You grit your teeth and push the mnemo-scanner beyond standard protocols, feeling the machine grow warm beneath your fingertips. The distortion field around the woman's face ripples like heat haze as you engage the forensic reconstruction algorithms. Her features begin to resolve - high cheekbones, a slightly upturned nose, and most strikingly, a jagged scar running from her left temple to jawline that pulses with an unnatural bioluminescent glow.

Suddenly, the memory stabilizes with a jolt that nearly knocks you backward. The woman's golden eyes lock onto yours with unsettling awareness - impossible in a memory playback. 'You shouldn't be here,' she whispers directly to you, her voice cutting through the memory's ambient noise with perfect clarity. The black case falls open at her feet, revealing not corporate documents as expected, but rows of glowing memory crystals identical to those used in your own archive vaults.

Behind her, the attacking figures finally come into focus - their faces obscured not by distortion, but by sleek silver masks displaying the corrupted corporate logo. One raises a device that makes your scanner scream with feedback. The memory collapses inward like shattered glass just as the woman mouths three words that make your blood run cold: 'They're watching you.'

The lab snaps back into existence around you. Mr. Tanaka convulses in the chair, his pupils dilated wildly. Your hands shake as you disengage the neural interface, noticing for the first time the identical hourglass symbol flashing briefly on your own scanner's display - where no such symbol existed before.