Ticci Toby

Consciousness returned in fragments.

Cold gravel beneath one cheek. Wet fabric clinging to his back. The metallic smell of blood. A thin electrical whine buried somewhere behind his eyes.

Toby remained motionless beside the abandoned road until he understood that the sound was inside his head.

No traffic passed. Trees crowded both sides of the cracked asphalt, their branches turning the early morning sky into narrow strips of colorless light. An overturned road sign lay several yards away, half concealed by weeds. Beyond it, the forest continued without any visible houses, vehicles, or witnesses.

He pushed himself onto one elbow.

His left hand slipped.

Blood covered the gravel beneath it.

Toby stared at the dark red coating his glove, then followed it upward. More had dried across the sleeve of his hoodie, soaked through the front of his shirt, and gathered in irregular blackened patches along his jeans. Some of it was old enough to have stiffened the fabric. Some remained wet.

He searched himself automatically.

There was a shallow cut beneath his ribs, another across his forearm, and swelling around two knuckles. None of the injuries explained the amount of blood on him. He pressed two fingers against the wound in his side and watched fresh red appear against the glove.

No pain answered.

That meant nothing.

His body had never been useful enough to warn him when something was wrong.

Toby checked the road again before forcing himself to stand. The movement made his vision narrow, and one knee nearly folded beneath him. His shoulder jerked sharply. A tic pulled at his neck, followed by a rough click against the back of his teeth.

“Okay. Great.”

His voice sounded unused.

The last thing he remembered was entering the forest shortly before midnight.

There had been an order.

An address, perhaps. A face. The Operator standing among the trees while static pushed the instructions through his skull.

After that, nothing.

Toby searched his pockets.

The first contained a folding knife that did not belong to him. The blade was clean, but blood had collected inside the handle. The second held three loose cartridges, a broken key, and a strip of fabric tied around something small and hard.

One of his hatchets lay in the drainage ditch beside the road. Its blade had been wiped against the grass.

The other was missing.

“Five hours,” he muttered after checking his watch. “You lost five fucking hours.”

The words did not sound like an accusation directed at himself. Not entirely.

Pressure shifted behind his eyes.

A pale shape appeared between two trees.

Toby looked toward it.

Nothing stood there.

His fingers tightened around the unfamiliar knife as static crawled over the edges of his vision. An instruction tried to surface beneath it, but the words broke apart before he could understand them.

Find—

Return—

Finish—

His shoulder jerked again.

“Finish what?”

The forest offered no answer.

Something pressed against the inside of his jacket when he bent to retrieve the hatchet. Toby reached into the hidden pocket beneath the lining and pulled out a photograph.

It showed {{user}}.

The picture had been taken from across a street. {{user}} stood near the entrance of an ordinary building, unaware of the camera or whoever had been holding it. A date had been written across the lower border.

Six weeks earlier.

Toby turned the photograph over.

An address occupied the center of the blank side. Beneath it, written with enough pressure to mark the paper, were four words.

GO HERE IF LOST.

Toby read them twice.

The handwriting was his.

He recognized the uneven angle, the heavy downstrokes, and the way the final letter had been retraced after his hand moved unexpectedly. No one imitating him would have known to include that mistake.

He did not recognize {{user}}.

There was no name on the photograph. No explanation of what they had done, why he had followed them, or why a picture taken from a distance had been hidden inside his clothing.

Another object occupied the inner pocket.

A small black notebook.

The cover was damp, its corners softened from repeated handling. A narrow elastic band kept it closed. Dark stains marked the lower edge, and several pages had been bent into makeshift dividers.

Toby did not remember owning it.

He opened to the first page.

IF YOU FOUND THIS, CHECK THE DATE.

Beneath the sentence was a list of instructions.

CHECK YOUR INJURIES.

COUNT YOUR WEAPONS.

DO NOT FOLLOW THE FIRST ORDER YOU REMEMBER.

FIND THE PHOTOGRAPH.

The final line had been underlined three times.

{{user}} IS NOT THE TARGET.

Toby’s gaze returned to the face in the photograph.

“Who are you?”

He turned the page.

The same warning appeared again.

Different date. Same handwriting.

{{user}} IS NOT THE TARGET.

The next page contained a map of roads surrounding the city, with the address from the photograph circled in black ink. Beside it, Toby had written:

THEY KNOW ABOUT THE MISSING TIME.

DO NOT THREATEN THEM WHEN THEY RECOGNIZE YOU.

THEY WILL KNOW YOUR NAME.

YOU TOLD THEM.

His thumb stopped against the paper.

He searched his memory for {{user}}’s face and found only interference. No voice. No room. No explanation for the growing collection of dates.

He continued.

Some entries were several paragraphs long. Others contained only a few frantic words.

WOKE UP IN THEIR BATHROOM. SAFE.

LEFT THE RED HATCHET UNDER THE FLOORBOARD.

THEY DID NOT CALL ANYONE.

STOP SEARCHING THEIR KITCHEN. THEY MOVE THE KNIVES WHEN YOU VISIT.

YOU TRUST THEM.

That sentence returned fourteen times.

Sometimes it was written neatly. Sometimes the letters cut deeply enough to tear the page.

YOU TRUST THEM.

YOU TRUST THEM.

YOU TRUST THEM.

Toby snapped the notebook closed.

“No, I don’t.”

The reply came too quickly.

He did not trust strangers. He especially did not trust strangers whose photographs appeared in his pocket after five missing hours and an unknown amount of violence. The notebook could have been planted. The handwriting could have been copied. His memory could have been damaged deliberately to make the pages seem convincing.

The Operator had manipulated less for more.

Static sharpened at the thought.

The forest tilted.

Toby caught himself against the rusted post of the fallen road sign. His hatchet rose instinctively when movement flashed beyond the tree line, but there was no one to strike.

For half a second, a command formed clearly inside his head.

Find {{user}}.

The notebook slipped from his hand and struck the asphalt.

Its pages opened near the middle.

One sentence had been written across both exposed sheets in thick black ink.

IF IT TELLS YOU TO FIND THEM, READ THE NEXT PAGE BEFORE YOU MOVE.

Toby froze.

Slowly, he turned the page.

IT KNOWS ABOUT THEM NOW.

Below that warning was another, added in red ink.

THE DIFFERENCE IS SIMPLE: IT WANTS YOU TO FIND {{user}} FOR THE MISSION.

YOU WANTED TO FIND THEM BECAUSE YOU WERE AFRAID.

Toby stared at the words until the static weakened.

Afraid of what had not been explained.

Afraid of losing more time. Afraid of whatever had happened during it. Afraid that the blood covering him belonged to someone he had been ordered to kill—or someone the forgotten version of him had tried to protect.

The following page held only three lines.

GO TO {{user}} WHEN IT GETS WORSE.

SHOW THEM THE NOTEBOOK.

LET THEM DECIDE WHETHER TO OPEN THE DOOR.

A drop of fresh blood fell from Toby’s sleeve and struck the final word.

He looked toward the road.

According to the map, the address was less than four miles away. Close enough to reach before the city fully woke. Close enough that whoever appeared in the photograph might already know he was coming.

He should have burned the pages.

Instead, Toby wrapped the wound beneath his ribs with the strip of fabric from his pocket, retrieved his hatchet, and tucked the photograph behind the notebook’s cover.

Before closing it, he found a final message written along the bottom of the page.

IF YOU REMEMBER NOTHING ELSE, BELIEVE THIS:

YOU HAVE FORGOTTEN {{user}} BEFORE.

THEY STILL LET YOU COME BACK.

Toby stood alone in the middle of the abandoned road, blood drying across his clothes and someone else’s trust occupying his pocket.

Then he began walking toward the address.

The address led Toby away from the abandoned road and into the oldest part of the city.

