The walk back from the cemetery felt like a funeral march. Sebastian stayed quiet beside me, probably trying to process everything we'd learned about the Consortium and my fake identity. But I had other plans.
"We need to make a stop," I said as we got to his car.
"Where?"
"Forgetting Valley. The memory black market."
Sebastian's face went white. "Evira, that place is dangerous. The people down there deal in stolen memories, deleted personalities, black market consciousness transfers. They're not exactly the friendly type."
"Good thing I'm not exactly friendly either these days."
I could see him wanting to argue, but he knew better. The Memory Walker didn't take no for an answer.
We drove down from Memory Hills into the guts of New London. The city changed as we went down - from shiny glass towers to crumbling concrete blocks, from pretty gardens to streets lined with memory clinics advertising "Fast Cash for Painful Memories" and "Forget Your Ex in 30 Minutes or Less."
This was where poor people came to sell their happiness and desperate people came to buy new identities.
The black market operated out of an old subway station called Terminus. Sebastian parked three blocks away because cars got stripped for parts down here faster than you could blink.
"Stay close," I told him as we walked through streets full of memory addicts. These were people who'd sold so much of themselves they barely remembered who they were anymore. They shuffled around like zombies, eyes empty, faces blank.
"Jesus," Sebastian whispered. "I forgot how bad it's gotten."
"This is what your Consortium friends created," I said. "A world where memories are money and people are products."
We got to the entrance to Terminus - a rusted metal door guarded by two guys who looked like they could bench press a truck. But when I looked at them, really looked, I could see their memories floating just under the surface.
One had killed a man for fifty bucks. The other had sold his daughter's first words to buy drugs.
"We're here to see Marcus," I said.
"Marcus don't see nobody without an appointment," the first guard growled.
I smiled and pressed my palm to his head. His memories rushed into me - violent, desperate, pathetic. And then I pushed some back out, but twisted. Different.
He stumbled backward, eyes wide with terror. "What... what did you just..."
"I showed you what happens to people who get in my way," I said pleasantly. "Now, about that appointment?"
Both guards practically threw the door open.
Inside Terminus was like something out of a sci-fi movie. Neon lights flickered in the dark, throwing weird shadows on walls covered in graffiti and old ads. The air smelled like ozone and desperation.
Memory dealers sat at beat-up stalls, selling their stuff to customers who paid with cash, stolen goods, or pieces of their own souls. I could hear bits of conversations as we passed:
"I got childhood memories from some rich kid - pure happiness, never been touched by trauma..."
"Military training packages, complete with combat skills and weapon know-how..."
"First love memories, guaranteed to make you believe in romance again..."
It was sick. People buying and selling pieces of human experience like they were trading cards.
We found Marcus in the deepest part of the station, in what used to be the control room. He was a thin guy with silver hair and eyes that had seen too much. His stall was different from the others - cleaner, more professional. This was where the serious players came to do business.
"Well, well," Marcus said when he saw me. His voice was smooth, classy, totally at odds with his surroundings. "Dr. Evira Grey. I was wondering when you'd show up."
"You know who I am?"
"I make it my business to know everyone in the memory trade. Especially someone with your... unique talents." His eyes flicked to Sebastian. "Mr. Black. Still trying to save her, I see."
"I need to buy something," I said, cutting to the point.
"I figured as much. What are you looking for? Happy memories? Painful ones you want to understand? Or maybe..." He leaned forward, eyes glittering. "Your own memories?"
My heart skipped a beat. "You have memories of mine?"
"Oh my dear girl, I have a whole collection." Marcus waved at a wall of vials behind him, each one glowing with soft light. "Bits of your past lives, pieces of conversations, emotional imprints left behind during your various... transitions."
"How is that possible?"
"Memory deletion isn't perfect," Marcus explained. "When memories get ripped out of a brain, especially traumatic ones, they leave traces. Echoes. Most memory surgeons throw these fragments away as waste. I collect them."
I stared at the vials, each one holding a piece of my forgotten past. "How much?"
