Chapter 4: Whispered Truths

Emily drifted in the space between sleep and waking, her mind untethered, floating somewhere it didn’t recognise.

At first, it felt like an ordinary dream.

Fragments of childhood surfaced—summer rain on warm pavement, the creak of a playground swing, the comfort of familiar laughter. The past unfolded softly, gently, like memories meant to soothe.

Then the edges began to ripple.

The room around her was her bedroom, but wrong. The walls pulsed faintly, bending as though reality itself were breathing. Shadows lingered where they shouldn’t, stretching too long, folding in on themselves.

And then the distant whispers began in the back of her mind.

She’s almost ready.
The algorithm is stabilising.
What will she choose?

The voices weren’t loud. They didn’t need to be. They slid between her thoughts, intimate and knowing, threading themselves into her consciousness as if they had always belonged there.

Emily turned—and saw them.

Ethan and Caitlyn stood a few feet away, their faces half-lit, suspended in an unreal stillness. Something in her chest tightened as she looked at Ethan first.

She felt him before she understood what she was feeling.

Fear. Exhaustion. A constant, gnawing pressure, like he was holding his breath every second of every day. His thoughts weren’t words so much as weight—responsibility crushing down on him, the terror of losing himself piece by piece. And beneath it all, a quiet, aching uncertainty.

He didn’t know how much longer he could hold on.

Emily’s breath caught.

Then she turned to Caitlyn.

The sensation changed instantly.

Where Ethan felt raw and fractured, Caitlyn was sharp—focused. Her emotions didn’t spill; they coiled. Emily’s awareness brushed against her, and the world seemed to tilt.

Suddenly, she knew.

Not guesses. Not suspicions.

Truth.

Caitlyn’s longing burned hot and possessive, stripped of politeness or restraint. She wanted Ethan—not just affection, not just closeness. She wanted him without interference.

Without Emily.

Moments Emily had dismissed snapped into place with brutal clarity. The subtle interruptions. The way Caitlyn’s gaze lingered. The quiet satisfaction when Emily was distracted, sidelined, dismissed.

Emily’s stomach twisted.

She shouldn’t be seeing this.
She shouldn’t be here.

But she didn’t pull away.

A voice—smooth, patient—curled through her thoughts.

Now you understand.
Now you see.

The room fractured, reality splintering like glass under pressure. The whispers grew louder, urgent.

Emily, wake up.

She gasped, jerking upright.

Darkness pressed in around her, broken only by the faint glow of streetlights filtering through the curtains. Her heart hammered violently in her chest, breath coming too fast, too shallow.

And then she saw them.

Ethan sat on the edge of the bed, his arm loosely around Caitlyn. Caitlyn’s head rested against his shoulder, her body relaxed in sleep. They must have dozed off while watching over her.

The sight struck like a physical blow.

But it wasn’t just jealousy.

It was knowing.

Emily lay still, every muscle locked in place as the truth from her dream settled into her bones. This wasn’t imagination. It wasn’t intuition.

It was access.

Power.

Ethan stirred first, blinking blearily before his eyes found hers.

“You’re awake,” he murmured, relief softening his voice.

Emily nodded, unsure she trusted herself to speak.

As he focused on her, something in her mind shifted—like a door easing open.

And suddenly, she wasn’t just looking at him.

She was inside the space he kept hidden.

Regret washed over her first. Fear, thick and relentless. She felt the strain of constant vigilance, the terror of becoming something he didn’t recognise anymore. Images flickered—Ethan alone in his dorm room, staring at a screen as knowledge poured into him faster than he could cope, his sense of self fraying at the edges.

Emily’s breath stuttered.

She pressed her fingers into the mattress, grounding herself.

“You okay?” Ethan asked softly. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

“I… had a weird dream,” she managed.

He gave a tired, humourless chuckle. “Yeah. Feels like my brain hasn’t shut off in weeks.”

Another thread pulled tight inside her.

She felt his loneliness.

And then—something else.

Her.

Emily.

The way he thought of her, the comfort she represented, the way she anchored him when everything else felt unstable. The realisation hit harder than anything else had.

She mattered to him.

More than she’d allowed herself to believe.

Emily squeezed her eyes shut, pressing a hand to her forehead as if she could physically stop what was happening.

“Emily?” Ethan leaned closer, concern sharpening his voice. “What’s wrong?”

