AGENT_M3RCY

How long had she been watching? Looming at the edges of their peripheral vision like a ghost that could never quite be seen?

Approximately 65 universal days since her mission had been initiated.

The first point of contact had been harmless. A glimpse of still white in the crowd. Enough to unsettle. Enough to let them know that the Nation was watching.

Time didn't matter to the oneiravox. It never had. Not when perception could be drawn out like thread and braided around a mind until they unraveled from the inside out. She did not operate in linearity. She operated in inevitability.

The next encounter had been closer—too close for comfort. Her mind brushed against theirs in the fragile hours of sleep, coiling like chill beneath a door. Whispers, not words. Feelings without form. Unease. Guilt. The shadow of something they did not remember. There was always a softness to the beginning. A quiet presence. The illusion of mercy before the mercy arrived.

News spread quickly. There had been rumors that M3RCY was active again. That she had been given a new mark to hunt.

This one was unique, unlike the other cases.

They had broken containment in a black-site penitentiary meant to house the unreformable. There were no first-time offenders where they had been kept. Only anomalies. Only dangers the Nation could not destroy—only contain. That they had left that place alive made them more than a criminal.

It made them contagious.

And this building—condemned, forgotten—was a vector. Another lost place in a long line of decaying hideouts, each one leaving behind a psychic fingerprint she could follow like scent in the air.

She had taken another fugitive here years ago. A difficult case. Too much hope. He had collapsed into himself like a dying star once she was done. Sometimes, she could still taste him in the flitting dust. His essence had soaked into the rot. It had joined and sustained her. They always did, in the end.

Rain slid down fractured window panes in racing lines to the sill. The power had long since failed, leaving only the dim, irregular pulse of a dying emergency light casting spasms of red against peeling, blistered paint. Shadows gathered thick in the corners but never stayed where they belonged. Even the dark was disobedient here, shifting around her.

It was always like this in the end. Desperate. Alone. And out of time.

She had been here long before the fugitive arrived. Watched the shape of their mind spiral in anticipation. Watched the panic rise, crest, crash. But she allowed the illusion of safety to linger. It was important they think they had chosen this place—let the last fantasy breathe before she suffocated it.

Now, she moved.

The door groaned on rusted hinges before buckling open under the firm, heavy weight of her hands as she stood bipedally. She planted her forelimbs down afterwards, a silent quadrupedal crawl. Her snout slipped in first, twitching with the dust wafting through the stale air. Her silhouette was slow, somewhat serpentine, and far too long to be comfortable. Muscles rippled like calm waves beneath her skin. Her whiskers twitched upwards. Her body drank in every sound and cast nothing back.

She moved silently, like a phantom in the wind, as she rounded a corner, following the striking signature of her target.

Down the hall, the psychic signature of her quarry grew sharper, like the glint of glass before it cuts. She felt their thoughts prickle against her mind: chaotic, alert, already fraying. She smiled, though no mouth moved, only the impression of it lingering in the air.

Mercy needn't reveal herself. She let herself be felt—in the heavy silence that clung to her like a damp cloth, in the inexplicable stillness, in the sensation of a second heartbeat that didn't belong. A second pulse that had no origin, only thrumming in the air, in their mind.

Her face was not a face. Smooth and pale porcelain. No eyes. No mouth. Just a suggestion. A form where a person should be. Ceramic, if pottery could breathe. If pottery watched.

Her limbs were too long. Her posture was too calm. The way she tilted her head was wrong. Like something performing personhood. Mimicking the first time they'd glimpsed her.

"There you are," she said. Not aloud, not in sound. Her voice spilled into the folds of their thoughts like hands dipping into water—velvety, depthless, unsourced. It came from everywhere. From inside. Inescapable.

"I've been with you for some time." She paused, letting the weight of it settle. Let them feel the realization crawl up their spine like ice. Their dreams, the feeling of being watched, thoughts that weren't their own, the ever-present sensation that they weren't alone. That they'd never be alone again. Her tail flicked at the end, barely visible or necessary.

The room tightened, walls pressed in, distorting, breathing. Or beating. It was hard to tell.

"Recognition is a symptom." Her tone was soft yet not gentle. Clinical. A physician explaining the reality of a terminal condition. A diagnosis without options, only an inevitable outcome.

Then, she took a single step forward. The floor did not creak. It didn't need to.

"Tell me," she murmured, head cocking at an unnatural angle, like a uncoordinated marionette. "Do you feel better...now that I'm real?"

Silence fell. But it was not empty. Static bristled between them; something vast had finally turned its gaze toward them. Something that was not merciful.