"For you? Let's call it a professional courtesy. Though I should warn you - these particular memories aren't pleasant. There's a reason they were deleted."
Sebastian grabbed my arm. "Evira, you don't have to do this. Whatever's in those vials, it's not gonna change anything."
"It might change everything," I said. "I need to know who I really was. All of me."
Marcus picked three vials from the wall and set them on his counter. "These have some of your most vivid memory fragments. The first is from your time as the Memory Walker - before your first death. The second is from your third resurrection, about six months before you died again. The third..."
He paused, looking uncomfortable for the first time.
"The third what?"
"The third is from two weeks ago. Before your current awakening began."
"That's impossible. Two weeks ago I was Dr. Evira Grey, living my normal life."
"Were you?" Marcus picked up the vial and held it to the light. "This memory was pulled from someone experiencing extreme fear. Terror, actually. The kind of fear that comes from discovering something that changes everything."
I reached for the vial, but Marcus pulled it back.
"You sure about this? Some knowledge can't be unknown."
"Give it to me."
Marcus handed me the first vial - the one from my Memory Walker days. "Drink it. The memories will integrate automatically, but the experience can be... intense."
I uncorked the vial and drank it in one gulp. It tasted like copper and electricity.
The memory hit me like a freight train.
I was standing in Sebastian's lab, but younger, harder, more dangerous. My hair was shorter, my clothes were black leather instead of medical scrubs. Sebastian stood across from me, and he looked scared.
"Evira, please," he was saying. "You don't have to do this."
"Don't I?" My voice was cold, empty. "You created this technology to help people, Sebastian. But look what it's become. Look what I've become."
I pointed at the bodies lying around the lab - three researchers who'd been working on memory extraction technology. They weren't dead, but their minds were gone. I'd taken everything - their memories, their skills, their personalities. They were empty shells.
"You're not a monster," Sebastian said. "You're sick. Let me help you."
"Help me?" I laughed, and it sounded like breaking glass. "You want to help me? Then give me your memories of this technology. Give me everything you know about memory extraction so I can destroy it all."
"I can't do that."
"Then you're just like the rest of them. Just another person who wants to use me for my abilities."
I reached toward him, my hand glowing with the power to rip memories from his mind. But Sebastian didn't back away.
"If you're gonna take my memories," he said quietly, "take this one first."
He grabbed my face and kissed me. Not a passionate kiss, but a desperate one. A goodbye.
And in that moment, I saw myself through his eyes. I saw the woman he'd fallen in love with before the Memory Walker ate her alive. I saw the gentle scientist who'd wanted to help trauma victims. I saw the person I used to be.
I pulled away from him, tears streaming down my face.
"I can't save her," I whispered. "She's gone, Sebastian. The woman you loved is gone, and all that's left is this thing wearing her face."
"No," Sebastian said. "She's still in there. I can see her."
But he was wrong. That woman was already dead. I was just the ghost haunting her body.
The memory faded, leaving me gasping on the floor of Marcus's stall. Sebastian was holding me, his face full of worry.
"What did you see?" he asked.
"The truth," I said. "I saw what I really was. A monster who destroyed everything she touched."
"That wasn't you," Sebastian said. "That was the sickness. The stolen memories driving you crazy."
"Was it?" I looked at Marcus. "Give me the second vial."
"Evira, maybe we should—"
"Give it to me."
Marcus handed me the second vial. I drank it before Sebastian could stop me.
This memory was different. Softer. I was in our bedroom, the one I'd seen just hours ago, but I looked different. Healthier. Happy.
Sebastian was asleep beside me, and I was writing in a journal. My handwriting was neat, careful, nothing like the scrawled desperate note from my suicide letter.
"Day 127 since resurrection," I wrote. "The nightmares are getting worse. I remember more each day - the people I killed as the Memory Walker, the lives I destroyed, the terror in Sebastian's eyes when he looked at me."
I paused, chewing on the pen.
