Chapter 62: Fragments

Chapter 62: Chapter 62: Fragments

Three days into the investigation, exhausted from long hours spent cross-referencing intelligence reports and old memory alike, Ren found himself slipping again, the familiar, unsettling pull of sleep dragging him under during what should have been a brief afternoon rest, and the dream arrived with the same vivid, aching familiarity it always carried, though this time, something in it shifted.

The dream itself stayed private, the way it always did, warm and unreachable and entirely his own, but partway through, it flickered, briefly, like a signal losing clarity, something unfamiliar bleeding faintly through the edges before the dream settled back into its usual, comfortable shape. Ren woke with a sharp, startled gasp, heart hammering, the strange interruption lingering uncomfortably at the edges of his consciousness even as the rest of the dream faded into typical, hazy forgetfulness.

He sat up slowly, disoriented, and found Reven watching him with immediate, focused concern from across the room.

"You were talking in your sleep," Reven said, something careful in his tone. "Not words, exactly. More like... distress."

"Something felt wrong," Ren said slowly, still working through the lingering disorientation, choosing his words with deliberate care. "Partway through, like the dream itself glitched somehow. I can’t really explain it better than that."

Reven’s expression sharpened immediately. "You’ve mentioned these episodes before," he said, something urgent entering his voice. "The lost time, the deep sleep that doesn’t match ordinary exhaustion. You’ve never described anything interrupting it like this before."

"I haven’t," Ren confirmed, dread settling cold into his stomach. "This is new. Or maybe it’s always been there and I just finally noticed it, now that I know to look."

Yegard entered partway through the conversation, immediately picking up on the tension. "What’s happened," he asked, crossing to join them.

Ren explained as best he could, careful to keep the actual content of the dream entirely to himself, offering only the strange, unsettling sensation of something interrupting it, a flicker of wrongness he couldn’t properly name. "I don’t know what it means," he admitted, frustration creeping into his voice. "I’ve had these gaps, this strange time loss, since not long after I arrived at the outpost originally. I never properly figured out why, and now, apparently, there’s something else layered into it that I hadn’t noticed before."

"Could this be connected to the Vorhesk faction’s activity," Yegard asked, something careful and considering in his tone. "If they’ve developed technology capable of manipulating monster behavior, perhaps something similar could extend toward manipulating your own mental state, particularly given your unique classification."

Ren felt a fresh wave of unease at the suggestion, the possibility that even his private sleep, his own mind, might have been compromised or influenced by outside manipulation settling uncomfortably in his chest. "I don’t know," he admitted. "It’s possible. I genuinely don’t have enough information to say for certain."

"We should have you properly examined," Reven said, something urgent and protective entering his tone. "A full neurological and energy-signature scan, something considerably more thorough than the inconclusive results the outpost’s medical team managed originally. If someone’s actually been interfering with your mind, we need to know definitively, and we need to know how to stop it."

Ren nodded slowly, old anxiety resurfacing at the prospect of more medical scrutiny, though the fresh fear of outside manipulation outweighed his usual reluctance considerably. "Okay," he said. "Let’s figure out what’s actually happening to me, properly this time."

The scan took place later that same day, palace medical staff conducting a considerably more thorough examination than anything Ren had previously undergone, careful, detailed scans of his neural activity, his energy signature, every aspect of his unique dual classification scrutinized with painstaking precision.

The results, when they finally came back hours later, left the lead physician visibly troubled.

"There’s a pattern here I don’t fully understand," she admitted, pulling up a dense, complicated display of scan results for Ren, Reven, and Yegard to review together. "Periodic fluctuations in your neural activity, correlating directly with the time-loss episodes you’ve described, that don’t match any known medical phenomenon in our current database. The readings themselves are inconclusive as to cause, I’m afraid. Whatever is generating them isn’t something our current diagnostic tools are built to properly interpret."

"What does that mean, practically," Ren asked, dread building steadily.

"It means something is happening during these episodes that medical science doesn’t currently have an explanation for," she said carefully. "Whether that’s connected to your dual classification specifically, to some external interference, or to something else entirely, I genuinely cannot say with the equipment and knowledge currently available to me."

Reven’s expression had gone sharp and focused throughout the explanation, something calculating settling behind his pale eyes. "I may know someone who could offer more insight," he said slowly. "A researcher, somewhat unconventional in her methods, who specializes in anomalous Sentinel and Guide phenomena that don’t fit standard classification. She’s been quietly consulting for the Crown on sensitive matters for years."

"Can you reach her," Yegard asked.

"I can," Reven confirmed. "Though I’ll warn you now, she’s considerably eccentric, and her methods don’t always follow conventional medical protocol. But if anyone can actually make sense of what’s happening to you, it’s her."

Ren felt a complicated mixture of hope and apprehension at the prospect, exhausted by weeks of unanswered questions regarding his own strange, unexplained experience. "Contact her," he said finally. "Whatever this is, whatever’s actually happening during those lost hours, I need to understand it properly before it becomes something considerably more dangerous than lost sleep and strange dreams."

Reven nodded, already reaching for his comm, and Ren found himself, despite the fresh uncertainty of the situation, grateful for the sheer, unwavering determination both men brought to every crisis that arose, whether it threatened him directly or simply unsettled the careful peace they’d all worked so hard to build together.

’Whatever this is,’ Ren thought, watching Reven coordinate quietly with his contact while Yegard remained close, steady and reassuring, ’whatever’s hiding in those lost hours, waiting to be properly understood, I have people now who refuse to let me face it without support.’ He thought of Milo and Finn, safely occupied elsewhere in the palace, blissfully unaware of this particular complication layered atop everything else currently threatening their fragile, hard-won peace. ’I just hope, whatever we find, it’s something we can actually handle, together, rather than one more threat determined to tear apart everything we’ve built.’