Project Obsidian

Black screen. Silence.

Then, like a needle slipping into the skull, sound.

"You are Cadmus. You were made in darkness, forged for the Light…"

The mantra hums through the bones of the facility, layered in subharmonics and overlapping frequencies—words designed to bypass thought and embed themselves in the obedience centers.

"You are Phantom. You do not question. You do not remember."

Blue overhead lights glow dimly, casting a chill across the neural lab. The only warmth in the room radiates from the chair itself—an obsidian-and-chrome instrument built to break consciousness apart and reassemble it clean.

Kade lies inside. Strapped in at eight points. Bare skin flushed, twitching under the grip of invasive neural sync nodes.

His body shakes as a new pulse surges through the system—one designed to trigger disorientation. The Cadmus doctrine is buried in every electronic wave.

[MONITOR 1 – BRAINWAVE TELEMETRY]

ALERT: Cortical echo detected. The subject is showing a retention loop.ERROR: Identity suppression incomplete.Status: Resistance escalating.

Kade's eyes flutter. His jaw locks—a hand clenches.

DR. MEI (reading the waveform)"He's not suppressing. He's—"

TECHNICIAN 1"He's fighting."

A sharp convulsion arcs his spine off the chair.

The shadow beneath him flares, like it's lifting with him—no longer cast by light, but moving of its own will.

The chair's restraints whir, locking harder with metallic snaps.

Across the lab, Dr. Desmond doesn't move. His expression is blank—neither impressed nor concerned.

DR. Desmond "Let him."

The mantra grows more distorted.

"Mission is truth. The Light is order. Emotion is error…"

The shadow doesn't flatten with the light. It thickens—twisting beneath the chair, pooling like tar warming under heat, clinging to the metal legs like it's trying to hold him down… or perhaps, hold him in.

[MONITOR 2 – HEART RATE]

49 bpm43 bpm60 bpmSpike.Spike.Stall.Still conscious.

TECHNICIAN 1 (startled)"That's not a heartbeat pattern. He's syncing with the mantra rhythm."

Mei glances down, then catches something in the corner of her eye.

On the floor beneath the chair, the shadow coils, then stretches, reaching toward the pulse generators mounted on the ceiling.

The room temperature drops. Not by much. But measurably.

DR. MEI(tense)"It's not just reacting to the body. It's reacting to the signal."

DR. Desmond (quietly, without surprise)"It's part of him now."

Static flickers across Monitor 3. Not a malfunction—interference, like something bleeding through from another system layer.

Desmond approaches the monitor as the telemetry begins to degrade.

[MONITOR 3 – NEURAL VISUALIZATION MODULE]The screen displays neural wave activity in real time.

But then… something shifts.

Noise stabilizes. Then, behind the telemetry curves and brainwave pulses… an image emerges.

A soft silhouette.A boy's face.

Dark-haired. Younger. Maybe seven years old. Standing barefoot in a room bathed in real sunlight, not artificial Cadmus halogens. His expression is calm. Curious. Smiling.

The ghost of a memory, crashing through a firewall.

TECHNICIAN 1 (in awe)"That's… that's a memory imprint. It's not supposed to surface this deep into a suppression sequence."

DR. MEI (whispering)"That's Kade."

The image flickers—then multiplies. A ripple of shadows cascades across the monitor. The boy turns his head as if he hears something.

Another pulse hits. Kade jerks in the chair. The restraints groan.

And then the image is gone.

The monitors flatten. Data resumes.Dead. Clean. Sterile.

"You were Kade. Kade is dead. Phantom serves."

Kade's body falls limp again, slick with sweat. But the fingers of his left hand still twitch. Fighting. Not fully gone.

Desmond steps back from the monitor, gaze unreadable.

The lights flicker once.

Then again.

And the shadow beneath the chair simply tightens its grip.

INT. KADE'S MIND — CONSTRUCTED HALLWAY (NON-REAL)

Darkness.

But not empty.

The sound of dripping water echoes faintly in all directions.

Kade stands barefoot on smooth, wet tile—ankles half-submerged in water that shouldn't be there. It reflects no ceiling. No lights. Not even his own body. Just the ripples. Just the silence.

The corridor stretches infinitely in both directions. Narrow. Curving at strange, impossible angles. Walls pulse faintly with dim red veins, like light trapped beneath skin. Every few seconds, a low hum shakes the air. Mechanical. Familiar. Cadmus.

His breathing is slow, shallow.

Confused.

Where am I?

A whisper cuts through the void.

FEMALE VOICE (V.O.)(soft, muffled, loving)"Kade…"

He flinches.

That word—his name—feels like a gunshot in the silence. For a moment, the whole hallway pulses in reaction, like the memory of reality has been reintroduced to something synthetic.

He looks around.

"Kade…"

The voice again. Closer this time.

It wraps around him like warmth in a freezer. He knows that voice, though he can't place the name. A woman. A gentle rhythm in her tone. Protective. Human.

