Speaker 1: Hello, I'm Welcome's stories all the time. Glad you are here.
Let's get into it. The monitor shows Ellie's drop to
his knees and then vanish, while the timer on the
overlay takes back to zero. Suspicion lodges in the station
operator's chest before the overide keys move. The operator leans
closer thum poised on the inter calm, and watches the
feeder start as if someone pressed a button on the world.
The field trailer came a keeps rolling. Cohen so wet
is at the doorway. Hans clench and the door frame
Ellie's Cowen says into the headset. The audio returns a
beat late and thin with static. The operator' suspicion pushes
him to speak commands instead of Christians. Within four lines
of code, and when recorded heartbeat, the broadcast has inverted
its purpose. The scheduled drill that should teach containment is
performing a subtraction. People disappear and the system writes new
rules in their place. The operator types a terse status
into the log and speaks with the flat procedure or
cadence he keeps for official records. He records what he
sees and what the system shows, because the log must
remain consistent even if the world does not. The operator's
name is never spoken on air, but the station knows
his routines. He is forty eight, salt and pepper hair
combed back, a thin vertical scar at his temple, and
a laminated protocol card clip to his chest pocket. He
closes the feed lock with the same motion he uses
to close forms. He reads aloud into the recorder becauseaying
the words ties them to action. Station operator to field
report train, the alley is unavailable, lupris started. Do not
cross perimeter. His voice is low measured and carries that
feigned radio rattle. The consoles add to every human sound.
Cohen answers quickly, Cohan, here, I watched him go. He bent,
then the camera looped him standing again. Elie's is gone.
Cowen's voice is short, sharp. He lists the facts like tools, name, action, location.
The operator notes the order. Cohen's tension tightens his speech
into quick commands. Do you have a survival override Cohen
and asks negative. The operator says protocol rewriten new restriction,
do not break line twenty two. The operator reads the
card text as its peers in the console mouth moving
against the drone. The first emotion shift moves from suspicion
into focused alarm. The operator's hands tighten on the clipboard.
He clamps the head tet is. He had to hold
the line steady. He shifts the camera feeds of the
trailer door, sits sent to frame, and orders Corn to
sweep the block outwarid and pairs. He hears corown matter,
Ali's whole position, Ali's answer me Coorwan's rhythm is practical.
Cowan taps objects to test resonance when nervous. The operator
knows Cowan's habits from previous cycles and uses them to
predict actions under pressure. They set a perimeter. The operator
keys the broadcast to a locked emergency tone and plays
the recorded replacement restriction to all units. The line reads
like a bureaucratic law that came alive. Certain actions are
now forbidden. Certain rots are closed. The tape of the
exer says, carries a scull at them where a line
has been cut out. The operator's fingers move the override's
script and he tries an authorized reset. The console refuses.
The loop has authority. The station cannot override. Corn's jaw
tightens at the speakers. We need the masser tape. He says,
we pulled a rack and we were set. The operator replies,
permission denied, bruck sealed. There is a static grasp that
sounds like a closed throat. They leave the trailer in pairs.
Corn goes with Romos and Mason, while the operator routes
extra feeds through the cret unit and watches on the street.
They find impressions left in the asphalt, long smere patterns,
as if tape reels were press into flesh, and then
in lund The boots of one technician stop short of
a smear in the footpath becomes noise in a pavement
grained that the camera reads as undulations. Corn crouches and
runs his gloved hand across the surface, fingers, coming away
with a feigned residue like tape adhesive. He says, this
is not a crash, it's an imprint. Ramos replies, like
something in spoiled them. The operator logs the words without interpretation.
The second emotion shift moves from alarm into urgent practice
golfir expressed through titan plans in abrupt borders. Cowen and
Ramos call back descriptions chack stop here, Ramo says, then
it's just static. Cohen tries a hand held docameter across
the smere and frowns. The meto blinks, drops to zero,
then flares red. When he had an edge where the
smear meets the knight, Cowen says, don't step past the boundary.
Mason answers, we won't. Their voices are clipped. They name
each other frequently, so the operator contract, who remains back
in the trail. At the operator finds a half burned
prot call card in Corwan's pocket. The card is creased
and smeared with ash, the ink partially erased. He holds
it to the crout and reads fragments aloud. Stand by,
do not alter sequence one, subject repeats seventh the last frame.
The instruction is self contradictory and impossible to perform in
the moment. A prior cycle left the note. The operator's
finger trace the scorch marks. He places the card under
a lamp and reads the burn pattern as if it
were a map. They attempt and override. At the console,
Cowen plugs a portable tape or corder into the rack.
Wants to feed a fresh loop into the system. And
tea at the cycle. He slams the recorder in and
begins playback. The operator recites the manual of rid line
by line cut master play blank page buffer. He says
the machine's answer with slow clicks. The loop presence appears
at the edge of the monitor as a negative silhuette,
a black form with a flicker of red like a stamp.
The camera shows its hedge for a beat and repeats
the last motion of a technician on a delayed loop.
Kwan moves to the rack and grips the master tape.
He hears the wet sound of a body folding from
the hallway. He reaches for the rewine spindles, and the
tape resists like a living rope. He jerks it free
and the feed stutters for a single second. The trailer
camera displays three images of Corwin, one in real time,
one a fraction late, and one that looks like the
shadow of his motion. The delayed image minks his hand
as it pulls the tape. Then the delayed image freezes,
while the real corn goes limp and collapses in wood
on himself. Raymus shouts Corwin through the word in a
dry high register, and then the line snaps. Cowan is
gone and is late looped him. Wi keeps moving a
beat after the real world stops. This is the chapter's climax.
The opera artor cannot ignore the way the anomaly claims
a body by replaying its final motion and then race
in the original. He orders Ramos to evacuate the field.