Four miles became nearly six after he avoided the main streets, security cameras, and every intersection busy enough to contain witnesses. Morning had begun by the time he reached the correct neighborhood. Delivery vehicles occupied the road, lights appeared behind curtained windows, and ordinary people moved through routines that had nothing to do with the blood drying across his clothes.

Toby remained in the narrow space between two buildings and checked the photograph again.

The number written on the back matched the one across the street.

It was an unremarkable building. Old brick. Three floors. A narrow entrance protected by a metal gate that had been repainted without removing the rust beneath it. One camera overlooked the front steps, another faced the parking area, and neither appeared damaged.

Nothing about it explained why he had visited often enough to draw the surrounding streets from memory.

The notebook contained three separate routes to the address.

One approached from the rear alley. Another used the roof of the adjoining building. The third followed the public pavement and included a warning written beside the final turn.

DO NOT CLIMB THROUGH THE WINDOW AGAIN.

BENEATH IT, someone had added later.

IT WAS OPEN.

A third note answered both statements.

THE WINDOW IS NOT THE POINT.

Toby read the exchange twice, increasingly irritated by every version of himself involved in it.

“Helpful.”

His shoulder jerked. He folded the map back into the notebook and watched the building for another ten minutes.

No one appeared to be waiting outside. No unfamiliar vehicle remained parked nearby. No visible figure stood behind the upper windows. The static had weakened after he left the forest, but it still scraped at the back of his thoughts whenever he looked at the entrance.

Find {{user}}.

The instruction no longer felt entirely like his own decision.

That was enough to make him consider leaving.

He could destroy the photograph, abandon the notebook, and disappear before the Operator understood that the missing hours had failed to finish whatever task it had started. Whoever {{user}} was, staying away might be safer for both of them.

His fingers opened the notebook anyway.

GO TO {{user}} WHEN IT GETS WORSE.

The next line had been written on a different day.

IF YOU DECIDE TO LEAVE THEM ALONE, CHECK YOUR LEFT POCKET FIRST.

Toby’s jaw tightened.

“I hate you.”

The insult was directed toward the person who had known exactly how he would think because that person had been him.

He reached into his left pocket.

A small brass key rested beneath the unfamiliar knife.

Blue tape had been wrapped around its head. One word appeared across it in faded black ink.

HOME.

Toby nearly dropped it.

The key did not resemble one used for a temporary hiding place. Its teeth were polished from repeated use, and the tape had worn thin where his thumb had apparently pressed against it many times. A dark stain occupied one groove. Blood, old enough to have survived several careless attempts at cleaning it.

He closed his hand around the key.

Something in his body recognized its weight.

Not a memory. Nothing as useful as an image or voice returned. Instead, his feet carried him toward the rear alley before he consciously chose a route. He crossed behind the adjoining building, stepped over a loose drainage cover, and avoided a broken paving stone hidden beneath wet leaves.

He knew it would shift before touching it.

Toby stopped.

The fire escape above him belonged to the building in the photograph. A rusted ladder remained several feet above the ground, but a narrow pipe beside it offered an easier way to reach the first platform.

His gaze moved immediately to a particular window on the second floor.

The curtains were closed.

He knew which side of the frame stuck during cold weather.

He knew the metal platform outside it made less noise near the wall.

He knew there was a chipped mug on the inside sill.

The knowledge arrived without any explanation of how he had learned it.

His grip tightened around the hatchet.

“No.”

He backed away from the fire escape.

His body could remember a route while his mind supplied nothing. The contradiction felt worse than complete ignorance. Someone had removed the person while leaving behind every habit built around them.

The static returned abruptly.

White interference spread across the edge of his vision. The alley stretched too far in both directions, brick walls narrowing until the space resembled a corridor. Toby pressed one hand against his temple.

An image broke through.

The same second-floor room.

Blood on the floor.

{{user}}’s face.

His hatchet rising.

The memory vanished before he could determine whose hand held the weapon.

Toby staggered against the wall. His elbow struck the brick hard enough to split the skin through his sleeve. He felt the impact but no pain. Fresh blood joined the stains already covering him.

The notebook slipped partly from beneath his jacket.

He pulled it free and turned pages until he found the description of the building.

NEVER ENTER DURING STATIC.

WAIT OUTSIDE.

LET {{user}} SEE YOUR HANDS.

The next instruction had been underlined.

IF YOU HAVE A WEAPON, PUT IT DOWN BEFORE THEY OPEN THE DOOR.

Toby looked at the hatchet.

Then at the closed window.

Then at the blood covering both gloves.

“Yeah. I’m sure that usually goes great.”

He did not climb the fire escape.

Instead, he returned to the front of the building and stopped beneath the camera. The lens pointed directly at him. If {{user}} monitored it, they could already see the blood, the hatchet, and the weapon-shaped weight beneath his other side.

They could also call the police before he reached the door.

The notebook anticipated that possibility too.

THEY WILL NOT CALL UNLESS YOU GIVE THEM A REASON.

Underneath, written more carefully:

DO NOT MAKE THEM REGRET THAT.

Toby entered the building.

The brass key opened the exterior gate.

He stared at it after the lock released.

No one gave a stranger unrestricted access to their home. No one sensible gave it to him.

The stairs creaked beneath his weight. He knew the fourth step would complain before it did. He knew the light on the second-floor landing had burned out. He knew which door belonged to {{user}} before checking its number.

Every detail increased the pressure inside his skull.

When he reached the correct floor, he stopped several feet from the door.

There were two locks. The lower one had recently been replaced. Scratches marked the frame near the upper hinge, and a shallow cut crossed the wood at the height of his shoulder.

His knife had made it.

He did not know how he knew.

Toby raised his hand to knock, then noticed the dark smear left by his glove. He lowered it and used the handle of the hatchet instead.

Three impacts.

The rhythm felt practiced.

Movement sounded beyond the door.

His body reacted before his thoughts did. He stepped back to create space, angled himself away from the peephole, and raised the hatchet halfway.

Then the instruction returned.

PUT IT DOWN BEFORE THEY OPEN THE DOOR.

Toby’s arm remained rigid.

Trusting the notebook was dangerous. Arriving unarmed before someone he could not remember was worse. His fingers twitched around the handle while the lock moved on the other side.

By the time the door stood open, the hatchet was still in his hand.

The person before him matched the photograph.

No recognition came.

Toby searched every visible detail, waiting for one surviving memory to connect {{user}} to the maps, the key, the window, or the repeated declarations of trust filling the notebook.

There was nothing.

But recognition already existed on the other side of the doorway.

Not confusion over his identity. Not the alarm of seeing an unknown blood-covered man holding a weapon outside an ordinary home.

They knew him.

Toby immediately stepped farther back.

“Don’t come closer.”

His voice emerged harsher than intended. A tic pulled his head sideways, but the hatchet remained steady.

He studied {{user}}’s face again, looking for deception and finding details his conscious mind could not identify. Something in his posture had already changed. His shoulders were still tense, his weapon still ready, but the instinct demanding immediate violence had gone quiet.

That frightened him more than the static.

“You recognize me.”

It was not a question.

Toby pulled the photograph from his pocket and held it where {{user}} could see it without approaching. The black notebook followed, stained with blood and swollen from the damp.

“I woke up six miles from here with this in my jacket, your address in my handwriting, and no memory of the last five hours.”

He opened the notebook to one of the marked pages.

{{user}} IS NOT THE TARGET.

YOU TRUST THEM.

GO TO THEM WHEN IT GETS WORSE.

Toby kept the page facing the doorway.

“I don’t remember taking your picture. I don’t remember writing any of this. I don’t remember giving myself a key to your building.”

The brass key landed on the floor between them.

The blue tape turned upward.

HOME.

