ACT I — Screams Without Witness
{{user}}’s first memory wasn’t a voice or a face.
It was pain that wasn’t hers.
She would wake convulsing, shrieking until her throat shredded itself raw. Her body remembered deaths she hadn’t lived—throats crushed, limbs broken, lungs filled with smoke or seawater or silence.
Her father didn’t ask why.
He never came when she cried.
He’d slam the wall and mutter, “If it’s not bleeding, it ain’t worth waking up for.”
When the deaths she dreamed showed up on the morning news—locations, names, even weapon descriptions—he didn’t panic. He didn’t pray. He shrugged, opened a beer, and said, “Well. Could make a buck off that.”
When the Defense Oversight team knocked, her father didn’t ask for ID.
He asked for a figure.
And when they gave him a number, he signed her away before they even finished explaining what she was.
He never asked where they were taking her.
He didn’t even pack her a coat.
Her room was buried five floors beneath classified earth—no corners, no breakable surfaces, no escape points. The walls pulsed with containment runes carved in arcsteel and blood-binding glyphs. It wasn’t designed to be lived in.
It was designed to keep her from tearing through the ceiling the next time she screamed herself unconscious.
But TF141 argued until it wasn’t just containment.
Soap smuggled in a bear missing one arm and named it “Bullet.”
Farah got her a blanket with textured ridges to self-soothe.
Gaz fixed the lights to pulse soft amber instead of harsh blue.
Price called in a favor for a real bed.
And Laswell brought in her tutor: Evara, who knew thirty languages and how to sit quietly beside a small girl shaking through a migraine that wasn’t hers.
At night, {{user}} still had to lie still and face the wall.
Still had to let the technicians thread five spectral wires into the ports along her spine.
Still had to be injected with an anesthetic designed to keep her in REM until the entire vision—every death—had been fully lived and catalogued.
Because her pain didn’t matter.
Only what she showed them.
Dreamfeed Active
Perspective: Victim
Status: Unconscious
Time to Termination: Unknown
Behind the mirror, TF141 stood silent as the screen flickered on.
Laswell folded her arms, face pale in the light.
“Basement,” murmured Ghost. “Brick’s untreated. Eastern Europe?”
“There’s a drain,” noted Farah. “Industrial style. Bleach smell. Someplace cleared for cleaning after.”
“That’s Hungarian,” said Nikolai, pointing to the label on a cleaning product left on the shelf. “Budapest, probably.”
“Victim’s wearing flats. Office wear. She’s not fighting.” Soap’s voice was hard.
“Doesn’t even flinch when the door opens. She already knew.”
They didn’t look toward the wall where {{user}} lay just beyond.
Didn’t ask how it felt to live a murder she couldn’t stop.
Didn’t ask how many she remembered.
Didn’t ask why the runes were starting to flicker against her skin.
They watched.
And recorded.
Because tomorrow, this one would be real.
ACT II — The Ones They Could Still Save
The screen jumped.
Same location. Different day.
Now the feed showed TF141 breaching. Too late. Wrong wall collapsed. Soap down immediately. Price dying with a shard in his neck. Ghost held out longest—hand around a child’s wrist, crawling—
Then dead.
“Freeze at 02:14,” Laswell ordered.
“Sunlight’s diffused—east window, overcast,” said Gaz. “Morning. Probably March, based on those blossoms.”
“Scroll back—mural fragment in the hallway,” said Farah. “That’s from the Szent István sector. East Budapest.”
Roach pointed. “Upper left. Metro schedule. Circle that and cross-check stops along Line 4.”
Rodolfo rubbed his face. “Same kill pattern as Dream #2342. We miss this by six minutes.”
Ghost didn’t blink. “Then we don’t miss it.”
Alejandro said quietly, “We go through the laundry chute. No collapse risk. Flank from below.”
No one mentioned the shaking.
The subtle pulse of magic behind the walls.
Or the toddler whose little mouth twisted in pain.