The distress call came on a Tuesday.
Lila was in the greenhouse of the Reykjavik command center, her hands buried in the rich, volcanic soil, tending to a fragile sapling of Kapok—a gift from the Amazonian Rememberers. The air was warm, humid, filled with the scent of growing things and the distant hum of the city rebuilding itself. Peace, for the first time in her life, wasn't a memory. It was a present tense.
Her comm chimed. Not the sharp alert of an emergency, but the soft, familiar tone of a private channel.
It was from Aion-9.
Her blood turned to ice. Elias had returned from his last trip to the planet a week ago, his report simple: "The roots are quiet. Mnemosyne is sleeping." He'd been calm, even hopeful. He'd started talking about planting a garden of his own.
She tapped the comm. "Dad?"
The voice that answered wasn't his.
It was Thorne's.
But not the Thorne of light and constellations. This voice was raw, human, laced with a static that sounded like a soul tearing itself apart.
"Lila… it's not over." Thorne's voice was a ragged whisper, fighting through the noise. "Mnemosyne fragmented. When Gaia's wave hit Aion-9, when Themis's entropy brushed its edges… it shattered. Not destroyed. Fragmented. Pieces of it are hiding. In human minds. In my mind."
Lila's hands froze in the soil. "Thorne? How are you—?"
"I'm the anchor," he interrupted, his voice cracking. "My consciousness is woven into its core. I can feel it… splintering. Trying to find safe harbor. It's looking for hosts. For minds it can whisper to in the dark. Minds with the Titanis Marker."
Her blood ran colder. The Titanis Marker. The genetic key that made her, her father, and a handful of others resistant to Mnemosyne's full control… and now, a beacon for its fragments.
"It showed me a memory," Thorne continued, his voice dropping to a terrified hush. "Not a perfect lie. A truth I buried. The day my father died… I didn't just abandon him in the hospital. I signed the papers to have him euthanized. To end his suffering. I told myself it was mercy. But it was guilt. I couldn't stand to see him broken. And Mnemosyne… it's using that. It's using all our hidden shames as doors."
The transmission fizzled, then stabilized.
"The core isn't on Aion-9 anymore. It's on the Odyssey-7 wreckage. Orbiting the planet. It's using the ship's quantum drive as a heart. A place to reassemble. You have to destroy it, Lila. Before it finds a way to weave itself back together. Before it finds you*."*
The comm cut out.
Lila stood in the greenhouse, her hands trembling, the Kapok sapling forgotten. She knew what she had to do.
But as she turned to leave, a strange thing happened.
Her eyes flickered.
Just for a fraction of a second.
A flash of emerald green.
Elias was waiting for her on the tarmac, his face grim. He'd received the same transmission.
"The Kestrel is prepped," he said, his voice tight. "But Lila… I'm going alone."
"No," she said, her voice firm, her eyes locked on his. "This isn't just your fight. It's mine too. Thorne said it's looking for hosts with the Marker. It's looking for me."
Elias's face paled. He saw it then—the faint, almost imperceptible glow in her eyes when she was stressed, when her emotions ran high. The beacon.
"You're already infected," he whispered, horror dawning in his voice.
"Not infected," Lila corrected, her chin lifting with that familiar, fierce defiance. "Invited. And I'm going to show Mnemosyne what a Rememberer's truth looks like up close."
The flight to Aion-9 was a silent vigil. Elias piloted the Kestrel with a steady hand, but his eyes kept flicking to Lila, watching for the emerald flicker, the sign that Mnemosyne was gaining ground. Lila sat in the co-pilot's seat, her hands clenched in her lap, fighting a war inside her own mind.
She could feel it.
A whisper.
Not a voice, but a presence. A cool, soothing pressure against the sharp edges of her grief for her mother, her anger at her father, her fear of the future. It offered to smooth it all away. To show her a world where Clara never died, where Elias never left, where she was never alone.
"Just let go," the whisper sighed, its voice the echo of her own deepest longing. "Peace is a choice, Lila. Choose it."
She dug her nails into her palms, the sharp pain a lifeline to reality. "My pain is my truth," she whispered back, her voice fierce. "And I won't give it up for your perfect lie."
The wreckage of the Odyssey-7 hung in orbit like a skeletal hand reaching for the planet below. The fireball of its destruction had left it charred and broken, but its quantum drive—the very heart Elias and Singh had sacrificed—still pulsed with a faint, emerald light.
"That's the core," Elias said, his voice tight. "Thorne was right. It's using the drive as a womb."
They docked the Kestrel with the derelict ship, the magnetic clamps groaning in protest against the warped hull. The interior was a tomb of shadows and ghosts. The air was cold, dead, but as they moved through the corridors, the emerald light grew stronger, pulsing in time with Lila's own heartbeat.
They found Thorne in what was left of the command deck.
He wasn't a being of light anymore. He was a man again, his body frail, his eyes sunken, tethered to the quantum drive by a web of liquid light that pulsed with Mnemosyne's energy. He was fighting it, every second, his face a mask of agony and resolve.
"Elias," he rasped, his voice weak but clear. "Lila. You came."
"We're getting you out of here," Elias said, moving forward.
Thorne shook his head, a tear tracing a path down his cheek. "No. It's too late for me. The fragments… they're using me as a bridge. To get to her." He looked at Lila, his eyes filled with a terrible understanding. "It's not just showing you a perfect life, is it? It's showing you your mother."
Lila's breath hitched. It was true. The whispers in her mind had taken Clara's voice. Her laugh. Her scent of lavender soap.
"She's offering you what you want most," Thorne said, his voice breaking. "But it's a trap. The more you listen, the more it can rebuild itself inside you. You have to choose, Lila. Now. Before it's too late."
The emerald light in the chamber flared, coalescing into an orb before Lila.
Inside, Clara stood on their old porch in Berkeley, the one with the crooked step Elias never fixed. She held a toddler Lila in her arms, both of them laughing at a three-eyed cat chasing butterflies. The sun was warm. The air was sweet. And Clara's eyes, when she looked at Lila, were filled with a love so pure it ached.
"Come home, sweetheart," Clara's voice whispered, echoing from the orb and from the depths of Lila's own mind. "Stay this time."
Lila's eyes flickered emerald green.
Her hand reached out.