The city swallowed her whole.
It was just past 2:00 AM. The streets shimmered with rain and reflected neon—the kind of night where time felt thin and dreams could bleed into reality. She moved like a shadow between alleyways, head low beneath her hood, hand tight around the phone in her pocket.
The message still glowed on the screen.
RUN. THEY KNOW.
– M
She didn't know who "M" was.
But the message came seconds after she escaped a hidden facility filled with locked doors, surveillance glass, and men who called her "Subject 108." That alone made M the closest thing to a friend she had.
She ducked into a 24-hour laundromat to dry off and plan.
Inside, the machines hummed, filling the air with heat and the scent of bleach. A single elderly man dozed in the corner, his laundry tumbling in the dryer like the memories she didn't have.
She took a seat and pulled out the photograph again.
Find Agent Marlow. Trust only him.
She traced the image with her thumb. Marlow looked hard-edged and tired in the photo, like someone who had been burned more than once and still hadn't stopped running. If he had answers, she needed them. And she had nothing else.
She flipped the receipt the address was written on:
241B Dockside Ave.
Bay District.
No city listed. But now that she was above ground, the pieces were falling into place. The skyline outside the laundromat—recognizable from somewhere deep inside her bones. Port Lucent.
It meant nothing. And yet it felt like home.
She left quickly, blending back into the wet streets.
The Bay District was the kind of place people forgot. Everything smelled like diesel and old fish. The warehouses were silent, stacked side by side like sleeping giants. Rats scurried across puddles. Fog clung to the docks like a second skin.
She found 241B at the end of a narrow pier. The door was rusted shut and painted the same dull gray as everything else. It looked abandoned. Of course it did.
But when she lifted the key from her duffel, it slid into the lock like it had always belonged.
The door opened into darkness.
She stepped inside.
Click. A light snapped on overhead—dim, yellow, buzzing faintly.
The room was small, almost bunker-like. A cot in one corner. A corkboard covered in red string and printed photographs. Stacks of files. A laptop. A kettle on a camping stove. Surveillance gear.
But no Marlow.
She stepped forward cautiously, letting the door close behind her.
Something flickered on the wall: a security feed. Multiple camera angles showing different parts of the city. One was trained on a specific alley—the one she had escaped into.
Someone had been watching her.
A mechanical whir sounded behind her.
She spun—just as a tall figure emerged from a metal door near the back.
He froze.
She didn't.
She lunged, pinning him to the wall with a forearm across his neck and her other hand raised in a tight fist.
"I hope you're Marlow," she growled.
"Easy," he rasped. "You have the same right hook as in the photo. I'm Marlow."
She narrowed her eyes. Slowly lowered her arm.
Marlow coughed, rubbing his neck. "Well," he said, looking her over, "you're awake. That complicates everything."
They sat across from each other in silence. She watched him brew tea while reading a file labeled "108 // ACTIVE."
"You were supposed to stay under until extraction," Marlow said.
"I didn't get the memo."
"I was told you wouldn't remember anything for at least another month. Maybe longer."
"Well, I don't remember anything. Except how to throw a punch."
He gave her a dry smile. "Some things stick faster than others."
She tapped the compass tattoo on her collarbone. "These—what are they? They feel like… more than ink."
He sighed. "That's because they are."
He walked over to the corkboard and pulled down a sheet of digital paper. On it was a diagram of a human nervous system—except the nerves were glowing circuits. Each major junction was marked with a symbol that matched her tattoos.
"You weren't just a subject," he said. "You were a prototype."
"Prototype for what?"
Marlow looked her dead in the eye. "For the last weapon this world will ever need."
She almost laughed—except nothing in his face suggested he was joking.
He continued, voice steady.
"There's a black program called Project Glassmind. It started off as synthetic memory mapping—uploading, rewriting, deleting memories. Then it moved into bio-integrated tech. That's where you come in."
He pointed at her tattoos.
"Those are embedded glyph-tech. Each one stores a neuro-reactive pattern—abilities, memories, skills. You don't remember your past because your mind was intentionally wiped. But the tattoos? They're the backups."
She stared at her arms. Suddenly, they felt heavier.
"So I'm a weapon?"
"No," he said. "You're the only one who survived becoming one."
She stood, heart racing. "Why would someone do that?"
"Because the world's breaking. Corporations and black ops agencies are scrambling to build the perfect soldier before someone else does."
She paced the room. "And who erased me?"
"I don't know for sure. But I know who authorized your creation." He pulled a photo from a folder.
A woman—tall, white lab coat, ice-blonde hair, severe eyes.
"Dr. Elira Vos," Marlow said. "Lead researcher on Glassmind. Also—your former handler."
She stared at the photo. Something inside her stirred. Anger. Sadness. Recognition?
"I remember that coat," she said quietly.
Marlow nodded. "You were the last active test. Codenamed 'Echo.' Everything else failed. You were the one success. That's why they want you back."
"No," she said. "They don't want me back. They want to own me."
A silence fell between them.
Then she asked, "How do I get my memories back?"
Marlow hesitated. "There's a failsafe. The tattoos unlock in a certain sequence. Each one triggers a wave of cognitive recall or a physical skill—combat, escape, infiltration."
"Like… leveling up?"
"In a way. But some of them come with consequences. Nightmares. Neural crashes. If you open the wrong one too soon…"
"I won't break," she said flatly.
"You already did," he said. "They just rebuilt you."
She looked down at her arms again.
All this time, she thought she was running from something.
Now she wasn't so sure she wasn't running toward it.
"What's next?" she asked.
Marlow stood, walking over to a wall safe. He opened it and pulled out a small vial of silver-blue liquid.
"Your next tattoo," he said. "The one you're missing."
He rolled up her sleeve and showed her a blank space inside her forearm. It was perfectly clean, unlike the rest of her skin.
"This one holds a map," he said. "A literal encoded blueprint of the facility you escaped from. The only way back in."
She blinked. "Why would I want to go back?"
"Because that's where they're keeping the rest of your memories."
As he prepared the micro-injection, she swallowed hard.
"No going back after this?"
"No," he said. "But that's the point."
She nodded.
He injected the vial. A sharp sting. Then—
The world twisted.
She collapsed to her knees as her vision fractured. Lines of light. Spinning coordinates. A voice whispering inside her head—hers, but older, colder.
"Echo, if you're hearing this… it means they failed to kill you."
Marlow's voice echoed somewhere behind the wave of noise. "You okay?! Echo?!"
She gritted her teeth as the glyph seared into her arm, glowing white-hot before settling into a soft amber.
Then the vision stopped.
And she remembered the hallway.
The screams.
The moment she chose to erase herself to survive.
She looked up.
Her name was Echo.
And she wasn't done yet.