Ramo's move back, get Mason, do not imitate motion near
the subject. Ramos replies corwyn Tha and cuts off. The
operator's script has become a list literal commands intended to
stop bodies from being mirrored into disappearance. The loop presentage
is the frame emitting no sound, only the interruption of signal.
The operator's voice is a tull now calm, clipped and administrative,
and he uses it to keep others from acting the
same fate. Ramos argues with the operator over the open line.
We can still pull him back. Romo says, we can
still save him. The operator answers Ramos, do not repeat
his last motion, keep moving, do not mirror. The exchange
is three lines long, sharp and fast. Romos presses and cuts.
You are letting him go. I am preventing more loss.
The operator says, stand clear. And start the secondary perimeter.
The back and forth is practical and cold. No one
shouts obscenities. They trade orders like medical trioge. The operator
is restrained as an action in itself. A discovery alters
their plan. The operator catches a blurred frame where small
dogs sill wet stands are Coorn's feet in the footage
before he vanishes. The dogs had tilts toward the loop
presence for a fraction of the second, and then the
dog repeats in motion and the delayed feed while the
live dog remains still and then is gone. The operator
remembers the patents from Earlis Echell's cataloged in the station.
Animals register anomalies before humans do. He realized this to Romos,
and Romos replies that he has a scratch collo lying
near the smear. The collar has an institutional tag stamp
with a partial ID number. The operator records the evidence
an animal that observed the presence and then ceased to
exist in the live feed. They attempt containment by ritual,
remove the master tape and burn it. Corwin's hands are
already gone, so Romo's and Mason lifthi spool. They carry
it like a body and place it on a missiltray
under the trail of flood. The operator in a rate
the procedure as an official transcript extract tape A knight
him firm perage. Mason strikes the lighter and the flame
finds the tape edge. The master reel culs and releases
a smell of burnt varnish and old magnetic oxide. For
two seconds, the operator sees a reflection in a crat,
a looping imbum stamped on the tape, and a small
pautprint like a witness mark. The flame goes up midburn.
The tape cools, but the emblem remains stamped in the
console overlay. The loop refuses purging. Instead, the system sees
his channels and folds them into the primary feed. The
operator finds his own recorded override being rewritten by the
system with a new line, a prohibition that did not
exist before the burn. The console displays it in blocky
white type on a black field no destruction of primary media.
The operator's sentence in the lock now reads differently than
what he spoke. He feels the third emotion shift resolved
to adapt under a new set of hostile rules. They
decide to copy the tape rather than destroy it. Rameau's protests.
If it copies, it spread's, Mason answers if it burns,
it binds. The operator chooses the lefs or of two
failures and authorizes a copy to local offine storage. He
orders duplicate master seal Coppie, do you not play Copper's
own live feed? They work fast, and the operator watches
the duplication counter take his the station helms. A new
restriction appears between frames, do not name the missing. The
operator sees Alleys and co and stripped of surnames in
the live lock. He speaks the names allowed to anchor
them in memory. They find more evidence on the block,
a driveway with a smear of taping the shape of
a human being, and within it arow small press poon
impressions leading to a house. The operator routs the camera
to a street view and watches Romas pick a collar
out of the gravel and hold it up Elies's dog.
He says tag reads. The operator pauses and reads the
tag number into the log because the tag anchor's identity
against the irasher. The loop presence appears in the doorway
of a house across the street as a negative silhouette
then slips to the edge of frame imposes as if counting.
Bramo snaps at the operator over the open line. We
can go in and open doors. We can take the time.
The operator answers Ramos, he will not enact a LAUS
motion recorded on system use radios only. No one moves
the same way as a recorded frame. The argument becomes
three rapid exchanges. We find them. Ramo says, we can't
leave them. You risk replication. The operator replies, he risks
more vanishings. You're reordering us to run. Romo says yes.
The operator says run. Do not mimic yet to save
point delta, the operator here is their boots scraping gravel
as they obey. There is a twist in the Coppert files.
The operator finds a previous cycles look that names the
loop presence as a containment measure rather than a hazard.
The aldotranscript shows coordinated teams to liberately feeding specific motions
into the loop as a control mechanism. They trained subjects
to perform a final motion that would be captured and
looped out of reality as a form of ethanasia. The
operator reads the words aloud and realizes the system can
be weaponized by ritual instructions are not just rules, they
are prescriptions for who is removed. The operator's hands tremble
in a way he never allows on to the air.
He feels angerful into his voice. Then he masks it
and continues to read the steps. Ramo's reacts with a
short line they used it on prisoners. The operator replies,
records indicate prior sanction to use on compromised personnel. Mason sayers,
Then the loop is enforcing orders, not accidents. Three voices
overlap in quick cadence. The operator is next Chory's most
factor that the loop can be used to erase targeted individuals.
He orders a data dump to the archive and flags
the older transcript for higher review. He knows higher review
will not reach them in time. The station closes channels.
The operator reroutes all external lines into a single monitor.
Feeder whispers the only provisional instruction they can rely on
minimal motion, constant naming, and do not reproduce recorded actions
with the proximity of the anomaly. He tells Ramos to
gather evidence and instructs to carry the dog collar back
into the trailer. The operator insists the photograph the color
on the smear, and he tells them to leave any
motion that look like the erase subject alone. He records
this of policy because policy is the only legible thing
left when the system rewrites language. JIMID chapter. Cleffhanner arrives
as the operator labels a fold to secon one evidence.
The croup flickers and displays a new line next restriction
pending remove signer. The operator breath held low and then
sends the alert to all units. All units signers are
now at risk, stand by and do not sign forms
in the field. He repeats the line because spoken words
or habits the lip may not be able to edit
an audio. The corresponds with one liners of disbelief. In
questions who signs? Ramos asks who signed? Mason says The
operator does not yet have the answer. The restriction breathe
is like a closing door. They test the new rule.