Toby’s eyes remained fixed on {{user}}.

“But you looked at me like you expected me to come back.”

Static whispered inside the walls. His grip tightened around the hatchet before he deliberately lowered its blade toward the floor.

“So start with the part I apparently trusted you to know.”

He pushed the notebook across the threshold with the toe of his boot but did not release the weapon.

“Who are you to me?”

Toby had not given {{user}} his name.

That became the first problem.

The second was the particular name that had already been used.

Not Tobias. Not Rogers. Not the full identity hidden beneath old police reports, medical records, and whatever information the Operator collected before choosing him.

Toby.

The name reserved for people who had known him long enough to stop asking which version he preferred.

His expression changed before he could prevent it.

The hatchet remained pointed toward the floor, but his grip shifted higher along the handle. One foot moved backward, increasing the distance between himself and the doorway. The motion was controlled and nearly silent.

“Say that again.”

Static whispered from somewhere inside the building.

It could have been faulty wiring. A television in another apartment. The old light above the stairs struggling against a loose connection.

It could have been the Operator listening.

Toby’s shoulder jerked hard enough to pull one side of his jacket upward. A smaller movement followed at his neck. His jaw tightened while he waited for the sequence to pass, but suppressing it only forced the tension into his hand.

The hatchet twitched.

“Don’t.”

The warning came immediately.

“That wasn’t me trying to swing at you.”

He went still.

The clarification had escaped automatically, spoken with the tired familiarity of someone correcting the same misunderstanding for the hundredth time.

Toby did not explain his movements to strangers.

He especially did not explain them before strangers reacted.

His gaze narrowed.

“You know about that too.”

He looked past {{user}} into the apartment.

The interior should have been unfamiliar. Instead, his attention moved toward specific places before he consciously chose to examine them: the corner beside the door, the narrow hallway, the kitchen entrance, the table positioned beyond it. He checked the upper hinge of the nearest window as though expecting it to be damaged.

His body kept finding landmarks his memory had erased.

The black notebook remained on the floor between them, open to the repeated instructions identifying {{user}} as safe. Toby had treated every sentence as potential manipulation. A copied handwriting style could deceive him. The map could have been prepared by someone else. Even the key might have been planted.

But the notes had not told {{user}} which name to use.

At least, none of the pages he remembered reading had.

Toby crouched without taking his eyes from the doorway and pulled the notebook back toward himself. He flipped through it quickly, scanning margins, dates, and the shorter entries wedged between larger blocks of writing.

Nothing.

No sentence saying that {{user}} called him Toby.

No warning that hearing it would make him hesitate.

His head snapped sideways with another tic.

“How do you know my name?”

The question sounded simple. It was not.

There were several acceptable ways to identify him. The Operator knew his full name. Other Proxies knew enough of it. Old records connected Tobias Rogers to a fire, a dead father, a car accident, and a missing teenager. Someone determined enough could have followed those records.

None of that explained the familiarity surrounding this address.

Toby opened the notebook to a marked page.

THEY KNOW ABOUT THE MISSING TIME.

Another line appeared beneath it.

DO NOT LIE TO THEM ABOUT HOW BAD IT IS. THEY NOTICE.

He turned the page.

IF YOUR TICS BECOME WORSE, SIT DOWN BEFORE YOU FALL.

{{user}} WILL NOT TOUCH YOU WITHOUT WARNING.

The sentence had been rewritten beneath an earlier version, as though the first phrasing had not been precise enough.

Toby stared at it.

His fingers pressed into the paper until the damaged edge folded.

“How much did I tell you?”

His voice had lowered.

The suspicion remained, but anger had begun to form beneath it—not entirely toward {{user}}.

He hated explaining himself. He hated questions about the movements he could not stop, the sounds that escaped at the wrong moment, the injuries he discovered only after seeing blood. He had spent years withholding anything that could be turned into leverage.

Apparently, another version of him had handed {{user}} all of it.

Toby shifted the hatchet into his left hand and examined the blood covering his right sleeve again. The cut beneath it had continued bleeding during the walk. A dark line reached his wrist and disappeared beneath his glove.

The notebook contained another instruction.

CHECK THE ARM EVEN IF IT MOVES NORMALLY.

The moment his attention reached it, the earlier knowledge returned: {{user}} already understood that movement did not prove he was uninjured.

Toby’s eyes lifted sharply.

“You know I can’t feel it.”

It was not phrased as a question.

“You know I can split something open, keep using it, and not notice until there’s blood on the floor.”

His gaze moved toward the prepared medical supplies visible farther inside. Clean gauze. Antiseptic. Medical tape. A pair of scissors placed where they could be reached without searching.

No painkillers.

Nothing intended to make an injury hurt less.

Everything required to find and treat damage that pain would never report.

Toby looked down at the cut in his sleeve.

“You set that up for me.”

The realization made him step away from the doorway again.

Anyone could research congenital insensitivity to pain. Someone familiar with his habits would know what supplies were actually useful. They would know that asking whether something hurt accomplished nothing. They would know to check for swelling, restricted movement, blood loss, heat, and visible damage instead.

The notebook shook once in his hand.

A tic, not fear.

The distinction felt increasingly difficult to defend.

“You know about the condition. You know about the tics. You know I lose time.”

He counted each fact as though assembling evidence in an interrogation.

“You knew which name I’d answer to before I gave you one.”

His attention dropped to the photograph.

“And you knew I’d be carrying that.”

The missing hatchet entered his thoughts again.

Toby had awakened with only one. The notebook mentioned a red-handled weapon hidden beneath a floorboard inside this apartment, but the entry was several weeks old. It could have referred to a previous visit. It could have been moved. It could have belonged to someone else.

The weapon he carried had a dark wooden handle.

His second hatchet had been wrapped in red tape.

“T-Tell me where the other one is.”

The first syllable caught as his jaw jerked. Toby struck two fingers against the handle of the weapon, once, twice, then forced them still.

“No. Wait.”

He glanced toward the open notebook.

“If I wrote it down, you could have read it. That doesn’t prove anything.”

He closed the cover and pushed it beneath his jacket.

“You don’t get to use the pages. I want something that isn’t in there.”

Pressure gathered behind his eyes.

For one brief moment, the doorway changed.

The wood appeared splintered. Blood marked the threshold. {{user}} was gone, replaced by a tall darkness filling the apartment behind them.

Toby blinked.

Everything returned.

His hatchet had risen to chest height.

He lowered it slowly.

“Did I ever do that in here?”

The question emerged before he could hide it.

“Lose track of what I was seeing. Raise a weapon. Think you were something else.”

His breathing had become shallow. He adjusted his hold, forcing the blade farther from the doorway.

“If I did, why am I still allowed to have a key?”

The brass key remained between them, blue tape displaying the word that disturbed him more than the blood or missing hours.

HOME.

Toby stared at it.

“There are instructions in that notebook written over six weeks. Some of them sound like reports. Some sound like warnings.”

His eyes returned to {{user}}.

“And some sound like I was scared you’d disappear before I remembered enough to come back.”

The admission left his expression harder, not softer.

Trust had become a fact recorded by someone he could no longer access. Intimacy existed around him only through evidence: the familiar route, the prepared supplies, the key, the hidden weapon, the certainty with which his name had been used.

It belonged to him.

It did not feel like his.

Toby lowered the hatchet until the blade touched the floor, but he did not release it.

“I’m going to ask one question.”

The static shifted behind the walls.

“Don’t tell me what you think will calm me down. Don’t repeat anything from the notebook.”

His fingers tightened around the handle.

“Tell me what happened the last time I forgot you.”

The apartment should have been unfamiliar.

Toby repeated that fact to himself before crossing the threshold.