He turns toward the sound.

A flicker of light appears at the far end of the hall.

And with it—shapes.

People.

Ghosts?

No—memories.

A woman's silhouette, standing with one arm outstretched. Hair in a braid, expression unreadable but tender. Her presence tugs at something buried in his chest.

To her right, a child, barefoot, maybe five years old. Wide-eyed, grinning, one tooth missing. Kade recognizes that smile.

It's his.

The child runs ahead, laughing. Splashing through shallow water.

Another figure appears beside them—a teenager in a dark jacket, bruised, eyes hollow but awake. Older Kade? A version that once knew who he was.

The woman turns her face slightly. Almost seen.

"Kade… come home."

He moves forward.

His feet splash.

His hand reaches.

Every instinct tells him—If I just get closer, if I just say something… I can come back.

"Ka—"

The mantra strikes like a drill.

"You are not pain. You are a function."

It blares through the walls. Through the floor. Through him.

The light behind the woman flickers.

The child stops.

The water begins to ripple violently.

Kade gasps, stumbling forward—but the floor cracks beneath him. Like thin ice. The tiles split at perfect right angles, soundlessly.

The hallway fractures.

The woman begins to glitch, edges stuttering, head jerking in broken loops.

The child's laugh turns into static.

Their mouths keep moving, but no sound comes out.

"You were Kade. Kade is dead. Phantom serves."

Kade screams—his voice echoing back in shattered syllables.

He pushes forward.

The hallway tilts, collapses inward like folding paper. The edges curl into digital teeth. The walls begin to peel, revealing not wires—not stone—but nothing. A void waiting to devour what's left.

Then he falls.

Into blackness. Weightless.

Time skips.

INT. THE VOID — COLD, HOLLOW, STILL

He lands—knees to steel.

A single neural chair sits in the distance, half-submerged in black fluid. The restraints hang open. It glows faint blue. Waiting. Knowing.

The shadow appears.

No longer cast. No longer tethered to light. It stands across from him, tall, robed in silence, shifting in texture and shape like smoke in a vacuum.

Then, it walks toward him.

Kade backs away—but not fast enough.

The shadow reaches him.

Touches his chest.

There's no pressure. No heat. Just a pull, like something sliding into him through his skin.

He falls backward—arms limp—as the shadow wraps around him, dragging him toward the chair.

"Kade…"

One last whisper. Weak. Fading.

He opens his mouth to answer—

But no sound comes out.

The chair glows brighter. The mantra returns.

"You are Cadmus. You belong to the Light."

His body twitches in protest—but his mind is already drifting.

The name he heard…

The voice he chased…

It's all unraveling.

He opens his eyes—

And for the first time…

He doesn't recognize himself.

Stillness.

Not silence—there's always sound in Cadmus.

The soft pulse of data streams. The hydraulic whisper of cooling units. The metronome beat of heart monitors. But the boy in the chair—Kade, or what remains of him—is silent.

Completely still.

The neural chair no longer hums with pressure pulses. Its function is no longer invasive. Now, it simply monitors. Stabilizes. Enforces.

Overhead lights glow white, warm but antiseptic, like a surgical theater too clean to be sacred. No more blue lighting. No red alerts. Just sterile equilibrium.

Kade lies reclined, electrodes fused to key points across his skin: jawline, spinal base, temporal cortex. His chest rises every seven seconds. On time. On cue.

No dream's resistance name.

Just synchronization.

INT. CONTROL STATION – OBSERVATION DECK ABOVE THE LAB

Technicians stare at a wall of monitors. None are panicking. Nothing has gone wrong.

Because everything is working.

[MONITOR 1 – NEUROLOGICAL CONFLICT REPORT]

SUPPRESSION HOLD: 0%SYNCHRONIZATION: 93% — DESIGNATION: PHANTOMPHANTOM ACCEPTANCE INDEX: GREENALERT: KERNEL "KADE" — INACTIVE

TECHNICIAN 1(reading aloud)"Identity conflict resolving. Residual resistance cleared."

DR. MEI, still standing off-center, watches the biometric overlay without speaking. Her voice barely makes it above the hum.

DR. MEI"He's syncing…"

The words fall heavily. She doesn't say it with relief.

Desmond glances toward her but offers no reaction.

DR. Desmond, "As expected. Shadow alignment is now sub-neural."

A quiet monitor beep confirms it. Heart rate: 47 bpm.No variance.

"You are Phantom. Phantom is Cadmus. Phantom is the mission."

INT. INTERNAL – KADE'S MINDSPACE

Void.

No more corridors. No more memories. No water. No echoes. Just a vast, black expanse where thought once lived.

Kade stands alone. Or maybe he floats. His body has no edges here. His shape doesn't cast anything anymore—not even light.

There's no voice calling his name.

Just one word, whispered slowly, then again.