The operator asks Ramos to sign a printed note and
then tread it. Ramo's gestures, hesitates, and then places his
thumb to a stamp and signs. The care shows the
ink drying. He shreds it. For a moment, nothing happens.
Then if feat shows Ramo's lad image up at the edge.
His hand mimicks the shredding motion a beat later and
then stops. While Ramo's in real life is still whole
and breeding the shred his paper app he is intact
in the delayed frame, but the real paper is gone.
While most swears and drops a tray. The operator orders
silence and tells Mason to start stamping anything. They regroup
and rehearse a new proto col in the trailer. The
operator reads aloud, name aloud, avoid repetitive gestures, do not
mimic record of frames, and treat pets as sensors and
not shepherds Cooran's absence sits in the room like a
missing boot. The operator writes Cowen's name on a fresh
card and stabs suit with a black market to keep
him present. He pins the card to the console. He
says the name clearly Corwin. The loop Pusen's ruples on
the edge of the crut with a red pimpac for
a breath. A last discovery ties the chapter together. The
operator watches the initial feed in slow motion and isolates
a frame where a prior station technician placed a small
white tipe fragment over the lens before a looper set.
The fragment bears a printed number and the faint in
print of a pall. The operator realizes the Loop marks
its own artifacts into the world, so that each cycle
leaves a bread contrail. The white fragment is both evidence
in a warning manufactured by the Loop Ittzel. The operator
files it under ottfact and records the co ordinates where
the fragment was found. He thinks that whoever left it
hope someone would read it as a map. The operator
ends the recorded transmission with a constrained status update. They
failed to reset the loop. They lost two personnel, Ellis
and Colwen, and they have consolidated survivors into a defendant sector.
He omits conjecture and keeps names and actions tied. He
issues a code directive to unknown listeners stand by, do
not cross the marked perimeter, wait for other instructions. He
signs the log with the station code and promises nothing.
The final paragraph contains a concrete beat. As he closes
the feed, a technician at the trailer door knocks onant's
hard The operator answers with a clip who was there?
The knocking stops. He announces in the open line entry
denied until authorization confirmed. He pins Cohen's name to the
board with a paper clip and writes the town. He
pushes the burnt protocol card under the lamp and watches
the crimson edge of the console over lay poles. The
monitor loops the last frame, Elie's collar lying in gravel.
The operator sets the recorder to leave the recorded directive,
and the room listens as the tape repeats and the
live fee begins again. The motion wroughte suspicion in motion
shifts suspicion, alarm, practical fear, resolve, anger, resigned vigilance. The
operator's choices in this chapter are driven by the suspicion
turn to procedural insistence on naming, containment, and adaptive rules.
He cannot stop the loop, but he can hold the record.
A respond to collapses at the cult a sack barricade
in the Feederywind's mid screen. Suspicion tightened in the station
operator's jaw when the image snapped back to zero. He
had seen a similar reset before, when Ellis fell and vanished.
He nothing into the intercom. At first, he watched the
same street play like a bad tape, until the overlay
ejected a new instruction, and a name erased itself from
the roster and the lower third. The central problem rose
in the first breath. A procedural drill has become an
agent that changes its rules and removes people. The station
operator canted the roster fingers flat on the clipboard, and
the word suspicion appeared as a line in the type
log beside his name. He tapped a printed protocol card
with one nail and chose to follow the overlay long
enough to recorded. The operator's decision to obey those damp
directives was driven by suspicion he could not clear, and
by the memory of Ellie's kneeling and disappearing in chapter one.
He was an institutional man. His name did not appear
on the tape. He was recorded as station operator in
the header age forty eight. Pail hair combed back, wrested
coat's mudge from years of handling paper. He kept his
voice low, flat, procedural. Outside the control room, Corwen leaned
under a blinking traffic barricade and told a responder to
hold the line inside. The operator watched the monitors and
listened for patterns. Corwan status the operator into the headset,
measured and even the lion carried the desert dry static
of a bad link. But Cowen's voice came for clipped
Cowan here, roadblock is live. Elly's his checking vehicles, Dolka houses,
barking all clear until he broke off. The operator did
not see the breaker in Corwen's sentence. He heard the
collapse instead. Corwen's breath tightened him, then stopped midward Alley's.
He forced the syllable out and then silence swallowed the channel.
The operator hit record. The feed ruined two seconds and
played to collapse again. This time the ovolat arrived when
no ovalais had been before and appended a new Safty
rule in red. The operator read the line aloud into
the log of voice flat to not fall a peripheral
motion erase missing roster members acknowledge immediately. Suspicion shifted. It
was not only a technical failure. The operator tested the
satellite feed, check redundancies and pulled arcives. Each check returned
corrupted text in the same looped emblem over the video.
He spoke aloud to the room to keep his hands
from trembling. Ale confirmed the roster. He said regional supervisor.
Haile's reflected monitor lists that jittered then lost one entry.
Ali's allies has come from the roster. Hale voice tut,
He's still on come. I can hear him breathing. The
operator watched the name blink out. He could feel his
pulse by the paper's edge. He slid a pencil across
the printed roster and circled the empty line. Cowen moved
in the cold sack with the head lamp beam and
a SA linked dishbrace in the tailgate. He had the
field jacket with a faded red patch and a portable
tape of corder clip to his belt. He did the
things he always did. He tapped a barcade to test resonance.
He counted cars. He murmured pro to colin a string
of half lines. When he recorded the counter instruction and
centered up the chain is voice cracked. He if we
isolate the barking dog and refused that ovalat maybe the
luke can't claimed the team. He sounded like he had
to believe his own plan. The operator noted Cowen's attempt
in the log and replay the file. The recording fractured
into a lip de echo. The echo dragged the last
motion of a vanished person into the foreground, a hand raising,
a bootstepping, shoulder dropping. That echo replaid without context and
forced the operator to listen to Lostwise. His suspicion toned
into alarm. Hale argued with him on the line. We
cannot just ignore an issue directive. If the overlay is
a legitimate emergency protocol, she said, the operator cut in.
