Chapter 2: Shards of Memory

Chapter 2: Shards of Memory

Sleep, when it finally came, was a shallow, black-water thing, offering no rest. Leo had stumbled down from the attic and collapsed on the living room sofa, not even bothering to turn on a light. He woke with a gasp to the pale grey light of dawn slanting through the blinds, the ghost of a monstrous, pearlescent baby burned onto the backs of his eyelids.

His first coherent thought was one of desperate, clawing denial. A dream. A nightmare. A grief-induced hallucination.

He sat up, his body aching, the silence of the house pressing in on him. He ran a hand through his sweat-dampened hair. It had to be a hallucination. The stress of the past three weeks, the emotional toll of clearing out his parents’ lives, the sheer exhaustion—it was the perfect storm for a mental break. His mind, seeking an outlet for its anguish, had simply invented a horror show. The empty attic, the impossible television… it was a fiction his psyche had crafted. A sick, twisted fiction, but a fiction nonetheless.

The high-pitched hum in his ears, the constant companion he’d always known, seemed fainter this morning, easier to dismiss as simple tinnitus. Yes. That was it. He was just tired and grieving.

Decision crystalized into action. The best way to prove it was all in his head was to confront the source. He would go up to the attic, sweep up the broken plastic and glass, and throw it all away. He would erase the delusion, piece by piece. Cleaning the mess would clean his mind.

He found a dustpan and a stiff-bristled brush in the utility closet, his movements deliberately steady and methodical. He was in control. This was just another chore in a house full of them.

Ascending the attic stairs for the second time felt different. The morning sun streamed through the single dormer window, illuminating motes of dust dancing in the air. The space felt less like a shrine and more like what it was: a dusty, empty room. And in the center of it, the wreckage of an old television. It looked smaller, less menacing in the daylight. Pathetic, even.

Leo let out a breath he didn't realize he'd been holding. See? Just a broken TV.

He knelt, the worn floorboards creaking under his weight, and began to sweep the smaller fragments into the dustpan. The scraping of the brush was a satisfyingly normal sound, an anchor in reality. He worked his way towards the largest piece—the concave shard that had once been the center of the screen.

He reached for it, intending to lift it carefully. But his hands were slick with a nervous sweat he hadn't acknowledged. The shard, heavier than it looked, slipped from his grasp. He fumbled to catch it, and the edge, sharp as a surgeon’s scalpel, slid across the soft flesh of his index finger.

“Ah, damn it,” he hissed, dropping the glass with a clatter.

He pulled his hand back. A line of crimson welled up instantly, deep and clean. A single, perfect drop of blood gathered at the tip of his finger, hung there for a heartbeat, and then fell.

It landed squarely on the center of the glass shard.

For a moment, nothing happened. Then, a faint sizzle, like a drop of water on a hot skillet. Leo stared, mesmerized, as his blood began to bubble and steam, not drying, but being consumed. A soft, electric-blue light pulsed from the point of contact, spreading through the shard in a network of glowing veins. It was the same sickly, impossible light from the night before.

Panic seized him. This wasn't a hallucination. This was real.

The glow intensified, and the shard, lying flat on the floor, projected a fleeting image onto the dusty wooden boards at his feet. It wasn't a movie this time, but a single, static slide.

The three-pronged helix logo of Aethelred Bio-Mechanics, sharp and menacingly clear.

And beneath it, a string of alphanumeric characters:

AE-CHIM-734

The light held for a three-second count—long enough for the image to burn itself into his retinas next to the memory of the alien baby—and then vanished. The shard went dark, inert once more, the only sign of the event the drying, brownish smear of his own blood on its surface.

Leo scrambled backwards, crab-walking away from the thing on the floor until his back hit the opposite wall. He stared at his finger, now sluggishly bleeding, then back at the shard. His blood. It was his blood that had powered it. He wasn't just the subject of the experiment; he was its battery.

The denial shattered completely, and in its place, a cold, terrifying acceptance flooded his veins. The visions were real. His mother, the lab, Dr. Finch, the thing in the container. It was all real.

And if it was real, he was not safe.

The quality of the silence in the house changed. It was no longer empty. It was watchful. The faint hum in his ears surged back, louder now, no longer just a background noise but a clear signal. He could almost feel it resonating with the dead electronics in the house. He glanced at the old, unplugged stereo system in the corner of the living room, and for a split second, he heard a whisper of static crackle from its silent speakers. He pulled his phone from his pocket—the screen was black, the battery dead—but he could have sworn he felt a faint vibration, a hum of energy against his palm.

He stumbled to the window, his heart a frantic drum against his ribs. He looked down at the quiet suburban street, the same street he’d played on as a kid. But it was alien now. The shadows cast by the oak trees seemed too long, too dark. A nondescript black sedan was parked three houses down. Had that been there yesterday? He couldn’t remember. He felt a prickle on the back of his neck, the primal certainty of being prey. He was being watched.

His gaze fell from the window, back to the wreckage in the attic, and the final, horrifying realization crashed down upon him.

He had thought that by smashing the television, he was destroying the evidence, ending the nightmare. He couldn't have been more wrong. He hadn't ended it. He had only broken it into a hundred pieces, scattering the curse across the floor.

And by bleeding on it, by activating it with his own unique, monstrous biology, he had sent up a flare. He had pressed a button, triggered an alarm. Smashing the TV hadn't been an act of destruction. It was an announcement.

I'm here, his blood had screamed into the ether. The asset is awake.

And somewhere out there, the hunters had just heard him.