splintered. The door burst inward.
The room was pitch black. The smell of dust and mold hit him like a physical blow. He thumbed the tactical light attached to his pistol. The beam cut through the darkness.
The room was empty. A bed stripped to its stained mattress. A busted television. A layer of grime over everything. But the System saw something else.
[CLASS-1 DESPAIR ECHO DETECTED.]
[REMNANT OF A TRAVELING SALESMAN. DIED OF LONELINESS.]
[POTENTIAL ENTROPY: 3.]
A faint, man-shaped shimmer was huddled in the corner, head in its hands. It was so weak it was barely there.
Silas didn't waste time. He raised the pistol. A high-pitched screech. The Echo dissolved.
[HARVEST COMPLETE. ENTROPY +3.]
He moved on. Room 2. The door was ajar. Inside, another Echo. This one was stronger, born of rage. A trucker who'd lost his rig. The room was trashed, the furniture smashed to splinters.
Screech.
[HARVEST COMPLETE. ENTROPY +8.]
He worked his way down the line. Room 3. Room 4. Each held a small, pathetic ghost story. A family that ran out of gas. A couple that turned on each other. Each was a quick burst of Entropy for the System. Trivial amounts, but they added up.
He was clearing the board, eliminating the pawns before he went for the queen.
He reached Room 6. As he approached, the door to Room 7 creaked open.
Just a few inches. Enough to reveal a sliver of darkness.
The lullaby started again, soft and intimate, as if sung just for him. This time, it wasn't just a sound. It was a feeling. A memory that wasn't his.
The memory of a warm hand on his forehead. The smell of his wife's shampoo. The weight of his daughter sleeping on his chest.
Love. Safety. Home.
[WARNING: DIRECT PSYCHIC INTRUSION ATTEMPT.]
[SYSTEM SHIELDING AT 85%.]
The cold logic of the System cut through the manufactured warmth. The illusion shattered. The lullaby became a weaponized frequency. The memory became a lie.
Silas snarled. He hated these things. Hated the way they twisted what was good, what was human, into a lure.
He raised his pistol and fired a bolt of energy not at Room 7, but at the door of Room 6. The lock exploded. He kicked the door open and stepped inside, using the room as cover.
He peered out through the grimy window of Room 6, his pistol ready. The door to Room 7 was still open just a crack. Waiting. Patient.
"I know you're in there," Silas called out, his voice a low growl. "Let's cut the bullshit."
The lullaby stopped. A new voice drifted from the darkness of Room 7. A woman's voice. Smooth, calm, and reasonable.
"There's no need for violence," the voice said. "I'm not like the others. I'm lonely. That's all. I just want some company."
Silas snorted. "Right. And I'm here to fix the ice machine."
He stayed put, scanning the area with the System. The primary signature was still in Room 7. Unmoving.
"I have things," the voice continued, a hint of seduction in its tone. "Things you need. Food. Clean water. A generator with a full tank of gas. All I ask is that you stay. Just for a little while. Talk to me."
[ANALYZING VOCAL PATTERN: DECEPTION PROBABILITY: 100%.]
[OFFER IS A TRAP. GENERATOR IS LIKELY THE ECHO'S CORE FOCAL POINT.]
Of course it was. A generator. The ultimate prize in this dead world. The perfect bait.
"Show yourself," Silas demanded. "Step out into the light."
There was a pause. "I can't. The light… it hurts."
A classic sign. Echoes were creatures of emotion and memory. The harsh reality of daylight was anathema to them. But the sky was overcast. There was no direct sunlight. It was another lie.
Silas had enough. He wasn't going to play this game.
He pulled up the System's reconfiguration menu. He had the modules. He had the Entropy.
[NEW BLUEPRINT AVAILABLE: FRAGMENTATION CHARGE (TIER-1).]
[A crude explosive device created by destabilizing scavenged materials. Effective against physical structures.]
[REQUIREMENTS: SCRAP METAL x5, BASIC WIRING x2, RESIDUAL FUEL x1 (FROM CONVERTER), ENTROPY x75.]
He had everything he needed right in his pack.
He found a rusty, empty paint can in the corner of Room 6. He dumped the required materials into it.
"Reconfigure," he whispered.
The contents of the can glowed red. The metal and wires twisted together, fusing around a core of volatile, energized fuel sludge. In ten seconds, he was holding a makeshift bomb.
