Chapter 9 Rourke's Trail

The screen went dark.

Riley stood frozen, staring at her own name circled in red ink among the dead. A low hum vibrated beneath her boots - not mechanical, but alive, like a beast snoring beneath the earth.

She turned toward the back of the chamber, where cables led into a collapsed server room. The air was colder there. Rotten. Metallic. Her flashlight caught on a small black box wedged beneath a broken workstation.

A portable hard drive. Scratched, but intact.

Taped to it was a strip of torn canvas, and in a familiar, jagged hand:

"CLAY. IF YOU'RE READING THIS - I'M NOT ME ANYMORE."

"BUT PART OF ME IS STILL TRYING."

Riley slipped the drive into her jacket, heart pounding. She recognized the handwriting - Jack Rourke. Her father's old CO. The last man seen alive before the first blackout at Breach Point.

She found a functional terminal in the corner of the lab and jacked the drive in. The screen stuttered. Then:

ACCESSING...

ENCRYPTED MESSAGE DETECTED

SUBJECT: OPERATION HOLLOW VEIL // FINAL LOG – ROURKE

DECRYPTING...

A video played.

Jack Rourke sat in a dark room. His face was gaunt, his skin pale and flaking. He looked... wrong, like something trying to remember how to be human. His voice was strained but lucid.

"If you're seeing this... then the veil didn't hold."

"They told us it was a contagion. A neural parasite. But that's a lie. The Hollow isn't alive. It's a shadow of thought. A mirror that remembers. Once you look at it... it looks back. It learns you."

He glanced off-screen. Flinched.

"I tried to bury it. With the others. We detonated the breach site. But it never needed a body. Just a mind."

"It's in memory now. In thought. In the idea of us."

The screen glitched. Jack twitched.

"If you find Clay... if you find Marcus' daughter... tell her to check behind her scar."

"They left her marked."

He leaned forward, his face now inches from the camera.

"And if she ever sees me again - tell her it's not me anymore."

The video ended.

The lights above Riley flickered.

She touched the scar behind her ear. It pulsed beneath her fingers - warm.

Outside the server room, a door slammed.

Not wind.

Footsteps.

Heavy. Dragging.

She shut the terminal off and drew her Glock. The flashlight's beam danced across the bunker wall.

Then, just before it reached the hallway... it bent.

Like light refusing to touch something real.

She held her breath.

A shape passed across the corridor - wearing her father's uniform.

Her hands trembled.

"Dad?"

The thing turned.

And smiled with eyes that weren't his.