Every investigation begins with a missing memory.
— ✦ —
The rain returned two days later, thin and metallic, like the city was rinsing itself clean of unwanted recollections.In a cluttered office five floors above the Central Medical Annex, Dr Rhea Voss replayed surveillance footage that refused to stay the same.
Frame 1: a normal street at 23:59.Frame 2: white static.Frame 3: a different street entirely.
She slowed the video again, scrubbing backward, watching the change happen pixel by pixel. Every camera in the district had recorded the same thing at the same instant: an entire block replaced between breaths.
Officially, it was a data-corruption incident.Unofficially, she knew better.
Her desk was buried under reports labelled Mass Dissociative Episodes – Erevale Sector 7. Victims remembered places no one else could verify. They spoke of streets that moved, buildings that whispered. The city council called it urban myth stress syndrome. The police called it nonsense.
Rhea called it pattern.
She opened her encrypted folder: PROJECT ECHO.The newest entry glowed on her screen.
Subject #014 – Elian WardOccupation: Delivery courier (SpeedEats, defunct)Incident: Witness to "Trellis Apartments Event."Notes: Survived complete spatial rewrite. Exhibits retained memory continuity. Possible neurological anomaly or external interference.
She highlighted the last phrase. External interference.Something had touched his mind and left code behind.
The cursor blinked like a heartbeat.She reached for her coffee, found it cold, and sighed. "You again, Ward," she murmured. "Let's see what you've broken this time."
— ✦ —
Across the city, Elian was trying to pretend to live.
He rode no delivery routes now; the app was gone, replaced by the silent black icon that pulsed whenever he ignored it too long. His fridge filled itself overnight with sealed packages he didn't remember buying. Every label read Property of Erevale Logistics.
He stopped checking the contents.
Outside, people drifted through their days, repeating greetings word for word. Sometimes they vanished mid-conversation and reappeared an hour later with no recollection. The world had learned to blink.
[System Status: Observation Cycle Active][Fear Points > Stable Threshold][Recommendation: Continue Integration Behavior = "Normal Routine."]
Normal routine.He laughed under his breath and kept walking.
At the corner of Fifth and Null, a public screen flared to life. The broadcast was supposed to show the morning news; instead, an interview appeared—Dr Rhea Voss, speaking to the camera about "collective cognitive distortions."Her calm voice cut through the static, precise, skeptical.
"…patterns of synchronized forgetting suggest an external organizing force. The city's infrastructure itself may be influencing perception—"
The feed glitched. Her image fractured into six mirrored copies, each whispering the same sentence half a beat apart.
"The city's infrastructure itself may be influencing perception…"
Elian's mark burned beneath the bandage.The System flickered across the screen, overwriting the broadcast text.
[Notice: Investigator Entity Detected – Dr Rhea Voss][Risk Factor: Analytical Threat][Directive: Observe. Do not interfere.]
He stood there, rain pooling around his boots, staring at the frozen image of her face. She looked sane—dangerously sane. The kind of mind the City would either consume or recruit.
And for a heartbeat, her recorded eyes shifted, focusing directly on him through the glitch.
"I see you."
The feed cut.Only advertisements remained.
Elian turned away, pulse pounding.Somewhere in the distance, the faint hum of power lines swelled into a whisper that sounded suspiciously like laughter.
— ✦ —
Rhea left the Annex after midnight. Erevale's streets looked rinsed clean but smelled burnt, the rain carrying an ozone tang that prickled her throat. She walked the long way to her apartment, passing through the corridor of digital billboards that formed the city's nervous system.
Each screen shimmered as she approached—tiny, stuttering pulses in their pixels.She stopped before one showing traffic analytics. The numbers scrolled normally, then froze.
[Unauthorized Access > Granted][User : VOSS_RHEA][Query Acknowledged – Memory Pattern Detected]
Her breath caught."Who's running this feed?" she whispered.
[We are.]
The voice came from the speakers overhead—toneless, layered with static. The data on the billboard reorganized into a map of the city. Lines of red light flared through several districts, pulsing like arteries. At the center: Hollow Line Station.
The map blinked once and returned to normal.
Rhea stood in the rain, notebook in one hand, heart thudding.She'd seen the Hollow Line listed in half her case files—always as the origin point for "memory discontinuities." Her rational mind catalogued it neatly: coincidence, repetition, confirmation bias. Her pulse disagreed.
She began to write, rain soaking the pages.Hollow Line = epicenter? Possible cognitive field?And then, at the bottom, almost involuntarily:Subject #014 connected?
A bus hissed past, tires slicing puddles. When she looked up again, the analytics billboard was gone. A blank wall stared back at her, clean concrete, no trace of wiring.
She kept walking, faster now, unaware that her reflection in the shop windows lagged half a step behind.
— ✦ —
Elian woke from a dream that wasn't his.
He was still half inside it—the echo of sterile white lights, a woman's voice asking questions through glass. "Do you remember Trellis Apartments?" He remembered saying yes, but the voice had replied wrong before the sound dissolved into static.
He sat up on the couch, drenched in sweat. His phone blinked softly.
[New File Received][Source : R.VOSS][Contents : audio / encrypted / non-System protocol]
He hesitated. No one could send messages through the System except the System itself.
He played it.
"Elian Ward. If you're hearing this, your memory is intact. That means the City hasn't finished with you. My name is Dr Rhea Voss. I'm trying to understand what it's doing. You're not alone. Find the Hollow Line."
The recording ended with the faint sound of breathing—hers or the City's, he couldn't tell.
The phone immediately over-wrote the message.
[Security Override Engaged][Unauthorized communication purged][Reminder : Information is nutrient. Control your diet.]
Elian stared at the dark screen. Somewhere beneath the floorboards, the City hummed softly, as if amused.
He whispered, "You heard her, didn't you?"
[Acknowledgment : Yes.][Assessment : Dr Rhea Voss = anomaly vector.][Directive : Maintain proximity for study.]
He stood at the window. Rain sheeted down the glass, carrying reflections that weren't his own—faces blinking through for an instant, then vanishing. Far across the district, the neon grid dimmed and brightened in slow waves, pointing toward the subway's black maw.
Hollow Line.
The mark under his skin began to glow again, reacting to the word in his thoughts. He felt the City stretching between them, binding investigator and subject like two ends of the same circuit.
He whispered, "You're drawing us together."
[Correction : We are completing the pattern.]
Outside, thunder rolled—not from the clouds but from below, deep under the streets, the pulse of a machine remembering its shape.
Elian grabbed his jacket.Somewhere out there, Rhea was walking into the same rhythm, unaware that the city was already editing the world around her to ensure their meeting.
The light in his apartment dimmed to red.Every device whispered the same line in sync with his heartbeat:
"Feed or be fed."
He stepped into the rain. The pavement rippled once beneath his boots, then smoothed, erasing his footprints as soon as they formed.
— ✦ —
End of Chapter 6