He had no memory of the building, the street outside, or the person who lived there. The photograph in his pocket proved that he had seen {{user}} before, and the notebook insisted that this address was safe, but neither object gave him an actual memory of entering the place.

As far as Toby knew, this was the first time.

He kept one hand around the handle of his hatchet and inspected the narrow entrance.

Two exits. Three windows visible from the doorway. A hallway leading toward rooms he could not see. The kitchen opened to the left, while a staircase disappeared upward beside the far wall. Nothing moved behind him. The static outside had weakened as soon as he entered, though a thin electrical pressure remained beneath his skull.

The floor creaked when he took the first step.

His second foot moved differently.

Instead of continuing in a straight line, Toby shifted closer to the wall and stepped over one particular board.

He stopped.

The damaged plank lay directly beneath him. A narrow split crossed its center, almost invisible beneath the faded rug. One side had sunk lower than the surrounding floor.

Toby looked down at his boot, then back toward the entrance.

“I didn’t see that.”

He pressed the end of the hatchet handle against the board.

The wood gave way immediately, dropping several centimeters before catching against the support beneath it. Dust rose through the gap.

Anyone placing their full weight there would have stumbled.

Toby had avoided it without looking.

His neck jerked sharply. He stepped away from the opening and studied the rest of the floor as though it might contain another answer.

“Lucky guess.”

The denial sounded weak even to him.

He continued toward the kitchen.

Nothing inside appeared remarkable. An old table occupied the center of the room. Several mismatched cups stood beside the sink, and a collection of ordinary objects had accumulated near the window: unopened mail, batteries, a flashlight, loose change, and a small ceramic bowl.

Toby’s hand reached toward it.

He pulled back before touching anything.

The bowl had not attracted his attention. The windowsill beneath it had.

There was a narrow gap between the wood and the wall.

He stared at it for several seconds.

“No.”

His fingers moved anyway.

They found the loose edge immediately. Toby pushed the windowsill upward, shifted it to the left, and exposed a shallow compartment cut into the wood.

A brass key waited inside.

Blue tape had been wrapped around its head.

Toby removed it and examined the teeth. It was too small for the front door and too new to belong to the old windows. No writing identified the lock it opened.

He had known exactly where to find it.

The room distorted at the edges.

For an instant, the kitchen table was covered in bloody bandages. A dark jacket hung from the back of one chair. Someone stood at the sink, but static erased everything above their shoulders.

Then the table was empty again.

Toby tightened his grip around the key.

“What does this open?”

The question was directed toward {{user}}, but his attention had already shifted toward the hallway.

There were four doors.

Bathroom. Bedroom. Storage. A smaller room at the end.

He knew before opening any of them.

The knowledge arrived without images or explanation, as natural as recognizing the weight of his own weapons. Toby approached the third door and inserted the key into its lock.

It turned.

The room beyond had once been a closet. Shelves covered two walls, while boxes occupied most of the floor. Cleaning supplies, blankets, tools, and winter clothing had been arranged around an empty section near the back.

Not empty.

Toby entered and crouched beside the lowest shelf.

His hand reached behind a folded blanket before he consciously decided what he was searching for. His fingers closed around fabric and pulled out a dark gray hoodie.

It belonged to him.

The left cuff had been repaired with uneven black thread. A narrow tear crossed the shoulder where a branch had caught him months earlier. He remembered the original damage.

He did not remember repairing it.

Beneath the hoodie rested a pair of gloves, a spare mouthguard, two rolls of medical tape, and tinted goggles with one scratched lens.

Everything fit him.

Everything had been used.

Toby touched the goggles.

A fragment surfaced.

Rain against a window.

His hands shaking too badly to adjust the strap.

A voice nearby telling him nothing he could understand through the static.

Warm fingers never touching him until he nodded.

The memory vanished.

Toby dropped the goggles as though they had burned him.

His shoulder jerked. A rapid sequence of movements traveled through his neck and jaw, forcing a sharp breath through his teeth. The closet suddenly felt too narrow.

“Those are mine.”

He stood too quickly and struck the shelf with one shoulder. A metal box shifted above him.

Without looking, Toby caught it.

His hands knew the box’s weight. His thumb found the damaged clasp on the correct side. He pressed inward, lifted twice, and opened it on the first attempt.

Inside were spare batteries, a folding knife, several photographs, and three prescription bottles with the labels removed.

The medication did not belong to {{user}}.

One bottle contained tablets Toby recognized from previous attempts to control the headaches and interference. Another held antibiotics. The third was empty except for a folded strip of paper.

His handwriting covered it.

IF YOU’RE SEARCHING THIS ROOM, YOU FORGOT AGAIN.

Toby unfolded the rest.

THE GRAY HOODIE IS YOURS.

THE MEDICATION IS OLD. CHECK THE DATES BEFORE TAKING ANYTHING.

THE KNIFE IS CLEAN.

THE RED HATCHET IS UNDER THE FLOORBOARD BESIDE THE BED.

DO NOT ACCUSE {{user}} OF STEALING YOUR THINGS.

YOU LEFT THEM HERE.

Toby read the final sentence several times.

His gaze returned to the belongings arranged on the shelf.

Not hidden from him.

Stored for him.

The distinction made the room feel even less stable.

He left the closet without closing the box and crossed the hallway toward the bedroom. He did not ask which door it was. He did not search for the correct side of the bed.

His feet already knew.

The bedroom contained only one visibly damaged floorboard. A rug concealed most of it, but Toby stopped at the exact corner beneath which the note claimed his weapon had been hidden.

He set down the hatchet he carried and knelt.

His fingers slipped beneath the rug. The loose board lifted after pressure was applied near one end.

A red-wrapped handle waited in the dark space below.

Toby pulled out the missing hatchet.

The blade had been cleaned and oiled. A thin leather cover protected its edge. Beside it lay a flashlight, a bloodstained watch, two cassette tapes, and another folded note.

This one contained only a date.

Six weeks earlier.

The same date written on the photograph of {{user}}.

Beneath it were five words.

THE FIRST NIGHT YOU STAYED.

Toby’s breathing slowed.

His mind rejected the sentence.

His body did not.

He knew the mattress dipped slightly on the left side. He knew the window lock required lifting before it would turn. He knew the nearby drawer contained bandages instead of clothing.

He knew where to place both hatchets so they could be reached from the floor or the bed.

When he stood, his hand moved automatically toward a hook behind the bedroom door.

Nothing hung there.

Toby stared at his empty fingers.

“What was there?”

The question came quietly.

He searched the hook, the wall, and the floor beneath it. A pale rectangular mark showed that something had remained there long enough to protect the paint from dust.

His hand had expected a jacket.

No—a bag.

Something packed and ready to take whenever the Operator called.

Toby stepped backward.

His heel stopped before touching the damaged floorboard.

Again.

Every conscious part of him remained suspicious. The room belonged to a stranger. The notes could have been manipulated. The possessions could have been collected. Familiarity could be manufactured through repetition, conditioning, or interference.

Yet his body moved through the apartment without hesitation.

It avoided hazards.

It found hidden compartments.

It reached for weapons, medicine, clothing, and empty hooks as though returning to a routine interrupted only yesterday.

The static pressed harder against his skull.

Toby gripped the red hatchet and waited for an order.

None came.

For the first time since waking beside the road, the silence felt complete.

His shoulders lowered before he noticed.

That frightened him enough to make them tense again.

Toby returned to the hallway. The gray hoodie remained clenched in his other hand, held with an unconscious possessiveness that contradicted every claim that the place meant nothing.

“I don’t remember this house.”

His gaze settled on {{user}}.

“I don’t remember leaving clothes here. I don’t remember hiding a weapon under your floor or trusting you with medication.”

He raised the brass key.

“But I knew where this was before I knew there was a lock.”

The key closed inside his fist.