It wasn't issued by any registered note, he answered, the
overlay is altering our systant The exchange commands and refusals.
Their voices traded shot lines. Hail station operator, we have
attachment to the municipal switch. We must follow the eastump
until we can verify the operate a verification. Its failing
names vanished when we try. Hale barked, then Stritfield movement
coll when them it approached Cowen, Cowen's colwyn'sad at lamps
won across a child's yard, streets melt of cold tar
and whitgrass. A dog barked non stop, and a yard
screened by a chain link. Co En crouched, tested the
docimeter and the needle shivered, then dropped. He crouched to
keep a silhouette low. He a greased streakd knuckles at
a burn on his forearm. He I can work around
the OVERVLA if I keep eyes in the perimeter. I'll
try to counter instruction. In fifteen he spoke to no
one and to every one in the same channel. An
outside event came. A little boy on a pot repeated
an absent victim's last motion. Three seconds after the victim vanished,
the operator froze the frame. The child's lips moved with
a delayed timing cole. When swore who is that kid?
He demanded into the mic responder team, get that child
away from the chema. A responder moved into frame, and
the child stood still, then slumped, then made the same
small step alleys it may before he dropped. Doubt became fair.
The operator's fingers tightened on the clipboard until the paper creased.
He ordered a few duplication and sent the file to
three separate archives. He kept saying the overlay text allowed
as he transcribed it. Because naming the role made of concrete,
he lobbed the line do not follow peripheral motion. He
paged the legal desk. He felt the typical institutional reflex
to document and to obey, but his actions began to diverge.
He authorized Corwin to attempt to control refusal. The refusal
was audible. Corwan into his recorder, we be not following
that embedded motion. Isolate the dog, keep the kid off
the steps, do not pursue any figure at the frame edge.
He clapped his recorder and sent the file up. The
file arrived like gravel in the operator speaker and then
recomposed into a hysterical loop of the same hand gesture.
The tape recorder's mechanical wine left a residue in the audio,
and then a responder in the call d sack froze.
He took a step and did not finish it. His
body held then vanished. The operator leaned forward and muttered
the emergency log number. He had watched el'skneel and vanish
in the previous cycle, and now he watched another responder
stop mid step and disappear. Someone in the control room
and hail shop. The operator's spish hardened into a decision
to record everything, to issue strict directives and plane type commands,
and to strip names from public logs. As the ovallay demanded.
He used his voice to transform panic into procedure. Hall
push back. You want to erase personnel from the municipal index,
she asks, We can't do that on assumption we have
brought calls for deconfliction. The operator typed as he spoke,
we will restrict movement and remove public referencing until verification completes.
He added a line the old personnel must not proceed
peripheral entities under any circumstance repeat no pursuit. An external
event occurred. A console display corupted commands and a ross
entry blinked out entirely losing authorization tokens for a responder
named Mendoza. The screen registered an invalidation cord and the
operator's automatic cross check returndnl Hale tried to re into
Mendoza into the system, and the system refused with a
red triangle. She slammed a hand on her console. Mendoza
was on sand by two minutes ago. She said, he's
reporting in he is there with static were Mendoza's reply
should have been. Cohen tried to act in the newly
issued directive. He tethered himself with a line to the
field vehicle and walked toward the barking dog. He moved slowly,
counting steps, tapping this outlink for signal strength. He reached
the yard and saw the dog circling the porch, a
thin white shape against the dark. The dog turned and
bareed teeth at the edge of Korwan's head lamp. Koran murmurred,
it's just a dog, It's just a dog. He curched
and extended a hand to the metal gate. The operator
watched the live feet in which Korwan's hand, however, it
then withdrew, then reached again. The ovallaatex bled and appended a symbol,
a small red triangle that matched the emblem the loop
presence favored. The operator felt his throat narrower. He into
the mike. Corwin would draw, do not isolate, the animal
would draw now. Corwan's voice came in a thin whisper
and not following that instruction, I need to see the
lion cut. A sudden, sharp event, the loop prisons appeared
at the very edge of the camera frame, a tall
black silhouette with a faint red emblem on its chest
that shimmered with scan line art facts. Its edges glitched
into the feed and the audio dropped out. The responder
nearest corn stilled, and then his limbs replayed the last
motion of the vanished person. The operator recorded the phenomenon,
and his hand shook on the keyboard while he typed
the words exactly as the overlay demanded. In the control room,
voices rose into a rapid exchange. Station operator Hale, we
need to force a hard reseet try the master key.
The operator reply, master key. Logs at the command interfaces corrupted.
Hale snapped, then switched to manual overiyes. The operator typed,
then deleted, then typed again. He felt anger at the
system for failing him in a calder sharp a caution
toward the rules it now enforced in motion shifted again.
Alarm moved into grim resolve. The operator ordered immediate erasure
of public roster entries and a rollback of real time
broadcast to a private channel. He stripped the filled feet
of identifying markers. He spoke allowed to enforce the change,
remove names from the life overlay, switched to internal ID
only CAW in a boat field approach, report only movement counts.
He kept his sentences short so he could be heard
across static Corwen's countermeasure failed in a small personal way.
He recorded a short instruction meant to contradict the over
If you see motion at periphery, do not follow it.
Tie your line to a fixed point and call the hub.
He compressed and sent the file. The operator received it
and routed it to the archives. When he played it back,
the audio appealed like Burn's books and replayed Korwan's panic,
the last motion echoing in a child's de laid mimicry.
Korwin swore in the channel that file looped dellis is
fall back into my recorder, he said, it made me
hear him again. An external event, the feed degraded to
a looping static emblem as the overlay stamped destrict, a
red restriction, permission to move to public se denied, permission
to contact municipal channels reduced, and a new line that
read inforced rasher of witnesses. All field recordings must be anonymized.
