The debriefing room was a sterile, soundproofed cube. Captain Valerius stood before a blank screen, his posture rigid, while Kaelen and Rourke gave their reports. Leo sat slightly apart, the memory of the void still clinging to him like a psychic chill.
"The target displayed complete energy negation," Kaelen stated, her voice clinical but with an underlying tremor. "Plasma, kinetics, even my own combat Aptitude. It was… siphoned away. It didn't attack our bodies. It attacked what we are."
Rourke just grunted, massaging his temple where his kinetic barrier had been anchored. "Felt like getting my soul scalped."
Valerius's gaze, heavy and analytical, finally settled on Leo. "O'Connor. Your report. You identified it as a 'Resonance Eater.' A term not in any bestiary."
All eyes were on him. Leo's mouth was dry. He had to tread carefully, revealing just enough. "That's what it felt like through my resonance analysis. It wasn't an emitter. It was a consumer. A psychic black hole. It wasn't generating the factory Echo; it was preying on it."
"And your conclusion was to… stop fighting?" Valerius prompted, his tone unreadable.
"It was the only logical move," Leo said, forcing his voice to stay even. "You can't punch a hole. You can only stop giving it things to consume. I theorized it was drawn to complex, active energy signatures. So we gave it nothing. Simple, passive, low-energy thoughts. It lost interest."
Valerius was silent for a long moment, then gave a slow, single nod. "Adaptive tactics. Good." He turned to the screen, which now displayed the garbled sensor data from the factory. "This entity represents a new class of threat. One that neutralizes our standard arsenal and preys on Aptitude users. Your unorthodox solution may be the only viable protocol until we develop a countermeasure." His eyes flicked back to Leo. "Your value to this unit has just increased exponentially. Dismissed."
Kaelen and Rourke filed out, the former giving Leo a curt, respectful nod. As Leo moved to leave, Valerius's voice stopped him.
"A moment, O'Connor."
The door hissed shut, leaving them alone. Valerius leaned against the table, his sharp features carved in the dim light.
"There's a discrepancy in the sensor logs," he began, his voice quiet. "A minor, localized psychic shockwave registered to your quarters approximately 36 hours before this incident. The temporal proximity is… notable."
Leo's heart froze. He said nothing.
"I am not a fool, Leo," Valerius continued, his tone not angry, but intensely curious. "This creature didn't just happen to appear. It was drawn to a powerful, complex, and new resonant signature. The same signature, I suspect, that caused that shockwave. You did more than just analyze the factory. You attracted that thing. What did you do?"
This was the precipice. Lying could expose him as untrustworthy. The truth could brand him as a catastrophic liability.
"I was… pushing my limits," Leo admitted, choosing his words with the precision of a bomb disposal expert. "I attempted to apply my talent to a meta-cognitive process. Self-perception. It was a mistake. The feedback was severe. I must have… broadcast something."
Valerius's eyes gleamed with a scientist's fervor. "Fascinating. You're not just a tool, O'Connor. You're a gateway. Your talent doesn't just interact with the Gloaming; it provokes it. It forces the hidden ecosystem to reveal its predators." He stood up straight, pacing slowly. "This is more valuable than a hundred successful missions. We are no longer just reacting. We are baiting the trap."
The cold, calculating purpose in Valerius's voice was more terrifying than any Manifestation. Leo wasn't just a weapon or a resource anymore. He was live bait in an experiment whose full parameters he didn't understand.
"From now on," Valerius decided, stopping in front of him, "you will log all such 'experiments.' Every tremor, every anomaly. You will do it under controlled conditions in the lab. We will study these reactions. We will catalog the predators you attract. We will learn the anatomy of the void itself."
He was being conscripted into a deeper, more dangerous layer of service. His unique nature was no longer just his secret or his burden; it was now a subject of official, cold-blooded study.
"Understood, Captain," Leo said, the words tasting like ash.
Returning to his quarters, the walls felt thinner than ever. He wasn't just fighting the horrors outside. He was being used to lure them, and the man in command was watching it all from a safe distance, taking notes.
He looked at the blank, unbroken wall where his mirror had been. It had been removed for "decontamination." He thought of the Resonance Eater, a creature born of the same abyss that had stared back at him. The Gloaming was learning his frequency.
And Captain Valerius was tuning the dial.