The infirmary wing remained drowned in an oppressive, unmoving darkness. The nurse's distant, frantic murmurs about blown fuses and overloaded conduits did little to pierce the gloom that had swallowed Breda whole. Air caught ragged and thin in Breda's throat. Tymon stood, small and rigid, his hand still tingling from the invisible thread he'd pinched, watching Breda's unfocused eyes dart about the room as if tracking a phantom. [INTRUSION DETECTED. WEAK POINT EXPOSED. MIDNIGHT DEADLINE ACCELERATED.] The voice, a grinding of gears and rusted iron, clawed at Breda’s mind. *“The boy. He sees. He touches. He is a conduit. The anchor of the target’s luck. Sacrifice his soul instead. Or your mother’s life… ends. Now.”* Breda choked. A sound like wet gravel tore from her throat, a desperate, silent plea that died before it reached her lips. Tymon took a step back, sensing the shift in her, a new, terrifying focus in her vacant stare. The air around Breda seemed to thicken, a sharp draft radiating from her skin. He felt a phantom brush of something against his cheek, then a faint, sweet smell, like decay and crushed petals. *** The next afternoon, the cavernous soundstage hung suspended in a state of precarious chaos. Light technicians in crimson overalls dangled from overhead iron gantries, adjusting colossal floodlights that cast stark, dramatic shadows across the set below. Director Vance, a gaunt, perpetually stressed man whose black turtleneck was perpetually dusted with lint, bellowed instructions through a tinny megaphone. "More haze! More existential dread! Where is my lead? Is she still… communing with the set?" Signy was indeed communing. She lay curled on the surface of a giant, crescent moon prop, painted with swirling, melancholic greens and blues, suspended by thick steel cables thirty feet above the concrete floor. She’d found it after a particularly brutal ‘emotional recall’ session had left her craving the comforting dark of a womb-like space. The prop was supposed to be part of the final scene, a tragic tableau of the protagonist’s descent into lunar madness. For Signy, it was just a surprisingly comfortable, quiet place to nap. Her light snores were almost inaudible over the clamor of the rehearsal, the clanking of winches, and the electricians’ clipped calls. Tymon, however, heard them. He sat on a flimsy folding chair below, clutching a tattered graphic novel, his gaze constantly drifting up to the swaying moon. He knew his sister’s sleep cycle better than anyone. Deep now, but easily roused by a sudden jolt. Breda stood on the gantry directly above Tymon, her hands clammy, the metallic rasp now a relentless, deafening shriek in her head. Her face was pale, streaked with fresh tears that had long since stopped flowing. She had been assigned to ‘assist’ the lighting crew, a thinly veiled demotion that placed her in close proximity to her target. The System wanted him dead. Not just injured, not scared, but gone. A sacrifice to secure Signy’s escalating luck, a morbid exchange for her comatose parent's fading life. [PROXIMITY ACHIEVED. EXECUTE. TIME IS EXHAUSTED.] The iron grating beneath Breda's feet felt like a tightrope stretched over an abyss. Her breath sawed in and out. She glanced down at Tymon, so small, so innocent, engrossed in his book. His bright, inquisitive eyes were Signy’s eyes, but sharper, less clouded by exhaustion. *“He is a conduit,”* the System had hissed, *“a pure channel of her fortune. Sever the anchor.”* Breda clenched her fists, her knuckles white. An emaciated, hollow-cheeked face flashed behind her eyelids: the hospital bed, the flickering monitor, the slow decline, and those rasped parting words: *“Live, Breda. Live.”* She took a shaky step towards the railing, her body trembling with a mixture of revulsion and a chilling, alien resolve. The System had replaced her own will with its iron command. She had no choice. Tymon looked up suddenly, his eyes meeting hers. A faint frown touched his brow, a flicker of unease. Breda lunged. Her hand shot out, not with malice, but with the mechanical, unthinking force of a marionette. She aimed for his shoulder, for the small, vulnerable space between his neck and his ear. A quick, decisive push. He was so small, he would tumble through the gap in the safety netting she’d 'accidentally' loosened an hour ago. Signy shifted on the crescent moon. A deep, contented sigh escaped her lips. She rolled onto her side, completely oblivious, her weight causing the massive prop moon to swing with a slow, deliberate momentum. The heavy crescent, its painted surface gleaming, arced through the air. It struck Breda mid-lunge, a solid, sickening thud against her chest. She gasped, the air knocked from her lungs, and staggered backward, sprawling onto the metal grates of the platform with a clatter that echoed through the room. The jolt was enough. Signy's eyes, still heavy with sleep, snapped open. The world was a dizzying blur of swinging moon, distant lights, and the sudden, loud clang of metal. Her senses, usually dulled, registered the immediate danger. She was high up, swaying precariously. Below on the mezzanine, Tymon stumbled, caught off balance by the reverberation. He teetered toward a gap in the perimeter line where netting hung slack, his arms flailing. Signy, leaning outward from her swinging perch, reacted on pure reflex; her hand shot down, fingers snaring the scruff of his collar, and yanked him back onto the firm concrete apron. Tymon looked up at her, his face pale, his small hand still trembling. The danger, sudden and inexplicable, had been very real. Signy stared at him, then at the frayed, suspiciously loose strands of the safety netting. Her gaze drifted to the crumpled figure of Breda on the scaffold overhead, her face twisted in pain, clutching her ribs. For the first time, Signy saw it. The casual carelessness of Drevik’s ramshackle production, the loose bolts, the frayed wires, the 'accidents' that weren't accidents at all. This place, this life, was trying to swallow her brother whole. Her apathy, a thick, comforting blanket she’d worn for years, unraveled. A cold, sharp clarity pierced through her exhaustion. Tymon. He was the only reason she woke up, the only reason she endured. And they were coming for him. Whether it was shoddy maintenance or something far more sinister, she didn't care. She would secure that million-credit studio contract. She would buy them a new life, a warm bed, food that didn’t taste of desperation. She would get Tymon out of Drevik. Forever. A deafening *CRASH* sounded as the facility's heavy blast doors burst inward. A phalanx of impeccably dressed executives, their faces grim, strode in, followed by a medical team wheeling a pristine, high-tech hospital bed. On it lay a woman, pale and still, a network of tubes disappearing beneath a pristine white sheet. Vance, ever the opportunist, beamed. “Ah, perfect! Breda, my dear, your mother has arrived! Just in time for our ‘Descent into Madness’ scene. What better prop for authentic grief than the source itself?” Breda, still gasping for air on the metal deck, looked down. Her stare locked onto the gurney. Her mother. Here. Exposed. And then came the chime, a final, mocking toll: [SACRIFICE IS IMPOSSIBLE. THE ANCHOR STRENGTHENS. YOUR MOTHER’S LIFE… IS NOW A BARGAINING CHIP. HER VITALITY IS YOURS. KEEP THE TARGET ALIVE. KEEP HER SAFE. OR YOUR MOTHER’S LIFE WILL BE DRAINED. INSTANTLY.]

Somnambulist's Sabotage