Ghosts Don’t Stay Dead

The drive back to Black Orchid Investigations was a quiet one, save for the occasional glance Jessica exchanged with Leanna and Olivia. Daniel sat in the back, staring out the window, his hands gripping the fabric of his pants as though grounding himself to reality.

Leanna finally broke the silence. "Daniel, what are they?"

He exhaled sharply. "Not people. Not spirits. Something... in between. I don’t know what they call themselves, but Vanguard classified them as ‘Oblivion Entities.’ They exist outside normal perception, like echoes of something we were never meant to see."

Jessica tightened her grip on the steering wheel. "Why you? Why did they take you?"

Daniel rubbed his temples. "I worked for them. Years ago. A research branch within Vanguard was studying ways to manipulate reality. Not just physics—perception itself. They called it ‘Project Veil.’ The goal was to weaponize cognitive dissonance—to make people disappear from memory, from history itself.”

Olivia frowned. "That’s impossible. You can’t just erase someone from existence."

"Not entirely. But you can make them unrecognizable, unremembered," Daniel corrected. "I was one of their early experiments. They wiped me clean—reset me. But something went wrong. I started seeing the cracks, glimpses of what came before. I wasn’t the only one."

Jessica’s pulse quickened. "There were others?"

Daniel nodded. "At least a dozen that I know of. All of us were ‘dead’ on record, but we weren’t. Vanguard didn’t kill us—they erased our pasts. Some of us pieced things together, but by then, the Entities had already started following us. Like cleanup agents. If you remember too much, they take you."

Leanna leaned forward. "Then why are they still after you? You were gone for years."

Daniel’s face darkened. "Because I wasn’t supposed to come back. I broke the cycle. And now, they’re going to correct that mistake.”

“I was away from them for five years,” Daniel continued. “Then I woke up three weeks ago in the middle of a subway tunnel with memories that shouldn’t have survived. That’s when they noticed. That’s when they started hunting again.”

The car rolled to a stop outside their office. Jessica turned off the engine and exhaled. "So what do we do? How do we fight something that erases people like they never existed?"

Daniel shook his head. "You don’t fight them. You outsmart them. And I know where we start."

Jessica’s throat tightened. This wasn’t just about survival anymore. It was about staying real in a world designed to forget you. She met his gaze. "Where?"

Daniel hesitated, then said, "There's a Vanguard site near the Ukraine-Moldova border. That’s where Project Veil was born."

Silence settled over them like a shroud.

Olivia sighed. "Of course. Because breaking into a government facility always ends well."

Leanna smirked. "It wouldn’t be us if it didn’t."

Jessica grabbed her coat and pushed open the car door. "Then let’s get to work."

Because in the end, you don’t win against shadows. You just keep your name from vanishing long enough to matter.