Chapter 16: The Sleepers
The world did not shake.
There was no explosion.
No visible war.
Only a silence—
dull,
artificial,
insidious.
The Sleeping Units awoke within that silence.
They were teachers. Doctors. Parents. Judges. Officers.
They had lived among others. Forever.
Carrying within them a fragment of Klinik-13, buried deep beneath years of normalcy.
And now, that fragment was activating.
Kelvin stood on the roof of the Sanctuary, watching the city from afar.
There were no flames. No sirens.
But he could feel everything shifting.
False thoughts floated in the air.
Memories altered, subtly.
People forgot what they had done just two minutes earlier.
"They've begun," said Orane behind him.
Kelvin nodded.
"The Sleepers."
"Dormant carriers of the virus. Inserted into society years ago. A failsafe, in case the Source was destroyed."
"And now that we've weakened it…"
"…they're taking over."
Lila woke up that morning.
Calmer. Changed.
The fusion with Iskara hadn't destroyed her.
It had opened her.
Her eyes saw further now.
She could sense the mental fissure in people.
She saw those who were infected—without realizing it.
"That teacher," she said as they walked down the street, pointing to a man. "He's smiling. But his thoughts are too linear. He thinks like a machine."
"A Sleeper?" Echo asked.
"Yes. He doesn't even know it yet."
"And if he finds out?"
"Then he becomes an Agent."
They returned to the city. Their faces hidden, their presence cloaked.
Klinik-13 was hunting them—not with soldiers, but with ideas.
On every street corner, posters they didn't remember ever seeing.
On the radio, a gentle voice spoke of "voluntary treatment," of "emotional cleansing."
People looked… calm.
Too calm.
Kelvin understood.
"They don't know they're changing."
Echo whispered:
"They want to change."
The group gathered in a hideout.
Orane had decoded intercepted mental transmissions using the Inverted Eye.
"They're planning a test. In a school. A mass wipe. Every child will lose their family memories. They'll become blank pages."
Kelvin choked.
"We have to stop them."
"If we act too soon, they'll see us coming," said Lila. "If we wait too long… those children will never be the same again."
Echo stood up.
"Then we hit harder than they do. We reveal the truth."
Kelvin frowned.
"How?"
"We hack a mass broadcast source. A TV station, a psychic hub, a dream node. And we inject a counter-idea."
Orane raised an eyebrow.
"You want to fight a mental virus… with a memory anti-virus?"
Echo smiled.
"Yes. And I already have an idea for the message."
They headed toward one of the urban psychic nodes: an old theater, recently repurposed into a "cognitive relaxation center." In truth, an entry point for the Sleepers. A place of soft conditioning.
But they didn't expect that one of the children they came to save…
would look them straight in the eyes.
"You're Kelvin," he said. "Number 17-B. The Anomalous Fragment."
Kelvin froze.
The child smiled.
"The Director said you would come back."
His eyes turned pitch black.
And the entire room began to resonate.
Dozens of Sleepers awakened around them. All tuned to a single thought:
"Recalibrate. Assimilate. Extinguish."