Your hands fly across the emergency shutdown controls as the mnemo-scanner's alarms reach a fever pitch. The neural tendrils retract with a wet pop just as Mr. Tanaka's body goes limp from the sedatives. Beads of cold sweat trickle down your back as you quickly check his vitals - stable, but his brainwave patterns show disturbing irregularities.

Grabbing your secure commlink, you initiate an encrypted channel to Section Chief Watanabe. The holographic face that materializes looks older than its years, with stress lines cutting deep across the forehead. 'Sir, I just had a Priority Blue event during routine retrieval,' you report, keeping your voice low despite the sound-dampening walls. 'Subject Tanaka exhibited memory corruption markers consistent with active neural suppression.'

Watanabe's hologram flickers as he processes this. Behind him, you catch a glimpse of the Archives' main hub where other memory archaeologists work under the same flickering blue lights. 'That's the third case this week,' he mutters before fixing you with a piercing stare. 'Standard containment protocol - freeze all related memory files and submit your neural logs for decontamination. And Kurosawa? Don't discuss this with anyone else.'

The transmission cuts out abruptly. As you begin the sterilization sequence on your equipment, your gaze drifts to the frozen image still hovering above the scanner - that damned black case with its glowing contents. One of the data chips seems to pulse faintly, almost like it's... breathing. You shake your head, attributing it to fatigue, but the unease lingers like a bad aftertaste.