The whisper from the terminal seemed to hang in the air long after the screen had gone dark. They're editing me.
Damian pushed back from the desk, the chair rolling too smoothly on its casters, a little too silent. The quiet of the apartment was no longer just empty; it was watchful. Every hum from the climate control felt like a held breath. Every faint pulse of light from the city beyond the window was a blinking eye.
Editing. The word was a virus, corrupting everything it touched. His memories, the very foundation of his self, were now suspect. That perfect, anchor memory of the lake—was it real? Or was it just a beautifully rendered piece of set-dressing, inserted to keep him calm, to keep him from asking the wrong questions? The nausea returned, a low roll in his gut. This wasn't the disorientation of a new body. This was the vertigo of a man realizing the ground beneath him was made of glass, and someone was holding a hammer.
He had to know. He had to find a frayed edge, a seam in the perfect tapestry of his past.
Elara.
The name was a key, turning in a lock he didn't know he had. With it came a flood of sensations that felt more real than anything in this sterile apartment: the whisper of silk against skin, the scent of jasmine and ozone, the sound of a laugh that was both melodic and sharp enough to cut glass. But no face. Her face remained stubbornly blurred, like a photograph smeared by a thumb. V2.0 had said it was fuzzy. For Damian, it was a void, an outline waiting to be filled.
He turned back to the terminal. His hands, these perfect, steady hands, trembled slightly as he navigated to the communications archive. He typed her name into the search bar: Elara.
The system spun for a moment that stretched into an eternity. Then, a result.
ELARA VOSS - Communications Restricted.
Restricted. The word was a solid, impenetrable wall. He tried to access the message history. A single, cold line of text appeared.
Access Denied. Biometric authorization insufficient. Administrative override required.
Administrative override. Elysian Archives. The very people V2.0 had accused of tampering. A cold fury began to burn through the fear. They had walled her off from him. Why? What was so dangerous about a memory of a woman?
He needed another way. If the official channels were blocked, he had to find the back alleys of his own life. V2.0 was paranoid, yes, but he was also a man who had worked in data security for forty years. He wouldn't have put all his secrets in one place, especially not a place controlled by the entity he distrusted.
Damian stood and began to pace, the plush carpet absorbing his footsteps. His eyes scanned the apartment, looking for anything that felt out of place, anything that wasn't part of the bland, corporate aesthetic. The sofa, the chair, the desk. All clean, all anonymous.
He walked into the bedroom. The bed was neatly made, the covers stretched tight. A single lamp on a nightstand. He opened the closet. Rows of identical grey and black tunics hung there, orderly and soulless. He ran his hands along the walls, feeling for any irregularity, any hint of a hidden panel. Nothing.
Frustration boiled over. He slammed his fist against the closet's back panel. The impact sent a jolt up his arm, but the panel gave a hollow, slightly different sound than the solid walls. He froze. He knocked again. Tap. Tap-tap. Definitely hollow.
His fingers traced the edges of the panel. There were no visible seams, no catches. It was meant to be seamless. He pressed along the top edge, then the sides. Nothing. He pushed at the center. It didn't budge. Desperate, he pressed the palm of his hand flat against the center and pushed downward. There was a faint click, and the panel swung inward on a silent hinge.
A hidden compartment. No larger than a shoebox. Inside, there was no data-slate, no mysterious device. Just a single, physical object.
A key.
It was an archaic thing, made of tarnished brass, heavy and real in his hand. It felt alien, a piece of a forgotten world. There was no digital signature, no biometric lock. Just a simple, mechanical key. Attached to it was a small, circular tag made of worn leather. Stamped into the leather was an address: Unit 734, The Aerie.
The Aerie. It was the oldest residential wing of the Arcology, a relic from the initial construction, before everything became seamless and AI-controlled. A place for those who valued, or could afford, a semblance of old-world privacy. A place off the main grid.
This was it. This was V2.0's dead drop. A secret he couldn't, or wouldn't, digitize.
Damian pocketed the key, the cold metal a secret weight against his thigh. He had a direction. But getting to The Aerie without attracting the attention of Aegis or the Archivist would be impossible. He was a rat in a glass maze.
He returned to the main room and stood by the window, watching the airborne transport lights weave through the canyon of towers. He needed a distraction. A reason to be in The Aerie that wouldn't raise flags.
An idea, fragile and dangerous, began to form. The integration protocol. Dr. Thorne had said familiar places could trigger memories. What was more familiar than a previous home? If he could convince Aris that he felt a pull, a fragmented memory tied to The Aerie, she might authorize a visit as part of his therapy. It was a thin excuse, but it was all he had.
He was about to comm her when his door chime sounded, soft and melodic. His heart jumped into his throat. Rourke? The Archivist?
He smoothed his features, trying to look like a man confused and fragile, not a man with a stolen key burning a hole in his pocket. "Enter."
The door slid open. It wasn't Rourke or Aris.
A woman stood there. She was older, perhaps in her late sixties, her face lined with a life that Damian's new body couldn't comprehend. She wore the simple, functional clothes of a service worker. In her hands, she held a small, potted plant with delicate purple flowers. Her eyes were red-rimmed, puffy from recent tears.
She looked at him, and a complicated wave of emotion passed over her face—shock, grief, and a flicker of hope so painful it was hard to look at.
"Mr. Grey?" her voice was whisper-thin. "I… I heard you were back."
Damian just stared, his carefully constructed plan evaporating. He had no idea who she was.
"I'm sorry," he said, the words feeling inadequate. "The restoration… my memory…"
Her face fell, the hope dying instantly. She nodded, swallowing hard. "Of course. I'm Marta. I… your V2.0, he was kind to me. He loved these." She gestured weakly with the plant. "He said they reminded him that things could still grow, even here. I thought… I thought you might like to have it."
She held out the plant. Damian took it numbly, the terracotta pot warm from her hands. The flowers smelled faintly of pepper and earth.
"Thank you," he said, his voice thick with an emotion he didn't understand—a grief for a man he never knew, a connection to a life that felt like a story he'd been told.
Marta gave him a sad, watery smile. "Welcome back, sir." She turned and shuffled away down the hall.
Damian stood in the doorway, holding the plant. It was the first real, living thing in this entire apartment. A kindness from a ghost. And as he looked at it, a memory, sharp and clear and utterly unexpected, stabbed into his mind.
Not the lake. A different room. Smaller. The smell of soil. A different woman, younger, her back to him, humming as she repotted a seedling. She turns, and for a split second, her face is clear. Amber eyes, crinkled at the corners with a smile. Elara.
Then it was gone.
The pot nearly slipped from his fingers. It wasn't a fuzzy, polished memory. It was raw, unfiltered. Real.
V2.0 hadn't just left him a key. He'd left him a truth. And someone had tried very, very hard to bury it.