The Gallagher Municipal Conference Room. The room had grown more crowded.
The council had called in additional experts—engineers, city architects, and emergency strategists. The tension thickened with each new report filed on the table. The air tasted of metal and ash, a phantom residue from the catastrophe they still couldn't explain.
Commander Bishop stood near the head of the table, rubbing his temples as the overhead projector flickered with drone footage.
Councilwoman Elara glanced across the room. "Let's keep this orderly. We have more members joining us today—Dr. Lennox, Dr. Freyer, Inspector Kael, and Councilor Milburn. Thank you for arriving on short notice."
A man in a gray suit stood up.
He was unremarkable, almost forgettable, save for how still he was. His hands never fidgeted. His face, pale and long, was clean-shaven. His eyes were sharp, too sharp, yet dulled with age—or was it something deeper?
"I appreciate your concern, Councilwoman," the man said. "But perhaps we're thinking about this the wrong way."
"And who are you?" she asked.
The man tilted his head. "Councilor Milburn. I've served quietly in the southern district for years."
Reddick narrowed his eyes. "Never heard of you."
"Many haven't," Milburn smiled. "But I've followed this city's heart closely."
The others continued, unaware of the subtle tension rising in Reddick's stance.
Bishop continued. "We need to send a team back in. Controlled. Monitored. Get readings inside the shop, take thermal scans, structural integrity tests—"
"No," Milburn interrupted gently. "You'll only wake it again."
Everyone turned toward him.
"What do you mean?" Elara asked.
Milburn folded his hands. "Some things should be left alone. Haven't we already paid enough in blood?"
Silence.
A young architect, Tobias Glenn, adjusted his glasses. "With all due respect, Councilor, if we don't examine the source of the anomaly, we risk more damage."
Milburn's eyes glimmered. "And what if you're the damage?"
Everyone stilled.
Commander Bishop stood up slowly. "What did you say?"
Milburn smiled wider. "So quick to forget how this began. How easily you bury memory under bureaucracy."
Then his voice changed.
It dropped deep and wet like oil spilling into a drain. His face twitched unnaturally.
"Michael Harrington was a man," he said, voice distorting. "But manhood is fragile. Memories sharper than blades. You broke him."
Gasps. Chairs scraped. One of the guards reached for his holster.
Milburn—no, Michael—stood calmly. His smile widened, cracking like old paint. Underneath his skin, faint pulses of light flickered. Tubes? Wires? Veins?
"This council took everything from me," he said. "Now I'll return the favor."
Reddick fired.
But the bullet passed through the illusion—Milburn's body distorted, shimmered—and vanished.
Everyone stood, panic rising.
"Was that a projection?" Bishop barked.
"No!" shouted Inspector Kael. "He was here. I saw his breath!"
Elara's hands shook as she backed from the table. "Get security! Lock down the building!"
Reddick ran to the corner of the room, pulling open the emergency command console. "He was toying with us… He's inside the system!"
Screens began to flicker. Surveillance feeds from Gallagher Street rewound and fast-forwarded, looping images of burning houses, of twisted metal limbs crawling, of eyes that opened where no face existed.
And all of it played to the sound of static—then a hum—then the voice of Milburn, whispering from hidden speakers:
"You brought your plans to the altar… but you forgot the sacrifice,"
Elara screamed.
Outside, the street lights flickered on—though it was barely afternoon.
And deep beneath the building, somewhere in the city's buried arteries, something listened.
The room had grown heavier, not just from the added voices but from something unseen, like a pressure in the bones. After the bizarre and terrifying encounter with Councilor Milburn—now known to be Michael Harrington—security had sealed the building. Metal shutters clamped over doors and windows. Panic had begun to settle into stunned silence.
Lights flickered overhead. The screens, once alive with drone footage and schematics, now displayed static or erratic loops of corrupted footage. Still, the council remained, shaken but holding together.
Commander Bishop exhaled and sat back down, face damp with sweat. "Everyone alright?"
"I… think so," murmured Councilwoman Elara, still gripping the table's edge. Her knuckles had gone pale.
Reddick stood at the emergency panel, his hand hovering over the console. "We've locked the place down. Manual override only. Nobody's getting in or out unless we let them."
"Except," said Inspector Kael quietly, "he's already inside. Or a part of him is."
A heavy silence followed.
Tobias Glenn, the young architect, sat rigid. "What even was that? Was that—real?"
"It was him," Bishop muttered. "Michael Harrington. But not the man anymore. Something else. Something… made of pain."
"He said we took everything from him," Elara whispered, eyes distant. "That we buried memory under bureaucracy. What did he mean by that?"
