The briefing room was a sarcophagus of cold light. Dr. Alistair Finch stood before the wall-screen, which displayed a nightmare of gilded architecture. It wasn't the burning, chaotic spire of pure Gold Fire they'd been shown before. This was something subtler, more insidious: a perfect replica of the West Wing's Oval Office corridor, rendered in the Interstice. The gold was in the details—the picture frames, the lamp fixtures, the cord braiding on the flags. It looked pristine, patriotic, and utterly wrong.
"This is not a frontal assault," Finch announced, his voice echoing in the sterile space. Kaito, Leo, Marcus, and Anya stood in a ragged line, still feeling the aftereffects of Thorne's clarity infusion. "This is an extraction. The Gold Fire here has manifested as a **cognitive corruption**. It hasn't destroyed a memory-node; it has… *hired* it."
The screen zoomed in on a specific memory-fragment playing on a loop: a middle-aged man in a sharp suit, a former deputy chief of staff, shaking hands with a lobbyist. The handshake lasted too long. A faint, gold shimmer passed between them. The lobbyist's smile became fixed, plastic.
"The fire feeds on ambition and transactional desire," Finch continued. "It locates memories of political power, of deal-making, and it inserts itself into the negotiation. It offers a better deal. More influence. A lasting legacy. In exchange, it slowly replaces the memory's original emotional core—the stress, the idealism, the guilt—with a pure, addictive hunger for more. The memory becomes a silent, gilded factory, producing resonant fuel for the larger outbreak."
The screen changed to show a central, powerful memory-node. It was a composite of countless news clips and public appearances: **President Elias Vance.** Not the real man, who was still alive, but the nation's collective, simplified memory of him—the booming voice, the reassuring smile, the symbol of executive authority.
"The primary target has attached itself to the 'Vance' node. It is using the authority of the office to legitimize its spread, creating a network of corrupted deals and promises. Your mission is to infiltrate a key negotiation cycle, intercept the transactional energy before it consolidates, and collapse the node's connection to the larger fire."
Leo cracked his neck. "So we're basically crashing a fundraiser in hell."
"In a manner of speaking," Finch said, unamused. "You will be embedded as Backgrounders within the memory-scape. Kaito, your Howl remains the primary tool for disrupting the gold resonance. But the environment will be… persuasive. It will offer you versions of your own ambitions. Your focus must be absolute."
He handed each of them a small, silver injector. "Resonance dampeners. They will lower your personal emotional signature, making you less appealing targets. They also have a secondary function. Activate it only if you feel the corruption attempting a direct integration. It will deliver a neutralizing shock."
Kaito took his, the cold metal a familiar weight. In his other pocket, he felt the contrasting chill of Thorne's crystal chip, the secret he hadn't disclosed. *Knowledge is currency.*
"Move out," Finch said. "And remember, you are not fighting a blaze. You are performing a surgical strike on a tumor of wanting."
***
The memory-scape was called "The People's House." It was a grand, marble-lined construct that felt both vast and claustrophobic. The air hummed with a low, pleasant murmur of imagined importance and marble-floor footfalls. They materialized as junior staffers—Leo and Marcus as security details with earpieces, Anya as a medical aide, Kaito as a press pool assistant, lugging a fake camera.
The Gold Fire's influence was visible not as flames, but as a *sheen*. The eyes of the Backgrounders playing politicians and aides had a faint, gold-dusted avarice. Handshakes lingered, releasing tiny puffs of gilt smoke. In a corner, a memory of a senator arguing for a clean energy bill suddenly accepted a ghostly, glowing suitcase, his speech morphing mid-sentence into praise for offshore drilling.
They followed the resonance trail, a path of increasing opulence, to the heart of the construct: a perfect replica of the Oval Office. The door was open for a "press briefing."
Inside, it was a circus of curated power. Kaito's group slipped in at the back. There, behind the Resolute Desk, sat the Vance memory-node. It was flawless—the tan, the confident posture, the easy smile. Arrayed before him was a small group of elite Backgrounders, their forms sharper, more detailed, representing powerful interests. And beside the desk, perched familiarly on its edge, was a woman.
She was not a Backgrounder. She was a **Gold Fire Manifestation**, a **Siren**. She wore a crimson power suit, and her beauty was severe, calculated. Her eyes were solid pools of liquid amber. She was laughing at something Vance said, her hand resting on the desk near his. She was flirting with a concept.
"The people need stability," the Vance-node was saying, its voice a rich baritone of recorded soundbites. "And stability comes from strong alliances. Proven entities."
The Siren's gaze slid from the node's face to its hands. On its right ring finger was a massive signet ring, absurdly large, the seal an intricate, swirling 'V'. It glowed with a soft, internal gold light. The source of the node's authority.
