Time: 04:37 AM to 06:06 AM  

Classification: Breach Unfolding (Unsecured Narrative)  

Status: System Memory Fragmenting. Conceptual Boundaries Compromised.

Scene 1: Displacement Drift

Caldra stumbled through the Layer 4 corridor.

Reality felt thin here, unstable from the halted termination pulse. Each step forward required effort, like walking through air that had forgotten how to hold her weight.

She should not exist in this space. The awareness pressed against her mind like a migraine made of logic. The walls pulsed with archived memories that weren’t hers—fragments of other custodians, other files, other erasures bleeding through the system’s wounded architecture.

Her chalk burned faintly in her pocket, moving against the fabric of its own volition. When she pulled it out, thin sigils were already forming on its surface—symbols she hadn’t drawn, patterns that hurt to look at directly.

A screen overhead glitched, showing Cassel’s face for three seconds. Smiling. Then static. Then erased.

A notification window materialized in front of her, text appearing letter by letter:

SYSTEM OVERRIDE: SHIRO KUMA AUTHORIZATION

"You have six minutes of margin. Beyond that, I can’t reach you.”

Six minutes.

She kept walking.

Scene 2: Terminal Null

The terminal waited at the end of the corridor like a confession booth.

Its label read: NULL ENTRY: ONLY FOR THOSE WHO SHOULD NOT BE

When she touched the screen, her personnel files began overlapping, playing like transparencies held to light. She watched herself as a child, filing imaginary documents in empty drawers. As a researcher, before the Registry claimed her. As an erased record, white text on black background. As an anomaly, burning chalk into impossible patterns.

The system’s voice emerged from speakers that weren’t there:

Which version of C. Myre would you like to keep?

All the images flickered faster.

Please select one memory to retain. Others will be dissolved.

Caldra pulled out her chalk. The screen was warm under her palm.

She refused to choose.

Instead, she began writing directly on the screen in chalk. The symbols emerged without conscious thought—not letters, not numbers, but something between language and mathematics.

The system stuttered:

Manual correction not supported.

The chalk continued moving across the screen.

“…but it fits.”

Scene 3: Auren’s Persistence

Auren’s presence filled the air without his body arriving.

His voice emerged from the terminal’s speakers, calm but edged with something sharper than frustration:

“I tried to remove you procedurally. I tried to burn the version that resisted.”

The screen showed her files being processed, deleted, reconstructed.

“Now I will simply observe.”

She could feel his attention like cold pressure against her skull.

“You are collapsing the boundary between fact and file. Between what is recorded and what is real.”

He did not issue another termination pulse. Instead, something worse began moving through the Archive—a Trace Directive that took the form of ghost records. Phantoms of erased personnel, hunting her identity line by line, file by file.

Their voices whispered through the walls:

“She should not be here.”

“Process the anomaly.”

"Return to authorized state.”

The chalk grew hot in her hand.

Scene 4: Shiro’s Last Patch

A hidden window flashed open in the corner of the terminal:

PRIORITY MESSAGE: SHIRO KUMA

"I can’t hold Layer 5 shut much longer.”

The text updated in real time:

"When it opens, your file will be rewritten or redacted. Possibly both.”

“Choose wisely.”

Below the message, a form appeared—a way out, but only by voluntarily submitting a false record to the system. A lie that would let her exist safely within approved parameters.

Caldra began writing something in the submission field.

Then paused.

Instead of submitting it, she saved the file under a dummy entry:

“For Cassel. Do not index.”

The system processed this for seven seconds.

Then accepted it.

Scene 5: The Door Opens

A low groan shook the corridor.

The door to Layer 5 opened. Not because Caldra had requested access, but because the system wanted her to see what happened to unprocessable entries.

She stepped inside.

She had no memory of choosing to do so.

Behind her, the corridor vanished—not deleted, but becoming something that had never existed.

The Layer 5 chamber stretched beyond the reach of emergency lighting. Files floated in mid-air, their contents bleeding into reality. Names became people. Numbers became time. Documents became truth.

At the center sat a desk with no occupant.

On it: a nameplate reading C. MYRE - CLASSIFICATION PENDING

Caldra approached.

The chair was warm, as if someone had just left it.

On the desk surface, written in chalk that glowed like phosphorus:

“This file cannot be verified. Cross-reference entry: NULL.”

[End of FILE 011]

She has entered the space where the Registry keeps things it cannot process. Where files go to become something other than files. Where Caldra Myre stops being a person and becomes a question the system cannot answer.

Next: FILE 012

-Shiro Kuma