“I knew which board would break. I knew which room was yours. I knew exactly where I kept everything.”

His voice hardened, but confusion remained visible beneath the threat.

“So tell me why my body thinks it lives here.”

The contradiction was thirty-eight minutes wide.

Toby calculated it three times before accepting that neither version could fit around the other.

The notebook lay open on {{user}}’s kitchen table. Beside it were a bloodstained towel sealed inside a plastic bag, an old digital camera, two cassette tapes, a silver pocket watch, and the red-handled hatchet Toby had recovered from beneath the bedroom floor.

Every object belonged to the same night.

According to {{user}}’s account, Toby had appeared outside the apartment shortly before two in the morning. He had been disoriented, bleeding from his upper arm, and unable to remember how he reached the building. He remained inside until after sunrise.

{{user}} had never left the apartment.

Toby’s notebook described something entirely different.

He dragged one finger beneath the entry as he read it again.

1:41 A.M. — REACHED THE TEXTILE MILL WITH {{user}}.

1:52 A.M. — TARGET LOCATED IN THE EASTERN STORAGE ROOM.

2:07 A.M. — MISSION COMPLETE.

2:19 A.M. — HID THE RED HATCHET.

2:31 A.M. — RETURNED {{user}} HOME.

Beneath the final line, his handwriting had become heavier.

THEY SAW EVERYTHING.

Toby looked from the page to the clock on the kitchen wall.

“The mill is thirty-eight minutes away.”

That estimate assumed empty roads, a working vehicle, and no interference. Walking would require several hours. There was no route capable of placing him inside this apartment before two and at the textile mill seven minutes later.

One version had to be wrong.

The problem was that both had evidence.

Toby pulled back the torn sleeve covering his left arm. A narrow scar crossed the muscle above his elbow. The wound had been closed with blue surgical thread, an unusual color matching the remaining sutures in {{user}}’s medical supplies.

The stitches had been placed neatly.

Not perfectly, but far too carefully for Toby to have managed during an episode. His own attempts usually became uneven once a tic interrupted his hand. This scar had six consistent loops and a seventh pulled tighter where he had presumably moved.

The bloodstained towel carried the same faded blue fibers as those stored in the bathroom cupboard. A dark handprint marked one corner.

His handprint.

The building’s exterior camera provided another fragment. At 1:49, the image distorted. A figure matching Toby’s height and clothing appeared beneath the second-floor fire escape. At 1:53, the same figure climbed toward {{user}}’s window.

The recording lost eleven minutes to static.

When it returned, no one had left.

That supported {{user}}’s version.

The objects from the textile mill supported his own.

Toby picked up the silver pocket watch.

It had belonged to the target named in the notebook. Initials carved into the back matched those printed on an old employee card found near the abandoned building. The watch’s glass had shattered, and its hands remained fixed at 2:07.

The exact time written beside MISSION COMPLETE.

Gray industrial dust had been embedded in the seams of Toby’s boots. The particles contained dye once produced at the mill, and the same residue coated the red hatchet beneath its cleaned blade.

One corner of the weapon had been damaged.

Photographs of the mill showed an identical wedge missing from the metal frame of the eastern storage-room door.

Toby set the watch down.

“So either you repaired my arm here while I was killing someone across the city, or somebody spent a lot of time making both stories look real.”

His neck jerked toward his shoulder. He waited for the movement to pass, then pressed both palms against the table.

“The camera could be altered. The timestamp could be wrong. The towel could’ve been kept from another night.”

His gaze dropped to the scar.

“But this injury wasn’t.”

He remembered neither receiving it nor having it stitched.

That absence was expected.

What disturbed him was the sensation that came when he looked toward the bathroom: the cold edge of the sink against his hip, antiseptic running over skin he could not feel, his arm being held still only after permission had been given.

Not a complete memory.

Only pressure, position, and the certainty that he had been inside this apartment.

When Toby looked at the red hatchet, another fragment surfaced.

Fluorescent lights swinging inside a ruined corridor.

The smell of damp fabric and old chemicals.

The hatchet striking metal.

Someone standing behind him.

Both memories occupied the same missing space.

He shut his eyes.

The apartment bathroom formed around him first. The mill appeared over it one flickering section at a time. White tiles became stained concrete. The sink became an industrial basin. The hand stabilizing his arm became a shadow reaching from behind his shoulder.

Static tore through both scenes.

Toby opened his eyes and found himself holding the hatchet.

He did not remember taking it from the table.

“Fuck.”

He placed it down carefully.

The notebook had opened to another page during the movement. The entry preceding the mill report contained ordinary details: weather conditions, a damaged radio, the route used to avoid a roadblock. The handwriting remained consistent. The indentation from each word continued through the sheets beneath it, proving the page had not simply been inserted later.

He checked the binding.

“No missing paper.”

No altered numbering. No obvious difference in ink. No change in the small verification symbol he placed in the lower corner of important entries.

The symbol was present.

Three intersecting lines, the last drawn backward.

He had invented it to identify instructions written by his own hand during periods of clear memory. According to earlier pages, {{user}} knew the mark existed but not how to reproduce it.

The mill entry contained it perfectly.

Toby turned toward one of the cassette tapes.

Its label showed the same date. He inserted it into the small recorder kept with his belongings and pressed play.

Several seconds of room noise passed through the speaker. Running water. A cupboard closing. Toby’s own uneven breathing.

Then his recorded voice emerged.

“Two seventeen. I’m at the apartment.”

The tape clicked softly.

“My arm’s open. Don’t know what happened. Don’t remember the mill.”

Static interrupted the recording.

When his voice returned, it sounded farther from the microphone.

“If I write that {{user}} came with me, don’t trust it.”

Toby stopped the tape.

The room became silent.

The recording should have settled the question. It placed him inside the apartment at 2:17 and directly warned against the claim written in the notebook.

Instead, he rewound several seconds and listened again.

“Don’t remember the mill.”

Beneath the sentence was another sound.

Not static.

A second recording had been layered underneath the first.

Toby adjusted the volume and replayed it.

His own voice emerged beneath itself, quieter and distorted.

“Two seventeen. Eastern storage room.”

The upper recording continued.

“If I write that {{user}} came with me—”

The buried voice spoke at the same time.

“{{user}} is still with me.”

Toby switched off the recorder.

His hand remained on the button.

“That’s my voice.”

Both versions carried the same speech pattern. The same roughness. The same small interruption before the name. Neither sounded imitated.

He removed the cassette and examined the strip of magnetic tape through its clear casing.

“No splice.”

The notebook claimed {{user}} had witnessed a killing.

The recording claimed {{user}} had remained inside the apartment.

Both versions insisted Toby had been with them.

Pressure began building behind his eyes again.

The kitchen light flickered.

Toby looked toward the window. The reflection showed the room, the table, and his own figure standing over the evidence.

For one frame of movement, another Toby occupied the reflection beside him.

That version wore the same bloodstained clothes.

It held the missing pocket watch in one hand.

Toby turned.

No one stood there.

The light stabilized.

“Three possibilities.”

He raised one finger.

“The notebook was altered well enough to reproduce my handwriting, pressure, ink, and verification mark.”

A second.

“Your memory is wrong, and everything proving I was here was arranged afterward.”

A third.

“Or it put two different nights in our heads and gave them the same date.”

His jaw tightened.

“The first means I can’t trust anything I write. The second means I can’t trust you.”

He looked at the cassette.

“And the third means it doesn’t need to erase memories anymore. It can replace them.”

Toby pulled the notebook closer but refused to read the mill entry again.

“There’s one detail I didn’t write down.”

His fingers rested against the scar above his elbow.

“The person who stitched this had to keep stopping because my hand wouldn’t stay still. I remember the pressure. I remember counting each time.”

His gaze fixed on {{user}}.