She opened her eyes and met his gaze.

“I need to tell you something,” she said, the words tumbling out before fear could stop them.

He straightened. “Okay.”

“I like you,” she said quietly. “I have for a long time.”

The silence that followed was deafening.

Ethan blinked. “You… what?”

She let out a shaky breath, forcing a small smile. “I know. The timing’s awful. I just—I didn’t want you thinking I was acting strange because of… something else.”

His mind spun, emotions colliding—she felt it all even without meaning to.

“Emily,” he said carefully, “you’re my best friend. You always have been. And lately… everything feels like it’s changing faster than I can keep up with. I don’t even know who I am right now.”

She reached for his hand without thinking.

“You’re still you,” she said. “No matter what’s happening.”

His fingers tightened around hers—just slightly. Enough to matter.

Then he hesitated.

And Emily knew.

Caitlyn had told him how she felt.

The truth settled heavily in her chest, sharp and aching. She felt his guilt, his confusion, the way he didn’t want to hurt either of them.

“I don’t want to choose wrong,” he admitted quietly.

Emily swallowed, fighting back tears.

She wished—desperately—that she didn’t know what she knew.

The pressure built suddenly, fast and violent. A low, electric hum threaded through her skull, her vision dimming at the edges. The whispers returned, louder now.

She is ready.
Begin synchronisation.

Pain flared behind her eyes as something latched on. Thoughts fragmented, flooding with patterns, directives, psychological frameworks she hadn’t asked for.

“Emily!” Ethan shouted, catching her as her body convulsed.

Her muscles locked, then jerked violently as the presence surged deeper, rewriting, optimising.

Then—

A sharp burst of static tore through her mind.

GHOST PROTOCOL ENGAGED.
DISRUPTING SYNCHRONISATION SEQUENCE.

The pressure snapped.

Emily arched once, gasping, then went limp.

Ethan held her, shaking.

“Emily—wake up, please—”

Her breathing was shallow, uneven. Cold sweat dampened her skin.

Another message flashed across his phone.

Emergency override successful.
Sync disruption holding. Subject remains vulnerable.

Caitlyn woke with a sharp intake of breath.

“What happened?”

Ethan looked up, panic written across his face. “She collapsed.”

“She needs a hospital,” Caitlyn said immediately, reaching for her phone.

“No,” Ethan snapped, grabbing her wrist. “We can’t. If Omniscient sees this, they’ll finish what they started.”

Fear warred with logic in Caitlyn’s eyes. “Then what do we do?”

Ethan didn’t answer.

Instead, his phone rang.

Unknown Caller.

He knew.

With shaking hands, he answered. “What do you want?”

Dr. Adrian Mercer’s voice was calm, almost gentle.

“Ethan,” he said, “I can save Emily.”

Ethan’s grip tightened as he looked down at her fragile, unmoving form.

“I have the resources you don’t,” Mercer continued. “Bring her in. No threats. No traps. Just help.”

Caitlyn shook her head, whispering, “Don’t.”

Mercer’s tone softened further.

“Time is running out.”

The choice hung between them—heavy, suffocating.

And Ethan realised, with sickening clarity, that Omniscient had finally cornered him.

MEMORY

Emily remembers the sound before anything else.

Laughter — sharp, high, and cruel in the way only children can manage. Not loud enough to draw adults. Just loud enough to let her know it was meant for her.

She had been small then. Small enough that the older kids looked enormous, all elbows and knees and confidence, blocking the narrow path behind the school. Someone had knocked her books from her hands. Someone else had stepped on them on purpose.

She remembers freezing.

Not screaming. Not crying. Just standing there, her mind going blank as if stillness might make her invisible.

“Say it again,” one of them said. “Say it like you did in class.”

Her throat closed. Her hands shook. She couldn’t remember what she’d said — only that the teacher had smiled when she answered, and that had been enough to mark her.

She remembers thinking, If I don’t move, this will end.

It didn’t.

The first shove knocked her backward. She stumbled, catching herself against the brick wall, breath leaving her in a painful rush. Someone laughed again, closer this time.

And then —

“Hey.”

The voice cut through everything.

It wasn’t loud. It wasn’t angry. Just sudden. Out of place.

Ethan stood at the mouth of the path, backpack slung over one shoulder, too thin for his age, hair sticking up like he hadn’t bothered fixing it that morning. He looked at them, then at her, then back again.

