The room went dark, save for the cold glow of the screens. On the main monitor, the Probe's visual noise began to organize itself, static lines weaving together until they coalesced into images. Fragments of the survivor's memory surfaced—unstable, pulsing like a heart in panic.
The first sensations weren't images, but feelings. Vertigo. The violent nausea when the street was pulled out of reality. Then, the revelation.
The afternoon sun vanished, replaced by a perpetual twilight beneath a purple sky, cracked like glass under strain. July 9th Street was there—the buildings, the cars, the familiar facades—but everything was wrong. Colors were denser, shadows deeper, alive. The world seemed to breathe, irregular and strained.
And they were not alone.
The man's memory collapsed into a fever dream, a cascade of adrenaline and pure terror. Figures that had once been harmless Echoes—translucent shadows, curious glitches—had gained weight and flesh. Physical monsters. Impossible. Through the survivor's eyes, Barros watched a horde pour out of alleys and burst through shattered windows: creatures with razor claws, angular limbs, jaws that opened wider than anatomy allowed.
He heard the sounds. The crack of breaking bones. The short, abrupt screams of friends and neighbors being hunted. He saw an abomination of chitin and teeth tear a car door open like paper, dragging a family out as the purple sky seemed to lean closer, watching.
"My God…" whispered the technician beside Barros, his voice a fragile echo in the room.
It wasn't a chaotic outbreak of violence. The realization that settled in was far worse.
It was a hunt.
The creatures moved with tactical intelligence. They flanked groups, isolated the slowest, herded their prey into dead ends. There was coordination. Method. The massacre wasn't collateral damage—it was the purpose.
Leo, the young technician, tore the polished helmet of the Probe from the survivor's head. The man on the gurney let out a low groan, but Leo barely noticed. His face was deathly pale, eyes wide with delayed understanding.
"Barros…" he said, his voice trembling despite his effort to sound professional. "This wasn't an Incursion event. The creatures didn't come here."
He swallowed hard, pointing at the frozen image on the monitor—the cracked sky, the monster mid-attack.
"We were taken there. It was an abduction. An abduction to a slaughterhouse."
Barros remained silent for a long moment. He stared at the screen, absorbing every detail of that other place. It wasn't the territory of any known Dreamer. It didn't follow the unstable logic of Echoes. This had intent.
It needed a name.
"Call it whatever you want, Leo," he said at last, his voice low and firm as cold steel. "For now, in the reports, this is Anomaly Zero."
Barros turned away, already feeling the weight of what that meant.
"And we're going to find out what the hell it is… before it decides to visit us again."