Chapter 8: "Delta Sector"

Delta Sector wasn't on most cadet schedules. It wasn't even officially part of the core training loop anymore. Technically, it had been decommissioned after a failed test run six cycles ago—sealed off, locked down, and left to rot.

Vael's new directive ignored all of that.

The path to it required bypassing two scanner checkpoints, one lockdown corridor, and a vertical shaft that hadn't seen maintenance in months. The system didn't stop him. In fact, it seemed to clear his way. Doors opened faster than usual. Lights flickered into guidance mode. Security subroutines that usually pinged anyone near unauthorized zones simply skipped him.

By the time he reached the Delta entrance, his HUD displayed the mission in full:

DIRECTIVE 02: THREAD-LOCK RECON

LOCATION: DELTA SECTOR / SURFACE ZONE 3A

MISSION TYPE: ACTIVE SCAN / LIVE THREAT POSSIBLE

OBJECTIVE: LOCATE RECURSION ANCHOR POINT

The main door was sealed with an old-model lockpad—non-biometric, manual override only. He reached for it, expecting resistance.

The lock clicked open before he touched it.

He stepped inside.

The first thing he noticed was the air. Not stale. Not recycled. It had the sharp mineral bite of surface oxygen, mixed with dust and heat. Delta Sector hadn't just been sealed—it had been abandoned.

The lighting was uneven. Harsh overhead strips flickered, occasionally dropping the hallway into momentary darkness before stuttering back to life. The ground trembled faintly beneath his boots—barely noticeable, but constant, like the entire level was held together by tension alone.

The floor was cracked in places, metal panels pushed upward by the slow crawl of instability. Recursion distortion had bent parts of the hallway—some corners slanted too far, and one section of ceiling looped on itself like a twisted piece of ribbon. Pipes hung at awkward angles, some venting slow wisps of coolant. The air shimmered occasionally where rendering lagged—a visual glitch crawling across door frames and corners.

ENVIRONMENTAL STABILITY: 41%

LOCAL THREAD PRESSURE: RISING

He kept walking.

Caution was instinct now. Every time he passed a wall panel, his HUD picked up trace interference—bits of code frozen mid-loop. One corridor showed residual shadows—images of cadets in mid-run, looped like reflections in broken glass. Not real. Just the echo of some past simulation gone wrong.

At the far end, a terminal blinked.

THREAD ANOMALY DETECTED

USER: ANCHOR NODE 0 — ACCESS ENABLED

Vael tapped the screen. A projection unfolded—a wireframe model of Delta Sector with three red dots pulsing along a curved line. One dot was bigger than the rest, its glow unstable.

PRIMARY ANCHOR SIGNAL: NEAR

A faint hum began vibrating through the walls, like a generator spinning up behind layers of distortion. From somewhere distant came the low crunch of something structural shifting—metal bending without permission.

He turned. The hallway to his left bent downward at an unnatural slope, like the entire floor had tried to fold inward. At the base of the slope, a doorway flickered, barely rendered.

Beyond it: darkness. Not unlit. Just... empty. Like the system hadn't finished deciding what was supposed to be there.

WARNING: ZONE 3A IS NON-STABLE — ENTRY MAY INTERRUPT THREAD INTEGRITY

His hand hovered over the frame. The temperature dropped by two degrees.

He stepped forward anyway.

The moment his boot crossed the threshold, the system screamed.

ALERT: UNRESOLVED RECURSION POINT DETECTED

WARNING: MULTI-NODE REFLECTION INITIATED

The world inside was jagged. Not broken—just unfinished. The room ahead extended outward in multiple copies of itself, each overlapping the next by milliseconds. His HUD split into three perspectives before snapping back into one.

And in the middle of it all stood a cadet.

Not a projection. Not a file.

Breathing. Moving.

Wearing standard bronze training gear—but glitched. The edges of his body flickered between frames. His face blurred slightly, then cleared.

He looked like Vael.

But the eyes were wrong. Too still.

ENTITY CLASS: THREAD-FRAGMENT / IDENTIFIER UNKNOWN

THREAT LEVEL: UNRANKED — UNSTABLE

The fragment turned toward him. Its mouth opened, but no sound came out. Instead, a system log popped into Vael's HUD:

"Recursion integrity lost. Anchor interference identified. Correction required."

Vael reached for a weapon—but the system refused to render one.

This wasn't a simulation.

This was his past, coming to kill him.

The fragment twitched. Its body skipped forward—not a step, but a reframe, jumping past the in-between. It was glitch-fast. Not bound by physics, only memory.

Vael dodged left, the motion sharp, instinctive. Static scorched the floor where he'd been. The fragment followed instantly, moving like it already knew his second motion.

