Chapter 7: Whispers of the Void

Chapter 7: Whispers of the Void

The knowledge from Leo Thorne’s datapad was a poison. It seeped into every moment of Kaelen’s existence at the Academy, tainting the sterile air, twisting the impassive faces of the guards into the masks of handlers, and turning Instructor Vex’s cold gaze into that of a farmer sizing up her cattle. The fear of failure, once an internal monologue of self-doubt, now had a tangible, monstrous form. The ultimate failure was not just being purged; it was being consumed.

He knew he couldn’t act alone. His power, [Path to Victory], was a reactive tool for survival, not a proactive weapon for investigation. He needed allies. He needed Lyra.

He found her in the cavernous, echoing refectory, hunched over a bowl of nutrient paste, her fingers idly disassembling and reassembling a standard-issue data slate with a speed that was anything but standard. Elara sat beside her, picking at her food, her eyes constantly flitting towards the exits. They had formed a small, trauma-bonded unit since their time in the Fearscape.

Kaelen slid onto the bench opposite them, his own tray untouched. The usual knot of anxiety in his stomach was so tight he couldn't imagine eating.

“The echo,” he said, his voice barely a whisper. “The ghost in the machine. I’ve been thinking about what he was trying to tell us.”

Lyra didn’t look up from her slate, but her nimble fingers paused for a fraction of a second. “He wasn’t trying to tell us anything, Vance. He was just a glitch in a bad simulation.” Her tone was dismissive, but her eyes flicked up to check if anyone was listening.

“Was he?” Kaelen pressed, leaning forward slightly. “Or was he an imprint? A warning left behind by someone who knew the system was a… harvesting ground?”

The term hung in the air between them. Lyra’s hands went still. She slowly, deliberately, reassembled the data slate and set it down. Her gaze met his, and the flippant, sarcastic mask was gone. He saw the same cold fear he felt reflected in her bright eyes. Elara flinched at the phrase, wrapping her arms around herself as if a sudden chill had swept through the room.

“Don’t use that word here,” Lyra hissed, her voice low and urgent. “Every wall in this place has ears. Digital ones.”

“We need to know more,” Kaelen insisted. “We need proof. Leo’s log is just the ramblings of a dead man until we can verify it.”

“And how do you propose we do that?” Lyra shot back, her fear manifesting as aggressive sarcasm. “Walk up to Vex and ask to see the energy-siphoning logs? I’m a good hacker, Vance, not a miracle worker. The Academy’s core systems are a black box. Nothing gets in or out.”

“We don’t need to get into the core,” Kaelen countered, his mind working, seeing the problem not as a fortress to be stormed, but as a series of failure conditions to be navigated. “We just need to find another crack. Another place where the numbers don't add up. Leo mentioned schematics. Where would they keep archives? Records?”

A single location came to all their minds at once. The Academy Library.

It was less a library and more a cathedral of information. Soaring shelves filled with ancient, leather-bound tomes on psychology, mythology, and philosophy stretched up into the vaulted darkness, while sleek, obsidian data terminals glowed on heavy stone tables, offering access to the Academy’s sanitized digital archives. It was the perfect place to hide in plain sight.

Under the guise of a study group researching the historical context of their phobias—a plausible excuse—the three of them found a secluded terminal in a dusty alcove dedicated to medieval demonology. Kaelen and Elara positioned themselves as lookouts, pretending to scroll through illuminated manuscripts, while Lyra sat at the console.

“Okay,” she murmured, plugging a small, custom-made device disguised as a charging cable into a port. “I’m in the public network. It’s heavily firewalled from anything important, but every system has to have maintenance protocols. If I can piggyback on a low-level diagnostic request, I might be able to pull some metadata from the infrastructure archives.” Her fingers became a blur across the holographic interface, lines of code scrolling past too fast for Kaelen to read.

Minutes stretched into an hour. The air grew thick with the smell of old paper and the ever-present tension of discovery. Elara was starting to tremble again, her gaze fixed on the library’s main entrance. Kaelen felt a familiar cold sweat prickle his skin. Every footstep, every distant cough, sounded like an approaching guard.

“Anything?” he whispered, his voice hoarse.

“Patience,” Lyra snapped, not looking at him. “I’m digging through layers of encrypted sanitation logs. It’s like they’re hiding something under… more hiding. Wait.”

Her typing stopped. She froze, her eyes wide. On the screen, she had pulled up a complex energy-flow diagram. It was labeled ‘Phobos Chamber & Fearscape Sim-Rig – Post-Session Energy Dissipation Report.’ A series of graphs showed massive energy spikes—green lines indicating terawatts of raw bio-electric and psychic energy being generated during training exercises. Then, another line, a neat, clean, blue one, showed that exact amount of energy being safely dissipated as thermal waste.

“It’s a lie,” Lyra breathed.

“What is?” Kaelen moved closer.

“This report.” She pointed a trembling finger at the screen. “The dissipation data is perfect. Too perfect. There’s no decay, no conversion loss, no residual bleed. It’s a clean one-to-one transfer. That’s physically impossible. Energy doesn’t just vanish cleanly like this. It would be the thermodynamic equivalent of a miracle.”

She typed another command. “They’ve falsified the output logs. But they can’t fake the initial generation numbers without the system flagging a calibration error. Look.” She brought up another file, a raw diagnostic from the simulation pods themselves. “Here’s the energy generated by our squad during the Fearscape dive. And here,” she highlighted a number, “is the amount our powers actually consumed. There’s a discrepancy. A massive one. Over ninety percent of the fear energy we generated… just vanished from the logs. It wasn’t used by us, and according to this faked report, it wasn’t dissipated.”

It wasn't a crack in the system. It was a gaping hole. The proof.

“It was siphoned,” Elara whispered, her voice trembling with horrified understanding. “Just like Leo said.”

Lyra quickly erased their digital tracks and yanked her cable. “We need to go. Now.”

They didn't speak again until they found themselves in a deserted, unmonitored maintenance corridor, the low hum of the Academy’s machinery a menacing growl around them. The pieces of the puzzle clicked into place with horrifying finality. Leo’s log. The ghosts in the code. The impossible energy reports.

“They’re not just collecting it,” Kaelen said, the terrible conclusion forming on his lips. “You don’t collect that much power without a purpose. It’s a farm, just like he said. We’re the crop.”

“And what does a farmer do with his crop?” Lyra asked, her usual bravado completely gone, replaced by a raw, brittle fear. “He uses it to feed something.”

The silence that followed was heavier than any wall in the Academy. They were trapped, small cogs in a monstrous machine they were only just beginning to comprehend. They were insects in a jar, and something on the other side was watching, waiting to be fed.

As the full weight of their discovery settled upon them, a low, guttural alarm began to blare through the complex. It wasn’t a drill. The sound was deeper, more resonant, a visceral warning that vibrated in their bones. Red emergency lights began to flash, casting the corridor in a hellish, strobing glare.

An automated, metallic voice echoed from the overhead speakers, devoid of panic but filled with a chilling sense of finality.

[CONTAINMENT BREACH. SECTOR GAMMA. ALL INITIATES, REPORT TO BATTLE STATIONS. THIS IS NOT A DRILL. REPEAT. CONTAINMENT BREACH.]

They had just uncovered the secret of what the Academy was feeding. And it sounded like something had just gotten loose from its cage.