“Leave her alone.”

One of the older boys snorted. “Or what?”

Emily remembers thinking Ethan looked scared.

She remembers that he stepped forward anyway.

The shove that followed wasn’t meant for her. It caught Ethan square in the chest, hard enough to knock the breath out of him. He hit the ground awkwardly, scraping his palms on the concrete as his backpack skidded away.

For a second — just one — the world went silent.

Then someone kicked him.

Emily screamed then. The sound tore out of her before she could stop it.

“Stop!” she cried, dropping beside him, hands hovering uselessly over his shoulders. “Please, stop!”

It ended the way things like that usually did — with a teacher’s voice shouting in the distance, with feet scattering, with laughter fading as quickly as it had started.

Ethan didn’t get up right away.

He lay there on his side, breathing hard, face flushed, eyes squeezed shut like he was trying not to cry. His lip was bleeding. One of his hands trembled against the pavement.

Emily crawled closer without thinking.

She wrapped her arms around him and held on.

She remembers how tightly she clung — like if she let go, something worse would happen. Like the world might break open again if she loosened her grip.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered over and over, her face pressed into his shoulder. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”

He shook his head, wincing as he sat up slowly.

“It’s okay,” he said, voice shaky but sure. “They won’t do it again.”

She didn’t know how he could be so certain.

But she believed him.

Later — much later — she would understand that this was the moment everything changed. That something in her had learned a rule it would follow for the rest of her life:

When Ethan is here, she is safe.

She never stopped holding on after that.

Protection didn’t always look like standing between her and danger.

Most of the time, it looked smaller.

Ethan sitting beside her on the bus when the older kids crowded the aisle too loudly. Ethan trading lunches without comment when she forgot hers. Ethan walking half a step behind her in hallways, not close enough to draw attention, but close enough that no one tried anything stupid.

He never announced it. Never acted like it was a choice.

He was just there.

Emily learned to measure her days by that presence. If Ethan was nearby, the world felt manageable. Predictable. Safe.

At home, things were different.

Her parents loved her — of that she was sure — but their love came with expectations shaped like rules. Good grades. Polite smiles. Piano lessons she practiced until her fingers ached. Dresses chosen for her. Answers rehearsed before company came over.

“Emily, stand up straight.”

“Emily, don’t interrupt.”

“Emily, that isn’t very becoming.”

She learned early which versions of herself were acceptable. Which thoughts to swallow. Which feelings to file away until they were neat and quiet and useful.

Ethan saw the difference immediately.

He noticed how her shoulders relaxed when she stepped off her parents’ porch. How her voice changed at school, how she laughed louder when no one was correcting her.

“You don’t have to try so hard,” he told her once, sitting cross-legged on the grass behind the library.

She frowned at him. “I’m not trying.”

He gave her a look — the one that said he knew better, but wasn’t going to push. “You are,” he said gently. “All the time.”

She didn’t know how to explain it. That being perfect felt safer than being real. That mistakes had consequences she didn’t want to feel again.

So she shrugged instead.

Ethan accepted that too.

But he chipped away at it anyway.

He dragged her into stupid debates just to make her argue. He dared her to skip one piano practice and sit on the roof with him instead, counting stars she wasn’t supposed to know the names of. He laughed when she swore under her breath and didn’t tell her it was unladylike.

“You’re allowed to be you,” he said once, lying on his back beside her, hands folded behind his head. “You know that, right?”

She turned her face away so he wouldn’t see the way her eyes burned. “I am me.”

“No,” he said softly. “You’re who they want you to be. There’s a difference.”

That sentence stayed with her.

So did the way he said they, and never you.

By the time they reached high school, everyone knew them as a pair. Ethan and Emily. Emily and Ethan. Best friends. Inseparable. Permanent.

Teachers paired them together automatically. Classmates joked about it. Someone once asked when they were finally going to admit they were dating.

Ethan laughed it off. Emily smiled and said nothing.

Because somewhere along the way, the feeling had changed.

She noticed it in small, treacherous moments. The way her stomach twisted when he talked about other girls. The way her heart raced when he leaned too close. The way her name sounded different in his voice than anyone else’s.

She fell in love with him quietly.

Carefully.

Hopelessly.

She told herself she was imagining it. That she was confusing safety with affection, gratitude with desire. She told herself not to ruin the one thing she was certain of.

So she stayed exactly where he expected her to be.

