The ceiling above us groaned — then cracked open like a mouth.
Dust rained down in choking waves.
Sparks spat across the floor.
Deep below, a low vibration rose — the sound of Mnemosyne preparing to annihilate its own facility.
Ari lay limp in my arms, barely glowing.
Lira screamed over the chaos:
"Elias! They'll vaporize this entire level in ninety seconds! MOVE!"
But I couldn't.
Ari's fading fingers clutched weakly at my collar, glitching through the fabric.
"Don't…" she whispered.
Her voice was soft, lonely, disintegrating.
"Don't let me die alone again."
The corridor behind us ruptured — a swarm of shadows pouring through like a tidal wave made of broken people.
Lira fired the disruptor into the advancing darkness.
"It won't hold them! Elias — MAKE A DECISION!"
Ari trembled in my arms.
Her glow flickered like a dying star.
"Don't… leave… me…"
Her coherence meter on Lira's scanner plunged:
08%
05%
03%
Lira looked between us — terror, pity, helplessness all fighting on her face.
"Elias," she said, voice breaking, "she's not going to survive. If you carry her—YOU won't survive."
The ceiling buckled.
Mnemosyne's AI voice echoed through the walls:
FACILITY PURGE: T–65 SECONDS.
ALL PERSONNEL EVACUATE.
Shadows surged closer.
Ari's flickering hand cradled my jaw — almost solid for a moment.
Her eyes, glitching and dissolving, held mine.
"Elias…" she breathed.
"Let me go."
My throat tore.
"I can't."
"You can."
Her voice was fading.
"You learned how to live without me once."
"No," I whispered. "I didn't. I just learned how to survive."
Her eyes softened in heartbreak.
"Then survive now."
The Swarm shrieked — their many voices echoing:
ELIAS
RHANE
STAY
STAY
Lira grabbed my arm.
"WE HAVE TO RUN!"
Ari's coherence hit:
01%
Everything slowed.
Her face flickered—
a girl on our first date, laughing into her coffee.
The Ari I found in digital fragments.
The Ari in the hospital bed.
The Ari who reached for me in the mindspace.
The Ari kneeling in the golden pillar, begging me to choose her.
It all collapsed into a single moment.
Her voice — soft as a memory dying:
"…goodbye."
And her glow blinked out.
Her body dissolved into golden dust in my arms —
light scattering like fireflies
then fading into nothing.
Gone.
Not collapsed.
Not corrupted.
Gone.
I let out a sound I didn't know I was capable of —
a broken exhale, part scream, part sob.
Lira didn't look at Ari's fading remnants.
She grabbed my wrist, shaking.
"Elias — she's gone. They killed her. But if YOU die, this all meant nothing."
I bowed over my empty hands as the dust faded between my fingers.
A single soft golden spark lingered—
then winked out.
Something inside me tore in half.
Then the world roared back into motion.
The Swarm lunged.
Lira pulled me violently to my feet.
"RUN!"
We sprinted.
Down a collapsing staircase.
Through clouds of falling debris.
Over the corpse of the operative who wasn't a person anymore.
The facility alarm blared:
T–45 SECONDS.
PURGE IN PROGRESS.
My legs moved without thought.
Tears blurred everything.
Ari's absence clung to me like a cold shadow.
Shadows followed us — grasping, reaching, calling in broken voices.
Elias—
Elias—
come back—
Lira shoved open a maintenance shaft and forced us inside.
"Up!" she screamed. "Climb!"
I climbed like a dying thing, lungs burning, heart splitting in my chest.
Midway up the shaft—
something hit me.
Not physically.
A memory.
A vivid one.
The woman's face — the one from earlier.
Crying.
Holding my hand.
Whispering:
"You won't survive this.
You're not built for loss."
Then she pressed her forehead to mine.
"That's why we erased her."
I lost my grip for a moment.
Lira caught my wrist.
"Elias! Focus! What did you see?!"
But I couldn't answer.
Because the memory shifted—
and the woman's name slid into place like a knife being pushed between my ribs.
Marin Rhane.
My mother.
Before Ari.
Before Mnemosyne.
Before everything.
She held me as I cried—
crying harder than I'd ever remembered crying—
and said:
"We'll take the pain away.
We'll erase it."
The shaft shook violently.
T–20 SECONDS.
Lira screamed:
"MOVE!"
We burst out onto Level One — the lobby of the Mnemosyne facility.
It was chaos.
Ceiling collapsing.
Lights exploding.
People running, screaming, bleeding.
Fragments of memories leaking through the air like fog.
The Swarm burst out of lower floors, howling.
Lira grabbed my face, forcing me to look at her.
"Elias. Stay with me."
But my chest felt hollow.
My mind felt fractured.
Half of me was still holding Ari as she turned to dust.
Half was hearing my mother whisper that she'd erased someone from my past before Ari ever existed.
I whispered hoarsely:
"They erased me twice."
Lira's breath caught.
"Elias… what did they erase?"
I looked into the smoke-filled corridor.
Into the shadows rushing forward.
And I realized:
I didn't know.
I didn't know who I had been.
What I had forgotten.
What they had taken.
What the shadow wanted me to remember.
But I knew one thing:
Ari's last spark was gone.
Something inside me cracked open.
Not grief.
Resolve.
The Swarm burst through the ceiling.
Mnemosyne's AI roared:
PURGE INITIATED.
RUN.
Lira grabbed my hand.
I didn't let go.
Not this time.
We ran.
Together.
Into the burning world