The council chamber was a place of weight. It was carved from the deepest, oldest concrete of Monolit, its walls thick and soundless, designed to crush dissent with pressure and silence. A single, massive table of polished steel dominated the room, its surface reflecting the cold, flat light from the ceiling panels above. Twelve men sat around it, the senior officers and engineers of the Federation Council. They were pillars of the old world, their faces maps of discipline and certainty, their grey uniforms immaculate. In the center of the table, a heavy brass tri-spoke symbol served as a paperweight, its three arms meant to represent Order, Duty, and Memory. To Sineus, standing before them, it looked like a piece of a broken machine.
He had been summoned. He stood straight, his hands clasped behind his back, the dust of the Western Gate still clinging to his boots. He had presented his report, his voice even and stripped of emotion, detailing the events he had witnessed. The holographic display above the table replayed the footage from the parapet: the shimmering forms of the Mnemonic Vultures, the useless spray of rifle fire, the impossible dissolution of the wall.
— The entities ignored all personnel, — Sineus concluded, his gaze fixed on the presiding general at the head of the table. — They did not target our soldiers. They targeted the Mnemonic Anchors. They attacked the function of the wall itself. This was not a raid. It was an assassination of a wall.
The recording ended. The image of the gaping wound in Monolit’s side hung in the air, a silent accusation. The twelve men were silent, their faces hard and unreadable. The only sound was the faint, ever-present hum of the Citadel’s life support. The presiding general, a man whose jaw seemed to be forged from the same steel as the table, steepled his fingers. His uniform bore the same polished tri-spoke symbol as the one on the table, a small, perfect emblem of a system that had just failed.
— A freak anomaly, — the general declared, his voice a low rumble of authority. The words fell like stones into the silence. — A new, aggressive mutation of the Unraveling. Unprecedented, but natural.
Murmurs of agreement rippled around the table. Sineus felt a cold knot tighten in his gut. They were not listening. They were choosing not to. The general’s eyes swept the room, not seeking truth, but enforcing consensus.
— Our first duty is to the fifty thousand souls within these walls. Our first duty is to order. News of this… anomaly… would cause panic. Panic invites the Unraveling more surely than any creature. The official record will state a structural failure due to unforeseen geological stress. We will suppress all other accounts. We will double patrols. We will reinforce the remaining walls.
He made a gesture. The holographic display shifted, showing a voting matrix. Twelve red lights blinked on, one after another, a cascade of denial. A single green light, from an old engineer at the far end of the table who believed in numbers more than narratives, flickered for a moment before being switched to red. The vote was recorded as unanimous. They had made their choice, trading truth for the illusion of calm, a price Sineus knew the world could not afford.
Just as the general was about to speak again, the chamber doors slid open. A young comms officer stood there, his face pale, his uniform disheveled. He was breathing heavily, a shocking breach of the chamber’s disciplined atmosphere.
— Sir, apologies for the intrusion, — he stammered, holding out a data slate. — Urgent reports from the outer sectors. From our listening posts monitoring rival traffic.
The general’s eyes narrowed, but he nodded for the officer to proceed. The data flashed onto the main holographic display. Two new wounds appeared on the map of the Eurasian Wastes. The first was a rail junction deep in Union 9 territory, a critical artery for their trade caravans. The report was terse: ‘Junction K-4 ceased to exist. Structure dissolved to dust.’ The second was a water gate on the Volga, controlled by the River Commons. The report was the same: ‘Gate 7 erased. Reservoir breached.’
Sineus watched the faces of the council members. He saw no horror. He saw no recognition of a shared threat. He saw the flicker of calculation in their eyes.
— Union 9’s main line is cut, — one officer murmured to his neighbor. — Their caravans will be crippled for months.
— The River Commons has lost control of their primary reservoir, — another added, a thin smile touching his lips. — They will be desperate for our hydroponic grain now. Their price for water will fall.
The air in the room shifted. The fear was gone, replaced by the cold arithmetic of opportunism. They saw their rivals weakening, and they saw it as a strategic advantage. They did not see an enemy systematically deleting the world’s ability to function. They saw a chance to improve their own position. Their world had shrunk to the borders of Monolit, their vision extending no further than the next trade negotiation.
Sineus looked at the brass tri-spoke symbol on the table. Its polished surface seemed dull now, its promise of unity a bitter lie. It was just a shape. Three arms radiating from a center that held nothing together.
In that moment, the debate in his own mind ended. The leadership of the Federation was a fossil, trapped in the amber of old doctrines. They were fighting ghosts of past wars, blind to the real one that was unmaking them. To wait for their orders, to obey their chain of command, was to be complicit in a slow, collective suicide. It was a death sentence for every settlement, every caravan, every soul clinging to existence in the wastes. He had to act. He had to act alone.
— Your report has been noted, Ranger, — the presiding general said, his voice dismissive. The new data had already made Sineus’s warning irrelevant in their minds. — You are dismissed.
Sineus’s body, trained by years of discipline, snapped to attention. He gave a crisp, formal salute. It felt like a final act, the closing of a door on a life that was no longer his. He turned, his back straight, and walked out of the chamber of dust and echoes. The heavy steel door slid shut behind him, sealing the council in with their comforting lies.
He did not return to his quarters. He walked through the grey, humming corridors of Monolit, his purpose a cold, hard weight inside him. Waiting for orders was death. He had to get permission from the only man he trusted to understand that.
