The darkness had seemed endless.
Then came the light.
A white, harsh, artificial light—so violent it tore a hoarse groan from him. Elias blinked, unable to understand where he was. The ceiling above him was smooth, too clean. Too perfect.
He inhaled.
Pain exploded.
His muscles screamed. His joints burned as if they had been forced back to life too quickly. Every breath pulled at his rib cage, awakening memories of bullets, fire, collapse.
He was alive.
Barely.
He slowly turned his head.
Metal tables surrounded him. Aligned. Cold. On each of them, bodies covered with gray sheets. Anonymous. Silent. The poor. The forgotten.
A public morgue.
The place where those no one claimed were brought. Those who died without status, without protection. Here, death was not sacred. It was functional.
Along the walls, carts carried small data keys, stored in numbered compartments. Each key held what remained of a life: extracted memories, fragments of identity, residual emotions.
Lives reduced to files.
Cataloged.
Stored.
Ready to be used.
Grief struck him all at once.
Not gently.
Not gradually.
Brutally.
A hand rested on his arm.
"Easy… you're safe…"
Instinct took over.
Before the sentence could end, Elias grabbed the hand, twisted, and closed his fingers around a throat. He rose in one fluid motion, lifting the woman off the floor effortlessly. His blue eyes were empty, icy, still trapped in war and mourning.
The doctor choked, her feet kicking in the air.
For a second, Elias did not see a woman.
He saw a threat.
Then the world snapped back into place.
He released her.
The doctor fell backward, gasping, too shocked to scream. Elias remained seated on the table, breath ragged, fists clenched.
"How…" he said at last, his voice rough.
"How did I get here?"
He looked up at her.
"Who killed my wife?"
The doctor stepped back.
"You were found unconscious," she explained. "Three bullet wounds. Internal bleeding. Burns. It's a miracle you're still alive."
She hesitated, then added:
"Here… when someone dies without official identification, we perform a partial extraction of memories. For archiving. For relatives… when there are any."
The word landed wrong.
"The woman who was with you died upon arrival."
The world tipped.
Elias did not answer. His gaze emptied. As if something inside him had detached—silently.
Something pressed against his palm.
He looked down.
A black data key. Simple. Worn at the edges.
A single number engraved on it.
11.
Images surged without warning.
The forest.
The gunfire.
The fire.
Her.
He slowly closed his fingers around the key.
Then he stood.
Without a word.
Without looking back.
He left the morgue behind—leaving the white light, the nameless bodies… and the proof that even death now belonged to a system.