"But I also remember loving him. Really loving him, not just the obsessive need to possess him that the Memory Walker felt. This version of love is different. Gentler. It makes me want to be better instead of wanting to eat everything around me."
I looked at Sebastian sleeping peacefully beside me.
"He thinks I don't remember what I was, but I do. Every day, more of it comes back. And every day, I have to choose - do I tell him the truth and break his heart, or do I pretend to be the innocent woman he wants me to be?"
I closed the journal and hid it under my side of the mattress.
"For now, I'll pretend. Because the look in his eyes when he thinks I'm safe and normal... it's worth living a lie."
The second memory faded, and I found myself crying without knowing why.
"She was protecting you," I whispered to Sebastian. "That version of me was lying to protect you from the truth."
"What truth?"
Before I could answer, Marcus handed me the third vial. The one from two weeks ago.
"This is the most recent one," he said. "You sure you want to see it?"
I nodded and drank the memory.
I was Dr. Evira Grey, living my fake life, but something was wrong. I was in my apartment, but it wasn't the middle of the night. It was afternoon, and I was supposed to be at work.
I was looking through my stuff, searching for something. My hands were shaking.
"It has to be here somewhere," I was muttering. "The journal, the photos, something..."
I found it hidden behind my bathroom mirror - a small notebook I didn't remember keeping. When I opened it, the handwriting was mine, but the words were strange.
"They're watching me," it said. "Every day at the hospital, I can feel eyes on me. The patients they send me aren't random. They're testing me, seeing how much power I can use before I remember."
My hands shook as I read further.
"Sebastian thinks he's protecting me, but he's working with them. I saw him talking to men in suits outside the hospital yesterday. They gave him money. Payment for keeping me sedated and happy."
The journal entries got more paranoid, more desperate.
"He's gonna kill me again. Just like the other times. He lets me live just long enough to love him, then he kills me when I start to remember the truth."
The final entry was dated just one day before my current awakening.
"I found the photos under his mattress. Pictures of other women who look exactly like me. Some are labeled 'Version 2' and 'Version 3.' I'm Version 5. There were others before me, and there will be others after me."
"Sebastian Black is a serial killer. And I'm his favorite victim."
The memory ended, and I found myself staring at Marcus in horror.
"That's not possible," Sebastian said. "I would never... Evira, you have to know I would never hurt you."
But doubt was creeping in. The memory felt so real, so vivid. And it explained so much - why I'd been afraid, why my body had reacted with familiarity to Sebastian's touch, why the Consortium had been so confident they could control me.
"Marcus," I said slowly. "You said I wasn't the first Evira to come here looking for memories."
Marcus nodded grimly. "You're the third, actually. The first came about two years ago. Desperate, terrified, convinced that someone was trying to kill her. She bought memories and disappeared. Never saw her again."
"And the second?"
"About eight months ago. She was different - angrier, more dangerous. She bought memories of combat training and weapons know-how. Said she was gonna make someone pay for what they'd done to her."
"What happened to her?"
Marcus shrugged. "Found dead in the river a week later. Officially ruled a suicide, but the wounds suggested otherwise."
I felt sick. How many versions of me had lived and died? How many had figured out the truth only to be silenced?
"There's something else," Marcus said quietly. "Something I haven't told you."
"What?"
"The memories you just drank? They weren't deleted from your brain during surgery. They were pulled out while you were awake and sold to me by someone who knew you'd eventually come looking for them."
"Who?"
Marcus looked right at Sebastian. "Someone who wanted you to discover the truth in exactly this way. Someone who's been planning this revelation for a very long time."
Sebastian's face had gone white. "You think I... you think I sold her memories to manipulate her?"
"I don't think anything," Marcus said. "I just deal in facts. And the fact is, someone who had close access to Dr. Evira Grey pulled these memories and brought them to me with very specific instructions about when and how to give them to you."
"Instructions from who?" I asked.
"Someone who knew you very well. Someone who could predict exactly when you'd start questioning your identity and exactly where you'd come looking for answers."
