Chapter 8

Cognitive Resonance

“I saw him.”

Officer Talia Kim stood ramrod straight, hands clasped behind her back. Her braid brushed the curve of her hips as it swayed, threaded with fine metal wiring from a clasp at the back of her head down to a spiked tip.

Director Li didn’t look up from his tablet. “You saw Annette Sheridan escaping. That has been confirmed. We have already issued the standard bounty package.”

“She wasn’t alone,” Talia insisted.

Li tapped something on his screen. “Our manifest does not support that, Ms. Kim. All escapees have been catalogued: those that escaped and the ones already recaptured or deceased. And Sheridan is already trending on the bounty boards. She’ll be an easy meal ticket for someone.”

Talia’s lips pressed together. “That’s because he wasn’t on the prison manifest. He didn’t look like an inmate. Male, early-to-mid-twenties. Hospital gown. Bruised. Barely conscious. He climbed into the back seat. Sheridan was the one driving.”

Li finally looked at her. His eyes were cold and unreadable. “And you are certain of that?”

“I don’t forget things,” she said. “I have an eidetic memory.”

The silence stretched uncomfortably.

“No footage?” Li finally asked.

“The attack knocked out most of the grid within the facility. None of the cameras on the side they exfiltrated from were functional. Visual confirmation only.”

“That is not actionable, Ms. Kim.” He turned back to his screen. “We are running containment and cleanup, not chasing ghosts. There are already enough bodies on the ground. The media wants a narrative and we will give them one: Supermax breach, minimal collateral, bounties issued, situation under control. No ghosts. Sheridan was in for petty theft. An annoyance, not dangerous. Whoever she took with her, if there even was someone, will be taken in by bounty hunters or legal enforcers. It is just a matter of time.”

“I’m going to look into it,” she said.

“No, you are not,” Director Li spoke like the matter was closed.

That gave her pause.

Li glanced back at her, this time with an edge in his tone. “You are done here, Agent. Debrief and rest. If there is a rogue variable, it will be dealt with.”

Talia didn’t argue.

She saluted, a perfect thump of fist against chest, turned, and left without another word.

But Talia was already replaying the scene of Annette Sheridan’s escape, of the unknown man in her mind, freezing frames in perfect, crystal clarity. She didn’t work for Santiago Systems directly, and though she might be reprimanded for it later, there was no way she could ignore what was obviously an attempt to cover up the existence of an unknown individual leaving the scene of one of the worst supervillain attacks in history.

Even if what she uncovered might cost her everything.

Kneeling where she had seen the stolen hovercar take off hours earlier, Talia Kim brushed a gloved fingertip against a faint mark on the cracked concrete. Dried blood. Small, incomplete droplets left in a scattered pattern. Two visible at first. A third revealed, mixed into the partial tread of a boot.

No blood pooling. No impact spatter. Just drops that had fallen during motion, yet not from an actively bleeding wound.

Talia’s brow twitched as she let the pattern settle into place. Her ability didn’t speak to her in words or visions. Instead, it accelerated her understanding. Removed the need to run complicated simulations and tests. Resonance between what she saw and everything she already knew. Almost like magic.

Bloodstain pattern analysis. Material absorption rates. Dust placement. Volume measurements.

Cognitive Resonance processed it all in moments. But only because she had studied and committed the biomechanics of injury and investigative forensics to memory until her ability and mind could work together to instantly reconstruct the shape of a wound from a single drop of blood.

Talia closed her eyes.

The world around her faded from sight.

From the darkness behind her eyelids, a single point of warm light flared. It spread outward like ink rippling across water, shaping the familiar contours of her sanctuary.

Shelves of deep mahogany twisted upward in impossible spirals, vanishing into gentle shadow. Every shelf overflowed with books: academic tomes, battered paperbacks, glossy romance novels.

Paper lanterns drifted between the rows, casting soft gold over the spines. A faint piano-and-strings melody floated from somewhere unseen.

The room curved into a wide semicircle, anchored by a dark stone fireplace whose steady flames cast both light and warmth.

Before it sat a velvet sofa, sunken just right from years of comfortable use. A low glass table in front was cluttered with empty soda cans, a half-eaten bowl of honey-roasted almonds, and a scattered pile of partially-read romance paperbacks.

Here, amongst the warmth and quiet, she could think clearly.

Here, she was truly herself.

Talia took a light step forward, almost flinging herself over the armrest and into the sofa. She was no longer dressed in her form-fitting, perfectly maintained officer’s uniform: instead, she wore fluffy pink pajamas with her favorite superhero on them. Bunny-shaped slippers adorned her feet, one now resting on the glass table, the other draped lazily over the armrest.

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A book lifted from amongst the stacks, trailing golden light behind it as it floated over to her waiting hand. It was her favorite, with a page corner folded at the kiss scene.

“Let’s start from the end, and work our way back.” Talia grabbed her first almond and waved it at the empty air.

A perfectly recalled image of a hovercar speeding off into the distance, one amongst many fleeing the scene, rippled into existence overhead.

As though the almond were a magic remote, she swiped right-to-left in the image’s general direction, her eyes flickering across the page of her chosen guilty pleasure: Galactic Pursuit: Forbidden Love, Hidden Amongst the Stars.

The scene began to play in reverse. The stolen vehicle returning to the parking lot, swerving and barely avoiding a collision at least four times just exiting the lot. The hovercar surging as though its life depended on it. Returning to its position. Annette Sheridan, gripping the wheel as though she was heading into battle.

Exiting the vehicle. A few droplets of blood fall from the fingers of her metallic right hand. She pulls the mystery man, her ghost, out of the vehicle. They walk backwards, Annette supporting him the whole way. From her original vantage point, their faces were obscured, but she could infer that they were deep in conversation.

The image freezes.

