***
Experiment ID: A01-NEURO-STAB-04
Date: Philos Calendar Year [Redacted]
Recorded By: OTHAN-17642
Objectives:
1. Evaluate Subject A-01's cognitive stability post-combat deployment.
2. Assess memory retention efficiency and eliminate non-essential recollections.
3. Reinforce neural conditioning to maintain optimal operational function.
--Othan Research Bureau Report No. 7703
***
Dim light filtered through the sterile glass of the containment pod. The hum of machinery pulsed in the background, a rhythmic lull that blended with the quiet scratching of pens against paper. The figures beyond the glass did not speak, only wrote. Data recorded, analyzed, categorized. She knew this place. Knew its silence, its sterile cold.
And yet, something was wrong.
A memory. Blurred, fractured. A presence amidst the chaos of the battlefield. A figure—like her, but not. Moving with the same precision, the same purpose. Eyes meeting hers for the briefest second. Familiarity, though she did not know why.
She tried to grasp it, to pull the moment into clarity, but it slipped through her thoughts like water through fractured hands. Her consciousness felt heavy, weighed down by something unseen, and deeper thought drifted from her reach. But the image remained, incomplete yet persistent.
Over and over, it played.
The battlefield. The motion. The meeting of eyes. A moment that should not exist, but did.
She let it loop in her mind, searching for meaning within the broken edges of a memory that refused to be forgotten.