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墨書 Inktalez
The phone screen was burning in his palm as Alan trembled and clicked on the video file labeled "1998.7.15" from the USB drive. The grainy footage from an old surveillance camera revealed a twenty-year-younger Jack Morrison replacing the spark plugs on a Yamaha motorcycle. Suddenly, the sound of a baby crying echoed in the garage, and Old Jack's expression froze—blood was seeping from the golden embroidery on the motorcycle's fuel tank that read "J.M.1998."
"They're back..." Old Jack in the video suddenly turned to look at the camera, his murky eyes almost pressing against the lens. "Every spark plug is embedded with..."
An explosion cut off the rest of his sentence. Alan felt a chill run down his spine as he watched flames shoot up from the screen; the Yamaha remained intact amidst the fire, three charred arms protruding from its exhaust pipe. As the video reached its end, his phone abruptly switched to the photo gallery, revealing a picture he had never taken: himself clad in a blood-stained leather jacket, straddling the motorcycle, with three indistinct figures chained to a support pillar behind him.
Alan's back pressed against the cold roll-up door, the blue light of his phone casting flickering shadows on his face. In the video, Old Jack's hand was rubbing between the threads of a spark plug, and suddenly those silver metal parts began to ooze dark red liquid. He noticed that Old Jack's left pinky finger was missing—just like now.
"Was this filmed last week?" Alan asked into the air, his voice echoing in the empty garage. The motorcycle in the video let out a piercing scream as sparks erupted from its dashboard, igniting Old Jack's sleeve. The old man seemed oblivious to the pain and instead extended his burning arm toward the fuel tank, flames dancing along the golden embroidery, scorching dark marks into "J.M.1998."
The scratching sounds from the ventilation ducts perfectly overlapped with the explosions in the video. Alan watched as the Yamaha rose upright like a demon awakening from slumber, its charred arms suddenly grabbing Old Jack by the ankle. As he was dragged toward the engine compartment, the surveillance footage shook violently before freezing on a close-up of an eye smeared with blood—reflected in its iris were three figures hanging from a support pillar.
The phone suddenly became too hot to hold, and the gallery automatically flipped to a yellowed photograph. Alan's pupils constricted: in the image, he wore an oil-stained leather jacket, gripping a still-dripping wrench in his right hand while his left foot rested on the Yamaha's footpeg. More terrifying were those three bound figures in the background—they bore striking similarities to him, as if they were brothers sharing close bloodlines.
"This can't be..." Alan's nails dug deep into his palm; memories from 2018 clearly indicated he was an only child. But written in blood on the back of the photo were the words: "Group photo of ritual participants, 1998.7.14." As he attempted to wipe away the stains with his sleeve, something suddenly fell from the ventilation duct.
It was a notebook wrapped in greasy cloth, with an inverted pentagram burned into its cover with wire. Opening to the first page revealed his own handwriting: "13th attempt failed; memory erasure procedure will commence at dawn." Below it was a diagram of a motorcycle's cross-section, with "Bioreactor" labeled at the engine position and "Memory Storage Chamber" glaringly written at the fuel tank location.
The motorcycle emitted a sharp electronic synthetic voice: "System detected administrator privileges." Alan stared in terror as a holographic projection materialized on the dashboard; it reconstructed the explosion scene from 1998 in 3D. His younger self stood amidst roaring flames, using an acetylene torch to burn through chains while screams from three men intertwined with the roar of exhaust pipes into a hellish symphony.
"Warning! Memory conflict exceeds threshold." The Yamaha's rearview mirror suddenly shattered, and flying glass fragments formed a clock pattern in mid-air. Alan curled up under a tool rack, feeling countless steel needles stirring within his skull. When the last shard embedded itself into the wall, he noticed an inverted pentagram brand appearing on his right palm that matched that of the notebook cover.
The scratching sounds from the ventilation duct grew rhythmic as Alan shakily raised his phone for light. Inside the greasy metal shell were countless etched marks forming binary code; certain segments had been repeatedly deepened—these were fault codes he had recorded in his maintenance logs. When he attempted to take a picture, all motorcycle headlights suddenly illuminated, casting enormous blood-red numbers within the duct: 19980715.
"This is... my employee ID number?" Alan touched his chest where a metal nameplate had inexplicably transformed into that same number. At that moment, he caught a whiff of burning flesh—intensely reminiscent of what he had seen in the video. The wrenches on the tool rack began to tremble collectively and magnetically arranged themselves into an arrow shape pointing beneath Yamaha's seat.
As Alan pried open a hidden compartment under the seat with a screwdriver, thick black blood splattered across his face. Inside lay a mini projector that automatically played footage that left him breathless—different versions of himself appeared one after another on screen, each repeating: "Find the true sacrifice and complete the cycle."
When the thirteenth Alan began to speak, parts of the motorcycle started disassembling themselves. Gears, pistons, and chains floated in mid-air like disassembled mechanical skeletons. At their center swirled a pulsating Mechanical Heart extending vascular-like wires toward Alan’s nameplate...
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