The operator had one tactical option left, turn the field
of corridor into a decoy. He instructed Korwyn to submit
an empty feed with scripted motions to trick the looped presents.
Cohen argued, for a real test once, we need to
see its pattern we need one clear outcome. The operator
pressed his lips together. He knew the risk. He ordered
the script a deco. Koran executed the mock motion, three
measured steps toward the curb, a raised hand, then a retreat.
The feed showed the steps, and then a responder and
frame stopped midstep and vanished. The decoy failed to distract
the presence. Hale boked a short stirring of angry lines.
You did what I told you not to do. Co
When she snapped, he exposed more bodies. Cohen answered him
fast clip speech. Hale, I tried to isolate the test.
I thought you thought wrong, Hale. Mendoz has gone from
our system. Elly's has gone from our feed. We are
burning down personnel records in real time. Cohen's voice dropped.
What do we do when names disappear? Hale? He asked,
each word small and sharp. The operator typed rasure repeatedly
into the lock. He could hear an ABIs TV from
a different channel through the building's thin walls. It carried
nothing useful. He wrote the instruction on a sticky tap
and pinned it to his clipboard. In heavy black ink
strip names ob structure, save lives, and unexpected reveal struct
a room. The little boy on the porch had been
filmed early by a citizen's phone uplated to an open channel.
The operator pulled the citizen's clip and froze a frame.
The boy's hand held a torn corner of a printed
emergency car. The card bore the same red triangle emblem.
The operator sent the frame to Hale and said, this
kid has a paper copy of the overlay emblem. Where
did he get it? Hale examined the frame and said,
there was a municipal drill flyer dropped this week, but
this card shows extra rules that were not on the
official flyer. The operator felt a tangible pivot a civilian
had a physical copy of a corrupted directive. That discovery
changed decisions in the room. Hale ordered community a preached
to retrieve any physical copies of ALTI flyers. The operator
assigned a secure team to canvas the immediate neighborhood for
printed material. He also ordered an internal ordit of HUID
access to the municipal printer. He felt the control of
physical paper might be a key to tracing the corruption. Corwin,
still on the field, found a scrap of tape in
the yard, He pocketed it and sent a photo. It
showed a thin strip of magnetic tape with a paprin
pressed into the adhesive. The operator traced the photo to
a foul name and cross us referenced the taped pattern
with the Loop Presence's visial signature. The tapes brocket holes
matched a model used in an institutional recording spool stored
at the regional archive. That meant clearly and concretely, the
Loop Presence used physical media as a phasing mechanism. A
utriss came when the operator replayed a narchevil spool from
three months prayer. The spool contained a dry administrative training
drill with a stamped note in a margin that we
do not distribute beyond facility. The note at the same
red triangle. The physical training copy had been borrowed twice
in the last month by a contractor whose name much
to vendor with municipal credentiles. The operator found an entry
with the vendor's badge number and a porto. The vendor's
photo was grainy, but the badge number matched a contractor
who had recently serves the broadcast equipment. The operator felt
that shark has a sharp intake of breath. The prisons
might be exporting real human access. In the control room,
forces became a rapid thread of short commands in questions,
hail flag, vendor badge. Cowen retrieved tape residue and do
not touch it with bare hands. Station operator wrote benda
files to forensics. The operator obeyed. He wrote initiate vendor review,
lock physical spool records. He kept the sentences punches so
coms would travel over damaged circuits. Cohen returned to the
vehicle with gloved hands and a sash or piece of
magnetic tape. He held it by edges and stamped a
field note. He into the recorder. Cut tape found in
front yard, poor print impression on at ties aside sending
sample to lab, do not play the on site. He
taped the note to the sample and sealed it in
his zip bag. He turned to the street and found
a neighbor with a foreign video offering an extra clip.
The neighbor's clip showed a brief moment where the loop
prisons of silou Whi shimmered across their porch camera before vanishing.
The operator paced the lap and set the sample chain
of custody. He logged every touch. He felt an odd,
precise calm as he attached labels and barcoots because paperwork
could be trusted and feeds lid. He briefed Hil in
short lines. We have vendor access, we have physical tape,
we have civilian copy of emblem. We will isolate all
three threats, Hale answered, make it fast. Every minute we waste,
we risk another person. The operator nodded, even though no
one could see him. At Chapter cliff finger hit when
the operator opened a secured file and found an internal
memo referencing an earlier droll where Ellie's was specifically listed
as an observer. The memo included a photograph of Elli's
kneeling next to a sprawl and smiling. The caption read
observer Ellie's keep this copy for internal review. The operator
froze the frame and then replayed the original clip of
Elli's kneeling and vanishing. The photo and the disappearance matched exactly.
He realized Ellie's had been marked for observation in a
training spool that later became corrupted. Someone inside the institution
had handled the specific copy. Hale's voice went low and fast.
Who cleared the observation who had custody of the spool
between the training and the day Eli's disappeared. The operator
scrolled through sign in sheets. He found a name, partially
redacted contract of Randall. The operator sent a whole request
to Randolph vendor Phile then pushed a priority query to forensics.
He hail, do we have physical access locks for Randall's passes?
Hale replied he was loved in last Tuesday at ten
p m. He claims to have performed maintenance on link.
This revelation four to new argument in the room, Hale,
if Randall had access, this is an internal compromise. We
call in internal affairs and we locked the archive. The
operator hesitated. He knew calling internal affairs could trigger protocols
that would seal too much and prevent field access to evidence.
He chose a compromise. We quarantined the spool and keep
Corn in the field only as a retrieval agent under
remote supervision. Hale agreed. In clip lines it now Corwin
retrieved more physical evidence had done. He came back with
a torn emergency card piece the boy had held on
the magnetic tape recidue. He handed the evidence to a
courier the operator had arranged. The operator watched the handoff
for a camera and confirmed the chain of custody. He
logged the currier's name, time, stem and see a number.
