The human brain isn't built for echoes.
Especially not the kind that follow you home.
The jasmine scent faded by morning, but something colder took its place — a heaviness behind my eyes, a pressure that pulsed with every heartbeat. I could feel my thoughts dragging, overlapping, stuttering like an overloaded processor.
Memory bleed.
Early stage.
I knew the symptoms.
We all did.
But knowing didn't make it any easier to ignore.
The walk to work was a blur.
The city looked washed out again, too bright at the edges, like someone had sharpened the world to hide the cracks. Every sound felt louder — the beeping of crosswalk signals, the drone of traffic, the whisper of advertisements flickering across holo-boards.
Somewhere in that noise, I thought I heard it again:
"Elias…"
Her voice.
Soft.
Behind my left ear.
I spun, breath catching, but the street was empty.
It wasn't real.
Couldn't be real.
I tried to steady myself, but the feeling clung to me — a presence walking half a step behind, the ghost of breath against my neck.
I almost turned around again.
Almost whispered her name into the cold morning air.
Instead, I pushed through the revolving doors of Mnemosyne's Archive Tower.
Work would distract me.
It had to.
Mnemosyne greeted me the moment I logged in.
"Archivist Rhane, please report to Neuro-Ethics Office A within fifteen minutes."
The request was too formal.
Too sudden.
My stomach twisted.
"Why?" I asked.
"Routine mental health evaluation."
Lie.
Mnemosyne didn't even bother to soften it.
I considered refusing.
But refusing meant suspicion.
Suspicion meant scans.
Scans meant someone else might catch the anomaly Ari left behind.
So, I forced myself up and walked down the hall.
The Neuro-Ethics wing was colder than the rest of the building — intentionally so. Frigid air keeps Archivists awake during evaluations. Keeps minds sharp. Prevents emotional bias.
It did nothing for me.
If anything, the cold sharpened the ache in my head.
When I stepped into Office A, a woman was waiting for me — seated behind a translucent desk, hair tied tightly back.
Dr. Lira Venn.
I recognized her from the broadcasts.
Sharp voice.
Sharper eyes.
One of Mnemosyne's senior neuro-ethicists.
One of the architects of the integration bans.
She looked up.
"Elias Rhane," she said. "Sit."
I sat.
Her gaze scanned me like a data analysis tool.
"You're not well."
The bluntness stung more than I expected.
"I'm fine," I lied.
She tapped a screen, eyes flicking across readings I couldn't see.
"Mnemosyne flagged you for irregular neural activity yesterday."
My fingers curled.
"It was an equipment error."
"Was it?"
Her voice softened — not kindly, but clinically, like she was dissecting my words to inspect the organs beneath them.
"Your baseline emotional readings were elevated," she continued. "Your cognitive rhythm was unstable. You hesitated three times during simple tasks. And—"
Her eyes narrowed.
"—your workstation registered foreign resonance."
My breath hitched — barely, but enough.
That was all she needed.
Her voice dipped to a whisper.
"Elias… if you've been experimenting with Echo contact outside protocol, you need to tell me now."
I swallowed.
The jasmine scent rose unbidden in my mind.
The warning on the screen.
Ari's voice telling me to go back.
And then the silence afterwards.
"I haven't experimented with anything," I said.
She stared for a long moment.
"Mnemosyne doesn't make mistakes."
"It did this time."
Her jaw tightened — not in anger, but in concern.
"Memory bleed is not a metaphor," she said quietly. "It kills people."
I said nothing.
She leaned forward ever so slightly.
"If something happened," she murmured, "I can help you. But only if you tell me."
Her voice was gentle — but she was still Mnemosyne.
And Mnemosyne existed to protect the vault, not the Archivist.
I stood abruptly.
"I should get back to work."
Lira didn't stop me.
But her final words followed like a shadow:
"Be careful, Elias. Bleed always starts small."
The hallway felt too narrow as I walked back, the lights too bright, the hum too loud. My head buzzed with static — real or imagined, I couldn't tell.
I sat down.
Logged in.
Tried to breathe.
A new request blinked onto my display.
"New Echo extraction request: #230947."
Normal. Routine.
I accepted it.
The Echo loaded — a childhood birthday, faded colors, laughter frayed at the edges. Easy work. Cleaning, restoring, stitching.
My hands moved on their own.
But halfway through stabilizing the emotional field, something happened.
A second voice slipped through the neural link.
Not laughter.
Not part of the Echo.
A whisper.
"Elias… don't…"
The breath punched out of my lungs.
I yanked the gloves off, heart pounding.
The Echo continued playing gently on the screen — the child smiling, the candle flickering, everything normal.
But in my headset, a faint static persisted — like the last trace of someone trying to reach me through the cracks.
"Ari?" I whispered.
The static tightened.
Condensed.
Softened.
A voice emerged — faint as dying light, trembling with strain:
"They'll hear me…"
I froze.
Cold sank into my bones.
Ari wasn't speaking from memory.
She wasn't speaking from inside the Echo.
She was speaking through it.
"Are you—"
My voice cracked. I tried again.
"Ari, are you alive in there?"
A gasp — hers, or mine.
I couldn't tell.
The static flared.
Then—
"Elias—run."
The sound cut abruptly.
The headset went dead-silent.
My terminal flickered.
Mnemosyne's symbol flooded the screen.
"Neural irregularity detected.
Commencing audit."
My blood turned to ice.
Audit.
Not routine.
Not optional.
A full neural audit meant:
they would scan my entire tether history
they would see the Integration
they would detect the resonance
they would find her
Panic surged through me.
I shot to my feet.
"No—stop—cancel the audit—"
"Override denied," the AI replied calmly.
"Remain at your workstation."
I backed away.
My heartbeat thundered in my skull.
The room seemed to warp, walls bending inwards like the world was folding into itself.
"Mnemosyne—stop!"
"Audit in progress."
Shards of fear cut through my chest.
They would find her.
They would purge the fragments.
They would wipe her from the system — forever.
I couldn't lose her again.
A noise behind me broke the spiraling panic.
Footsteps.
Slow.
Measured.
I turned.
Dr. Lira Venn stood in the doorway.
Her eyes softened when she saw my face.
"Elias," she said quietly, "what did you do?"