He crouched by the window, timed his move.
He lit the short, improvised fuse.
He kicked open the door of Room 6 and sprinted across the twenty feet of asphalt separating him from Room 7, all in one fluid motion.
He didn't throw the bomb inside. That's what it would expect.
Instead, he slammed it against the wall next to the door and dove for cover behind a concrete planter.
The explosion was a deafening CRUMP. Not a high explosive blast, but a concussive force that blew a huge, ragged hole in the motel's cheap cinderblock wall.
Dust and debris filled the air.
For a moment, there was silence.
Then came the scream.
It wasn't a human scream. It was the sound of a thousand grieving mothers, a thousand lost children, all crying out at once. It was a sound that clawed at his sanity.
[SYSTEM SHIELDING AT 62%.]
Silas grit his teeth, fighting the psychic assault. He pushed himself up, pistol at the ready, and peered through the dust.
The lullaby was gone. The seductive voice was gone. All that was left was the raw, concentrated agony that had been hiding underneath.
Inside Room 7, through the hole in the wall, he saw it.
It wasn't a woman.
It wasn't even human-shaped.
It was a tangled mass of wires, cables, and what looked like human nerves, all connected to an old, sputtering diesel generator in the center of the room. The generator was its heart. The mass pulsed with a sick red light, and from it grew a single, spectral appendage that ended in a vague, feminine form—the "Siren" it used as its lure.
The Siren was now flickering violently, its beautiful face twisted into a mask of pure hatred. The explosion had damaged the generator, its anchor to reality.
It was wounded. It was angry.
Dozens of smaller, cable-like tentacles snaked out from the central mass, whipping through the air, smashing the remaining furniture to pieces. They lashed out through the hole in the wall, trying to find him.
Silas rolled away as a tentacle slammed down where his head had been, cracking the concrete.
He fired. The energy bolt hit one of the tentacles, and it recoiled, momentarily dissolving into static before reforming. It hurt them, but it wasn't enough.
He needed to hit the core. The generator.
He broke from cover, running parallel to the wall, firing as he went. He was drawing its attention, making it expose itself.
The Siren's spectral form lunged at him, passing through the wall like a ghost. Its hands reached for his face, its touch promising an eternity of loving, suffocating grief.
[SYSTEM SHIELDING AT 45%.]
He ignored it. He kept his eyes on the prize.
The generator was chugging, belching black smoke. The System highlighted a weak point—a cracked housing near the fuel intake.
He slid to a stop, planted his feet, and took aim.
He poured everything he had into this shot. He could feel the energy being ripped from his own body, a violent, painful tearing.
The Resonance Pistol screamed.
The bolt of energy it fired was thicker, brighter, more unstable than any before. It hit the generator right on the cracked housing.
The generator didn't just break. It detonated.
A wave of pure psychic force erupted from Room 7, a silent tsunami of despair and loss.
Silas was thrown backward, tumbling head over heels, the world dissolving into a screaming vortex of white noise.
[SYSTEM SHIELDING AT 12%.]
[CRITICAL PSYCHIC TRAUMA DETECTED.]
[HOST STABILITY COMPROMISED.]
He hit the ground hard, his head bouncing off the asphalt. His vision swam. The faces of his wife and daughter flashed before his eyes, not as a lie from the Echo, but as a genuine, agonizing memory.
For a second, he wanted to just let go. To just drown in it.
Then, the cold logic of the System cut in, a lifeline in the storm of his own grief.
[HARVEST COMPLETE.]
[CLASS-3 ECHO NEUTRALIZED.]
[ENTROPY +517.]
The number burned through the pain. 517.
He had won.
He pushed himself up, his body screaming in protest. The Siren's Rest was silent once more. The psychic pressure was gone. Room 7 was a smoking, blackened ruin.
He staggered back to the Leviathan, each step an effort. He collapsed into the driver's seat, the door swinging shut behind him.
He was alive. He was bleeding from a dozen small cuts, his head was pounding, and he felt like he'd been emotionally disemboweled.
But he was alive.
And he was rich.
He looked at his Entropy total. He had enough to pay his debt, and more. Much more.
He had the resources to make the Leviathan stronger. To make himself stronger.
He looked back at the ruined motel, a tomb for forgotten souls. He had destroyed it. He had consumed its pain and turned it into power.
This was the new law. The only law.
The strong feed on the ruins of the weak.