Victor walked toward George with deliberate precision, each footstep echoing faintly through the polished hallway. His expression was composed, unwavering—the kind of calm that came from years of practiced routine.
George glanced at the time.
10:00 a.m.
Sharp. As always. Punctuality was Victor's quiet signature.
"Victor," George said, his tone relaxed but undercut with intent, "what's on today's schedule?"
Victor tapped the side of his wristwatch. A soft chime accompanied the flicker of a holographic interface, projecting a translucent blue display into the air.
"There's an appointment with Mr. Anderson scheduled at noon—specifically, 2:00 p.m.," Victor said smoothly. "Aside from that, your calendar is clear."
George studied Victor for a moment. His gaze sharpened slightly, as though running calculations behind his unreadable eyes.
Then—without gesture or word—he began transferring a portion of his Record into Victor.
It was subtle, almost imperceptible, threading through the quiet between them like a current under still water. As the transfer progressed, Victor's jacket began to shift in hue—muted greys giving way to faint color, blooming like ink in water. The Record was taking hold.
But then it hit George—fast and sharp.
A wave of dizziness.
The hallway tilted briefly in his vision, and he stopped mid-step, placing a hand against the wall to steady himself. His breath slowed. No words. Just a slight shake of his head to clear the fog.
He turned silently and walked back toward his office, one hand tucked in his coat pocket, the other brushing along the smooth paneling of the wall.
Victor remained where he was, unaffected. He turned back to the reception console and resumed his work, fingers gliding across the controls like a pianist rehearsing muscle memory.
George walked the length of the corridor with a dull throb in his skull—each step echoing the cost of transferring even a small fragment of his Record.
----------------
[HELIX SYNDICATE – Underground Chamber, Planet X-12]
Roth Malik moved through the narrow tunnel beneath the ruined shell of the city with the ease of a man who'd walked through both shadows and lies. The walls were slick with condensation, their surfaces vibrating gently with the hum of hidden conduits channeling power from unknown sources.
Above ground, the world speculated endlessly about the Liberation Group—some hailed them as radicals, others as heroes. But down here, beneath the gridlines of surveillance and state propaganda, truth flowed in colder currents.
The steel door ahead hissed as it recognized him, retracting into the wall with a sound like an exhale.
The planning chamber inside was bare but fortified—concrete walls layered with null-metal plating, meant to dampen psychic or technological intrusion. A circular table dominated the center, around which five figures sat—three men, two women. Their postures were rigid, their expressions unreadable. Soldiers? No. Survivors of a different kind. Players in a game no one outside this room even knew was being played.
The red-haired woman leaned forward, eyes sharp and voice tighter.
"Is it true?" she asked. "What the letter said?"
Roth didn't answer immediately. His boots rang out twice on the metal floor. He came to a stop at the table's edge. No theatrics. Just the gravity of truth.
He gave a single, solemn nod.
That was all it took.
The temperature in the room dropped. Elira fell back into her chair, face pale. The others exchanged glances, the kind that carried silent panic. The message was confirmed.
Planet X-12 was slipping out of orbit.
This wasn't theoretical. This wasn't a possibility.
It was happening.
And they believed him instantly—not because of what he said, but because of who he was.
Roth Malik was not the true leader of the Liberation Group.
That was a myth. A narrative carefully constructed for the public.
The Liberation Group was merely a mask—a visible decoy designed to mislead, distract, and channel rebellion in a direction the Syndicate could control.
The Helix Syndicate was the real force—the silent architects of control, the invisible puppeteers behind every apparent uprising. And Roth?
Roth wasn't their commander.
He was their scalpel.
A man chosen not for leadership, but for a singular, invaluable gift:
Lie Detection.
He didn't need interrogations. No machines. No blood. His mystic ability allowed him to feel falsehood—like a static charge in the air, like poisoned oxygen. Reality itself wavered when someone lied near him.
That's why they had sent him.
Not to make decisions.
To verify truth.
And now that he had confirmed it—the planetary drift—the chamber knew what came next.
There would be no escape. No prevention.
Only fallout.
----------------------
[GEORGE'S OFFICE – Minutes Later]
The silence in George's office was total, broken only by the soft tick-hum of the wall clock.
He lowered himself into the chair with a slight exhale, still recovering from the earlier transfer. The interface lit up the moment he touched his desk, its gentle glow painting his face in pale blue.
One word hovered in his mind like a splinter he couldn't dig out:
Reality Warping.
Dr. Albus had mentioned it the day before—his voice quiet, cautious, as if even speaking the term aloud might summon unwanted attention. George remembered the detail that struck him most: before the transmigration, the original George had dealt with patients affected by this phenomenon. Many of them.
He typed it in.
SEARCH: Reality Warping
The screen erupted with data.
Sealed case files. Archived audio logs. Censored footage. Expunged notes from now-defunct research labs. George's eyes scanned the chaos, picking out the threads that mattered, letting pattern recognition do its work.
And then—clarity.
Reality Warping was not a theory.
It was a phenomenon that had begun roughly fifteen years ago, marked by the arrival of anomalies—creatures, energies, and curses that defied logic and origin.
No one knew where they came from.
The files listed them by many names:
Cognitive Spikes
Whispered Beings
Reality Parasites
Assimilates
These weren't invaders in the traditional sense. They didn't conquer. They merged—slipping into the folds of physics, embedding into cities, weather patterns, language, even thought itself. Their presence caused localized fractures in the laws of nature.
Time would loop. Gravity would collapse. Cities would vanish. Entire regions would forget their own names.
But the most dangerous changes were in people.
Some minds shattered—irreparably broken by the contradictions of altered space.
Others… awakened.
Within a rare few, the pressure of these anomalies triggered long-dormant powers—latent mystic forces encoded into human ancestry. Pyrokinesis. Clairaudience. Reality manipulation. Voices in the mind that weren't madness, but memory.
Reality Warping wasn't understood.
Wasn't treatable.
Wasn't slowing down.
It was an evolving curse. A planetary infection. And the world had been sliding toward collapse ever since its appearance.
George leaned back in his chair, the screen's glow casting hard lines across his face. He stared ahead, silent.
So this is what the original George had faced.
Not delusions.
Not disorder.
But a reality trying to rewrite itself through the people inside it.