"It didn't offer escape. It offered silence. And it almost sounded like mercy."
It started with the wind.
Not real wind—the field kind, soft and rhythmic, carrying warmth but no direction. It came from everywhere and nowhere. Gentle. Constant. Too perfect to be natural.
Orin noticed it before the sky changed.
The air had grown too still earlier that morning, as if the atmosphere were waiting for a command. The sun hadn't moved in what felt like an hour. Shadows curved in ways they shouldn't. Even the sounds of the city—already dulled by recursion drag—had softened to a near hush.
As he walked beside Junie, he felt a growing tightness in his chest. Not fear.
Something worse.
Longing.
He didn't know where it came from.
He only knew it wasn't his.
[01 – Sketches and Stillness]
Junie paused mid-step, her brows furrowing. She'd been scanning her sketchpad for hours, flipping through page after page, waiting for the sketches to draw themselves again. They hadn't—not since the bell tower. Not since she'd remembered her other name.
But then, without her moving the pencil, a new image bloomed across the page.
A field. Wheat-coloured. Wide. A small cabin in the centre. Two chairs. No city skyline. No roads. Just clouds too perfectly placed above.
Junie stared at it, her lips parting.
"I didn't draw this," she whispered.
Orin peered over her shoulder, heart slowing.
"I've seen it," he said quietly. "In a dream I couldn't remember until just now."
Junie looked up.
And ahead of them—just past the edge of the cracked road that bordered the old city—stood a field of gold.
[02 – Entering the Memory Trap]
It wasn't there a moment ago.
Now it stretched endlessly before them, swaying under the breeze that had no scent, no weight.
The edges shimmered faintly, like heat rising off a mirage. The boundary between this field and the surrounding decay of Bray Hollow was too clean, too deliberate. The transition from concrete ruin to pastoral bliss was surgical.
A manufactured dream.
Junie took a step back.
"This isn't a loop."
"No," Orin said. "It's worse."
She swallowed. "This is a memory graft. A future fabricated and pressed into the present to lure us."
"To reset us."
They stood in silence for several moments.
Then the breeze shifted.
And the cabin door, far across the field, creaked open.
Smoke curled gently from its chimney.
Someone was home.
And they were waiting.
[03 – The Peace Scenario]
They stepped inside.
The field was soft beneath their boots—too soft. It gave beneath their weight, not like dirt or grass but like a living fabric. It felt as though the land was adjusting to their presence.
Every so often, Orin would catch the scent of something nostalgic—fresh bread, his grandmother's perfume, the chemical warmth of the store's floor cleaner—overlapping in waves that came and went too precisely.
When they reached the porch, the door opened fully.
And standing inside the frame was Orin.
Older. Peaceful.
His posture was relaxed. His face slightly lined. But his eyes were clear. Sane. Safe.
Behind him, a woman stepped into the light.
Junie. Smiling. Her hands free of charcoal. Her sketchpad gone.
Orin couldn't breathe.
"They're us," Junie said.
"No," Orin whispered.
"They're who we'd be if we gave up."
They were invited inside without words.
The cabin was warm. Firelit. The furniture was worn, but lovingly used. There was soup on the stove. A bed tucked into the back corner. Books lined one wall. Pictures of people Orin didn't know—but instinctively wanted to.
On a small end table sat a broken wristwatch, forever frozen at 6:17.
Junie brushed her fingers over it.
"The same time from the bell tower," she whispered.
The older Junie—Version J—sat at the table and smiled. She spoke gently.
"You don't have to keep running."
Her voice was soothing. Too soothing. Like a sedative injected through sound.
Orin turned to Version O, who stood beside the hearth.
"We have peace here," he said. "It's quiet. It's clean. No System. No war. No rewriting."
"No memory," Orin said bitterly.
Version O tilted his head. "Only the ones that matter."
[04 – The Pull]
Something changed in Orin.
He felt it.
A slowness in his limbs. A drowsiness in his mind.
Like someone was draping soft blankets over his memories.
He looked down at his hands.
The Diver mark was fading.
Dimming.
Version O stepped closer. "You've fought long enough."
"You're not me," Orin whispered.
"I was. Before the remembering. Before the Chair. Before the pain."
Junie gripped Orin's arm.
Her voice was low and shaking.
"They're trying to overwrite us with ourselves."
Version J stood.
"We are you. Just… happier."
Junie turned sharply. "You're not real."
"But we could be," she answered. "Isn't that what matters?"
Orin hesitated.
And the Diver mark flickered.
[05 – The Fracture Trigger]
Junie didn't argue.
She didn't beg.
She simply pulled a sketch from her pad—one she'd drawn of Orin in the Chair, screaming.
She held it up to his face.
"You told me," she said softly, "never let you believe the dream if you didn't earn it."
Orin's throat tightened.
Junie dropped the page into the fire.
The drawing ignited.
And at the same moment—
The world cracked.
The cabin glitched.
Wheat turned grey.
Smoke reversed.
The table split.
And Version O and Version J twisted—
Not in violence.
In correction.
Their smiles widened. Faces flickered.
Their mouths opened wide—
And static poured out.
[06 – Collapse of the False Peace]
The cabin shook.
A voice filled the sky.
FIELD: PEACE_SCENARIO_019C
STATUS: DIVER RESISTANCE DETECTED
CONDITION: UNSUSTAINABLE
ESCALATE TO FRACTURE SCENARIO
Orin fell to one knee.
The floor under him no longer felt like wood.
It was recursion code.
He grabbed Junie's hand as the cabin folded in.
They tumbled through light, through heat, through memory.
And then—darkness.
[07 – Aftermath]
They woke in a back alley.
Again.
Same city.
Same angle of the sun.
Same fading billboard three blocks away.
But different.
Because now… they remembered the choice.
Junie stared down at her sketchpad.
Blank.
Burned at the edges.
Orin flexed his fingers.
The Diver mark had returned.
Stronger now.
It pulsed in sync with his heartbeat.
And from somewhere behind the veil of silence in the city, a voice returned.
"You passed the first test."
"Now let's see if you can survive the next."
The System offered a perfect peace—but it was a lie meant to overwrite.
Orin and Junie resisted.
Now Diver Zero will escalate.
No more dreams.
Only confrontation.
© 2025 Ofelia B Webb. All rights reserved.
This is an original work published on WebNovel.