I recovered the diary from the bushes, hiding it in my coat as I made my way beyond the temple grounds. I searched for a quiet spot along the beach, far from where prying eyes might find me. I settled down in a shady spot, sitting on a rock as I pulled out the diary and opened it. This kind of invasion of privacy felt so incredibly wrong, but I wasn’t left with much choice. That, and the fact I was sitting here on the beach reading a book like it was a lazy summer morning made it all the more odd.

The book appeared to be quite old. There was fraying along the edge of the cover, and Ghost’s talon marks were evident despite the obvious care he’d given.

“This thing’s pretty old. You’ll have to be more careful when you bring it back. We’ll wrap it in something.”

Ghost nodded.

I undid the clasp and opened it to the first pages.

“She was twelve years old when she began writing in it,” I said.

“I doubt there’ll be anything of interest before the incident.”

“I wouldn’t be so sure about that.”

“We don’t have time for you to read the entire thing cover to cover,” Ghost said.

“Who isn’t remembering details now? With my enhancer, I can read it a lot faster than a normal person.”

“Don’t waste your enhancer on things like that,” he said.

“It doesn’t require much output. Bet you forget it could do things like that.”

Ghost blew air from his beak, staring at me blankly. A huff, I suppose. He was really getting into these human gestures lately.

My mother gave me this diary today and said I should write in it whenever I’m missing Dad. He did not come back from fishing last week. Mom said he won’t come back. I’ve been really mad about it, but sad about it too. She is frustrated with me because I’ve not been helping as much.

I sighed. “Looks like she lost her father when she was twelve. That must’ve been… really tough.”

Ghost nodded.

I flipped forward, continuing through a large section, using my enhancer to quickly move through the less relevant sections, making sure I didn’t miss anything helpful. Eventually, I made it to a passage written when she was sixteen.

I heard her again today. I’ve made Mom upset for weeks now, trying to tell her about the woman hiding nearby. It was only today that I began to realize there’s no woman at all. At least, not physically. She never says anything that makes sense. Not really. It’s like a whisper, or a collection of words that don’t make complete sentences. Mom said I shouldn’t tell anyone else about it.

I paused on the page, taking a deep breath and looking up at the dim, overcast sky.

“Did you find something?” Ghost asked.

“I’ll tell you after I go through a few more entries.”

I continued to flip through. The mentions of the voice became rare, at least for a while.

An entry when she was still sixteen caught my attention.

Today, I finally saw her. The woman. She’s been talking to me more and more lately. I thought at first I was crazy, but I actually saw her today! It’s because I’ve been studying the stars. I think that’s why her presence is getting stronger. I told Mom, but she can’t see her. Mom begged me to keep it a secret. Eventually, everyone will come to know her. She tells me things, and disappears. But she has enemies. Other voices are appearing now that say mean things about her, or tell me to do bad things. These are scary, but I know the woman will protect me.

A few pages later.

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The bad voices are starting to become bolder. They cause bugs to appear on my arms and legs. I feel them crawling. I look at them, and they disappear. I believe this is a power that the woman gave me. All I need to do is look at the evil, and it flees. This brings me comfort. My head is so cluttered with the voices. Mom has asked me to stop going out. No matter how many times I try to explain these voices to her, but she never seems to get it. She doesn’t understand them at all. She thinks they’re not real.

I rubbed my temples. I was, by no means, a psychologist. I’d studied it, just as every PanTech scientist had, fairly extensively. Still, it wasn’t my field of work or expertise. I didn’t feel like I needed to be an expert to understand what was going on here.

“I believe she may have been… maybe still is schizophrenic. She talks about auditory, visual, and other types of hallucinations. She grew accustomed to hiding them, but came to accept them as real. When I see things like this, I hate PanTech all the more. A girl like her could’ve been helped.”

“Does this rule out the possibility of her being this zone’s commander?”

“Not entirely, no, but I think it’s unlikely.”

“How do we explain the signal amplifier?” he asked, perching on my shoulder, reading along with me now.

