Isaac drifted in and out of awareness like a signal struggling through interference.
Sound came first—muffled voices, distant and layered. Then sensation: the ache in his ribs, the metallic taste of blood, the pressure of rough fabric beneath his fingers. He tried to open his eyes and failed.
"He's breathing."
"Barely."
"Keep him moving."
The words anchored him.
Someone was carrying him. Someone cared enough to risk being seen.
When he finally managed to open his eyes, the world tilted. He was inside a moving transport—dark, windowless, vibrating with the hum of an electric engine. Emergency lights cast everything in red.
Mara sat across from him, her face tight with fear she hadn't let herself show before.
"You're awake," she said softly. "Good. Stay that way."
"What… happened?" Isaac croaked.
"You became inconvenient," Jonah replied from the front. "They don't like that."
Fragments returned—Hale's broadcast, the kneeling figures, the chant that had grown too loud to erase.
"Alina," Isaac whispered.
Mara nodded. "She didn't survive."
The words hit harder than the pulse weapon.
Isaac closed his eyes.
"They killed her on live feed," Ruth said quietly. "And it backfired."
The transport slowed, then stopped. Hands lifted Isaac again, carrying him into cool air and the smell of old stone. An underground station, long abandoned, repurposed by the network.
People watched as he was laid down. Not in awe. Not in fear.
In recognition.
He felt it—dozens of minds holding onto his name, his words, his presence. It was overwhelming. For someone who had once been erased, being remembered felt almost painful.
"You can't go back out there," Mara said once he'd been stabilized. "They'll kill you."
Isaac stared at the cracked ceiling. "They're already killing people."
"Yes," she said. "But not you. Not yet."
That was the problem.
By morning, the city had changed again.
The protests hadn't stopped. They'd multiplied. People stood in lines across districts, each person speaking a name aloud, passing it to the next like a sacred obligation.
No banners.
No demands.
Just memory.
The government declared a state of emergency.
Curfews were announced and ignored. Networks were throttled. Power cuts spread unpredictably. Surveillance drones patrolled openly now, no longer pretending neutrality.
And still, the names continued.
Director Hale convened an emergency council behind sealed doors.
"They're turning remembrance into defiance," one official said.
Hale's expression was drawn, his calm beginning to fracture. "Defiance can be crushed."
"Not without martyrs," another replied. "And martyrs multiply memory."
Silence fell.
Then Hale spoke, his voice low. "Then we remove the symbol."
Across the city, units received new orders.
TARGET: ISAAC KORANTENG.
STATUS: UNREGISTERED AGITATOR.
DIRECTIVE: TERMINATION.
The network felt it immediately—the pressure, the narrowing focus. Isaac sat up slowly as the warning rippled through the minds connected to his.
"They're coming for me," he said.
Mara's face hardened. "We can move you."
"No," Isaac replied. "Running makes me a ghost again."
Jonah swallowed. "Then what?"
Isaac stood, unsteady but resolute. "Then I let them see the cost."
They argued. They pleaded.
He listened.
Then he stepped away.
The city center was under lockdown by the time Isaac reached it. Barricades blocked the streets, but people parted as he passed, recognizing him not from screens, but from stories.
Someone touched his arm. "We remember."
That was enough.
He climbed the steps of the old civic hall—a building older than the Registry, its stone walls etched with names long since forgotten.
Drones descended, weapons armed.
Isaac raised his hands.
"I am Isaac Koranteng," he said clearly.
The words rippled outward.
"I worked for the Registry," he continued. "I erased people so you wouldn't have to see them."
The crowd held its breath.
"I believed forgetting was mercy," Isaac said. "I was wrong."
A drone speaker crackled to life. "You are ordered to stand down."
Isaac ignored it.
"They took names because names connect us," he said. "They told us memory was dangerous. But forgetting was how they controlled us."
Security forces moved into position.
Isaac felt fear then—real, human fear. His heart raced. His hands trembled.
And still he spoke.
"I don't ask you to fight," he said. "I ask you to remember. Each other. The erased. The truth."
A shot rang out.
Isaac staggered.
Another hit his shoulder.
He fell to his knees.
The crowd screamed—but they did not scatter.
They surged forward, chanting names louder than before.
The drones hesitated.
The soldiers froze.
The city watched.
Isaac collapsed onto the stone steps, vision blurring. He felt hands beneath him, voices calling, but they were already fading.
As darkness closed in, he felt something else.
Not erasure.
Continuity.
His name carried forward, mouth to mouth, mind to mind, beyond the reach of any system.
And he understood, at last, the woman's final truth:
To be remembered is not to be safe.
It is to be human.