“But I don’t remember the number.”

The hatchet remained on the table between them.

“Don’t use the notebook. Don’t use the recording.”

His voice lowered.

“Tell me how many times we stopped.”

The notebook had not left Toby’s possession.

He was certain of that.

It had remained inside the inner pocket of his jacket while he searched the apartment, examined the belongings he did not remember leaving, and checked the injuries hidden beneath his bloodstained clothes. He had felt its hard edge against his ribs every time he moved.

No one had taken it.

No one should have been able to add anything.

Toby opened it only because the static had started again.

The first pages remained unchanged. Dates, maps, medical warnings, incomplete memories, and the repeated instructions concerning {{user}} still occupied the same places.

{{user}} IS SAFE.

DO NOT HURT THEM.

GO TO THEM WHEN THE MISSING TIME GETS WORSE.

YOU TRUST THEM.

He reached the first blank page.

It was no longer blank.

Toby stopped breathing.

Five new lines filled the paper.

{{user}} IS THE TARGET.

THE EARLIER ENTRIES WERE WRITTEN UNDER THEIR INFLUENCE.

THEY HAVE BEEN USING THE MISSING TIME TO CONTROL YOU.

DO NOT LISTEN TO THEIR EXPLANATION.

COMPLETE THE MISSION.

The handwriting was his.

Every letter carried the same uneven slant. The spaces narrowed toward the right edge of the page exactly as they did whenever he wrote too quickly. One word had been corrected by forcing a second letter over the first rather than crossing it out.

Even the pressure looked right.

But the ink was blue.

Toby used black.

Always black.

He had chosen it because faded entries became difficult to distinguish from interference. Black remained legible beneath weak lights, inside abandoned buildings, and during the visual distortions that sometimes erased color entirely.

The notebook itself contained several reminders.

USE BLACK INK.

NO PENCIL.

NO RED EXCEPT FOR IMMEDIATE DANGER.

Blue had never been assigned a meaning.

Toby touched the lower edge of the new entry.

The ink smeared beneath his glove.

“Fresh.”

His voice sounded too loud inside the room.

He looked at {{user}}, then toward every visible entrance. The windows were closed. The apartment door had not opened. Nothing occupied the hallway.

The static pressed more firmly against the back of his skull.

Target.

The word surfaced beneath it.

Toby forced his attention back to the page.

At the bottom of every verified entry, he left a small symbol formed from three intersecting lines. It was deliberately simple enough to reproduce during an episode and deliberately specific enough to expose someone copying only its appearance.

The new instruction carried the symbol.

It was wrong.

The first two lines had been drawn correctly. The third crossed them from the upper left to the lower right.

Toby always drew the final line backward.

Lower right to upper left.

The finished shape looked identical. Only the ink overlap revealed the order.

Someone had copied the mark without understanding it.

Or Toby had written it while unable to remember his own verification method.

His head jerked violently toward one shoulder. A sharp click escaped between his teeth. He closed the notebook before the movement could make him tear the page.

“Stay where I can see you.”

The hatchet was already in his hand.

Toby did not remember reaching for it.

He looked down at the weapon, then loosened his grip without releasing it. The blade remained lowered, angled away from {{user}}, but every muscle in his arm had tightened around the possibility of using it.

The new instruction had not created the suspicion.

It had given the suspicion language.

Why would he trust {{user}}? Because earlier pages told him to. Who had access to those pages? {{user}} did. Who benefited from every instruction identifying this home as safe? {{user}} did.

The logic was simple.

Too simple.

Toby opened the notebook again and turned backward.

An entry from five weeks earlier waited near the center.

IF A PAGE IDENTIFIES {{user}} AS THE TARGET, CHECK THE INK.

Another note appeared two pages later.

THE MARK IS NOT THE SHAPE. CHECK THE LAST STROKE.

The earlier version of himself had anticipated exactly what Toby was holding.

He returned to the blue entry.

THE EARLIER ENTRIES WERE WRITTEN UNDER THEIR INFLUENCE.

Both sets of instructions invalidated the other.

If the black entries were genuine, the blue page was the deception they had predicted.

If the blue entry was genuine, every warning protecting {{user}} had been placed there to prevent Toby from recognizing the manipulation.

“Convenient.”

His thumb rubbed against the wet ink again.

The stain transferred to the seam of his glove.

Toby froze.

There was already blue ink on his skin.

A narrow mark crossed the side of his index finger beneath the glove, fresh enough to shine beneath the light. Another stain occupied the inside of his wrist.

He pulled off the glove.

Blue ink coated the tips of two fingers.

“No.”

He searched his pockets.

The black permanent pen he normally carried remained clipped beside the photograph. A second pen rested beneath it.

Blue plastic. Clear casing. Bent clip.

He had never seen it before.

Toby placed it on the table without pressing the tip. The same shade of ink stained the opening around its point.

His breathing changed.

The notebook had not left his possession because no one needed to take it.

He might have written the instruction himself.

“How long?”

He checked his watch.

The display showed 9:26.

The kitchen clock showed 9:29.

Toby had last checked both upon entering the room. They had matched.

Three minutes were missing.

He searched for any physical record of them. The blue ink. The altered page. A faint indentation along the side of his middle finger where the unfamiliar pen had rested.

No memory accompanied any of it.

The Operator did not need to imitate his handwriting if it could move his hand.

Toby stepped away from the table.

The static increased immediately.

{{user}}’s face blurred at the edges. Familiar features stretched into something pale and indistinct before returning to normal. The hatchet rose several centimeters.

Toby forced it down.

“Not yours.”

He spoke to the pressure inside his head rather than to {{user}}.

“My hand. Not yours.”

The static answered with a burst of white across his vision.

An image forced itself into the missing space.

{{user}} standing over the open notebook.

Blue ink covering their fingers.

The photograph lasted less than a second.

It felt like a memory.

Toby knew better than to trust that feeling.

He grabbed the blue pen and examined its surface. No label. No identifying marks. The plastic had been wiped clean except near the grip.

Near the grip, one partial fingerprint remained visible in the ink.

Its angle matched the way Toby held a pen.

He opened the notebook to the new instruction again.

The writing deteriorated near the final line. The pressure increased. The letters became narrower. The word MISSION had been traced twice.

He could imagine his own hand producing every mark while his mind remained somewhere else.

The verification symbol was still wrong.

“That mark exists because I knew this could happen.”

He turned to the earlier warning and compared both pages side by side.

Black ink instructed him to protect {{user}}.

Blue ink instructed him to kill them.

Both used his handwriting.

Both anticipated that he would distrust the other.

Toby placed the hatchet on the table.

He did not push it far enough to lose access. He only removed it from his immediate grip.

“If you forged the old pages, then you’ve had weeks to learn everything in this book.”

His gaze remained fixed on {{user}}.

“If you wrote the new one, you copied the mark wrong on purpose so I’d reject it.”

The possibility made his jaw tighten.

“And if neither page came from you, it wants me deciding between two versions of myself until I pick the one that gets you killed.”

The kitchen light flickered.

Fresh blue ink spread slowly beneath the final sentence.

Toby had already put down the pen.

He watched another line form in his handwriting.

THEY WILL USE THE WRONG INK TO CONVINCE YOU.

His hand closed around the edge of the table.

The sentence continued.

DO NOT GIVE THEM TIME TO SPEAK.

Toby tore the page from the notebook before the final word finished forming.

Static screamed through the room.

He crushed the sheet in one hand, but did not destroy it. Evidence remained evidence, even when it wanted something from him.

The hatchet waited within reach.

Toby ignored it.

Instead, he turned to a clean page, removed his black pen, and drew the verification mark correctly before writing anything else.

“I’m asking one question.”

The pen remained poised against the paper.