Reddick crossed his arms. "Harrington's son was murdered. The system failed. Then his wife died—also under unclear circumstances. That pushed him off the edge. We didn't notice the signs. Maybe we didn't want to."
"But to become that?" Tobias asked. "The recordings… the transformation…"
Bishop leaned forward, elbows on the table. "He merged with something. The shop. Maybe with the tech inside it. Those experiments we found traces of—it wasn't just bio-engineering. It was something else. Something that let him anchor himself to objects. Places. Maybe even machines."
Kael nodded slowly. "And he used that to project himself into Milburn's identity. Into our systems."
"So what do we do?" Elara asked. Her voice shook less now. "We can't just walk out there again. Not while that thing is still watching."
"We stick to the plan," Bishop said firmly. "We find the survivors. They're the only ones who made it out alive. They saw what it became. They might know what it wants."
Reddick moved to the central table, pulling up a manual terminal. "I'll reroute communications. The lockdown's disrupted most signals, but we can get through to outside agencies. I'll issue a priority alert: locate Missy Kirk, Natasha Vega, Kevin Mason, and Dina Montana."
Tobias clicked his pen nervously. "Should we inform the public?"
"No," said Kael immediately. "We say nothing until we know more. We don't need a city-wide panic."
Outside, the afternoon sun dimmed behind a sudden overcast sky. A low rumble passed beneath the building—like a subway car, only there were no trains scheduled today.
The council said nothing. None of them wanted to acknowledge it.
Down in the basement, locked behind steel and silence, one of the surveillance terminals turned on by itself. The image was blurry, distorted, but a shape moved across it.
A childlike silhouette.
Followed by a whisper, curling through the audio feed:
"Memory is the womb of monsters."
Inside the conference room, the lights dimmed.
And still… they talked.
They planned.
Unaware that they were already inside the mouth of something dreaming them into ruin.
The doors had sealed with a final, mechanical thud.
No one could leave. No one could enter. The building had gone into a full lockdown—triggered the moment the illusion of Councilor Milburn disintegrated before their eyes. The metal shutters over the windows groaned as they clamped into place, drowning the room in dim artificial light.
A hollow silence hung over the room, disturbed only by the low hum of the emergency lights. The kind of silence that made hearts pound louder.
Councilwoman Elara broke it first, her voice raspier than usual. "We'll remain calm. No one panic."
"We've already panicked," Tobias Glenn muttered from his seat, trembling. "We've just been haunted by a ghost wearing human skin."
Inspector Kael looked over the security console. "System override. Full lockout. He rigged the failsafes. Whoever—or whatever—Michael is now, he's been inside our systems longer than we knew."
Commander Bishop sat back down, rubbing his eyes with a slow, shaky hand. "Alright… No one's coming to get us. Fine. Then let's do what we came here to do—talk. What did we see? What do we know?"
Councilman Holtz leaned forward, sweat trickling down the side of his temple. "He mentioned memory. That we buried something. That we broke him."
Reddick crossed his arms. "Michael Harrington wasn't just another victim. He planned this. Built this. Every corner of that house, that shop—it's all wired together. And now… this?"
Dr. Freyer, who had been silent until now, cleared her throat. "I've seen trauma manifest in unusual ways. But this… This isn't trauma. It's evolution. Controlled, painful transformation. The kind a man doesn't go through unless he wants to become something else."
"What does he want?" Elara asked.
Dr. Lennox answered, his voice quiet. "To be remembered. And to make us remember."
Bishop turned toward Kael. "Let's piece this together. He mentioned sacrifice. Said we took something from him."
Kael flipped through a folder. "There were rumors—unofficial files—that his son, Lukas Harrington, was murdered. Possibly by a gang. That the BangBangs were involved. Michael vanished after that. Declared dead last year."
"Not dead," Reddick muttered. "Just… waiting."
Elara tapped the table. "So he created that shop. 'NEW LIFE: Restoration & Repair'… what if it wasn't just a front? What if it were the experiment?"
"You mean, a way to resurrect his son?" Freyer whispered.
"Or more than that," Lennox added. "A place to bring back memories themselves. Not just people—but trauma, guilt, obsession. A building made of grief."
Tobias stood, pacing. "I saw the footage from the house. From the shop. There were entities in there. Creatures stitched from old toys, burned photographs, school supplies—"
"Memory-made flesh," Kael finished.
Reddick finally spoke again, slowly. "I was there… during the fire. One of the few who got out. I saw it. The floor of that shop—it breathed. Like it was part of him."
They fell silent.
For a long moment, there was only the buzz of a faulty light overhead.
Then Bishop spoke. "So we're looking at a grieving father who merged his pain into architecture. Who used his son's death as fuel to create monsters. And now, he's turned himself into one."