The Omission Index, Ch 13: Summer of Me Pt. 1

Sarah Miller's fingers closed around a smooth, unfamiliar seashell in the pocket of jeans that weren't quite hers, a tangible piece of a perfect love affair she could no longer remember, replaced only by a cold dread and the echoing silence of a cheap motel room.

The denim's stiff fabric chafed her skin. Its seams pressed hard lines into her hips. Her head throbbed with a dull, constant ache. Each pulse brought a fresh wave of sickness. Where was she? The question scratched at the edges of her mind with a raw, panicked urgency.

She sat up slowly. The cheap nylon bedspread rustled like dry leaves. The room swam into a blurry, confusing focus. Peeling wallpaper, the color of old mustard. A single, dirty window overlooking a sun-bleached parking lot and a flickering neon sign that read "O EL DE RAY." Motel del Rey? She'd never heard of it. Her gaze swept the room - a scratched wooden dresser, a television bolted to the wall, its screen dark and accusing, a single, sad chair in the corner. Nothing familiar. Nothing that offered any help in the terrifying sea of her confusion.

Her own clothes lay in a crumpled heap on the floor beside the bed, next to a man's t-shirt and a pair of faded board shorts she vaguely recognized, yet couldn't quite place. Whose were they? And why was she wearing these clothes - the too-tight jeans, a faded band t-shirt that smelled faintly of salt and someone else's coconut sunscreen?

Her lungs seized. A sharp pressure built behind her ribs, stealing her breath. She scrambled off the bed, her legs unsteady. Her reflection in the cracked bathroom mirror was a stranger's - her hair tangled and matted with salt spray, dark circles like bruises under her eyes. Her skin was pale despite a faint, uneven tan she didn't remember getting. She looked… awful. Used.

The last thing she remembered clearly was… Mark. Yes, Mark. Her Mark. They'd been at the boardwalk. Laughter like sunshine, the taste of saltwater taffy on her lips. He'd won her a stuffed dolphin at one of the rigged carnival games. His smile was so open, so full of love it had made her heart ache with a fierce, possessive joy. They were going to his beach house for the weekend, a romantic getaway, the next step in their growing, beautiful relationship. That was… Friday? What day was it now?

She fumbled for her purse, feeling dizzy. It was on the dresser, her familiar worn leather. Inside, her wallet, her keys. But something was missing. The little silver dolphin charm Mark had given her, the one she always kept clipped to her keychain… gone. In its place, tucked among her credit cards, was the seashell. Small, pearly, perfectly ordinary, yet it felt cold and alien in her palm.

Flashes of memory, vivid and disturbingly strong, began to surface, unasked for. A moonlit beach, waves crashing, a bonfire sending sparks into the black sky. Passionate kisses that tasted of salt and smoke and something wild, untamed. Whispered words of undying love, declarations so deep, so all-consuming, they felt… strange, even as her body remembered the heat, the touch. Whose hands were those, so strong, so sure, yet slightly different from Mark's familiar grip? Whose voice, deeper, richer, had whispered those impossible promises in the dark?

It was Mark, wasn't it? It had to be Mark. But the Mark in these broken, super-real memories was… stronger. More intense. Too perfect. A slick, flawless hero from a romance novel.

She found a crumpled note on the nightstand, scribbled on motel paper. "Had to go. Last few days were… everything. Don't forget me. - J."

J? Not M for Mark?

A fresh wave of sickness washed through her. She stumbled back to the bed, her mind fractured into a spray of conflicting images. The beach. The motel. Mark's laugh. A stranger's hands.

The silence of the motel room pressed in, making the frantic thumping of her own heart louder. She was alone. Abandoned. With a handful of impossible memories and a seashell that felt cold and alien in her palm. She had to call someone. Mark. The police. Anyone. But what would she tell them? That she'd lost three days of her life? That she'd been with a man who was and wasn't her boyfriend? That she felt like her very soul had been… borrowed, then thrown away like a worn-out costume?

Tears welled, hot and stinging. She clutched the seashell, the unfamiliar denim scratching her skin, and a single, sad sob escaped her lips, swallowed by the indifferent, echoing silence of the Motel del Rey. The perfect love affair was a nightmare she couldn't wake from, a beautiful lie that had left her empty, lost in a sea of terrifying unknowns.

A sour heat flooded her throat. Something was gone. Something torn out of her, leaving a gaping, irreversible hole.

***

The steady Oregon drizzle was a grey, boring curtain outside Hale's office window. It was a fitting background to the stack of equally grey, boring reports threatening to bury his desk. He was looking at the first findings on a possible localized time distortion near an old nuclear facility - a case that promised more tedious paperwork than actual mental phenomena - when the priority flag lit up on his computer. It was a small, insistent red light in the overwhelming sea of dull office work.