"Such a… powerful symbol," the Siren purred, her voice like honey over gravel. "It must be so heavy. A burden of office."
"The weight of the people's trust," Vance intoned.
"Perhaps it should be… shared," she suggested, her amber eyes locking onto his. "A sign of a new alliance. A personal commitment to our… mutual interests."
The room held its breath. The Vance-node looked at its own hand, then at the Siren's expectant, hungry face. A flicker of conflict passed over its features—the original memory of presidential duty wrestling with the Gold Fire's implanted desire to please, to deal.
"Yes," the node said, its voice losing a fraction of its surety. "A gesture of faith." It began twisting the ring off its finger.
Kaito's blood went cold. This was the transaction. The ring was a core symbol. Giving it away wasn't a deal; it was a surrender of the node's thematic integrity. He had to act. He opened his mouth, ready to unleash the Sanity Howl, to shout down this grotesque auction.
But as he drew breath, his vision… *split*.
It was a violent, peeling sensation, like a layer of his perception was ripped away. The world didn't change, but he saw *more*. He saw the strings. He saw the Oval Office not as a memory, but as a intricate **set**. The marble columns were revealed as painted scaffolds of resonant energy. The Vance-node was a sophisticated puppet of light and compiled sound, its emotions not its own but streaming in on golden filaments from a dark source above. And the Siren—she was a dense, burning knot of wanting, with thousands of fine, needle-like threads trying to pierce the node, to sew the ring to her.
He wasn't just seeing the scene. He was seeing **the production**.
The shock stole his breath, silencing the Howl before it began. This new sight—this **Director's Eye**—was overwhelming. He blinked, trying to shut it off, but it remained, a terrifying double exposure of reality and its cheap, spiritual scaffolding.
He watched, helpless, as the Vance-node placed the giant signet ring in the Siren's palm. She closed her fingers around it, and a pulse of victorious, radiant gold energy shot up her arm. She grinned, a predator's smile.
"And a public crown," she whispered, leaning closer, her voice now the only sound in the room. "To show the people the strength of our union. Something… sapphire. To match the eyes of the nation."
The node, now visibly dimmer, nodded. "Of course." It gestured, and a Backgrounder hurried forward with a pillow. On it rested a crown, not of state, but of grotesque fantasy—glittering white gold set with synthetic-looking blue stones. It was garish, a cartoon of power. The node took it and, with a hollow ceremony, placed it on the Siren's head.
The transformation was instant. The Siren's form swelled with stolen authority. Her amber eyes now flashed with blue sparks. She was no longer just a manifestation; she was becoming the **central figure** in this corrupted memory. The ring and crown were focusing lenses, amplifying her power to rewrite the entire narrative around her own greed.
Kaito's new sight spasmed, the pain acute. He stumbled back, bumping into a heavy, gilt-framed portrait on the wall—a standard, somber portrait of a 19th century First Lady. As his shoulder made contact, his Sight drilled *through* the painting.
He didn't see canvas and paint. He saw a **window**. And in the dark space behind it, a human eye, wide with terror, was staring back at him. It was a real eye, a living eye, frantically peering through a hole in the fabric of this constructed world.
"What is happening to the painting?" Kaito gasped, the words tearing from him.
The Backgrounders near him turned, their gold-dusted faces blank. One shrugged. "A conservator's light? The humidity?"
He looked back. The portrait was now *across the room*, hanging perfectly normally. No eye. Just the serene, painted face of a queenly woman from another century. Had his new Sight shown him the truth, or an illusion?
The transaction was complete. The Siren, now crowned and be-ringed, was leading the docile Vance-node by the arm toward the doors, the press pool surging around them. The extraction was failing. The tumor was metastasizing.
"Leo, Marcus!" Kaito hissed, forcing his dual vision to focus on his team. "The ring and the crown! They're focal points! We need to separate her from them!"
Anya was already moving, her medical aide cover allowing her to get close. As the Siren passed, Anya "stumbled," a syringe of clear fluid (a placebo from her kit) slipping from her grasp and spraying towards the Siren's hand.
The Siren recoiled with a hiss. It was a distraction. A split second of breached aura.
Kaito didn't Howl. He **Looked**.
He focused his new, painful Sight directly on the massive signet ring on the Siren's finger. He ignored its golden glow and instead saw the hundreds of greedy, needy filaments connecting it to her core. He saw the single, thicker cable of authority still tenuously linking it to the fading Vance-node. With a mental wrench that felt like twisting his own synapses, he *pulled* on that cable.
In the real world, nothing visible happened. But the Siren screamed—a sound of shattered glass and tearing metal. The ring on her finger blazed hot and cold at once. The Vance-node, a dozen feet away, clutched its own hand and cried out, "Mine!"
