Fold 13 - You Don’t Get to Use Me

Yuwon scanned through the shattered glass of one of the buildings around: chairs were knocked over at odd angles, a jacket hung from the back of one of them, sleeves caught mid-swing, like someone had reached for it and never finished. The corner of a table was scorched probably from a detonation nearby. In the far corner, half-buried in plaster dust, a small stuffed animal lay on its side, one eye missing, the other staring up.

He crouched and lifted it gently. Turned it once in his hand.

"I hate this part" he said quietly into comms. "Some Gates give so little warning... and people just end up vanishing. In the middle of dinner... Picking up their kids..."

"You're seeing a personal imprint?" Saejin asked.

"Debris. But yeah." He exhaled through his nose. "This wasn't gradual. They didn't have time."

Saejin didn't respond right away. On his monitor, Yuwon's pulse had risen by half a beat. His resonance had lifted slightly, more emotionally charged than the baseline allowed for.

"You alright?" Saejin asked.

Yuwon placed the stuffed animal down carefully. "It's not the first time I'm seeing this."

Outside the zone, Soren keyed in: "I've got field shimmer on the northeast boundary. The Gate is twitching again, I guess it didn't like the mood swing."

"Copy" Hara said. "Tag it. Don't interfere yet."

Yuwon moved deeper into the warped building. The walls bent subtly as he passed but he kept his pace steady, eyes forward, refusing to give the distortion any more weight than it deserved.

Then a voice, soft and very close: "Can you see the wavy places too?"

He froze.

It wasn't on the comm or filtered through resonance. It was just there... in that room.

He turned his head slowly.

"There was a loud boom" the voice continued, "and a big flash. I couldn't find my daddy after that."

Yuwon's pulse rose, but his tone stayed level. "My name's Yuwon" he said calmly. "I'm here to help you."

There was no answer. Just a faint scuff of movement in the next room. Then silence again.

Before he could follow, another voice cut through, colder, composed, undeniably the Gate:

"Help is just delay. You teach them to cling instead of adapt."

Yuwon's jaw flexed once. "She's a child. She doesn't need your analysis. She needs out."

The room darkened slightly and the air started shimmering. Energy gathered in the far corner as a shape began to form, vague at first, then more defined. It was human in size, but the details couldn't seem to settle. Its limbs stuttered at the joints. Its face flickered like an unfinished sketch. When it moved, it didn't walk, it glided in short bursts, as if jumping frame to frame.

"It's a Specter" Yuwon said, eyes fixed on the shifting form. "I've got visual. And from the way she's reacting, it's probably linked to one of her memories."

Specters were the result of a memory loop the Gate couldn't stabilize, fragments that failed to integrate cleanly into the environment. When the emotional load was too high or the structure too complex, the memory warped instead of embedding. What was left behind was unstable, reactive, and often dangerous.

The Specter hissed and lunged. Yuwon moved fast, raising one hand. A focused pulse shot from his palm, impacting the creature mid-lunge. It hit the wall and skidded, smoke trailing from its back.

The girl screamed, confused.

Yuwon pivoted, crouched beside her, shield flaring into place around them. The Specter charged again, bouncing off the barrier. The impact was harder this time. The barrier held, but his left arm buckled slightly.

"I think I'm hit" he grunted. "Shoulder. Nothing deep."

Saejin felt it before Yuwon even said a word. The impact jolted through the resonance sync hard enough to tighten his chest and spike a brief tremor down his left arm. He steadied his breathing and keyed in, voice level. "Confirmed. You need an exit path."

"Not yet. She's still exposed."

They ran. The building layout changed again, the walls lengthened, all doors vanished. Saejin rerouted in real time, overlaying possible exit routes across the internal map.

"East stairwell shows partial integrity. Get her there. I'll try to stabilize the path behind you."

Yuwon took a sharp left and ducked beneath a flickering archway. She didn't understand what was happening, but she knew enough to be afraid, and to stay close.

They reached a half-collapsed stairwell. He guided her into a gap between two broken pillars which he deemed safe enough for now.

"Stay here. I'll come back."

She nodded once, eyes wide.

He turned, and the Specter was already there. The zone shimmered behind it, but this time, it wasn't a hallway. It was a house. Familiar. Too familiar.

Yuwon stared at it. Didn't move.

He was standing in his own memory now. The color of the carpet. The sound of distant laughter. The scent of warm food cooling in a kitchen left mid-meal. And then, that sound he never forgot: the blast and the silence afterwards that marked the moment everything changed. The day he became an Esper. The day his family was gone.

Saejin watched the sync and realized the new pattern didn't match the zone, it matched Yuwon instead. It was memory loop from within him. The Gate was tuning to Yuwon's signal and he knew that was too dangerous.

"This isn't yours" Saejin said, voice steady through the channel. "It's a copy. Let it pass."

Yuwon clenched his jaw, his hands had started to tremble. Then a ripple in the resonance sync came gently. A steady, familiar pressure wrapped through his focus, quiet and anchoring. Saejin wasn't speaking, but Yuwon could feel him, his presence filtering through the link, keeping him from sliding any deeper.

He stepped forward, out of the memory. The Specter was there, waiting, gliding in unstable rythms.

"You don't get to keep her here" Yuwon said to the Gate. "And you don't get to use me."