The silence in the sterile med-bay was absolute. Leo lay on the examination cot, an ice-pack pressed to his throbbing temples. The physical toll of the hundredfold data-entry loop was a deep, systemic exhaustion, but it was the psychic hangover that was truly debilitating. It felt like his mind had been scoured with sand, leaving raw, over-exposed nerves. The world seemed too bright, sounds too sharp, the memory of the Mimic's disorienting pulses a persistent echo in his synapses.
The door hissed open. Captain Valerius entered, holding a data-slate. He didn't ask how Leo was feeling. The question was irrelevant to him.
"Fascinating," Valerius began, placing the slate on the bedside table. It displayed a cascade of data from the lab incident. "The Psyche Mimic's manifestation was directly proportional to the complexity of your cognitive load. But its dissolution… your solution was even more instructive. You didn't overwhelm it. You starved it with a paradox—an immense application of power used to generate a signal of absolute nullity."
He looked at Leo, his wintery eyes alight. "You've given us a new defensive paradigm. We're designating it 'The O'Connor Protocol': the use of self-generated, high-intensity monotony as a psychic countermeasure."
Leo closed his eyes, the clinical terms feeling like violations. They were naming a weapon after the scar it had left on his soul. "It nearly shredded my mind, Captain."
"A calculated risk," Valerius replied, his tone dismissive. "And one that yielded invaluable data. The entity was drawn to a very specific resonant frequency, one your talent is uniquely capable of producing. You're not just bait, O'Connor. You are a key, and every entity you attract shows us another lock in the Gloaming's architecture."
He picked up the slate. "Your next training regimen is being adjusted. We need to expand your 'monotony' toolkit. You will practice sustaining high-multiplier applications on a variety of low-cognitive skills: rhythmic breathing, basic motor function repetition, sensory deprivation."
Leo felt a cold dread that had nothing to do with the ice-pack. They weren't going to let him recover. They were going to forge him into a more efficient tool, honing the very edge that was cutting him to pieces.
"I need time," Leo said, his voice rough. "The cost… it's cumulative."
"The Gloaming does not afford us time," Valerius stated, a finality in his voice. He turned to leave. "Rest. You have a field assessment in twelve hours. A Weeping Land sector is showing signs of a nascent Manifestation. Low priority. A good opportunity for a low-stress application of your observational skills." He paused at the door. "And O'Connor? Well done today."
The door hissed shut. The praise felt colder than the ice.
Twelve hours later, Leo stood with Kaelen at the edge of Sector Gamma-9, a "mild" Weeping Land. The air was hazy, carrying the scent of ozone and decay. The very light seemed sickly, and the ruins of old apartments leaned against each other like drunken mourners. His head still ached, a persistent thrum of wrongness.
"You look like hell, rookie," Kaelen commented, her eyes scanning the broken skyline.
"Lab work," Leo muttered.
She gave a grim nod of understanding. "The Captain's methods are… direct. Just keep your head on a swivel. This should be a milk run. Scan for the nascent core, we tag it, a suppression team follows up in a few days. Easy."
Leo hoped she was right. He activated his resonance analysis, keeping the multiplier low, a gentle x5. The world resolved into a tapestry of faint, lingering emotions—fear, loss, the dull grey residue of forgotten lives. It was like listening to a million faint, sad radio stations all at once. With his mind already raw, the effort was like pouring salt on a wound, but it was manageable.
He led the way, pointing out the subtle psychic currents. "The confluence is ahead. In that old community center. It's faint, but it's coalescing. Feels like… loneliness. Deep, institutional loneliness."
"Loneliness we can handle," Kaelen said, her rifle held ready.
They pushed through the broken double doors of the community center. The interior was a snapshot of abandonment. A layer of dust covered everything, and children's artwork, now faded and peeling, still hung on the walls. In the center of the main hall, the air shimmered with a faint, silvery light. The nascent Manifestation. It was weak, harmless.
"See?" Kaelen said, lowering her rifle slightly. "Easy. Tag it and let's go."
But Leo couldn't move. His low-grade analysis was still active, and he felt a new signal. Not from the nascent core, but from the periphery. It was a resonant frequency he recognized, one burned into his memory from the lab. It was the same psychic "scent" as the Psyche Mimic.
His head snapped up. "Kaelen, it's a trap!"
From the shadowed stage at the far end of the hall, the air tore open. Not one, but two of the iridescent, shifting Mimics oozed into reality. The nascent core hadn't been the source; it had been the bait, placed there by something intelligent to lure in a sensitive like him.
The first Mimic pulsed. A wave of crushing despair and isolation—an amplified version of the center's own resonance—slammed into them. Kaelen cried out, staggering, her combat focus shattered by the sudden, foreign emotion.
The second Mimic fixed its diseased eye on Leo. It pulsed, and a wall of shimmering, complex equations and data streams—a distorted reflection of his own talent—materialized in the air and shot towards him.
He couldn't use the O'Connor Protocol. He was too disoriented, the Mimics were too fast, and Kaelen was vulnerable. He had only one option. He had to break it before it broke him.
He dropped his analysis and focused everything on one single, violent action. He focused on the concept of Dispersion.
[Skill Recognized: Psychic Dispersion - Fledgling Lv. 0.5].
[Hundredfold Application Activated.]
He didn't have the skill. He had to build it from nothing, a hundred times over, and unleash it in an instant.
The cost was apocalyptic.
A silent, visible wave of pure force erupted from him. It wasn't physical; it was a tidal wave of anti-information, a negation of complex patterns. It struck the data-stream wall and the two Mimics. The constructs unraveled. The Mimics themselves screamed, their forms dissolving into static and then into nothingness.
The entire community center shuddered. Dust rained from the ceiling. The nascent core in the center winked out, annihilated as collateral damage.
Leo didn't feel victorious. He felt his knees give way. A torrent of blood gushed from his nose, splattering the dusty floor. A white-hot agony, worse than anything he had ever felt, exploded inside his skull. He was aware of Kaelen shouting his name, her voice distant, as if from the other end of a long tunnel.
The last thing he saw before darkness swallowed him was the concerned, frightened look on Kaelen's face. Not the look of a soldier to a comrade, but of a person witnessing something terrible and uncontrollable.
He had survived. He had won. But he knew, with absolute certainty, that he was losing the war against the cost of his own power. He was the fuel, and Valerius was content to watch him burn.