He felt a careful lightness. Procedure was moving, and movement
could protect people. The chapter reached its peak when Presence
again appeared in the peripheral of the cul de sac camera,
this time closer and more defined the emblem on its chest.
Poles read and the audio dropped into reverse. Wells our
responder reached for a colleague and froze mid motion. He
left an imprint of boot tread on damp pavement, and
then the boot vanished. The operator watched that bootprint remain
on the ground. Physical evidence persisted where people did not.
He typed a single line into the log Presence and
forces a rasure, but leaves traces. Hale ordered a hard
wire to the archive and an emergency handoff to forensics.
She we will keep the secure. We will not broadcast
this clip publicly. We are oscillating all related material until
we determine cause. Korn for his cracking, said, Alleys is
on my feed. He falls, he vanishes, the kid repeat him.
The kid's paper has the triangle. Someone distributed that paper,
Hall replied, short and fierce. Then we find who distributed
the paper. We start with Randall. The operator felt a
final shift from suspicion to grim determination. He issued an
ouster stripped directive over the internal channel, all identifying day
to remove physical evidence to forensics, vendor axis frozen community
of freach for printed cards, and a stric field order
no pursuit of proferal motion. He closed his log and
pinned the file to the secure queue. He watched the
overlay return one last time, stamped with a narrow of
red restriction, The emblem looped once and the feed degraded
into static. The chapter ends with a concrete beat. The
operator's console displayed one remaining live image, a bootprint on
the cold desack assphalt damp and defined under a head
lamp cone. A curon knocked at the control room door,
carrying the sealed back containing Coran's tape residue and the
torn card. The operator rose clipped his recorder onto his
blazer and took the package. He to Hail, we lock
the stone and bring Randall in for questioning. Hale answered,
I'll despatch an officer now, the operator handed the courier
the sign chain of custody received, and the door closed
behind the courier's name on the lock. The overlay blinked once,
and then the monitors fell into a looping emblem. As
the transmission cut. The cul de sackfree jumped backward while
core and ran toward the fall. In this bonder, he
reached for a radio and found only static, and the
street rewound under his boots. Suspicion sat under his roofs
the way and old coin bresses into a pot. He
had seen a similar rewind when Ellie's bent and vanished.
He he Ellie's into the hand held voice tight and
the audio returned a delay. Deckud A skipped to beat.
The camera sapped to zero and showed the same motion again,
the responder collapsing the same foot scraping pavement the same
overtar and barricade. Korn pushed his shoulder against the metal barrier,
breath coming out hard, and thought of the stition operator's
face in the monitors upstairs. Thus suspicion pushed him toward action.
If the loop removed witnesses, then staying still meant being
erased to the operator. Watched the reset count a blinket
three digits and counter protcolsteps by muscle memory. The operator's
bision hardened into inventory override keys, laminated cardi intocomline. He
ran a hand along the analog head to a cable
until it clicked into place, and mouthed the new restriction
under his breath. He do not pull a fallen responder
into the frame, beloved, reading the forbidden action to himself,
as if naming it might make it real. The card
beneath his thumb warmed a smear of soup listed at
the edge where his thumbrushed the laminate, he felt the heat,
and that physical bone turned out into a plan. The
operator chose to erat commands rather than repeat instructions. Troyce
is mattered now because rules were changing the map of
who could survive Corwin? Do you copy? The operator entered
the intercom and measured Keedden's key to the beeps. Cowan answered,
breathing into the mic, A copy station. I can see
a responder on my flank. He repeats his hand motion.
It's delayed by half second. Cowen's voice rose once and
then sank. The hand held a corridor in his satchel
rattled with a tape side hiss. He crouched beside the responder,
a man named Rays, and tried to make raise blink
on command, Rays let form the same cows they had
fallen three minutes earlier. Kohen grad raised shoulder to steady him.
The frame snapped back. Ray's shoulder disappeared from the image first,
then Rays was gone. Cohen's hand clothes on empty air,
his fingers grazed cold pavement and dust. Koran's wore. He
Rays and the word tore out of him. The operator
watching slander a thumb on a physical of ride the
override register, and then a maund like a spool. The
feed rouned again and call. When watch strays fall a
second time in the same frame, Corwan's jaw tightened. He stationed,
we are losing Bodison were set. The operator copy, do
not retrieve, observe and report, do not create a new witness.
Cowen's mouth went dry. He had been sent to test loops.
Testing had never been quiet science. It was noise and
cold light in the risk of hands that would not
answer when cold. They argued over the line for three
short breaths. Corwin, we can't leave him there to vanish
the operator. If you touch him, you risk expending the
loop's footprint. Cowen, so let him disappear. The operator prote
a color adjustment, lure the presence away from populated notes.
That is my order. Cowen tapped his tape recorder with
one knuckle, as if the mechanical sound would ground him.
The audio glyph from the recorder played backward for a
fraction of a second and produced a rhythm that matched
the street light flicker. Both men heard a pattern in
the reverse swell and understood that the loop carried instructions
inside its corruption In the culled to sack, Cowen move
with a testing rhythm. He checked Ray's helmet, the responder's badge,
the scuff neeplay. He the man's name, rais Raise, stay
with me. The responder's eyes opened and miurred an earlier moment.
He did not look at Coors so much as replay
the motion he had made. Corwin took one step back
and tried to trace a new tankred with the recorder.
He pressed play, and an odd Caden's unfolded, a tiny delay,
a gap, then a tonal squeal that sounded like an
alarm pushed du molasses. Corwen pointed his head lamp at
the overturned barricade and noticed the lamps cun trembled in
a way that didn't match his breath. He tapped the
barricade with his knuckles to test resonance in the wood
answered with a slow, hollow thunk. Heat stationed the barricade.