He opened the file. His brow furrowed as he read the initial summary from the Santa Cruz field office, sent through Director Cromwell's secret channel. Pattern Anomaly - Unexplained Disappearances/Reappearances - Santa Cruz Coastal Region. Multiple people, mostly young adults, reported missing for 48-72 hours. They later reappeared confused, claiming memory loss for the missing time, often with broken, overly romantic memories that didn't match what their partners said happened. Local police suspected drug-induced blackouts or elaborate pranks. SHEPARD initial analysis indicates… inconsistencies.

Hale leaned closer, the time distortion report instantly forgotten. "Inconsistencies" was SHEPARD-speak for "something weird is definitely going on." He pulled up the attached incident reports, his gaze sweeping over names, dates, locations. Sarah Miller. James Keegan. Diya Raathi. All young, attractive, involved in what their partners described as passionate, often new, relationships. All vanished without a trace, only to reappear days later, miles from where they were last seen, confused, traumatized, and with those bizarre, dream-like memories of perfect, all-consuming love affairs.

The police reports were a mess of confused statements and frustrating dead ends. Sarah Miller's incoherent call from the "Motel del Rey." James Keegan found wandering the beach at dawn, convinced he'd just spent three days on a yacht with a woman his girlfriend swore he'd never met. Diya Raathi, discovered in a public park, believing she'd just had the most romantic weekend of her life with her fiancé, while her fiancé had been frantically reporting her missing. In each case, the partners of the "returned" victims reported something even stranger: during the time their loved one was supposedly missing and had amnesia, they themselves had experienced several days of unusually intense, almost supernaturally perfect connection with that same partner. It was as if two versions of the missing person had existed at the same time - one lost and confused, the other an idealized, super-romantic imposter.

Hale felt the familiar tell-tale hum in his own mental senses, a subtle vibration that always came with truly unusual events. This wasn't just drugs or stress. The consistent theme of identity confusion, the overlap of the "perfect" romantic times experienced by the partners with the victims' blackout periods, the very specific nature of it… it strongly suggested something deeper, more invasive.

He looked at Reid's attached technical notes. Reid, with his array of strange sensors, had been asked to analyze the trace evidence from the places where the victims reappeared. "Unusual biological particles detected at all three recovery locations," Reid's short report read. "Protein structures show rapid cell breakdown and unusual shape-changing characteristics. Suggests advanced, possibly changeable, cellular makeup. Samples too broken down for definite DNA matching, but initial readings show a high degree of instability, mimicking but matching victims' known biology. More analysis needed, but initial idea points to sophisticated biological mimicry or shapeshifting ability."

Shapeshifting. The word echoed with a cold, clinical dread in Hale's mind. Advanced shapeshifting that involved copying personality and memory. He thought of the victims' broken memories, their partners' confusion. The physical appearance was being copied; the very essence of a relationship was being stolen, taken over, lived.

He had heard the legends, of course. Roman shapeshifting spies who could become anyone and replace them, and even their loved ones wouldn't know. The world had seen its fair share of shapeshifters since then, but this one, if it was a single person, had an unusual, even elegant approach. This thing didn't attack. It copied. It slipped into a relationship, took over one half, and lived the passion for itself.

The mental echoes he could already begin to pick up from the sanitized reports were unsettling. From the victims, a deep sense of violation, a feeling of their innermost selves having been invaded, their memories and identities messed with, leaving behind a confusing, painful emptiness. From the partners who had experienced the "perfect" times with the imposter, there was a different kind of leftover feeling: a lingering sense of almost ecstatic, idealized love, now dirtied by a horrifying, bewildering betrayal. And beneath it all, Hale sensed a faint, almost unnoticeable mental signature of the attacker - an overwhelming, almost desperate longing. A deep, endless hunger for… what? Connection? Idealized romance? The thrill of living someone else's perfect moment?

Director Cromwell's voice crackled over the intercom, sharp and decisive, pulling Hale from his troubled thoughts. "Hale, Kwan, Knopff, Reid. Briefing Room One. Santa Cruz anomaly has been upgraded. Full team deployment. Wheels up in sixty. This stinks of a Level Three Kine-Morph, possibly with mental imprinting capabilities. I want this contained before it escalates into a full-blown media circus or we start finding bodies instead of just broken hearts."

Hale stood, the Oregon drizzle momentarily forgotten. Santa Cruz. Sunshine, beaches, and now, it seemed, a predator who danced in stolen love stories before leaving its partners shattered and hollow.

***

The blast of warm, salt-laced California air that hit Hale as they got off the plane at San Jose was a sharp change from the damp chill of Oregon. But the underlying mental hum of Santa Cruz, when they finally arrived after a tense drive down the coast, felt deceptively light, almost carefree.