His HUD screamed with new overlays:

THREAD DEVIATION: LIVE

SIMULATION BOUNDARIES: OVERRIDDEN

SYSTEM FAILSAFE ATTEMPTED — DENIED

RESPONSE OPTION UNAVAILABLE

He ducked behind a warped support beam. The fragment phased through the first layer of it, hands flickering into a blade-shape, shimmering with recursion tear. The metal around it warped in real time.

Vael didn't have weapons. But the system wasn't locking him out entirely—just filtering what it thought was safe.

He forced a hard system ping.

MANUAL PULL REQUESTED — MEMORY NODE: DELTA FILE 7A

RESULT: TRAIT OVERRIDE - MOMENTARY

A menu blinked to life. Not a weapon—but a trait shard.

TRAIT GRANTED (TEMPORARY): ANOMALOUS REFLECT — 6 SECONDS

The fragment dove for him.

Vael braced—and let it hit.

The impact wasn't physical. It was like catching a surge of corrupted electricity mid-transfer. Pain didn't register the usual way. Instead, his thoughts flickered—images of recursion loops and echo reflections seared across his vision.

The trait activated.

TRAIT ACTIVE: ANOMALOUS REFLECT — 5.9 SECONDS

The fragment's forward momentum froze. Then reversed. Not just in space—but in memory. It staggered, confusion flickering across its blurred face as its own strike replayed backward into itself. Static pulsed along its shoulders.

Vael moved. Fast.

He slammed his shoulder into the fragment's midsection, driving it sideways into a chunk of glitched wall. The space warped around them—frames slipping. He caught the edge of a reinforced support bracket and twisted, flipping over the figure's back.

TRAIT ACTIVE: 3.1 SECONDS

The fragment righted itself mid-stumble. Its hands reshaped again—this time forming twin arcs of recursion burn. They shimmered like unstable blades, vibrating out of sync with reality.

It charged.

Vael rolled low. Not away—through. His movement intersected the ghosting frames, and for half a second, their timelines overlapped. It was enough.

He threw a fist upward, augmented by the residual feedback from Reflect. Not an attack—an echo of the one it had launched.

It hit home.

The fragment collapsed in a burst of fractured data. Not destroyed—but staggered. Pieces of its form fell apart in layers like data blocks unspooling in reverse.

TRAIT EXPIRED

THREAD-PRESSURE RESPONSE: DELAYED

RECURSION STABILIZATION: FAILING

ANCHOR NODE — UNLOCK CHANCE 47%

A warning tone blared.

The fragment didn't rise again. But the space around it began to re-render—walls rebuilding, floor correcting, loop pressure spiking.

Vael stepped forward, breathing hard. He extended his hand.

MEMORY LINK INITIATED — DO YOU WISH TO ABSORB FRAGMENT DATA?

WARNING: THREAD CORRUPTION POSSIBLE

He hesitated.

Then accepted.

MEMORY LINK ACTIVE

DATA STREAM INCOMPLETE — 62% RECONSTRUCTED

PROCEED WITH INTEGRATION?

Yes / No: [Yes]

The world turned inside out.

Not literally. But it felt that way.

Vael's HUD blanked, then flooded with frames—images slamming through his mind like shrapnel. They weren't visual memories, not exactly. More like compressed fragments of feeling, snapshots of recursion entropy trying to preserve what shouldn't exist.

The fragment had been a cadet once. Real. His name had never loaded, but his memories were intact enough to show his fall.

Vael watched:

—A room much like the Academy, but off. Walls flickering. Instructors watching without faces. Lessons that looped.

—The cadet being told his Anchor potential registered too high. That he was to be transferred.

—That he refused. That he tried to anchor a recursion breach himself.

It broke him.

FILE STREAM DETECTED — "DELTA FAILURE ARCHIVE: SUBJECT Z-9"

The cadet had been locked in Delta Sector. Not for study—for erasure. The system couldn't delete him outright, but it let time do the work.

He decayed.

And split. Echoes of himself spread through the hallways, fragments trying to fix the loop he failed to contain. The more he tried to stabilize it, the more fractured he became.

Vael pulled free of the feed, gasping.

His vision returned in static. The room had changed.

The collapsed fragment was gone. Dissolved into data mist. The glitched floor was settling. Walls no longer shifted.

But something remained.

TRAIT GAINED: THREAD LEGACY — GHOST CACHE (Rank E)

Allows temporary access to recursion fragments for insight or influence. Limited to 1 use per day.

A soft hum ran through his band. Not system-issued. Anchor-deep.

Another message blinked:

MISSION COMPLETE — THREADLOCK FILE RETRIEVED

SYSTEM NOTICE: NEW THREAD IDENTIFIED — LOCATION UNKNOWN

Vael backed away slowly, still catching his breath.

Whatever Delta Sector was, it hadn't been just a quarantine.

It had been a warning.

And now he carried part of it.