At first, we thought she was joking—claiming she found a cat asleep inside a supply drone. It was curled up on the rations like it belonged there. A gray tabby with a smug look, completely unfazed by the drone’s landing or the chaos of unloading.
Naturally, they kept it. Gave it a name, made it a patch with a cartoon paw print. She said it lifted morale. And it did—everyone loved the cat. It never strayed far, always appeared when lights flickered or someone needed cheering up.
Then Mykola found the tag.
It was hidden under its thick fur, behind the collar—a matte disc with strange, non-standard lettering:
“PTA-217 — SILENT NIGHT — SECTOR 4B”
We assumed it was some old kennel tag or an inside joke. That is, until a senior engineer overheard and went ghost-white. He dug up an old file from a backup drive—documents listing discontinued animal surveillance units. Birds, rodents, even goats. And there it was:
PTA-217. Decommissioned due to “uncontrollable behavioral conditioning drift.”
Last assigned to: Silent Night Program. Sector 4B.
That’s when things got strange.
First, the generator exploded with no warning—just a sharp pop and the smell of scorched plastic. We rushed out to investigate. The cat was already there, calmly watching from beside the fuse box. Not even wet, despite earlier rain. Just… waiting.
Then the dreams began. At first, no one mentioned them—just groggy mornings and sleepless eyes. But too many started waking up at 3:17 AM, every single night.
Some spoke of whispers in their sleep. Others described distant blinking lights in the desert. Larson swore he dreamed of Sector 4B—a place he’d never visited, yet described in eerie, precise detail: dunes, a black tower, and a humming that made your teeth hurt.
Lena—my cousin—was unfazed. She named the cat Marble, called it a clever stray. “Probably just got good instincts,” she laughed. “It’s just a cat.”
But Marble wasn’t like any cat we’d known.
It knew patrol rotations. Dodged sensors. Never made a sound. Never blinked when stared at. It just… observed.
One night, I placed a mirror outside my tent to test a theory. At exactly 3:17, I woke with a jolt—heart pounding, chest tight. I stepped out.
The mirror was cracked. Marble was gone.
The next morning, Mykola was missing. We found him behind the comms shed—curled up like he’d simply dozed off. Eyes wide open, no injuries. Just a faint electrical smell and a scorched ring in the grass.
They ruled it cardiac arrest. But we knew better.
Lena was devastated. She banned Marble from her tent, tried driving it away—but it always came back. Same spot. Same time. Tail flicking like nothing had changed.
Then came the file.
Kaz, a new kid in the data center, found a partial report buried in an archive. Dated March 1998. It detailed PTA-217—a gray tabby trained for psychological monitoring and morale boosting. But something had gone wrong. The animal developed empathic mimicry.
It didn’t just mirror moods. It magnified them. Anxiety became panic. Grief turned to despair.
Eventually, it didn’t need to be nearby. It could reach into dreams. Distort sleep. Twist emotional responses.
It was marked for termination.
But the records never confirmed it was destroyed.
Someone must’ve saved it. Hidden it. Maybe they thought it was too useful. Or too dangerous to let go.
We started shifts to monitor Marble. Someone always awake. But the more attention we gave it, the stranger things got.
Equipment glitched. Radios caught phantom voices and music. Lena’s watch started random countdowns—always stopping at zero without explanation.
Sleep became rare. And when it came, we dreamed of Sector 4B.
Eventually, I snapped. Quietly took a rover and set out west toward Sector 4B—off-grid, beyond our drone towers.
An hour in, I saw Marble in the backseat. Just sitting there.
I didn’t send it away.
We reached the sector at dusk. No towers, no fences—just barren land under a pale moon. Marble jumped out, walked to the center. I followed.
Then I saw them.
Dozens of still figures in a circle. Uniforms from our time. Others from decades ago. One in a Silent Night lab coat.
They weren’t moving. Just breathing.
Marble sat in the middle and looked at me.
Then the humming began—low and deep, rattling through my bones. Whispers I couldn’t understand.
I tried to leave, but couldn’t.
All my buried emotions—fears, regrets, betrayals—flooded back at once. I was frozen, overwhelmed.
Until Marble brushed against my leg.
And just like that—it stopped. The figures disappeared. Silence returned.
I collapsed.
When I woke, Marble was on my chest, purring softly—for the first time.
I drove back in silence.
Lena met me. Didn’t ask. Just hugged me.
We never told command. Never filed a report. We just let Marble be.
And slowly, things improved.
The dreams stopped. The power held steady. Mykola’s bunk stayed untouched, a quiet tribute.
Marble remained. Still watching, still showing up at just the right moment. But it no longer felt ominous.
It felt protective.
Months later, we held a private ceremony. No ranks. No protocol.
We gave Marble a title:
Emotional Operations Specialist, Retired.
With a patch. A real bed in the comms room. And a new tag:
“Still Watching. Still With Us.”
I left the base not long after, transferred to civilian logistics. Stayed in touch with Lena. She said Marble aged quietly. Always nearby, never a burden.
When Marble passed, it was in her lap—under the soft hum of the drone bay fans.
They buried it beneath the base tree—the one that somehow thrived in the desert.
People say Marble still shows up.
In dreams. In memories.
Especially when someone’s alone or lost.
Not to haunt. But to remind.
That we carry more than weapons and tech.
We carry each other.
And sometimes, the smallest presence can hold back the deepest dark.
Because what was once designed to watch us…
Ended up protecting us instead.
So yeah, my cousin brought a cat to base.
But what we got was more than that.
A little strange. A little dangerous. But a reminder:
Not everything broken needs to be discarded.
Sometimes, it just needs to be seen.