1060: Story 1060: Banshee Protocol 1060: Story 1060: Banshee Protocol The emergency broadcast began at 3:33 a.m.
No sirens.
No evacuation orders.
Just a mechanical voice, genderless, distorted by static:
“Initiating Banshee Protocol.
Remain indoors.
Seal all mirrors.
Do not answer the door.
If you hear her scream—pray she doesn’t see you.”
Then silence.
Then a hum.
Then we began to forget.
It started small.
Names slipped.
Birthdays vanished.
Survivors we’d been traveling with for weeks were suddenly strangers to us.
Someone would walk into a room, and we’d swear we had no idea who they were—until the fog cleared, and we remembered.
But it wouldn’t last.
The fog always came back.
Carmen was the first to hear it.
A sound like shattered glass screaming.
Piercing.
Unnatural.
Not in the ears—in the bones.
She collapsed, blood pouring from her nose and ears.
She shook, convulsed, eyes rolled back as if something inside her was trying to claw its way out through her skull.
We couldn’t help her.
We couldn’t even remember why we were helping her.
We holed up in an abandoned bunker—steel doors, no windows.
The walls were lined with cryptic instructions scratched in blood and rust:
“Protocol is memory.
Memory is protocol.”
“Don’t listen to her eyes.”
“Never say your own name out loud.”
We didn’t understand.
Until the camera feeds cut out one by one.
And then the last survivor of Glenridge Station appeared.
Her name had been Lieutenant Arlenne Voss—Special Containment Operative, Sector 9.
The log files we found on her corpse described the Banshee, a psychic weapon unearthed beneath a ruin of impossible geometry, encoded with names, powered by remembrance.
They tried to contain her with an experimental mnemonic scrambler—a device that fractured conscious thought.
The Banshee’s curse required focus to take hold.
But it worked too well.
Everyone forgot who they were.
Forgot what they were fighting.
Forgot what they unleashed.
Now, we see her between frames.
In reflections we forgot to cover.
She’s a blur of funeral silks, her mouth always open, never moving.
Her eyes are hollow—but if you recognize her, if you let the familiarity set in, if a single memory clicks—
—she screams.
And you cease to be.
Not just die.
You’re erased.
From time.
From memory.
From the minds of everyone who ever loved you.
Milo’s gone.
There’s a gap in the group where he stood.
His bed is untouched.
His weapons remain.
But no one remembers his face.
Only the scream.
And the echo it left behind.
The only way to survive now is to forget faster than she can find you.
Never dwell.
Never look back.
Keep your mind moving like a skipping record.
We write each other’s names on our arms now, every morning.
A fading chain of ink we hope will hold our souls in place a little longer.
The protocol is still active.
We are still forgetting.
And she is still screaming.