The Past, Rewired

[thisDerius]

Derius moved with quiet precision, his boots echoing softly against the polished steel floor as he stepped toward the console assigned to him. The terminal flickered to life as he approached, a familiar prompt glowing dimly on the interface. He wasted no time—Donagan’s instructions had been clear, and Derius had no intention of fumbling through needless protocol.

Fingers danced across the interface as he logged in, his cybernetic eye flickering subtly as it synchronized with the display. His internal augmentations filtered and categorized data in real time, allowing him to scan through massive datasets in seconds. His brow furrowed as lines of text and visual feeds scrolled across the screen.

"Hmm… Apahanta... Seth Wither... EVE... Finn McCool...” he murmured to himself, each name like a ghost from the past echoing in his mind. “Ingenuus Cell?” He arched an eyebrow. “Looks like there’s some data on that too. Worth a look…”

Derius opened the corresponding files, watching as folders began unfolding in front of him like a cascade of dominoes—intel logs, experimental records, archived comms, operational documents. There was more than he expected—far more.

With a few deft gestures, he initiated a deep search on the keywords, routing them through a local buffer to avoid triggering any embedded failsafes or retroactive data wipes. The encryption surrounding some of the files was archaic, but sophisticated—a clear sign of Ingenuus protocol. It wasn’t just about breaking through anymore; it was about understanding what he was looking at. Every scrap of metadata could be another piece of the puzzle.

"This will take a while..." he muttered, transferring the flagged data into a temporary cache zone. Packet by packet, the information began to download—painfully slow by his standards, but safely insulated from data loss or detection.

He leaned back slightly, stretching out his right shoulder where the synthetic nerves still occasionally tingled from older injuries. Glancing across the room, he raised his voice slightly over the ambient hum of servers.

“Hey, Donagan,” he called out, watching the tech on the far end of the chamber monitor his own set of processes. “Do I need to be here while the transfer’s going on, or can I let this thing grind it out on its own?”

He motioned toward the active terminal. Lights blinked across the monitor—transfer at 12% and climbing—but the real weight lay in what he was beginning to piece together. These names, these files—they weren’t just old entries. They were fragments of a much bigger picture. And Derius wasn’t sure whether he was ready to see the whole thing just yet.