“She drives like a maniac,” Talia said, licking a finger before turning the page. Her eyes did not shift from the book. “What do you think, Professor?”

A figure stepped out from between the rows of shelves, heels clicking against the marble floor in crisp, deliberate steps. She wore a pencil skirt and grey suit jacket, with glasses that caught the firelight and hair kept in a loose ponytail.

Professor Talia came to a stop beside the sofa. She gazed thoughtfully at the still image, thumb pressed against the underside of her chin, index finger resting on her lips.

“Hmm… Standard issue medical gown. Pale blue. Cotton-polyester blend indicates it was provided for comfort, rather than for surgery. The type that’s likely provided to those receiving the serum.”

Talia reached out a hand and an unlabeled can of soda appeared in it. “You’re such a nerd. I love it.” She popped the tab, gulping loudly as though dying of thirst.

Professor Talia ignored her and continued her lecture. “It is heavily worn, dirty. And not just in a way that implies he survived the attack on the facility. Perhaps it was stolen from the washing facility—”

“No,” Talia interrupted. “Washing facility was destroyed in the initial attack according to reports.”

“Then the simplest answer must be considered: it is his, and he had been wearing it for some time before escaping. Note the boots.”

“Combat boots. Santiago Systems guard standard attire. Size ten. The wrist tablet, also,” Talia said, still engrossed in her book.

Professor Talia nodded. “Indeed. Both stolen, of course. You can see how the boots shift slightly as he walks. He’s a size nine. Nine-point-five at most.”

Talia hummed, low and thoughtful, and snapped the book closed after marking her new place. “Alright, let’s continue.”

Talia opened her eyes. To the outside observer, it would have looked like a dramatically slow blink. Only seconds had passed.

Reality returned. The cool breeze against her cheeks, the crisp perfection of her uniform, the ever-present pull of her braid swaying down her back. The acrid stench of burned metal and failure. If her Mind Palace was a place of comfort and self-expression, reality was gritty half-truths and the weight of expectations.

She marched inside the facility with purpose. Her eyes scanned the floors and walls, the most likely location to find supporting evidence of Annette Sheridan’s passage.

Talia was rewarded immediately. More droplets of blood trailed around a corner, possessing the same profile according to Cognitive Resonance.

She followed and stepped into a med-tech room. At a glance, Talia could tell the scene had been tampered with already. Two bodies had been bagged and removed, based on the dried blood and evidence markers.

She closed her eyes again.

“Whaddya fink?” Talia, mouth full of almonds, asked the air. The image floating above now showed the med-tech’s room.

“‘s a fight, alright,” another Talia dropped from the upper shelves, landing effortlessly beside the sofa.

She straightened, shaking imaginary dust from the sleeves of her fitted gi. A black belt wrapped around her waist with a precise knot, and her hair was pulled back in the same practical style Talia wore in the field.

“Amateurish, but fierce. This lot was fighting for their lives, no mistake about it.”

The scene expanded. Bookshelves and fireplace pushed back, making it appear as if the three Talia’s were standing in the middle of the crime scene.

Master Talia walked over to a chair that had been discarded to one side of the room. “Looks like it was used to beat someone with how it’s bent.”

She points up at the automated medical arm. “And this fuckin’ thing’s got blood and hair and scalp stuck in its bits.”

Professor Talia pushes her glasses up slightly. “Based on the estimated force a rotating medi-arm can produce, it’s likely the missing body against the wall was its victim.”

Master Talia steps over to a bloody spray pattern on the floor and squats next to it. “Somebody coughed up blood here. Time to get back out and check if it matches.”

Talia nodded absently as Master Talia stood.

She closed the book, marked her place, and opened her eyes. The metallic scent of blood marked her return to the real site of the fight.

She activated Cognitive Resonance again and swept the room with a critical eye, tagging the blood, matching it against the other spatters around the room and with the droplets outside.

The coughed-up blood did not belong to the two victims, and it did not match the record on file for Annette Sheridan.

Now we’re getting somewhere.

For the next hour, Talia moved through the prison in silence. Her eyes swept over every collapsed wall, every dust-coated smear of blood, while Cognitive Resonance processed everything

It was tedious work, but she was no stranger to the long hours required for perfection.

She found familiar blue fibers on a jagged bit of railing as she began the descent. Further down: an Auto-Winch, coated in dry blood. It matched the sample from the med-tech room above.

Realizing her target had used the winch to ascend didn’t change her methodical pace. Many floors down, she picked up the trail again, identifying her target’s blood on a railing.

He was injured and moving fast. The fighting overhead would have been intense. He saw a chance to bypass the chaos. Perhaps the wrist tablet he was wearing was connected to the winch. If not…

She considered the probability of such a lucky break, weighing it against the possibility of her ghost having a power to override the winch’s security.

A few floors down she found another clue. Dried blood smeared across the walkway in uneven streaks, as if someone had dragged themselves forward.

A faint whisper from within her mind echoed up: Master Talia. “He fought someone here. Someone who made him earn it.”

And then she was at the threshold of the deep cells. Talia shivered. It was cold, but that was overshadowed by the oppressive weight of what might be left down in the dark.

What monsters might Santiago Systems be hiding down here?

She crossed the broken bulkhead, eyes following blood droplets leading directly to one of the open cells.

Stepping inside, Talia knew she had reached the end of her descent. The blood on the edge of the door matched the unknown sample from the med-tech room, which had in turn painted a path through the prison. This was the final bit of evidence she needed to be certain.

A second whisper echoed from within: Professor Talia this time. “Catastrophic seismic damage to the bulkhead, a slight buckling of the door frame to the cell… enough for a desperate person to rip open. Localised escape event confirmed.”

Her target was an escaped prisoner.

From the deep cells.

One that’s been Redacted.

“Fuck.”

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