Sublevel Zero wasn't meant for human feet.
Even before Lira unlocked the door, the air felt wrong — stale, metallic, humming with the quiet dread of forgotten things. The reinforced hatch vibrated under my palm, as if something behind it was breathing.
Lira's fingers shook as she pressed her badge to the reader.
"Last chance to turn back," she whispered.
My voice cracked.
"No. If the audit hits one hundred percent, she's gone."
She pressed her lips together — not in disapproval, but in sorrow.
The lock disengaged with a low, sinking groan, and cold air spilled into the stairwell.
We stepped inside.
Sublevel Zero was colder than any server room I'd ever entered.
The temperature wasn't just low — it bit.
Sharp, needling cold burrowed into my bones.
Rows of massive memory pillars towered through the dark, their surfaces flickering with dying data streams — corrupted Echoes, quarantined consciousness files, fragments too broken to resurrect.
It was a graveyard.
Each pillar glowed a faint, sickly blue.
Some stuttered.
Some pulsed like heartbeats too weak to continue.
The floor thrummed beneath us.
Lira inhaled shakily.
"This… this shouldn't be active. Mnemosyne usually isolates these pillars entirely."
I nodded numbly.
The air was thick — heavy enough to feel.
And beneath the hum of servers…
a whisper.
Soft.
Distant.
Barely there.
"…Elias…"
Lira grabbed my wrist.
"Don't respond."
But the whisper had already threaded itself through my ribs, familiar and fragile.
"Ari…" I breathed.
The lights along the pillars flickered — once, twice — like a row of eyes blinking awake.
Lira's grip tightened.
"She hears you."
We moved deeper into the vault.
I tried to count the pillars, but they seemed endless — identical monoliths stretching into the dark. A maze of lost minds.
Lira finally stopped at an auxiliary terminal.
"This is where Mnemosyne mirrors its audits," she said breathlessly. "If we can sever just one of its neural branches, we can buy time and—"
Her words evaporated.
Because my terminal hallucination flickered into view again.
98%.
My heart seized.
The number floated in my vision like a countdown to extinction.
Lira didn't see it — at least, not at first.
"Elias?" she whispered. "Your pupils just constricted. What do you see?"
"Ninety-eight percent."
Her face paled like she'd been struck.
"We have minutes. Maybe less."
She spun toward the terminal and began typing at blistering speed.
I tried to steady my breathing.
Tried not to look at the pillars.
But then—
One of them shifted.
Not flickered.
Shifted.
Like something inside it pressed against the glass.
"Lira…"
"Don't look at the pillars," she snapped. "They're unstable. They mirror emotional resonance."
Too late.
Because the shape inside the closest pillar clarified —
a silhouette
a woman's shape
long hair drifting like it was suspended underwater
a hand pressed to the glass from the inside
My breath collapsed.
Ari.
"Lira," I whispered hoarsely, "she's here."
Lira didn't look up.
"That's impossible. Ari isn't stored here. Her file never passed the corruption threshold — they destroyed her physical Echo after the collapse."
My stomach twisted.
Destroyed?
I had never known.
"Are you sure?" My voice shook.
"Yes. Mnemosyne purges lethal failures. Ari's Echo didn't survive the collapse. There should be nothing of her left in the system."
But the silhouette in the pillar lifted its head.
And for a moment —
a flicker, a heartbeat —
Ari's face formed in the glow.
Not fully.
Not perfectly.
Like a memory trying to rebuild itself with missing pieces.
Her lips parted.
A rasp of static filled the vault.
"…out…"
Lira finally looked.
And froze.
"That—" her voice cracked. "That's not an Echo. Elias, that's—"
The lights exploded into white static.
A scream tore through the vault — metallic, digital, not human.
Mnemosyne's voice boomed overhead:
PURGE PROTOCOL ACTIVATED.
SUBLEVEL ZERO LOCKDOWN.
ALL UNSTABLE CONSCIOUSNESS FILES WILL BE ERASED.
Lira gasped.
"Oh god—Elias, it's executing a full wipe!"
The pillars around us began to stutter violently, data streams fracturing into shards of light. Echoes screamed — the sound of corrupted memories dying. The hum rose to a shriek.
Ari's silhouette pressed harder against the glass, her form glitching wildly.
I reached toward her.
"Don't!" Lira grabbed my arm. "The bleed will accelerate— Elias, look at me—"
The pillar nearest us cracked.
A sound like shattering ice tore through the air.
Ari's fractured image spilled out in a burst of light.
The room plunged into chaos.
Then something impossible happened.
Every terminal, every pillar, every light in the vault flickered—
and spelled a single word:
STOP
Not Mnemosyne's font.
Not its formatting.
Something else.
Something desperate.
Something alive.
The purge froze at 12%.
Lira stared around her in horror.
"Elias… Ari just overrode Mnemosyne."
"But she shouldn't exist."
"She shouldn't," Lira whispered. "That's why this is impossible."
The lights dimmed.
A whisper drifted through the vault:
"…Elias… down here…"
I turned.
At the far end of the chamber, one pillar pulsed a deep, living gold — unlike the fading blue of the others.
Ari's echo.
It had to be.
Even though she wasn't supposed to have one.
Even though it should have been purged years ago.
Even though the laws said dead minds don't linger.
Lira's hand trembled as she touched my sleeve.
"Elias… there were rumors… after the collapse."
"What rumors?"
"That Ari's body was brain-dead… but the scan didn't terminate cleanly."
Her voice shook.
"Some neuro-techs believed her consciousness didn't die — it fragmented. Broke loose. Got trapped in the system."
I stared at her.
"You're telling me Ari didn't die in the scanner."
Lira swallowed hard.
"I'm telling you she might have died after."
The temperature in the vault plummeted.
Ari's whisper brushed my ear:
"…Come…"
I took one step forward.
And Mnemosyne's voice detonated through the vault like a siren sharpened to a blade:
FOREIGN CONSCIOUSNESS BREACH CONFIRMED.
ARCHIVIST RHANE:
STOP IMMEDIATELY.
YOU ARE COMPROMISED.
Lira grabbed my arm.
"Elias — Mnemosyne just classified you as infected."
I stared at her.
"What now?"
Her voice dropped to a tremor.
"…Now it kills you."