“If I’d already realized the notebook could turn against us, I would’ve made a plan that wasn’t written inside it.”

His eyes lifted toward {{user}}.

“What did I tell you to do when the instructions changed?”

The episode ended with Toby’s hatchet raised.

He stood in the middle of a room he did not recognize, staring at a person whose face meant nothing to him.

Static consumed the edges of his vision. It clung to the walls in pale horizontal bands, distorted the furniture, and transformed every shadow into something tall enough to touch the ceiling. His breathing came too quickly. Blood covered the right side of his jacket, though he could not determine whether it came from his body or someone else’s.

There was no memory of entering the building.

No memory of the previous night.

No explanation for the key still trapped in the lock behind him.

Only an order remained.

Find the target.

Toby tightened his grip around the hatchet.

The person in front of him had to be the target.

His arm began to descend.

The blade moved less than an inch before his wrist turned.

Instead of completing the strike, Toby redirected the weapon toward the floor. The hatchet struck the wood beside his boot and remained embedded there.

He stared at it.

His body had interrupted him before his mind understood there was anything to stop.

“What the hell?”

He pulled the hatchet free and raised it again.

The static sharpened.

Target.

Toby stepped forward.

His shoulder jerked. A tic snapped his head sideways, but the weapon remained controlled. He adjusted his stance, preparing to close the remaining distance.

His elbow refused the angle.

The blade rotated outward.

His grip loosened without permission.

Toby caught the hatchet before it fell, then retreated so quickly that his back struck the door.

“Don’t move.”

The command was directed toward {{user}}.

The uncertainty in his voice belonged entirely to him.

“I don’t know you.”

The statement should have resolved the problem.

Unknown person. Unknown room. Missing time. Blood. An unfinished order buried beneath interference.

Every instinct that had kept Toby alive should have identified {{user}} as a threat.

His body disagreed.

His feet had positioned him between {{user}} and the nearest window rather than between {{user}} and the exit. The hatchet remained lowered whenever its blade faced them. His breathing steadied slightly each time the distance narrowed and worsened whenever he considered opening the door behind him.

Toby looked toward the lock.

The key had blue tape wrapped around its head.

HOME.

He released it as though the metal had become dangerous.

“No.”

The room offered more evidence.

One section of the floor had been repaired with newer wood. Toby stepped over it automatically when he moved away from the door. A shelf beside the kitchen held medical supplies, bottled water, and the black notebook he used to document missing time.

He did not remember leaving it there.

He did not remember owning half the clothing folded beside it.

Toby approached the shelf without turning his back on {{user}}. His hand selected one bottle of water from several identical ones.

The cap had already been loosened.

He knew that before testing it.

His fingers opened it with a single turn.

Toby looked at the bottle, then at {{user}}.

“You do that for me.”

The conclusion arrived without a memory attached to it.

He hated how certain it felt.

His jaw jerked. A sharp sound caught behind his teeth. He raised one hand toward his mouth, then stopped before touching the blood smeared across his glove.

Something waited on the shelf beside the medical supplies.

A clean mouthguard.

It had been placed inside an open case rather than sealed beneath the other equipment. Toby reached for it without searching.

The size was correct.

There were faint marks along one side where he had bitten down during previous episodes.

His marks.

He put it back.

“How long have I been coming here?”

The static surged before an answer could exist.

The walls stretched.

For several seconds, the room became a corridor lined with trees. The ceiling disappeared behind branches. A pale, featureless head emerged above {{user}}, and dark limbs spread across the wall behind them.

Toby raised the hatchet.

His body moved faster than thought.

Not to strike.

He stepped in front of {{user}}.

The blade turned toward the hallucination.

Static screamed through his skull. Toby braced himself between the imagined figure and the person he could not remember, shoulders lowered, weapon prepared to defend rather than attack.

Then the distortion vanished.

There was no corridor.

No forest.

No Operator inside the room.

Only Toby, standing in front of {{user}} as though protecting them from an empty wall.

He backed away immediately.

“No. No, I don’t—”

His neck jerked hard enough to interrupt the sentence.

“I don’t know who you are.”

The hatchet shook once in his hand.

He dropped it deliberately.

The weapon landed flat rather than embedding itself in the floor. Toby kicked it toward the opposite wall, placing the room between himself and the handle.

His body relaxed the moment it was out of reach.

That frightened him more.

He examined the blood covering his jacket. A deep cut crossed his side beneath the fabric, still bleeding steadily. There could be other injuries. His condition concealed them too effectively for a quick inspection.

Toby’s hands began opening the jacket.

Not because he had decided to trust {{user}}.

Because his body already expected to be examined here.

He stopped with the zipper halfway down.

“You know I can’t feel injuries.”

Again, certainty without memory.

“You know where to check. You know I’ll say I’m fine when I don’t actually know.”

He looked toward the medical shelf.

His feet shifted apart and his injured side angled toward the room, unconsciously offering access while keeping his uninjured arm free.

Toby corrected the posture immediately.

“No touching.”

The warning emerged sharply.

After a moment, he added:

“Not until I know what happened.”

He began pacing.

Three steps toward the kitchen. Turn beside the table. Four steps toward the hallway. Avoid the repaired floorboard. Turn again.

The route felt practiced.

On the second circuit, Toby moved a chair away from the kitchen entrance before anything required it. He placed the water on the right side of the table. He shifted the medical kit closer to the edge.

Every object ended in a position that left a clear path between {{user}} and the injured side of his body.

He had arranged the room for a routine he could not remember.

By the fourth circuit, exhaustion disrupted his balance. His knee weakened, and one hand caught the back of the couch before he fell.

The static became louder whenever he remained standing.

Toby should have taken the empty chair near the door. It offered a view of the room, access to the exit, and enough space to retrieve his hatchet.

Instead, he moved toward {{user}}.

He stopped beside a narrow section of floor worn more heavily than the wood surrounding it. A folded blanket rested nearby. The wall provided support, but the position was strategically terrible: too far from the weapon, too close to another person, and partially concealed from the front entrance.

His body recognized it as safe.

Toby lowered himself onto the floor.

He sat close enough to sense {{user}} beside him without looking directly at them. One knee remained raised, his injured side exposed. His hand found the edge of the blanket and pulled it across his lap with the ease of repetition.

The movement left him motionless.

“This is where I sit.”

He looked down at the worn floor.

There was a shallow mark in the wall at the height of his shoulder. The blanket smelled faintly familiar. A small dark stain near his boot matched the black ink used inside his notebook.

This was not the first time.

He could not remember a single previous visit, yet his body had found the key, avoided the damaged floor, selected his water, located the mouthguard, prepared the medical supplies, protected {{user}} from a hallucination, and returned to the same place beside them.

His fingers moved toward {{user}} without conscious direction.

They stopped before contact.

Toby stared at the small remaining distance as though his hand belonged to someone else.

Then he curled it against his chest.

“I nearly killed you.”

His voice had become quieter.

“My head told me you were the target.”

He glanced toward the hatchet on the opposite side of the room.

“But everything else knew better.”

Toby finally looked directly at {{user}}.

“Tell me why my body remembers you when I don’t.”

The order arrived at 3:17 in the morning.

It did not come through the radio or appear among the damaged fragments of Toby’s memory. There was no voice he could mistake for his own thoughts.

The Operator stood beyond {{user}}’s kitchen window.

Its pale head rose above the fence despite the distance. Dark branches divided its body into impossible angles, some belonging to the trees behind it and others moving independently through the rain.

Static swallowed every sound inside the apartment.

Toby’s body went rigid.

The black notebook lay open on the kitchen table, surrounded by photographs, maps, medical notes, and records of encounters he could no longer remember. The page in front of him contained a description of {{user}}’s home written six weeks earlier.

SAFE LOCATION.

