The "lab" was a sterile, circular chamber deep beneath Sweeper Headquarters, lined with psychic-dampening alloy and enough sensor arrays to monitor a supernova. It felt less like a laboratory and more like a bomb-testing vault. Leo stood in the center, feeling like a specimen on a slide.
Captain Valerius observed from behind a thick plasteel viewport, his face illuminated by the glow of scrolling data. "Begin with Level 1," his voice crackled through the intercom, devoid of emotion. "Sustained tenfold application on auditory processing. Let's establish a baseline emission."
This was the new routine. Leo was no longer just a responding agent; he was a test subject. His days were split between field operations—now fraught with the knowledge that he was a beacon—and these controlled sessions where he was poked and prodded to see what he might attract.
He took a steadying breath. [Skill Recognized: Auditory Acuity - Basic Lv. 2]. [Sustained Application. Multiplier: x10].
The hum of the air circulators sharpened into a high-pitched whine. He could hear the faint grind of a servo in the wall, the rustle of Valerius's uniform sleeve against the console. For thirty seconds, he held it, a low-grade, manageable strain. The sensors around him glowed a steady, calm blue.
"Emission signature: minimal. Psychic footprint: negligible," Valerius dictated. "Cease application."
Leo let the skill drop, the world returning to its normal auditory dullness. So far, so boring.
"Now, Level 3," Valerius continued, his tone sharpening with anticipation. "Recreate the conditions of the mirror incident. Apply a fiftyfold multiplier to a complex, internal cognitive process. Visual-spatial mapping."
A cold knot tightened in Leo's stomach. "Captain, the last time—"
"Is the reason we are here, O'Connor," Valerius interrupted, his voice leaving no room for debate. "We need the data. Proceed."
Gritting his teeth, Leo focused. He pictured the complex, multi-level layout of the Grantham Orphanage in his mind. [Skill Recognized: Visual-Spatial Mapping - Basic Lv. 3]. [Intent: Sustained Application. Multiplier: x50].
His mind exploded into a hyper-realized simulation. He wasn't just remembering the orphanage; he was in it, his consciousness mapping every crack in the plaster, every splinter on the banister, every dust mote in the air with impossible, god-like precision. The strain was immediate and vicious, a hot iron spike driven between his eyes.
The sensor arrays flared from blue to a frantic, pulsating orange. Alarms chirped softly on Valerius's console.
"Significant spike in theta-wave output," Valerius reported, his voice laced with a clinical excitement. "Resonant frequency shifting into a high-complexity bandwidth. Hold it, O'Connor. Just a few seconds longer."
Leo gasped, his knees buckling. The perfect mental map began to fracture, doubling, tripling, showing him a hundred different versions of the orphanage—one burning, one flooded, one overgrown with alien flora. He was losing cohesion, just like with the mirror.
"Captain… I can't…"
A new alarm, this one harsh and strident, cut through the room. A different set of sensors, pointed at the empty corners of the chamber, flashed a deep, bloody red.
"Bi-location event!" a technician's voice shouted over the intercom. "Psychic entity manifesting! Class 4 designation!"
In the corner of the vault, the air itself seemed to tear. Not a void like the Resonance Eater, but a wound. From it oozed a creature of shimmering, iridescent mucus and shifting, semi-transparent flesh. It had no discernible shape, its form constantly melting and reforming around a central, throbbing organ that looked like a diseased, unblinking eye. It was a "Psyche Mimic," a thing that fed on complex thought patterns and replicated them as physical, psychic weapons.
It pulsed, and a wave of disorienting vertigo washed over Leo. The chamber walls seemed to curve inward, the floor to tilt at an impossible angle. It was manifesting his own fractured spatial mapping.
"Defensive protocols active!" Valerius commanded, his voice tight. "O'Connor, cease your application! Sweeper team, stand by!"
Leo released the skill, collapsing to the floor as the mental pressure vanished. But the Mimic remained, now pulsing with a different, more aggressive energy. It had latched onto his frequency and was now self-sustaining.
It pulsed again. This time, jagged, crystalline shards of pure psychic energy—copies of the hyper-sharp mental imagery he'd just generated—sprang from its form and shot towards the viewport.
The plasteel screeched as the crystals impacted, spider-webbing the surface. Valerius flinched back.
"Team is not ready for a Class 4 in a confined space!" the technician yelled. "Containment breach imminent!"
Lying on the cold floor, vision swimming, Leo knew a Sweeper team would be massacred in here. They would bring energy and complex combat skills—a full-course meal for the Mimic. He had to end this. Now.
But he couldn't use a complex skill. He couldn't give it anything else to copy.
His mind, fogged with pain, grasped for the lesson of the Resonance Eater. Give it nothing it can use.
He pushed himself up onto his elbows, ignoring the screaming pain in his head. He didn't try to fight the disorientation. He embraced it. He focused on the most boring, repetitive, and mentally empty task he could imagine.
Data entry.
He pictured his old cubicle. The hum of the terminal. The mind-numbing monotony of inputting string after string of meaningless numbers. He immersed himself in the memory of absolute tedium.
[Skill Recognized: Data Input - Basic Lv. 5].
[Intent: Sustained Application. Multiplier: x100].
He didn't project the skill outward. He turned it inward, creating an impenetrable, monotonous feedback loop in his own mind. A fortress of utter boredom.
The Psyche Mimic shuddered. It pulsed, trying to latch onto this new signal. But there was nothing to grasp. No complex patterns, no sharp emotions, no spatial data. Just a flat, endless, repeating stream of null-information.
It pulsed again, weakly. The crystalline shards it had created began to dissolve. The shifting, iridescent flesh dulled, becoming grey and inert. Confused and starved, the creature let out a final, silent psychic wail and collapsed into a puddle of viscous, non-reactive sludge.
The alarms fell silent. The sensors faded from red back to a calm, steady blue.
In the ensuing quiet, Leo heard only his own ragged breathing and the faint, rhythmic tapping from behind the viewport. He looked up.
Captain Valerius was not looking at the dissipating sludge that had nearly killed them all. He was staring directly at Leo, one finger tapping thoughtfully on his console. There was no fear in his eyes. No relief. Only a deep, insatiable, and terrifying hunger for knowledge.
He had his data. The controlled burn had been a success. And Leo knew, with a soul-deep certainty, that Valerius would only ever see the fire he could start, never the cost of the fuel.