It was late afternoon when the secure communicator buzzed with the highly restricted frequency reserved for Captain Emrys. Ryker, who had been meticulously cleaning and checking every corner of the Isolation Block, answered immediately.
"Report," Ryker commanded, keeping his voice strictly formal.
"The asset's transfer is secured," Emrys reported from the Citadel. "Now, to your previous request. I spent the morning running the few facts we have: the Lycan subject, the 'Seven-Point Lock,' and the specific geographical coordinates of the containment incident at Sector Rho-9."
"And the Lock?" Ryker pressed.
"Still nothing concrete. Too ancient for our archives," Emrys admitted. "However, the geographical data showed that the incident site—Sector Rho-9—is just outside a small, insignificant community known as Oakhaven. It is a quiet, normal village. No political value, no strategic military position, no shifters sites there and certainly no history of magic."
Ryker frowned, confused by the simplicity. "Then why did the incident occur there? Why the extreme containment spell, if the location itself holds no secret?"
"It seems the location isn't the secret, Commander," Emrys explained, her voice dropping. "It's merely the point of her origin and capture. I cross-referenced the capture date with decades of civilian logs and social welfare reports from that region. The village of Oakhaven recorded a significant, non-magical event exactly seven years prior to her capture."
"What event?"
"The girl was found abandoned at the village church when she was four years old. She had no recollection of her life before that moment," Emrys revealed. "She was eventually adopted by a local woman after two years. Ryker, the amnesia is not a fresh trauma. The Seven-Point Containment Lock was already active seven years ago."
Ryker absorbed this stunning revelation. Lyra's past wasn't something recent—it was buried under years of artificial concealment. The seal had been cast by people trying to hide her true self long ago.
"The amnesia, then, is a protective measure, not a consequence of battle," Ryker concluded. "Someone, likely her biological family, deliberately cast this ancient seal on her to hide her true Lycan identity from the normal world—the mandanes as we call them—and left her in a remote village for her own safety."
"Precisely," Emrys confirmed. "The seal failed or weakened when she was forced to flee the village and crossed the forbidden line, triggering the shift and leading to her capture. The danger is not Oakhaven; the danger is who placed the seal and who is now looking for a missing Lycan child."
"We shift our focus," Ryker stated firmly. "The Elders and the Crown are contained for now. But if the seal is a product of Lycan culture, other supernatural factions will possess the means to break it or exploit her. Do the forbidden archives contain any information on other Werewolf Kingdoms or Lycan Factions operating near our borders?"
"They do," Emrys confirmed. "It's heavily censored, but it's there. I'll continue to mine the data. Our immediate threat is no longer internal; it's external, and they play by entirely different rules."
"Understood. Continue the research," Ryker commanded. "And the healer needs to initiate Phase Two immediately. I need stabilizing elixirs to keep Lyra calm. Her amnesia is stable, but her panic is rising."Ryker didn't hesitate. Now knowing that Lyra was hiding an intentional secret placed by her own family—a secret that had been enforced for over half her life—he needed to understand the current, real-time damage it was inflicting. The amnesia was not a symptom; it was the prison wall.
"Commander, there's something else you should know." Emrys finally cut his train of thought.
"What is it?"
"Her name isn't Lyra." She paused and Ryker subconsciously swallowed." It's River. The name given to her by her adopted mother." He just sighed.
This would not affect their progress in anyway. He just had to maintain the illusion that he understood and knew Lyra,or better yet. River.
He turned from the communicator and walked back to the cot. Lyra had fallen into a restless, troubled sleep, the exhaustion from the interrogation finally overpowering her anxiety.
The single, bare bulb in the Isolation Block cast sharp shadows across her face. He focused on her breathing—it was shallow and uneven. Then he looked at the scars.
There was the recent, superficial jagged claw mark across her cheek, sustained during the initial, painful transformation. But beneath that, there were older, less visible scars: the faint, residual traces of the physical and emotional trauma she must have suffered since she was four.
As he watched, Lyra began to whimper softly. Her small body twitched, and her head tossed from side to side on the pillow.
Ryker knew this wasn't an ordinary nightmare. This was the Seven-Point Containment Lock at work. The seal was designed to maintain a perfect, comprehensive void of memory. Now that she was awake, confused, and experiencing stress, the seal was violently fighting any attempt her mind made to reconstruct the past. It was a constant, internal magical battle, and her sleeping mind was the battlefield.
A bead of sweat traced a path down her temple. Her lips parted, and she murmured something inaudible—a fragment of a dream, or perhaps a whisper of a forgotten memory trying to claw its way to the surface.
Ryker knelt beside the cot. He placed his large, gloved hand near her head, feeling the faint, unnatural coldness radiating from her skin—the residual magical chill of the powerful spell that caged her Lycan identity.
He realized the severity of the healer's warning: If you try to remove it suddenly, you risk a psychic detonation.
The terror was immense. The seal wasn't just hiding a name or a location; it was holding back the totality of her Lycan self, her forgotten life, and her true family. If the seal cracked due to stress, the nine-year-old Lyra who remembered her adopted home in Oakhaven would be instantly overwritten by the forgotten, four-year-old Lycan child—a violent, confusing integration that could destroy her sanity.
Ryker gritted his teeth. He was a soldier, used to physical threats. This silent, internal, magical war was far more terrifying. He felt completely helpless. He needed those stabilizing elixirs, and he needed them immediately, to bring the seal's internal war back to a manageable simmer.
He stood up, pulling his communicator out. He had to assume Rowland was waiting for the signal. He could not wait for morning.