The copper extraction chair hummed at exactly sixty hertz when I powered it on at 2:47 AM. The sound made my teeth ache, same as it had every night for the past eight years. But tonight was different. Tonight, I was about to break the most sacred rule of the Underground Memory Guild.
Never extract from the dead.
The memory chip felt ice-cold between my fingers, smaller than a contact lens but containing thirty seconds that would either destroy me or set me free. Elena's final thirty seconds. My twin sister's last moment of consciousness before she "accidentally" fell from the Blackstone Tower penthouse three months ago.
I'd been staring at this chip for an hour, sitting in my converted speakeasy beneath Chinatown where the air still carried hints of century-old opium and fresh jasmine tea from Mrs. Chen's shop upstairs. The red velvet walls absorbed sound so well that even the hum of the chair seemed muffled, like a secret whispered in a confessional.
My hands shook as I loaded the chip into the extraction port. The morgue attendant who'd slipped it to me had warned that death memories were different—more vivid, more violent, more likely to leave permanent scars on whoever viewed them. But I needed to see. I needed to know if Elena's death really was the accident the police claimed, or if someone had pushed my sister off that roof.
The chair's neural interface crown descended with a soft pneumatic hiss. I'd modified this particular chair myself, enhancing it far beyond the legal limits. While the Memory Exchange downtown processed sanitized experiences in their sterile chrome towers, I dealt with the raw stuff—the memories too dark, too powerful, or too profitable for the regulated market.
I took three deep breaths, a habit I'd developed to center myself before each extraction. Then I pressed the activation button.
The world exploded into Elena's consciousness.
I'm standing on the penthouse balcony, sixty stories above Neo Francisco's glittering streets. The wind whips my hair across my face as I clutch the railing, my knuckles white with tension. My heart pounds so hard I can feel it in my throat.
"You don't understand what you're asking me to do," I hear myself say, but the voice is Elena's, not mine. I'm experiencing her memory as if it's my own, feeling every sensation she felt in those final moments.
"I understand perfectly." The voice comes from behind me, cold and measured. But I can't turn around—Elena's memory is locked on the city lights below, the way fear had frozen her gaze in that direction.
"People will die if this information gets out," the voice continues. "Innocent people. Is your conscience worth their lives?"
I feel Elena's resolve strengthen, her spine straightening despite the fear coursing through her veins. "Innocent? These people you're protecting—they're monsters. What they're doing to those children, those families... it has to stop."
"Then you've made your choice."
The sound of footsteps approaching. Elena's head starts to turn, finally, and I catch a glimpse of a figure in the shadows—tall, wearing an expensive suit, face partially obscured by the darkness. But there's something about the way he moves, something familiar—
And then Elena is falling.
The sensation of weightlessness, of terror so pure it burns through every nerve ending. The lights of the city rushing up to meet her, growing larger and larger until—
I ripped the neural crown off my head, gasping. The memory cut off just before impact, the way death memories always did. But I'd seen enough. I'd seen him.
Adrian Blackstone.
The billionaire heir to the Blackstone Empire had been on that balcony. But the expression on his face in that brief glimpse before Elena fell—was it guilt or horror? Was he the killer, or had he witnessed something he desperately wanted to prevent?
I rubbed the scar on my left ring finger, an old habit that intensified when I was stressed. Elena and I had given ourselves matching cuts when we were eight, tiny deliberate wounds so people could tell us apart. Elena had always been the brave one, the one who asked questions and demanded answers. I'd been content to stay in shadows, to manipulate and control from behind the scenes.
But Elena was gone now. And someone was going to pay for that.
My hands were steadier now as I ejected the memory chip and slipped it into the hidden compartment of Elena's necklace—a simple silver chain I'd worn every day since her funeral. The chip disappeared inside the hollow pendant, invisible to anyone who didn't know where to look.
The Underground Memory Guild's second rule echoed in my mind: what happens in the chair, stays in the chair. But some secrets were too dangerous to keep buried. Elena had been investigating something big enough to get her killed, and that something involved the most powerful family in Neo Francisco.
I locked the extraction chair and checked the security feeds Maya had installed throughout my clinic. The alley outside remained empty except for a stray cat picking through garbage. No sign of corporate surveillance or police interest. Yet.
As I climbed the narrow stairs to my apartment above the clinic, I was already planning my next move. Adrian Blackstone didn't know he had a witness to whatever happened on that balcony. He didn't know Elena had a twin sister with a talent for memory manipulation that went far beyond anything the legal market offered.
But he would know soon enough.
In the memory trading business, everyone was either a buyer or a seller. And Adrian Blackstone was about to become my most valuable client—whether he knew it or not.
I poured myself two fingers of whiskey, Elena's favorite brand, and raised the glass to her photograph on my mantelpiece. She looked so much like me it was unsettling—same amber eyes, same stubborn jawline, same way of tilting her head when she was thinking. But where I'd learned to hide my thoughts behind careful masks, Elena had worn her heart on her sleeve. It's what made her a great investigator and a terrible secret keeper.
"I'm going to find out who did this to you," I whispered to her image. "And I'm going to make them pay in ways they never imagined."
The whiskey burned going down, but it helped steady my nerves. Tomorrow, I would begin the most dangerous con of my career. I would get close to Adrian Blackstone, find out what he knew about Elena's death, and decide whether he deserved my mercy or my revenge.
But first, I needed to understand exactly what Elena had been investigating. And for that, I'd need to dig deeper into memories that someone had gone to great lengths to bury.
I walked to my bedroom window and looked out at the neon-soaked streets of Neo Francisco. Somewhere in this city of eight million people, Elena's killer was sleeping peacefully, probably convinced they'd gotten away with murder. They had no idea that their victim's memories lived on, and that her twin sister had just watched them commit their crime.
The memory extraction had left me with more questions than answers, but one thing was crystal clear: Adrian Blackstone held the key to everything. Whether he was Elena's killer or the only witness to her murder, he was my path to the truth.
And tomorrow, he would walk right into my web.
I finished the whiskey and set the empty glass on Elena's photograph. In the morning, I would become Luna Hayes, master memory merchant and avenger of the dead. But tonight, I was just a sister who missed her twin more than breathing, holding onto thirty seconds of stolen time that might be all I had left of the only person who'd ever truly known me.
The clock on my nightstand read 3:47 AM. In four hours, my regular clients would start arriving, desperate to sell their happiness to pay rent or buy someone else's skills to advance their careers. The Memory Exchange would open for legal business, processing sanitized experiences for approved customers.
But in the shadows beneath the city, the real memory trade never stopped. And I was about to remind everyone why Luna Hayes was the most dangerous dealer in the business.
Elena's investigation had gotten her killed. Now it was going to get me justice.
I pulled the neural crown interface headband from my nightstand drawer and placed it on my forehead—a modified version that let me access stored memories without the extraction chair. If I was going to hunt Adrian Blackstone, I needed to understand everything Elena had discovered about his family.
Time to see what other secrets my dead sister had left behind.