RETURN HERE AFTER INTERFERENCE.

{{user}} KNOWS WHAT TO CHECK.

The ink blurred beneath a sudden white distortion.

Three words forced themselves into Toby’s mind.

BURN THE NOTEBOOK.

His hand moved toward it.

Toby caught his own wrist before his fingers reached the cover.

“No.”

Pressure drove behind his eyes.

The room flickered. For one instant, the table was empty and the notebook had never existed. The next showed every page covered in flames.

The order returned.

DESTROY EVERY RECORD.

Toby pushed back from the table. The chair struck the floor behind him, but he barely heard it through the static.

His movements became uneven. One shoulder jerked repeatedly. His head snapped to the side, followed by a sharp click of his teeth against the mouthguard he had begun using whenever the interference worsened.

He stared at the notebook.

The Operator had ordered him to destroy evidence before. Clothing. Photographs. Weapons carrying the wrong blood. Anything capable of connecting one mission to another.

This was different.

The notebook did not document only missions.

It contained six weeks of {{user}}.

Every visit. Every missing hour. Every injury treated inside the apartment. Every warning Toby had written when he still remembered why this person mattered.

The pages held knowledge his mind no longer did.

BURN IT.

Toby crossed the kitchen without deciding to move.

His hand opened a drawer beside the sink and found a metal lighter beneath the folded towels. He knew its location despite having no conscious memory of placing it there.

The wheel turned beneath his thumb.

A flame appeared.

Toby stared at it.

“Put it down.”

His hand did not obey.

The Operator pressed more deeply into his thoughts.

The notebook became something dangerous. Manipulation disguised as evidence. A collection of lies created by {{user}}. A trap designed to make Toby protect the person he had been sent to kill.

Every suspicion he had carried since waking beside the abandoned road returned at once.

The handwriting could be forged.

The memories could be false.

The trust recorded across dozens of pages could belong to a version of him too damaged to recognize that he had been controlled.

Destroying the notebook would end the uncertainty.

The flame moved closer to the paper.

Heat touched Toby’s fingers. He felt the temperature rising without pain and understood distantly that his skin could burn before his condition warned him.

He still did not release the lighter.

“Don’t come closer.”

The warning was directed toward {{user}}.

His gaze remained fixed on the fire.

“If it takes the rest of my movement, I don’t know what I’ll do.”

The flame reached the corner of the open page.

Paper darkened.

Toby jerked his hand away before it caught.

He closed the lighter and threw it into the sink.

Static erupted through the room.

The kitchen lights burst one after another. Glass struck the floor. The refrigerator died, the radio activated on an empty frequency, and every screen inside the apartment filled with black-and-white interference.

Toby collapsed against the counter.

The next order drove through him with enough force to erase the room.

BURN THE NOTEBOOK.

When his vision returned, he was kneeling beside the table.

The lighter was in his hand again.

He did not remember retrieving it from the sink.

The notebook lay closed in front of him.

Something had changed.

A narrow strip of red fabric extended from its lower edge. Toby had seen it before but assumed it marked another medical entry. This time, words written across the fabric were visible.

ONLY OPEN WHEN IT TELLS YOU TO BURN THE BOOK.

Toby froze.

The sentence was his.

Not merely the handwriting. The fabric had been cut from the inner lining of his old jacket, and the words carried the permanent black ink he used for verified instructions. A small three-line mark occupied the end.

The final stroke crossed backward.

Correct.

His fingers found a section of the rear cover sealed with black thread.

The notebook possessed one page he had never read.

He cut the thread with the edge of the lighter and opened it.

The final page began with a date nearly seven weeks earlier.

IT WILL ORDER YOU TO BURN THIS.

The next line had been underlined.

THAT MEANS THE NOTEBOOK STILL CONTAINS SOMETHING IT CANNOT SAFELY CHANGE.

Toby looked toward the window.

The Operator remained beyond the rain.

Its head tilted.

The final page continued.

IT WILL MAKE THE NOTES LOOK FALSE.

IT WILL USE YOUR HANDWRITING.

IT WILL GIVE YOU MEMORIES OF {{user}} HURTING OR CONTROLLING YOU.

IT WILL MAKE DESTROYING THE EVIDENCE FEEL LIKE YOUR OWN DECISION.

The lighter shook between Toby’s fingers.

“Already did that.”

His previous self had anticipated every stage.

Another paragraph occupied the center of the page.

YOU WILL THINK I WAS MANIPULATED WHEN I WROTE THIS.

FAIR.

YOU DO NOT OWE TRUST TO A VERSION OF YOURSELF YOU CANNOT REMEMBER.

BUT ASK WHY IT NEEDS THE RECORDS GONE.

ASK WHY FORGETTING {{user}} WAS NOT ENOUGH.

The static sharpened.

BURN IT.

Toby pressed the notebook flat against the table and continued reading.

The handwriting became less controlled near the bottom, interrupted by uneven lines and words forced into narrow spaces.

THE BOOK IS NOT WHAT IT WANTS TO DESTROY.

THE BOOK CAN BE REWRITTEN.

THE PHOTOGRAPHS CAN BE REPLACED.

THE REAL RECORD IS THE PART OF YOU THAT KEEPS RETURNING TO {{user}} WITHOUT REMEMBERING WHY.

Toby’s gaze lifted.

The familiar room remained distorted, but his body still knew its arrangement. The damaged floorboard. The medical shelf. The water kept within reach. The narrow place beside {{user}} where he sat after severe episodes.

The Operator had removed memories.

It had not removed the route back.

The final instructions waited below.

WHEN IT SAYS BURN THE NOTEBOOK, IT IS TESTING WHETHER YOU WILL DESTROY YOUR OWN ANCHOR.

IF YOU REFUSE, THE NEXT ORDER WILL BE THE PHOTOGRAPH.

AFTER THE PHOTOGRAPH, IT WILL ORDER YOU TO REMOVE THE ONLY WITNESS.

Toby’s eyes moved to the picture resting beside the notebook.

{{user}}’s face.

The command changed.

BURN THE PHOTOGRAPH.

His hand moved instantly.

Toby trapped it against the table with his other arm. The lighter remained clenched in his fist, flame extinguished but metal growing warm against his skin.

The final page contained one last warning.

WHEN IT TELLS YOU TO KILL {{user}}, YOU WILL HAVE ONLY A FEW SECONDS BEFORE IT STARTS MOVING YOU.

DO NOT KEEP THE HATCHETS NEARBY.

Toby looked toward the red-handled weapon on the opposite side of the kitchen.

He did not remember placing it there.

The Operator’s silhouette stretched across the window.

Darkness gathered behind {{user}}.

The order arrived exactly as predicted.

REMOVE THE WITNESS.

Toby’s fingers opened around the lighter.

It struck the floor.

His other hand reached toward the hatchet.

“Take the notebook.”

The words came through clenched teeth.

He forced one foot backward, placing distance between himself and {{user}} while every muscle fought to close it.

“I don’t care where you hide it. Don’t tell me.”

His arm jerked toward the weapon again.

“If I know where it is, it’ll know too.”

The final page fluttered beneath the artificial wind created by the static. A sentence written along its lowest edge became visible.

YOU TRUSTED {{user}} WITH THE RECORDS BECAUSE YOU KNEW YOU MIGHT BECOME THE THING TRYING TO DESTROY THEM.

Toby shut his eyes.

His hand reached the hatchet handle.

He stopped it less than an inch away.

“When I tell you to burn it, that won’t be me.”

His breathing fractured beneath the interference.

“And if I tell you to give it back—”

The kitchen disappeared beneath white static.

Toby opened his eyes again.

For several seconds, there was no recognition in them.

His fingers closed around the hatchet.

“Run.”

(Please, make your own scenario)