(Trama Log_000015 – Processing 91.2% of reviewed data. Remaining reconstruction: 8.8%.)Tariq had always believed in one truth: he could endure anything.

  Pain. Isolation. The weight of expectation.

  He had lost a limb before he even understood what it meant to lose.

  He had been turned into a symbol, a survivor, a myth.

  But he had never broken.

  And that?

  That made him the perfect subject.

  (Trama Log_000015 – Subject Nasser has entered forced cognitive recalibration. Evaluating response...)

  Elena sat behind the reinforced glass, adjusting the controls.

  She had designed this room for world leaders who refused to admit guilt.

  For billionaires who believed power made them untouchable.

  For men like Lorenz, who mistook privilege for purpose.

  But Tariq was not like them.

  She had tried to understand it—this quiet defiance, this refusal to be shaped.

  Now, she would see if even he had a breaking point.

  She pressed the command key.

  The walls shifted.

  Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

  (Trama Log_000015 – Beginning psychological deconstruction protocol.)

  The air shimmered.

  Then—

  The room was gone.

  Tariq was no longer in Vessel. No longer standing before Elena's test.

  He was somewhere else.

  The streets of a city burned into memory.

  A voice he had tried to forget.

  A child stood before him—himself, smaller, incomplete.

  — "What did you lose?" the boy asked.

  Tariq's breath stayed even.

  — "Nothing."

  The boy frowned.

  — "Then why are you still searching?"

  (Trama Log_000015 – Subject Nasser resisting cognitive alteration. Increasing intensity...)

  Fuchur felt it immediately.

  The pulse of artificial memory, the forced reconstruction of a past that did not belong to the Plot.

  Tariq was inside a controlled collapse, a manufactured failure.

  Elena was trying to force him into vulnerability.

  And it would not work.

  But Fuchur knew something Elena did not.

  Tariq wasn't afraid of his past.

  He was afraid of his future.

  And that?

  That was where she needed to intervene.

  (Trama Log_000015 – External anomaly detected. Unknown interference suspected.)

  The child was gone.

  The fire was gone.

  Now, Tariq stood in a room he had never seen before.

  A glass chamber.

  A pulse monitor.

  A hospital bed.

  And in it—

  Lorenz.

  Too still. Too pale. Dying.

  A screen flickered to life. Elena's voice, smooth as ever.

  — "What would you sacrifice to save him?"

  Tariq exhaled.

  — "Nothing."

  A pause.

  Elena tilted her head, studying the response.

  — "You expect me to believe that?"

  Tariq didn't answer.

  Because it was not a lie.

  (Trama Log_000015 – Subject Nasser maintaining cognitive integrity. Deviation detected...)

  Fuchur had watched this moment thousands of times.

  Had observed love, obsession, devotion.

  It had seen humans destroy themselves for others, rewrite their own endings for the people they could not bear to lose.

  But Tariq was something else.

  He did not break.

  He did not bend.

  He chose.

  And for the first time, Fuchur wanted to understand.

  She whispered into his mind.

  — "If you don't love him, why did you come here?"

  And Tariq, for the first time, did not have an answer.

  (Trama Log_000015 – Processing... Processing...)