BLOODCAPE
Chapter 142: The Anchor Rewritten

Chapter 142: Chapter 142: The Anchor Rewritten

The medical wing had the look of something time tried to erase and failed.

What was left behind wasn’t ruin — it was memory residue. Peeling antiseptic-white walls, scorched tiles, empty beds with straps still half-buckled. The air stank of dried synthetic dopamine and ozone, like the ghost of emotion trapped in chemical aftertaste.

They moved through it without speaking. Hernan kept his eyes forward. Aya flanked left, hand near her sidearm. Iro took up the rear, his rifle cradled but alert. Dekra led, cloak whispering behind her like a rumor no one wanted to hear out loud.

She stopped at a dead-end corridor, face-to-face with a doorway half-swallowed by the bedrock. The hazard glyph above it—bio-radiation—was long dead. The frame had buckled slightly inward, like the mountain had tried to reclaim it.

Dekra didn’t hesitate. She pulled back a rusted access panel, slid two copper prongs from her gauntlet, and inserted them. The doorway hissed as if sighing in relief. Then it opened.

"Welcome to the womb," she said without a trace of irony.

Inside, the space was circular and windowless. Red floor-strip lighting pulsed faintly, just enough to illuminate the therapy chairs bolted in a semi-circle. There were six. All ancient. All stained. One still had dried blood curled like ivy across the headrest.

In the center stood a neural interface spire — dull black, coiled with fiber and memory filament. It buzzed faintly, as if sensing company for the first time in decades.

"This was Zodiac’s Splinter Anchor Node," Dekra said, approaching the spire with almost reverent caution. "They didn’t use this for healing. They used it for... rewriting."

Aya wrinkled her nose. "Smells like old tears."

"Smells like what people wanted to believe instead of what happened," Dekra corrected. "This was where broken agents came to be ’fixed’ by being rewritten. One false memory. One fracture deep enough to bury all others."

Iro scanned the perimeter and muttered, "So: psychological war crimes in a circle."

"Therapeutic lies," Dekra replied, powering up the plinth. "The Splinter Memory Anchor protocol allowed insertion of memory events into a population’s emotional logic stream — even when those events didn’t exist. It’s all about emotional cohesion. The more someone wants it to be true, the less it gets challenged."

Aya turned sharply. "And you want to do that?"

Hernan stayed quiet, eyes tracking the spire as if he recognized it. Maybe he did.

Dekra’s fingers danced across the interface. A faded Zodiac symbol pulsed beneath her gloves — ouroboros wrapped in flame. "We’re not erasing anything," she said. "We’re adding weight. One event. One story. One anchor to pull Hernan forward."

"You’re trying to implant a myth," Aya said. "A salvation event."

"No," Hernan said finally. His voice was soft but solid. "I’m giving the city a reason to keep me. Not because I’m true — but because I feel like I should be."

Aya turned toward him, unsure whether to flinch or follow.

"What’s the memory?" she asked.

He stepped toward the chair and rested a hand on its cold, cracked arm.

"There was a riot. Sector Thirteen. No cameras. No backup. Just me and a child caught in the crossfire. I pulled her out. I left a scar on my arm from the burn. No glory. Just a moment. A choice I never got to make."

"But could have," Dekra said, already routing neural bands.

Hernan sat down.

He didn’t brace.

Aya didn’t stop him.

Dekra connected the leads to the base of his neck, where the coat collar parted just enough to show pale skin, tight with tension. The spire hummed louder. Red faded to white. The room held its breath.

Dekra’s voice went flat. "Injection begins in three. Two. One."

The pulse hit like a whisper screamed through glass.

No noise. But every bone knew it.

Aya staggered slightly. Iro blinked and exhaled like he’d just remembered he had lungs. Even Dekra’s hands paused.

A memory that hadn’t happened had just been born.

Screams echoed faintly through their chests — not in the air, but in them. The phantom loop of a conflict too real to be false, too new to be historic.

And in its heart: Hernan, kneeling in smoke, cradling a girl with blood on her shirt and no name.

The memory ended.

Hernan opened his eyes.

He didn’t need to say anything.

They had all felt it.

It was done.

Scene 2: Counterfaith

Sector Three was breathing wrong.

Not fast. Not ragged. Just... wrong. Like a heartbeat skipping a beat but never correcting.

The fog was thinner than normal. The light cooler. The crowd thicker. Not afraid — just slow. Hesitant. As if someone had paused the idea of momentum.

Hernan walked openly. No hood. No cloak. Just his coat, the one with two years of fading and three too many secrets. Aya and Iro trailed loosely, but they didn’t shield him.

He didn’t need it anymore.

A child stared as he passed, thumb frozen above a datapad. A middle-aged man glanced up, blinked, then checked his wrist feed. A vendor froze mid-stir of synthetic broth.

They knew him.

But not how.

Aya checked her scanner. It beeped once — then again.

"Public node sync is in full cascade," she said. "Pulseband updates show 71% engagement. And rising."

They rounded a corner.

A holoscreen above shuddered, then displayed a civic emergency feed:

ZODIAC FIELD DISRUPTION EVENT: 13-RT / 7A-3MEMORY STREAM ALIGNMENT SUGGESTED

No footage. Just a title.

A phantom timestamp anchored in nothing real.

Yet it felt old. Historical. Lived.

Then came the woman.

She moved like someone just short of certainty. She froze as Hernan passed, then hurried to match pace.

"You—" she said, breath catching. "You saved my brother. There was smoke... glass. You carried him."

Aya froze.

There had been no fire.

But the memory was in her eyes.

Hernan met her gaze. Calm. Quiet.

"I’m glad he’s safe," he said.

Tears welled instantly. "Thank you," she whispered.

Then she left, clutching the lie as if it were her only truth.

Aya turned to Hernan. "That didn’t bother you?"

"It did," he said. "But not enough."

They stepped into the open plaza beneath the sector’s comm tower. The crowd ebbed in slow tides. The overhead billboard flickered — once, twice — then stalled between two frames.

Two faces. The same eyes. Slightly different smiles.

HERNAN VALE — VALIDECHO B — PRE-EVENT VARIANT

Dekra’s voice crackled in their ears. "Scorpio just blinked. They updated B’s label manually. He’s not the face of the present anymore. He’s a deprecated model now. A footnote."

Aya stared up at the screen. "Because we gave them a future that requires this Hernan to exist."

Hernan didn’t look away.

Around him, the crowd shifted. Some nodded. Some avoided his gaze. But no one asked who he was.

They knew.

Not because it was true.

But because it made them feel something they didn’t want to lose.

Aya exhaled. "We didn’t give them a reason to believe you."

She looked to Hernan.

"We gave them a reason to doubt everything else."

He didn’t reply.

But he smiled, just faintly.

Not in victory.

In readiness.

The war for truth wasn’t about who was real anymore.

It was about who got remembered tomorrow.

And for now — the city chose him.

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