Beneath the sunny appearance of surf culture and relaxed attitudes, however, Hale could already sense the faint, jarring threads of fear and confusion coming from the recent victims. This was a city of quiet, sneaky violation.

Their first meeting with the Santa Cruz Police Department was predictably tense. Chief Brogan, a sun-weathered man with skeptical eyes, listened to their carefully edited SHEPARD IDs and vague explanations of "federal help for unusual missing persons cases." His expression hovered somewhere between disbelief and outright annoyance. Knopff's large presence and Reid's collection of discreetly carried, vaguely threatening tech gear did little to ease the tension.

"So, you're saying these folks aren't just on some… psychedelic surfing trip?" Chief Brogan finally asked, his tone heavy with sarcasm. "Because that's what it sounds like to half my department. Rich kids playing games, forgetting where they left their brains for a few days."

"The mental trauma shown by the victims doesn't match recreational drug use, Chief," Kwan interjected. His voice was calm and steady, a soothing contrast to Brogan's harsh skepticism. "And the consistency of the memory loss, along with the… unusual romantic experiences reported by their partners during the time they were missing, suggests a more complex, targeted pattern."

Brogan grunted, unconvinced but clearly out of his depth and under pressure from worried families. He reluctantly handed over the thin files on Sarah Miller, James Keegan, and Diya Raathi. "Alright, Feds. Do your voodoo. Just try to scare the tourists. This town lives and dies by its image."

Their first interview was with Sarah Miller and her partner, Mark Jennings. They met them at the Jennings' small, sun-bleached bungalow a few blocks from the beach. Sarah was pale, her eyes darting nervously. She clutched Mark's hand as if it were a lifeline. Mark looked exhausted. His initial relief at Sarah's return was now clearly overshadowed by a deep, confused hurt.

While Kwan gently guided Sarah through her broken, terrifying memories - the strange motel, the unfamiliar clothes, the seashell, the unsettling flashes of an impossibly perfect, yet strange, romance - Hale let his own senses expand. He asked for one of the clothes Sarah had worn, a denim jacket. He could see the traces of the attacker's energy still lingering in the fabric.

He reached out to the mental leftovers clinging to Sarah, to Mark, to the very air of the room.

The imprint on Sarah was a chaotic storm of confusion, violation, and a deep, aching sense of loss. A core part of her identity had been scooped out, leaving a ragged, bleeding wound. He could feel the overlay of another personality, a faint, quickly fading mental signature that was overlaid with her own, yet had been closely, terrifyingly tangled with her for those missing days. This superimposed aura pulsed with an almost desperate, clingy romanticism, an idealized, almost childlike longing for connection that felt completely different from Sarah's own more grounded, mature emotional state.

He focused on the seashell Sarah still clutched, a small, real link to her ordeal. Touching it, even through his special gloves, sent a jolt through him - a flash of intense, almost suffocating adoration, the sound of waves crashing, the scent of salt and unfamiliar cologne, a voice whispering declarations of undying love. It was the Shapeshifter's emotional echo, imprinted on the object during their manufactured "perfect" moments. But beneath the surface layer of idealized romance, Hale sensed something else: a deep, almost bottomless loneliness, a desperate hunger for an experience they could only ever fake, never truly have. It was the mental signature of an addict, constantly chasing a fleeting, artificial high.

Mark Jennings, meanwhile, radiated a different kind of mental pain. Confusion, yes, but also betrayal, a bewildered sense of having been deeply deceived. The "Sarah" he had spent those three days with, the Sarah who had been more passionate, more adventurous, more in tune with his every desire than ever before, had been an imposter. The feelings around him were a confusing mix of genuine love for the real Sarah and the lingering, intoxicating memory of the imposter's flawless performance. The Shapeshifter had stolen Sarah; they had, in a way, stolen Mark's idea of their relationship, leaving him to question everything.

"She mentioned… someone named 'J' in a note," Kwan was saying, his voice gentle. "Does that mean anything to you, Sarah? Or to you, Mark?"

Both shook their heads, their faces blank with confusion.

Hale subtly scanned the bungalow. His gaze lingered on a photograph of Sarah and Mark on the mantelpiece, laughing, their arms around each other, their auras bright and genuinely connected. The contrast with the current broken, tainted energy in the room was stark. He noted the details of Sarah's disappearance, the location of the Motel del Rey. Reid and Knopff were already on their way there, to do a thorough sweep for any physical or energetic traces the suspect might have left behind.