“Maybe someone else is a spy here. We didn’t suspect Connie either. Not until it was too late. It’s possible we’ve been focused entirely on Lunaria, when someone else has been nearby pulling the strings.”

“I’m still confused about her visions. If she was mentally ill, as you’ve suggested, how have her visions become accurate? How did she predict you’d arrive, and how did she predict that PanTech would come in and vaccinate everyone?”

“She did more than predict it. She made it possible. Remember that detail about having everyone sleep on the temple grounds? She didn’t just know it would happen in that case. She helped to facilitate it.”

“She’s being communicated with by Adversity Management,” he said. “And that explains the signal amplifier, but that would mean…”

“A device is implanted in her, likely in her brain. That’s not an easy implant to fit someone for without anyone noticing.”

“An enhancer?”

I rubbed my forehead. Frelya is… was… one of the few people capable of implanting one. As far as I know, they’re exclusively done at PanTech. She’d never been to PanTech, at least that anyone is aware of. Unless she disappeared for a week at some point and mysteriously returned. I continued to read. Maybe we’d learn more from the diary.

Her struggles with the voices and other hallucinations progressed, would stay the same for a while, new hallucinations and delusions would appear.

I met a wonderful man recently. Jeremy. He’s a genius but treats me as an equal. He’s been encouraging me to try out my ideas on improving our harvests. I was too ashamed before. Now that Mother’s passed, I’ve started to venture outside the house more. I know that others will believe these voices are fiction, so I don’t mention them. I’ve told Jeremy about them, and he’s so understanding… even if he doesn’t believe in them. He treated me the same, and promised he wouldn’t tell others about them.

More passages. Some, extremely difficult to read through. She wrote at length about her two lost children, as Mira had told me about. The miscarriage, and the one who was stillborn. Her hallucinations became much worse after that. She began to hear babies crying, and believed they couldn’t pass into the afterlife. That they’d become ghosts haunting her.

Finally, I made it to the passage I’d been searching for.

I did something unforgivable. I believed I’d made a bargain with the kind voice in my mind, but now I’m not so sure. I may have been tricked by one of the evil ones. Even I had come to believe the voices in my head were fiction, and perhaps that’s why I accepted the offer. Our child in exchange for ridding my mind of all other visions, and a closer connection to the voice of the stars, as I came to know her. She is undoubtedly real, because my child is now gone. The other voices are gone. I no longer hear the babies crying or see the insects crawling on my flesh. I no longer hear their laughing, or insults, taunts. And yet… why do I feel like all the evil is gone because I have become it? It’s the burden I must bear, for the good of the people here. If I can make their lives better, then why not sacrifice my own life. Jeremy will never understand…

I closed the diary, lying on my back and staring up at the sky.

“I read it as you did,” Ghost said.

“Just when I think PanTech can’t get any more evil… They took advantage of a mentally disturbed woman, made her sacrifice her child, ruin her marriage. Nothing more than a convenient puppet to be used in order to control everyone else here. They knew she was charismatic, and that everyone loved her. Now, give her the ability to ‘predict’ things with complete accuracy, and that’s all that was needed to ascend her to the mouthpiece of divinity.”

“But there was nothing in there about what happened to their daughter. Only that she disappeared.”

“Turns out she doesn’t know,” I said.

“Could the diary be a misdirection? Something invented to throw someone off the trail, should they ever seek the truth?”

I turned to Ghost and grinned. “Now who’s paranoid? I guess that’s always possible, but I doubt it. Sure, PanTech could produce a convincing fabrication, but what are the chances someone like me is going to come along and start digging? Pretty much zero. And while she doesn’t seem to have any answers, we know who does now.”

“Adversity Management… but is this wise?”

“Nothing about this is wise… but—”

“But we’re going to do it anyway,” Ghost said, cutting me off and finishing my sentence. It sounded more like excitement than scolding.

“Getting invested in the mystery yourself now, huh?”

“I suppose…”