POV: Leloma
Location: Shared Quarters, Caleront – back desk module
Time: Cycle Day 14.32
Tags: archive trace, memory distortion, altered rooftop, suspicion folds inward, mesh relay
She waited until the quarters confirmed single occupancy.
Mesh logs showed CirrusV outside grid range—still drifting, or deliberately out of pattern.
The room held its quiet. Not passive. Not hostile. Just the kind that knows better than to ask.
Leloma pulled the low chair from the desk alcove and sat without sound.
The glyph blinked once—high corner, almost imperceptible.
Not new. Not active. But not gone.
She swept two fingers across the back frame, entered a buried key, then a second.
The archive requested dual authentication. She gave both.
The file loaded.
5710.ACX-NORA
A name she hadn’t chosen.
The playback stuttered once—buffered too long—then resolved.
Rooftop ledge.
Angle correct.
Frame width matched memory.But the sky was too clear.
Domes fully filtered.
No haze at all.
She watched herself appear first—seated, hands around a cup.
The cup might be real. Or interpolated.
Then CirrusV.
But something was wrong.
He didn’t sit. Didn’t lean the way she remembered.
His posture too square. Too closed.
The body of someone giving space—not sharing it.
“Some things are easier when we don’t speak.”
Her breath caught.
The words were almost right.
But they were his, not theirs.
And that rooftop had not been one-sided.
She paused the frame.
The timestamp flickered—mildly out of sync.
Archive event created 5710.42
Modification trace: 5712.05
Render operator: Redacted
She checked the deeper mesh call-log.
Internal replay flag
Operator: not her
View instance: confirmed
Trace routed through local relay
Emotional dwell markers: partial
Eye-focus: 6.2 sec
No deletion logged
The file closed itself before she could interfere.
Overwrite key: expired.
Audit trail: inaccessible.
It had protected itself.
But the mesh had already logged the access.
Her ID.
Timing.
Signal echo.
She stood.
No drama. No hurry.
Just the slight shift of someone re-entering a room that no longer holds its shape.
She looked toward the still-sealed window.
Then back to the silent desk.
“What did they do to us?”
No answer.
But the relay buffer held the question longer than it should have.
And somewhere in that delay, she felt seen.