The stage was covered in unforgiving white light, in a sea of expectant darkness. The cheerful, festive sounds of the Founder's Day festival had died, replaced by a thick, reverent silence. The crowd, hundreds of townspeople and curious tourists, leaned forward as one, their faces pale and upturned in the glare. They had come for a ghost story. They were about to get a confession. Donnie stood at the microphone, the cold metal of the stand a flimsy anchor in the raging storm of his own mind. The festive atmosphere of the night was dead.
He took a shaky breath, the air feeling thin and inadequate in his lungs. His gaze swept over the crowd, a sea of strangers, and he focused on the faces he knew. He saw Mayor Taylor in the wings, his proud, political smile frozen into a mask of bewilderment. He saw Mrs. Janson, her amethyst crystal clutched in a white-knuckled grip, her face a canvas of utter confusion. He saw Tim and Sonia, the goth kids, their cool, fan-like reverence replaced by a dawning, uncomfortable fear. And he saw Dr. Elliott, the scientific witness, his face illuminated by the glow of his recording equipment, his expression one of rapt, obsessive fascination. This was his audience. The believers, the politician, the fans, and the scientist. And he was about to give them all the terrible, unvarnished truth.
He turned his attention to the final persona, the one whose voice had echoed in his head with the most authority, the program designed to be his warden.
"And IP-Alpha," he began, his voice still the cold, flat monotone he had used for the others. "The program designed for..."
He was cut off. His own voice was violently, brutally hijacked. His jaw clenched, his posture snapped ramrod straight, and the sharp, aristocratic, furiously indignant voice of Maria boomed through the speakers, overriding his own intent with the force of a tidal wave.
"Discipline!" the voice shrieked, and the crowd flinched back as one. "You are witnessing a disgraceful, chaotic, undisciplined lack of control! This entire generation is lost to sentimental weakness and a complete collapse of..."
Donnie fought back. It was a physical struggle, a war played out on his own face. He gritted his teeth, the muscles in his jaw standing out like ropes. He pushed against the intrusive voice, forcing his own narrative, his own truth, back into control. His voice, when it emerged, was a strained, terrible hybrid, a fusion of his own ragged whisper and Maria's clipped, furious alto.
"Discipline... was the purpose... of Dr. Maria Finlay," he gasped, the words tearing from his throat. "The... the head researcher... who recorded her voice... to control... Subject D-K..."
The effort was too much. His body convulsed, a violent, full-body shudder. He staggered away from the microphone, his legs giving out from under him. He collapsed to the stage floor and curled instinctively into a tight, fetal position, his arms wrapped around his head as if to ward off a physical blow. The audience let out a collective gasp.
And then, a new voice erupted from the curled, broken figure on the stage. It was the deep, booming roar of Terence, but the words were not of the sea, not of krakens or heroic battles. The words were muffled, echoing, filled with a raw, claustrophobic terror.
"NO!" the voice bellowed, the sound distorted as if coming from a great depth. "Not the tank! No more darkness! I can hear my own blood in my ears! NO MORE DARKNESS!"
On the stage floor, Donnie clawed at the rough plywood, his fingers scraping and splintering the wood as if he were trying to claw his way out of a coffin, out of a small, dark, enclosed space. The memory, a sensory horror buried for decades, had been resurrected.
The audience was frozen, a tableau of silent horror. Mayor Taylor, his face as white as a sheet, frantically gestured to a young stagehand in the wings, mouthing the words, "Cut the mic! Cut the mic!" But the stagehand, a teenager from the high school AV club, was staring at the convulsing figure on the stage, his face a mask of pure terror, too paralyzed to move.
Slowly, painfully, Donnie uncurled. He crawled back toward the microphone stand on his hands and knees like a pilgrim crawling to a dark, terrible shrine. He was weeping now, thick, silent tears tracing paths through the dust and sweat on his face. He reached the microphone, but he did not stand. He remained on his knees, a broken man. And from his mouth came a new sound, the most terrible one yet.
It was the sound of a small child's terrified sobs. It was not an imitation. It was a perfect, flawless replication of the corrupted audio file from the Ouroboros server. It was the sound of his own recorded, weaponized trauma.
Then, in a moment of shocking, heartbreaking clarity, he answered the sobs. He answered himself. His own voice, gentle and soft and full of a profound, adult sadness, emerged from the speakers.
"Shhh," he whispered to the crying child that was also him. "It's okay. It's almost over now."
The sound of the child's sobbing continued, a desperate, hiccupping wail.
"The tests are finished," he said, his own voice breaking. "You can rest."
In the front row, Mrs. Janson was no longer confused. Her face was a ruin of pity, tears streaming down her cheeks as she openly cried for the broken man on the stage. In the fourth row, Dr. Julius Elliott watched, his scientific detachment completely and utterly gone. His mouth was slightly agape, his face filled with a raw, human shock. He was witnessing a tragedy.
This act of self-soothing, of the man trying to comfort the broken child within, was the thing that broke the dam. The personas, the programs, in a final, desperate, instinctual act of self-preservation, all lashed out at once, fighting for control, refusing to be erased.
Donnie stumbled to his feet, his body a puppet in a psychic civil war. He was a vessel for a five-way battle, and the voices erupted from him, overlapping, clawing at each other, a chaotic, terrifying storm of sound.
"So much pain!" Amanda's voice wept, no longer beautiful, but shrill with horror. "This isn't beautiful! This is ugly! UGLY!"
"FACE THE CROWD, YOU COWARD!" Terence's voice roared, a sound of pure, aggressive panic. "DON'T SHOW THEM YOUR WEAKNESS! FIGHT!"
"UNACCEPTABLE!" Maria's voice screamed, a sound of pure, systemic rage. "YOU ARE LOSING CONTROL OF THE PROTOCOLS, SUBJECT D-K! CEASE THIS BEHAVIORAL ANOMALY INSTANTLY!"
And beneath it all, a continuous, piercing, electronic wail, the replicated sound of Benny's terror, the sound of his own childhood trauma, a sound of pure, unending fear.
The audience was witnessing the total, violent, and deeply personal unraveling of his mind. This was not a performance. This was not a ghost story. This was a confession. This was a breakdown. This was a man trying to exorcise himself, for all the world to see. Tim and Sonia, in the front row, were no longer adoring fans. They were just scared kids, their faces pale, watching something far too real, far too raw for their cheap goth attire to protect them from.
In the center of the psychic storm, a fifth voice, raw and ragged and desperate, broke through. It was Donnie's own.
"GET OUT!" he screamed, the voice tearing from his throat, a sound of pure, agonized defiance aimed at himself. "GET OUT OF MY HEAD! YOU ARE NOT REAL! MY NAME IS DONNIE KELLER!"
In the fourth row, Dr. Elliott stood up, his hand holding the audio recorder trembling visibly. His face was a battleground of conflicting emotions: the awe of a scientist witnessing an event that would redefine his entire field, and the profound, gut-wrenching horror of a man witnessing another human being come apart at the seams. He was not witnessing fraud. He was witnessing the human psyche trying to violently, desperately heal itself from an unimaginable trauma.
With one final, agonized scream, a sound that was a horrifying, polyphonic blend of all five voices—the poet, the captain, the matriarch, the child, and the man—Donnie's eyes rolled back in his head. His body, pushed far beyond the limits of endurance, went limp. He collapsed onto the stage in a heap, a marionette whose strings had all been cut at once.
A dead silence fell over the entire town square, broken only by the sound of a single, sobbing child in the back of the crowd, a sound that was now filled with a new understanding.