Phantom… Phantom… Phantom…

The name loops. Not like memory.

Like instruction.

A command hard-coded into the spaces between heartbeat and breath.

He tries to respond. But his voice—his real voice—is gone.

Something like grief stirs. A pulse of emotion.

A memory of fear. In the hallway. Of a woman's voice.

It flickers across the dark. A spark—

Then it's smothered.

The shadow rises again. Not as an entity, but as a presence.

It doesn't stand beside him anymore.

It is within him.

Filling the void. Merging with whatever's left. Wrapping around the last shred of emotion like a shroud.

"Emotion is error."

He doesn't hear it this time.

He believes it.

INT. CADMUS MONITORING SUITE – LIVE SYNC SCREEN

[MONITOR 2 – EMOTIONAL TRACE FEEDBACK]

Trace Pulse Detected:Classification: Inconclusive.Duration: 1.4 Category: Limbic Grief Event Status: Overwritten.

One of the technicians stares longer than the others. Quietly unnerved. It felt like something tried to survive—and failed.

[MONITOR 3 – HEART RATE]

46 bpm.. 47 bpm.. 47 bpm. C adence matches the audio feed.

TECHNICIAN 1(flatly)"Heartbeat fully aligned with mantra rhythm. No autonomous drift. Subject is in total compliance."

Desmond finally steps forward, hands clasped behind his back.

DR. Desmond: "Begin final synchronization."

The Cadmus logo fills the central monitor. Glowing red. Rotating slowly.

A countdown initiates:

FINALIZATION SEQUENCE: PHANTOM_0019%... 24%... 42%... 68%...

No alarms.

No final tests.

Because they don't need to confirm.

The identity is already accepted. Not just overwritten—but welcomed.

The shadow beneath the chair no longer lashes or coils.

It just lies there.

Compliant. Companion.

Perfectly still.

CADMUS NEURAL REPROGRAMMING CHAMBER — FINAL PHASE COMPLETED

Silence.

Not peaceful. Not calm. It's the kind of silence that follows after something has been broken cleanly—a clean severing.

The Cadmus mantra loops once more, barely audible now, as if whispering only to itself.

"…You belong to the Light…"

Then—It stops.

For the first time in hours, the room holds quiet.

The lights above shift. From surgical white to neutral tone—an intentional cue. Procedure complete.

A soft mechanical chime sounds.[SYSTEM READOUT: NEURAL REALIGNMENT SUCCESSFUL. DESIGNATION LOCK: PHANTOM]

The chair powers down, hydraulic pressure equalizing with a hiss. The restraints retract silently, folding back into the chair like fingers pulling away from a finished sculpture.

Technicians enter the chamber. Not soldiers. Not doctors. Operators.

One unhooks the spinal jack at the base of Kade's neck.

Another removes the final cranial nodes and slides a datapad across the bioskin for a closing signature.

Neither looks him in the eyes.

Because Cadmus doesn't look at what it creates.

It simply moves on.

Kade's body remains still. Arms at his sides. Head tilted slightly. Breathing shallow. For a moment, he might as well be unconscious.

But they know better.

Dr. Desmond watches from just inside the glass threshold, his hands behind his back, expression unreadable. He doesn't step closer. He doesn't need to.

He's already seen what's coming.

DR. MEI (from the observation deck)"Vitals holding. All markers within Cadmus parameters. Identity kernel fully replaced."

A monitor flashes in affirmation:

[SUBJECT ID: PHANTOM_001 – ACTIVATION PENDING]

Then—

A twitch.

The fingers of Kade's right hand flex slowly.

Once.

Twice.

Not a spasm. A signal. Conscious will.

Seconds pass.

Then—

His eyes open.

The lights above don't flicker. Nothing dramatic happens.

But it feels seismic.

His irises, once hazel, are now darkened, clouded with residual neural dye. Not empty—but precise. Like a machine just booted for the first time, assessing the world in terms of relevance and threat.

There's no shock in his gaze.

No confusion.

Just awareness.

He stares at the ceiling for three long seconds, unmoving. Calculating. Remembering nothing—and needing to remember nothing.

Then, his head turns.

Slowly.

Deliberately.

His eyes land on Desmond.

Desmond doesn't speak right away. Doesn't smile. Just waits.

Then, finally, he asks the question.

DR. Desmond (calm, steady)"Designation?"

The chamber holds its breath.

A beat of silence.

The subject sits upright.

Controlled. Fluid. Every muscle seems pre-wired, every action intended.

He looks at Desmond.

And speaks.

No hesitation, certainty, or humanity.

"I am Phantom."

His voice is calm. Almost gentle.But behind it, something dead and clear.

Not robotic.Not hollow.

Just finished.

The lights dim slightly.

In the corner of the room, his shadow stretches behind him, taller than his form, darker than the surrounding light should allow.

It doesn't twitch.

It doesn't rebel.

It simply waits.