You can fight a lie with truth. You can fight a system with fire. But what do you do when the weapon isn't a gun or a drone—it's your own memory burning out mid-sentence?
Scene: Southern Watchpoint — Coalition Outpost 14
The first report came quietly.
A field operative named Suli paused during a relay report.
"Sector five… we moved with backup from…"
He blinked.
Looked at his hand.
"Why is it bleeding?"
Aya patched him up. Scanned for toxins. Nothing.
But five hours later?
Suli couldn't remember his unit's names.
Or the war.
Scene: The Infection Grows
By the next day:
Three memory recorders lost entire blocks of their encoded recall logs.
A pilot crashed a drone because he forgot where he was mid-flight.
One medic wandered into the Archive and asked who Ava was.
She'd trained him last week.
Scene: Ava in the Mirror
Ava stood alone in her room, staring at herself.
Not for vanity.
For proof.
"Who am I?" she whispered."Say it out loud."
Nothing came.
Not fear. Not panic.
Just a numbness in the center of her chest.
She sat down.
Wrote her own name.
"AVA SPIRE"
Then underlined it.
Twice.
Just in case it disappeared.
Scene: Rook's Realization
Rook met with Aya and Echo in the war room.
Aya projected the logs.
"This isn't a bio-agent."
"It's psychological code."
"They're not wiping our data.They're scrubbing us while we're awake."
Echo added:
"Think about it. They built me to overwrite Ava."
"What if Scythe isn't a weapon you fire?"
"What if it's a program you embed in someone's story?"
Scene: Test on Recovered Victim
They brought in Suli again.
Sat him down.
Tessa played a clip of him from two weeks ago—laughing, singing.
He watched himself.
Didn't blink.
Didn't smile.
"Who is that?" he asked.
Aya leaned in.
"That's you."
Suli shook his head.
"That guy's already dead."
Scene: Ava's Isolation
That night, Ava locked herself in a signal-dampened room.
Wrote names on the wall.
Everyone she remembered.
Everyone she loved.
Everyone she lost.
But by dawn—
The names were still there.
And she didn't recognize three of them.
Scene: Echo Steps Forward
Echo approached Rook quietly.
"This isn't just memory warfare."
"This is identity collapse."
"They don't need to shoot us anymore.They just need to make us stop being us."
Rook said nothing for a long time.
Then:
"We need to find the original Scythe code."
"Before it finds Ava."
Final Scene: Ava's Glitch Returns
Alone.
Late.
The lights flicker.
Her reflection blinks before she does.
And for a moment—
Her voice stutters.
"I—I—I…"
She steadies her hand.
Carves the word "STAY" into the table.
Then writes it again.
"STAY."
Because if she forgets who she is…
Something else might crawl in.