Register's anomalous resonance repeat on playback. The operator replied, mark
it mark anything that repeats nothing in the field is
free of the loop. The voice in the control room
stayed flat. It was a procedure recited in a room
full of failing machines. Back in the control room, the
operator watched the protocol text on screen rewrite itself. The
institutional font slid pixel by pixel, and an impossible restriction appeared.
Do not make eye contact with looped subjects. The operator
read the line twice slowly, then washed his laminated card
begin to smolder where it overlapped the monitor's base. He
took the card free with glove fingers and felt heap
through fabric. He blew on the card and the smoke
callled like a black filament. He set the card down
and his hand shook when he KEYDA protected file to delete.
He spoke into the intercom quite of this time and said, Corwin,
if the card Burns protocolism were, do not approach the emblem.
Korwan and the line answered, what's the emblem? Station? The
operator hesitated, He could not name the emblem without seeing
it in print on a human Pawin moved the recorder
in a slow arc and played the reverse cliff twise.
Each playback revealed a new timing, a half second shift that,
when stapped, suggested a missing frame between motions. Corwin, there
is a missing frame between the drop and the venish.
We can target it. The operator. You will need to
create a decre lure the presence out of populated notes,
sacrifice an ode if required. Coorwan's hands were steady on
the satchel strap. He you mean me, the operator? You
mean what is available? Cown, use what you have. Coran
dug into the satchel and slid a strip of old
tape between two fingers. The tape smelled like iron and
burned plastic. A respond to coal from down the block.
Her radio sputtered, Corwan, do you see a red mark
the pavement? She said. Koran looked and found a faint
in print with someone and stood a thin red triangle
the size of a palm. He touched it and the
pain felt slightly tacky. He wiped his gloved finger on
his jacket, and the princes mudged into a darker staind
as an emblem Corwin as were Ellie's vanished. He thought
of Ellie's kneeling and disappearing, and the streep rewinding like
a film with a missing sail, the operator's face once
lack in the monitor's glow. Here we have the imprint again,
contain expodure, create distance. Coorwan considered taking Ray's helmet of
road to create a motion that would uppace the Loop's mimicry.
He instead wrapped the tape around a wrench in tide
a loose knot, making a small artificial motion that might
raid as a living subject. The field confrontation happened in fits.
Cowan set the wrench in motion with a flick and
backed away. Ray's head moved along with the thrown narc,
delayed by a fraction of a beat. The Loop presents,
which had been waiting at the frame's edge, stepped farther
into the scene and mimic the wrench's last arc. Koran
took two steps forward and reached to drag rays back
by the armpit. The fee jerked, Cowan's arm elongated in
a smear of pixels, and the world snap backward in
a collision of frames. Raised body folded in the same
degree as before, then vanished. The wrench clattered on the assault.
Cowan's fingertips found empty fabric. He shouted station into the
MC voice roar the operator aboard retrieval. Do not attempt
further contact, Corwan, I'm not leaving him here to be unmade,
the operator replied. Then you make a choice to change
the procol make it precise. Corwan played the reversed audio
again and found a puzzin that suggested timing three beats,
a long silence, then a microsecond where motion was not registered.
He we can move across that microsecond. We can insert
ourselves as a controlled variable. The operator counted lyle calibrating
delay in the monitor one two, three, whole move on silence.
Koran gripped the wrench into his knuckles, paled, and then
stepped into the gap. On the operator's count, the cul
Deesat dropped into the hole between moments, Corwan fell to
pressure against his lungs and the taste of old tape
in his mouth. He saw the loop presence flicker like
bad figure and choose to replicate the last motion of
a person it had claimed Ella. The Presence mimicked Alley's
reach for his own knee. Koran flexed his fingers and
held on to the wrench like a steak. The climax
came when the Presence turned its mimicry toward Korwin deliberately.
Its edge shimmered with scan line artifacts, its silhouette elongated.
Korwan recognized a motion from the early loops. The presence
repeated a colleague's last for each a deliberate baiting gesture.
Kor removed his feet to fraction of an inch to
the right to avoid matching the timing exactly. The fee'd
caught him in mid step, and the world drew und
a beat. Korwan Fro's chest hollow and realized that the
presents used to lay the trap motion into his pattern.
The operator lunged voice sharp, Korwan, stop, do not step further.
Korwan heard Rise's name in his own mouth. He'd know
I'm not going to let it pull another one. The
presence bend at an impot possible angle and extended a smear
of lind that matched to memory of Elli's last posture.
Cohan felt the wrench tug out of his hands. Of
gravity itself had become sticky. The worlds snapped. Cohen's last
recorded motion played in a loopocrost remonitors upstairs, his shoulder tensing,
his foot faltering, the wrench tilting. Then the monitor froze
on a triangle of red where he had stood, and
a thin thread of tape that had been tied around
the wrench's handle. The operator watched the red endbum bloom
where Corewin had been. He slammed keys, deleting institutional locks
that recorded Cohen's sign in an assignments. His hands were
steady enough to mask the small trimmer in the risks
where the operator's ID number was inked. He recorded a
coded directive into a secure channel that bent the drill's
original outline. He did not speak the directive aloud. Instead,
he laid the file onto the broadcast as a disguise
evacuation vector. Upstairs, the control room smelt of burnt laminate
and hot circuitry. The operator held the burnport culcard between
two fingers and set a line into the live feed
that was not meant for a wide audience. If you
are in a populated node, moved toward the periphery and
maintained distance, do not mimic motions of loop subjects. Sacrifice
one note to save many. The operator's voice was flat, unmeasured.
