The air in the designated meeting room tasted of nothing. It was an engineered void, scrubbed of dust and microbes and the faint, ever-present psychic residue of human passage. Kaelen felt the absence like a pressure in his ears. He and Walter Bell stepped through the portal, the heavy door hissing shut behind them, sealing them in a perfect cube of white polymer and cold, shadowless light. In the center of the room was a single black table. Their footsteps made no sound on the floor.
Julian Valerius stood by the table as if he had been grown from the station’s sterile plating. His dark gray executive suit was a slash of shadow in the bleached-out space, the fabric showing no creases, no sign of travel. He was not waiting for them. He was receiving them. His presence in the Resonance Field was a quiet, confident void, the signature of a mind perfectly shielded and ruthlessly focused.
— We have what you want, — Kaelen said, his voice flat. He kept his hand on the worn satchel slung over his shoulder. Inside, the real fragments were nestled beside the decoy data-wafer, a lie wrapped in layers of truth. The weight of it was the only real thing in the room.
Julian offered a smile that did not reach his eyes. It was a precise, calibrated expression, a piece of corporate interface. — The pretense is over, Kaelen.
Before Kaelen could process the words, a silent pulse of energy washed through the room. It was not a sound, but a sudden, violent pressure against the Resonance Field, a hammer blow of pure static. The quiet, coherent hum of Aris Volkov in his head vanished, replaced by a screech of white noise that lasted for a microsecond before it, too, was gone. The Ghost-Eater Shunt at the back of his neck went from a familiar, low-grade ache to a useless weight of cold metal.
Beside him, Walter Bell’s chassis seized. The amber light in his custom optic died. The raven Uplift, a being of precise function and cold logic, crashed to the floor with the heavy, final sound of disconnected machinery.
The white walls were not walls. Panels slid back with a faint hiss, revealing eight corporate soldiers, their faces obscured by the flat black helmets of Yama-Mitsui tactical gear. They held pulse carbines at a low, ready position, their movements economical and perfectly synchronized. They were a function of the room, another part of the trap’s architecture. They did not look at Kaelen. They watched the space around him.
Julian Valerius did not move. He had not flinched. He simply watched Kaelen’s reaction, his expression one of mild, professional interest. He was an Eraser, a surgeon of the psyche, and this was his operating theater.
— You were a tool, Kaelen, — Julian said, his voice as calm as the engineered silence. — A broken one. But useful. You led us to the scattered pieces. A fine piece of retrieval work.
He took a step forward, his polished shoes making no sound. He did not approach Kaelen. He walked to the inert form of Walter Bell and smoothly lifted the satchel from Kaelen’s shoulder as he passed. The price of walking into the trap was the loss of everything they had gathered. The cost was absolute.
Kaelen’s hands clenched into fists. His own shunt was dead. His Empathic sense was a blank wall. He was psychically blind and deaf, a ghost in his own skull.
Julian placed the satchel on the black table. He unfastened the clasp and looked inside, his gaze passing over the decoy data-wafer with utter disinterest. Their counter-plan, the carefully constructed lie of a failing memory, was a child’s trick. It had never mattered. Julian’s objective was not the data. It was the vessels.
He reached into the bag and removed the antique Ganymede pocket watch. He held it for a moment, a flicker of something like professional appreciation in his eyes. Then he dropped it to the floor and brought his heel down. The crunch of shattering silver and crystal was obscenely loud in the silent room.
Next came the Europa lab keycard. He snapped the white polymer between his fingers, the sound a sharp crack. He let the two pieces fall.
Finally, he took out the original Mnemonic Spool, the cracked crystal Kaelen had bought from a junker on Ceres. He held it up to the light, the lattice within catching the cold, white glare. — A record is not a soul, — Julian murmured, a mocking echo of the Keeper creed.
He crushed it in his fist. The sound was a grating, crystalline shatter, like ice breaking under immense pressure. The dust of the crystal lattice, the physical anchor of Aris Volkov’s first coherent memory, drifted from his hand and settled on the perfect white floor.
The last, faint whisper of the ghost in Kaelen’s mind died. The connection, the quiet hum that had become the background radiation of his existence, was severed. It was not a violent tearing this time. It was a slow, cold fade to black. Erasure. The axis of his world had flipped, a violent, negative plunge back into the void he had tried to escape.
The silence that followed was no longer empty. It was full of loss.
Julian looked at him, his work complete. — Now, it is just noise.
The ghost in his head was fading to nothing.