The connection snapped back into place for a dizzying second. The ring was his. The Siren's power wavered.
"Now, Leo!" Kaito shouted, his nose bleeding from the strain.
Leo didn't need prompting. He lunged, not for the Siren, but for the Vance-node. As a "security" agent, his move was to protect the President. He grabbed the node's arm, the one with the ring's psychic tether, and yanked him backward, away from the Siren.
The physical and resonant separation was critical. With the Vance-node's authority forcibly withdrawn, the glittering sapphire crown on the Siren's head flickered, turning to cheap crystal and tinsel before dissolving into gold mist.
The Siren whirled, her beautiful face contorted into a mask of feral rage. Her eyes fixed on Kaito. He was the one who had *seen* the trick. "You," she snarled, her voice no longer honeyed but the roar of a furnace. She raised her ringed hand, and a concentrated beam of Gold Fire, pure offer and promise, lanced toward him.
Kaito tried to raise a hand, to use his Sight to deflect it, but the beam was too fast, too hungry. It promised him everything: a return to life, Eli alive, his family whole, success, peace. The vision was so potent, so tailored, it was a physical warmth in his chest.
Then Marcus was there. He threw himself in front of Kaito, taking the full brunt of the beam in the chest. Marcus's eyes went wide, not with pain, but with wonder. A beatific smile spread across his face. "I… I got the promotion," he whispered. "They finally see me." He stood frozen, enchanted, a statue of fulfilled ambition.
The Siren laughed, turning her fire on Leo and Anya, driving them back. The corrupted Backgrounders were closing in. The mission was a rout.
"Activate the dampeners!" Kaito yelled, fumbling for his own. He jammed the silver injector against his neck and pressed the secondary trigger.
A wave of nullifying gray energy, the antithesis of wanting, burst from him in a silent pulse. It didn't hurt the Siren, but it shocked the golden filaments around her, turning them dull and brittle for a moment. Leo and Anya did the same. The triple-wave of negation cracked the gilded atmosphere of the room.
The Siren shrieked, clutching her head. The Vance-node, freed from her immediate influence, blinked, its programming defaulting to a safe, public address about unity. The chaotic scene was collapsing into incoherence.
"Grab Marcus and GO!" Kaito ordered.
Leo hauled the smiling, entranced Marcus over his shoulder. Anya covered their retreat, spraying her medical aerosols to create a sensory-distraction cloud. Kaito took one last Look at the Siren. Through the Director's Eye, he saw her not as a monster, but as a desperate, hungry signal, broadcasting on a frequency of lack. And he saw something else—a thick, primary cable of gold energy, not leading up into the abstract fire, but *down*, plunging through the floor of the construct, into a deeper, darker level of the Interstice.
Then they were running, bursting out of the memory-scape and into the neutral Gray, the sounds of the crumbling Oval Office fading behind them.
***
In the debriefing room, Finch was livid. His benign mask was gone, replaced by cold, surgical anger.
"Marcus is cognitiously compromised. He'll be in resonance quarantine for weeks. You failed to collapse the node. You identified a secondary focal point but lacked the capability to sever it. The mission was a qualified failure."
Kaito, exhausted, his mind still raw from using the Sight, spoke up. "The ring. The crown. They weren't just symbols. They were **contractual anchors**. The fire isn't just consuming; it's writing binding agreements into the memory-code. And it's not coming from above." He met Finch's gaze. "It's coming from below. The source is underneath the memory-quarters."
Finch's anger didn't fade, but it shifted, sharpened with interest. "Explain."
"I saw it. A new… perception. I could see the infrastructure. The supports. The energy flow." He didn't call it the Director's Eye. That felt too revealing, too close to the truth of the portrait's peering face.
Finch studied him for a long moment. "A latent ability. Triggered by exposure to high-grade cognitive corruption. Not uncommon for Anchors under stress." He seemed to file the information away. "The 'below' is irrelevant. Your task is to manage fires, not map the geology of the Interstice. You are dismissed. See to your teammate."
As they left, Leo supporting the vacant, smiling Marcus, with Anya trailing behind, Finch's final words followed them.
"Prepare for re-calibration, Kaito. This new sight of yours will need to be… focused. And controlled."
Back in the impersonal barracks, Kaito sat on his cot. He closed his eyes, and the afterimage of the world burned in his mind—the cheap scaffolding, the puppeteer's strings, the desperate eye in the portrait. He had gained a weapon, but it showed him how deep the prison walls went. And somewhere below it all, a deeper fire burned. He pulled Thorne's crystal chip from his pocket. The secret of a petty, familial corruption felt small now. He was starting to see the shape of a much larger one.