His best friend.

His constant.

His anchor.

And he never saw it.

Or maybe he did — and chose not to.

She couldn’t tell.

What she did know was this: whenever her parents’ expectations grew heavier, whenever the world tried to compress her back into something neat and obedient, Ethan was the one who reminded her how to breathe.

He was the reason she listened to her heart at all.

And she had no idea how much of herself she’d built around that truth —
or what would happen if it were taken away.

The first thing Emily noticed was that the memory wouldn’t stay still.

She was sixteen again. Late afternoon light slanted through the school hallway windows, warm and gold, dust floating lazily in the air. Lockers slammed. Someone laughed. Someone else swore.

Normal.

Ethan walked beside her, backpack slung over one shoulder, talking about something she couldn’t quite hear. She watched his mouth move instead, the familiar cadence of his voice anchoring her in place.

This was real.
This had always been real.

Then the light flickered.

Just for a second.

Emily frowned, slowing her steps. The hallway shimmered like heat rising off asphalt. The lockers warped, stretching too long, then snapping back into place.

“Ethan?” she said.

He kept walking.

That wasn’t right.

She reached out, fingers brushing his sleeve—

—and her hand passed through empty air.

The hallway corrected itself instantly. Ethan was beside her again, solid, warm, looking down with that familiar half-smile.

“You good?” he asked.

She nodded automatically, even as unease curled in her chest.

The memory continued, but something underneath it felt… strained. Like a song playing through damaged speakers.

They sat on the football field bleachers now. Sunset bleeding into night. This one mattered — she could feel it.

She remembered this day.

She had almost told him.

She watched herself beside him, younger, braver, heart pounding so hard she thought it might give her away. She could feel the words gathering in her throat again.

I love you.

The moment stretched.

Then it skipped.

Suddenly, they were standing instead. Conversation unfinished. Her confession missing like a sentence ripped from a page.

Emily’s breath hitched. “No,” she whispered. “That’s not how it went.”

The world around her paused.

Then resumed — incorrectly.

More moments surfaced, cascading faster now.

Ethan walking her home after dark.

Ethan sitting on her bedroom floor while she cried over a fight with her parents.

Ethan defending her during a class presentation when someone mocked her voice.

Except now—

He stood farther away in each one.

A step back.
Then two.

His words shortened. His touch vanished. His presence thinned like fog under sunlight.

Emily spun, panic rising sharp and sudden. “Stop. Please. You’re doing it wrong.”

Something moved at the edges of the memory.

Not a figure. Not a voice.

A process.

Scenes reorganised themselves with mechanical patience. Emotional weight was redistributed. Connections were reclassified.

Ethan’s role shifted.

From protector → peer.
From anchor → influence.
From constant → variable.

“No,” Emily cried, grabbing at the moment where he stood between her and her parents in the kitchen, voice raised for once, defending her right to choose her own future.

The scene fractured.

Ethan blurred, then disappeared entirely.

Her parents remained.

Their voices grew clearer. Louder. More certain.

“This is what’s best for you.”

“You don’t need distractions.”

“You’ll understand when you’re older.”

Emily clutched her head as the pressure built, memories rearranging themselves with terrifying efficiency.

Without Ethan, the world made… sense.

That was the lie.

She felt it settling into place, smooth and seamless, like a perfectly fitted mask.

Without him, she was obedient. Achieving. Calm. Focused.

Without him, she didn’t resist.

“No,” she sobbed. “He mattered. He made me.”

The process paused — not out of mercy, but evaluation.

Then the final memory surfaced.

The earliest one.

The playground.

Older kids. Laughter sharpened into cruelty. Hands pushing her down. Dirt scraping her palms.

And Ethan.

Running.

Bloodied knuckles. Split lip. Standing in front of her anyway.

Her chest seized as she threw herself into the scene, wrapping her arms around that version of him, clinging desperately.

“You can’t take this,” she begged. “This is where it started.”

The moment froze.

Ethan looked at her — not as he had been, but as he was now.

Faded.

Unimportant.

A soft correction rippled through the memory.

Ethan was still there… but he didn’t step forward.

An adult intervened instead. A teacher. Authority. Order.

Efficient. Clean. Replaceable.

Emily screamed.

The memory collapsed.

One last sensation flooded her before the darkness closed in:

Relief.

Not hers.

Manufactured.

And then—

Silence.