He did not raise it. He erased the original drills
timeline and replaced it with a script that directive responders
away from dense residential clusters and toward empty lots, industrial sites,
live utility corridors. He saved the file under a non
script label and set it to push over the analog
transmitter in thirty seconds. He wrapped the tape bull and
a handkerchief and placed it in the console as a
token he could not explain. The aftermath played on monitors
in slow motion. The feed resorted one more time, and
the camera showed a faint red emblem where Corwin had
stirred the triangle like a burn mark on concrete. The
operator left the file queued hand scorched in the laminate
of his card. He tied a final stand by message
into the transmitter's buffer, a coded ritual meant to attract
the presents away from populated traces. He did not speak
the words loud. He pressed a key in the channel.
Hum the monitors began to stutter. A looping static turned
rose and matched the low drone under the room's air
folders outside respt bonded down the block, haunted breaths to
keep from moving, and watch the called d sack through
a crack windshield. The operator considered the moral calculus with
an almost clerical attention. He had watched Ellie's vanish in
an earlier recet that ruan the same footage until his
hands were rawn the intercom. He had watched a respond
to collapse in the feet reverse mid screen. Those memories
were not ghostly, they were registered events. Ellie's knees hitting pavement,
riise helmets guff, the barricades would splintering. He thought of
prote call's paperwork that could be burned to change consequences.
He deleted names from logs. He added a directive that
would redirect the presence's attention toward industrial zones and away
from residential loops. He believed that changing the drill structure
could change the presences appetite. There was a subtle and
expected reveal. The operator discovered in the preserved footage a
frame that had been masked by earlier edits. In that frame,
behind Alley's as he dropped his knees, a white silhouette
had paused with a slight bend of a head. The
silhouette held a small object, a looping tape fragment between
two fingers. The operator froze the frame and zomed in
until the object resolved into the same red triangle and
printy at corwn spot. The discovery refrained Ellie's disappearance. It
suggested that the presence did not merely race, It recruited
or marked the operator at The emblem precedes the removal.
It brands the position. He replayed the frame, backing further
to see how the embum bloomed a micro second before
the vanish. He whispered it leaves a calling card. It
leaves a mark to return to the realization shifted the plan.
The presence followed the market. Left Faced with that evidence,
the operator made a choice that would end the immediate
loop at the cost of his role within the system.
He drafted a final instruction set that would minic the
loops on logic. He scheduled a transmission that would play
a contradictory pattern instead of forbidding contact of right. The
transmission would narrate a stage motion designed to tentph the
prisons away from populator coordinates toward a sealed industrial yard.
He encoded the timing exactly down to the micro second
gap discovered in the reverse cliff. He set the transmitter
to lead the corrected program on a low power channel
and then to drop the rest of the institute signals.
He wrote a single line into the broadcast headed that
only field texts would recognize. The operator used a file
name that suggested a droll escalation so the presents would
accept it as valid. He saved the file, then removed
his head set and put it on the console in
a way that the camera would see. He pressed to
transmit key and let the corrective pattern bloom across the
same frequency the presents had been using. He watched the
monitors as are thin red thread and rolled in the
feed where Colwyn had been, and then contracted into the
industrial lot that the operator had chosen. He felt a
cold sensiion in his throat, but could not tell if
it was fear or relief. The control room lights dimmed
as the transmitterforded into its new cadence. The loop dissolved
around a cold d sssy feed, and the cameras registered
a slow, deliberate motion esill wept, moving away from houses
and toward empty lots. The last external event came as
defeeds their into static. The operator watched the emblem'smear shifter
on the empty street into the lot he had named
in the corrector file. The emblem halls once, like a
stamp burning into a tape. The operator reached up and
set the laminated card back into his chest pocket. He
then tied a final short message into the log stand
by line that would instruct any listening fuel text to
maintain distance and monitor the redirected feed. He did not
sign his name, He did not say a farewell. He
hit sand, and the transmission dropped into a looping static
bed the size of a small ocean. The monitors lit
the last image, the red emblem on into pavement. The
operator slid his hand across the desk and turned room
light outside through the control room window. The coldie sacked
street light clicked and then went out. In the minutes
that followed, the loop held its new rhythm. The industrial
lot recorded the red emblem bloom, and then nothing else.
Cameras there showed only a wind blown chain link fence
and a puddle that reflected a dead sky. The operator
leaned back and felt the weight of his choices in
the physical app behind his eyes. He had dratted the
presence away from dense neighborhoods. He had erased logs and
traded one sacrifice for a chance to keep a larger
set of people from being erased. He had recorded a
directive that would play until someone physically disabled the transmitter.
He had no certainty that the presence would followed the bait,
only the evidence that the embum moved in a way
he had predicted. He listened to the drone of the
machine and felt its vibration through the arm of his chair.
A fine note was arrived when the operator reviewed the
preserved audio one last time under the static bary. Deep
was a reversed syllable that matched his own stand by syntax,
a fragment he had used in consciously while deleting locks.
The reverse syllable formed a tiny command that could be
read as authorization. The operator understood then that his own
voice had been folded into the loops grammar. His choices
had become part of the pattern that shaped the presence's behavior.
That revelation reframed the moral landscape. He had not only
routed the hazard, he had supplied it with new rules.
He considered deleting the corrective file, but then he thought
of Rays and Ellys, and of Gorwn's steady hands. He
thought of the responders who would wake up and follow
the redirected instruction to and Delot's rather than family blocks.
He pressed his palm flat against the console and watched
a last frame, a red triangle where Cowan had stood
faint and precise. He picked up a spowl of tape
and wounded around two fingers until the film suck coal
and hot. He wrapped the spool in the handkerchief and
placed it into the console drawer. He locked the drawer.
He took a breath that tasted of hot plastic and ozon.
The chapter causes on a concrete situational beat. The monitors
cut their steady looping static. The operator's final cue directive
begins to play on a narrow band, and the control
room's emergency like flashes once before the room goes dark.
The operator's hands are visible for a moment on the desk,
then the image collapses into the red emblem behind him,
feigned unreadable, and the transmission cycles again, and that is
the end. Thank you for listening, and I will see
you in the next one.