I stared at Sebastian, trying to read his face. Was he the loving husband trying to protect me, or was he the manipulative killer the memories suggested?
"Sebastian," I said carefully. "Tell me the truth. Have you been working with the Consortium this whole time?"
"Yes," he admitted. "But not the way you think—"
"Have you been manipulating my memories?"
"Only to protect you—"
"Have you killed me before?"
Sebastian was quiet for a long moment. When he spoke, his voice was barely a whisper.
"Not directly. But... my actions have led to your deaths. Every time."
The admission hit me like a punch to the gut. I backed away from him, my hand moving automatically to my throat.
"You're the reason I keep dying," I said.
"Evira, please, let me explain—"
"Explain what? How you've been murdering me over and over? How you've been working with the people who want to turn me into a weapon?"
"It's not like that!"
But I wasn't listening anymore. The memories I'd absorbed were mixing with my own thoughts, creating a picture I didn't want to see but couldn't ignore.
Sebastian wasn't my savior. He was my killer.
"How long?" I asked. "How long have you been planning this little revelation? Did you pay Marcus to save those specific memories? Did you set up this whole thing so I'd discover the truth in the most dramatic way possible?"
Sebastian's silence was answer enough.
I turned to Marcus. "Is there a way out of here that doesn't involve going past the guards?"
"There's a service tunnel that leads to the old water treatment plant. But Evira, you should know—"
"What?"
"There's one more thing. Something the other versions of you discovered right before they died."
"What is it?"
Marcus reached under his counter and pulled out a final vial. This one was different from the others - darker, more scary looking.
"This memory came from the original Memory Walker. From the very first time you died. It's the memory of your actual death, seen through your own eyes."
"Give it to me."
"You sure? This memory... it might change everything you think you know about your relationship with Sebastian."
"I said give it to me."
Marcus handed me the vial, but before I could drink it, Sebastian grabbed my wrist.
"Please don't," he said. "Whatever that memory shows you, it's not the whole truth. There are things you don't understand, circumstances that—"
I pulled away from him and drank the memory in one gulp.
I was dying.
The lab was dark except for emergency lighting. Alarms were going off. Sebastian was doing CPR, tears streaming down his face.
"Come back to me," he was saying between compressions. "Please, Evira, come back."
But I was already gone, watching my own body from somewhere above. And in that moment of death, I could see everything clearly for the first time in years.
The Memory Walker hadn't been a disease or a side effect of absorbing too many memories. It had been a creation. A personality deliberately built and stuck in my mind.
Sebastian hadn't been trying to cure me. He'd been trying to perfect me.
The gentle woman he claimed to love had never existed. She'd been a mask, a cover story for the weapon he'd been building.
And every time I died and came back, I came back a little more perfect. A little more controlled. A little more exactly what he wanted me to be.
Sebastian Black wasn't my husband. He was my creator.
And I was his masterpiece.
The memory ended, and I found myself staring at Sebastian with new eyes.
"You made me," I whispered. "All of it - the Memory Walker, the resurrections, the different personalities - you made all of it."
Sebastian's face fell apart. "Evira—"
"I'm not your wife. I'm your experiment."
I started backing toward the service tunnel Marcus had mentioned, but Sebastian followed me.
"You have to understand," he said desperately. "I did love you. The original you. But she was dying - the memory absorption was killing her. I thought if I could just... rebuild her personality, save the parts of her that I loved..."
"You turned me into a science project."
"I saved you!"
"You killed me!" I screamed. "You killed the original Evira and replaced her with a bunch of puppets designed to love you!"
"That's not—"
"Stay away from me."
I turned and ran for the service tunnel, but Sebastian's voice followed me through the darkness.
"Evira! You don't understand! There are things about your resurrection that even I don't know! You're not just my creation - you're something more!"
But I was already gone, disappearing into the tunnels under New London.
Behind me, I could hear Marcus chuckling.
"Same as the others," he said to Sebastian. "They all run when they learn the truth. But they always come back. They always come back for revenge."