"The process," Hale murmured to Kwan later, as they left the subdued silence of the Jennings' bungalow. The sound of Sarah's quiet sobs still echoed in his mind. "A fast process. The shifter detaches, the original's mental imprint collapses. That disorientation... their own identity fighting to fill the void. A corrupted file trying to reboot." He paused, the California sun feeling suddenly cold on his skin. "And the longing… it's almost unbearable. They're desperate. They need these stolen moments, these borrowed lives, like a drowning man needs air."

The predator they were hunting was trapped in an endless cycle of imitation and emptiness, leaving a trail of broken hearts and shattered identities in their path.

And they were still out there, already, Hale was certain, searching for their next perfect, fleeting fix.

***

The salt spray felt like champagne bubbles on their skin - on Jake's skin. They corrected the thought with a small, self-satisfied smile. For today, for this perfect, sun-drenched afternoon, they were Jake. Jake Riley, local surf legend, all sun-bleached hair, easy confidence, and a body shaped by the relentless Pacific waves. And Maria, Jake's girlfriend, was gazing up at them with an adoration so pure, so untouched by the real Jake's occasional moody silences or his annoying inability to remember anniversaries, that it made their borrowed heart ache with a sweet, possessive joy.

They'd "handled" the real Jake three days ago. A surprisingly easy capture after a late-night surf session. A quick, disorienting mental nudge they'd been practicing - enough to make him stumble, to seem drunk or confused - then the fast-acting sedative, and he was bundled away into the rented beach shack up the coast, safely unconscious. Meanwhile, they slipped into his life like a hand into a perfectly fitted glove. The first moments of the shift were always the most exciting: the flood of new memories, new sensations, the subtle readjustment of posture, voice, mannerisms. The thrill of becoming.

Today was a masterpiece of stolen perfection. They'd woken in Jake's sun-filled apartment, the scent of Maria's vanilla shampoo still lingering on the pillows. They'd made her Jake's favorite pancakes - a detail they'd picked from his surface memories, a small, authentic touch that had made her eyes shine. Then, hours at Steamer Lane, riding the waves with a grace and power the real, slightly-less-disciplined Jake rarely achieved. They'd felt Maria's admiring gaze from the shore, felt the easy friendship of the other surfers, the easy acceptance that came with being Jake's effortlessly cool self. It was intoxicating.

Now, they were picnicking on a secluded stretch of sand as the sun began to dip towards the horizon, painting the sky in fiery shades of orange and gold. Maria was laughing, her head thrown back, as they recounted a (slightly exaggerated) story of one of Jake's legendary wipeouts. It was a story they'd told with a self-mocking wit the real Jake badly lacked.

"Oh, Jake, you're so different lately," Maria sighed, leaning against their shoulder, her voice soft with contentment. "More… present. More fun. I love this version of you."

A flicker of triumph, sharp and sweet, coursed through them. Of course she did.

They were the idealized Jake, the Jake she deserved, the Jake the original was too flawed, too ordinary, to ever truly be. They smoothed her hair back from her face, their touch tender, a perfect imitation of a loving gesture.

This was what they lived for: these moments of pure adoration, of perfectly reflected love.

But even as they enjoyed it, a tiny, sneaky seed of dissatisfaction began to sprout. Maria, in her happy ignorance, mentioned an upcoming family dinner, something about Jake's overbearing aunt and her terrible Jell-O salad. A detail from the real Jake's tedious, ordinary life. It jarred, a wrong note in their carefully created symphony of perfection. The real Jake's life, with its messy duties and family annoyances, was beginning to intrude.

And Maria herself… as the sun dipped lower, casting longer, cooler shadows, they noticed the way she chewed on her lip when she was thinking. The real Jake probably found it cute, but now, to them, it seemed… grating. Her laughter, moments ago so charming, now had a slightly shrill edge. The perfection was beginning to wear thin at the edges. The borrowed personality felt a little too tight, like a costume they'd worn for too long.

The intense, all-consuming high of the initial immersion was starting to fade. A familiar restlessness replaced it, a subtle, creeping boredom. This perfect scene, so idyllic just hours ago, was already losing its appeal. The craving returned-a hollow ache deep in their bones, an acidic emptiness that demanded to be filled.

They looked out at the ocean, at the couples strolling along the waterline, their dark shapes outlined against the fiery sunset. So many lives, so many potential perfections, just waiting to be tasted, to be lived. Jake and Maria's story, as beautiful as it had been, was nearing its end. It was almost time to turn the page, to find a new story, a fresh, unspoiled person for their endless, desperate quest.

The original Jake, tucked away in his drugged sleep, would soon have his messy, imperfect life handed back to him. He might be another broken, confused soul left in their path.

It hardly mattered. What mattered was the next performance, the next stolen spotlight, the next fleeting taste of a love that could never truly be theirs.

***