BLOODCAPE
Chapter 143: Ghost Signal

Chapter 143: Chapter 143: Ghost Signal

The weather station loomed above Sector Eleven like a relic from another theology — part shrine, part ruin. It stood crooked on its plateau of steel, overlooking the city’s soft lattice of fog and flickering light. Shattered vent ducts hissed in the wind. Rusted turbines slept in coils. And above it all, the sky churned with synthetic cloud formations — a swirling tapestry of forecasted memory and quiet dread.

Dekra crouched beside a tangle of junction panels near the tower’s skeletal base, fiber lines trailing from her sleeve like borrowed nerves. Her eyes glowed dimly as glyphs crawled across her retinas — sickly, stuttering blue.

Aya watched her from a few paces away, one hand resting near her sidearm. "I thought this station was disconnected."

"It is," Dekra murmured. "Or it was. Scorpio re-looped it through a ghost node we blacklisted last cycle."

"Looped for what?" Iro asked, pacing behind them with his rifle lowered but not relaxed.

Dekra didn’t look up. "Empathy splices."

Hernan, silent until now, tilted his head. "What the hell is that?"

With a flick of her gauntlet, Dekra pushed the raw data into visual render. What had been glyphs became curved pulse maps — jagged spikes and troughs, as though someone were measuring emotion in blood pressure.

"He’s not broadcasting ideology anymore," she said. "He’s broadcasting you. Or fragments of you. Feelings harvested from your behavior—admiration, fear, trust, command presence. Snapshots of emotional response patterns taken from before the fracture."

Aya’s voice dropped. "He’s reprogramming the city using Hernan’s soul."

"No," Dekra replied. "He’s using something better. Their memory of Hernan’s soul."

Silence.

The wind stirred across the plateau like breath through old bone. Below them, the city looked peaceful — as if the signal hadn’t already begun rewriting its gut instincts.

"He’s winning," Iro said, voice taut. "Because he doesn’t need facts. Just reactions."

"Can we shut it down?" Aya asked, glancing toward the crumbling control tower.

"We can," Dekra said. "But crack the ghost loop directly, and we trigger a failsafe. Scorpio built this node as a one-way trust tunnel. Interference reads as a memory breach."

"Translate," Iro muttered.

"Full purge," Dekra said. "Every recent social record. Identity threads. Network anchors. All gone."

Hernan ran a hand along a collapsed data conduit. "He’s hiding behind the story of me."

Aya looked at him. "Then give them one he won’t."

"A lie?" Hernan asked.

"No," she said. "A contradiction."

"A feeling that doesn’t serve him," Dekra added. "One B would never touch. Regret. Weakness. Shame. Scorpio prioritizes clarity. He can’t simulate conflict."

"And if I splice guilt into the network," Hernan said, "the mirror cracks."

He took the recorder spike from Dekra’s pack and slid it into the port on his collar.

Aya touched his arm. "You sure?"

"No."

"But you’re doing it anyway."

"That’s what regret feels like."

The climb was slow. The old tower groaned like a waking giant. Hernan had to sidestep missing ladder rungs, brace his body against rusted girders. Near the top, the wind thinned, sharp with ozone.

At the peak, he stood alone.

The splice interface blinked.

He looked at the city — a web of lights, stories, and slowly rotting certainty.

He held the mic.

Closed his eyes.

And spoke.

"I let someone die. Not in a blaze of purpose. Not to save a squad. I hesitated. I blinked."

"I still remember their name. That’s why I can’t be replaced."

The wind didn’t stop.

The sky didn’t open.

But the signal did.

Below, Dekra watched her screen.

The splice fractured.

Not rejected.

Just doubted.

And doubt — at last — entered the code.

Scene Transition: Sector Axis 4

Sector Axis 4 pulsed like a migraine in glass.

The architecture didn’t shimmer, it twitched. Neon signage blinked out of sync. Civic holoscreens ran overlapping feeds. Some said VALE CONFIRMED. Others flickered ECHO ACTIVE or MEMORY STABILIZATION IN PROGRESS.

Aya moved through the center of the chaos with Hernan and Iro beside her. People turned to stare — not always at Hernan, and not always at the same version of him. The emotional splices had done something unexpected.

They’d made Hernan real.

Too real.

Multiple real.

On a towering screen overhead, a surveillance reel played Hernan aiding a wounded evac team. Seconds later, a different screen showed him speaking to schoolchildren in a clean uniform.

Both clips were verified.

Neither had happened.

A woman near a noodle stall dropped her tray and sobbed uncontrollably. A teenage boy whispered Hernan’s name, then backed away like he’d seen a ghost. Two older men began arguing loudly — one calling Hernan a savior, the other screaming that the real Vale had died months ago.

Aya checked her scanner. "Hernan — we’ve got a problem."

He looked over. She rotated the screen to show three live pings.

Sector Five. Sector Twelve. Right here.

All biometric matches.

"That’s not possible," Iro said.

"It is," Dekra’s voice crackled over comms. "Scorpio’s bleeding the splice signal — triangulating his identity through emotional resonance. Every place people believe he was, the network logs it."

Aya’s voice dropped. "They’ve stopped needing evidence. The system’s feeding itself."

A new screen popped up — Hernan breaking up a riot in a rail sector. The timestamp was fifteen minutes ago.

The people reacted.

A teenager screamed, "You’re dead! I saw your memorial!"

"No, he saved my niece!" another cried.

"He’s a myth!"

"He’s a tool!"

"He’s mine!"

Iro raised his rifle defensively as a bottle cracked nearby — not thrown in hate, but grief. No one seemed to know why they were angry. Or if they were angry at all.

"Phase Containment just activated," Dekra said. "Scorpio’s trying to stabilize B’s narrative as the core."

"How?" Aya asked.

"Recursion," Dekra replied. "The more people feel, the more the system assigns validity. And Hernan — he’s destabilizing everything."

Aya’s scanner buzzed again. "Scorpio just activated Proximity Resolution Protocol. If conflicting emotional echoes persist, the system defaults."

"To what?" Iro asked.

"To consensus," Dekra said flatly. "The city has 48 hours to choose a version of reality. After that, it purges the rest."

More signage changed:

CONVERGENCE REQUIREDMERGE RECOMMENDEDPUBLIC MEMORY FRACTURED

Hernan stood beneath a storefront canopy.

Faces surrounded him. Some afraid. Some reverent. A few falling to their knees, a few backing away in horror.

One child looked up and whispered:

"Are you the sad one... or the strong one?"

Hernan didn’t answer.

Aya leaned in, voice low. "They don’t know which one of you they’re worshiping anymore."

Hernan stared at the fractured screens.

And for the first time... he didn’t try to fix their gaze.

Because somewhere beneath the screaming code and broken memory...

...he was starting to believe neither version mattered.

Only the silence that came after.

Only the crack that refused to heal.