The exit doors of the Mnemosyne facility blew open behind us as we stumbled into the night.
Alarms wailed across the city skyline —
sirens, evacuation drones, emergency broadcasts all overlapping in a rising mechanical panic.
Lira bent over, catching her breath.
"We made it… we actually—"
She stopped.
Her face turned white.
I turned slowly.
The ground trembled.
Something massive was pushing up through the street behind us.
Glass shattered.
Chairs in nearby cafés toppled.
Pedestrians stopped mid-step, staring.
A bulge rose beneath the asphalt—
Then exploded upward in a violent eruption of concrete and smoke.
The Swarm.
It poured out like liquid shadow, masses of corrupted memory leaking into the open air.
A woman screamed as a tendril brushed her shoulder—
and immediately she collapsed, clutching her head as her own childhood memories replayed on a loop, projected faintly around her like broken holo-footage.
Someone else fell to their knees as their partner's face dissolved from their mind, replaced by a stranger's.
People ran, screaming, scattering.
Lira choked out:
"This… shouldn't be happening. The Swarm should be limited to brain-linked sectors. This is real-world bleed."
Another tendril slammed into a streetlamp—
and the metal flickered between two shapes:
a lamp
and a noose
and a hospital IV pole
and a wedding arch
and then a lamp again.
Reality was stuttering.
The Swarm surged farther up the street, absorbing the memories leaking from terrified bystanders.
Machines malfunctioned.
Screens flickered.
Cars stalled as their onboard AI systems began replaying someone else's driving memories.
A billboard glitched, flashing a looping message:
I FORGOT MY NAME
I FORGOT MY NAME
I FORGOT MY—
Lira grabbed my sleeve urgently.
"Elias, if the Swarm keeps spreading, it'll destabilize the entire district. We need to get you somewhere safe."
"Safe?" I whispered.
"There's no safe anywhere now."
But she pulled harder.
"We don't have a choice. Mnemosyne is going to quarantine the whole zone. Any Archivist caught outside during an incident like this—"
Her voice trailed off.
She swallowed.
"Elias… I'm now legally classified as a defector for rescuing you."
I stared at her.
"And you still stayed with me?"
Her jaw clenched.
"Of course I did."
My breath shook.
Before I could speak, the ground shook violently again.
A shard of shadow detached from the Swarm, sliding across the pavement like spilled ink.
It moved with purpose.
Straight toward me.
Lira raised the disruptor—
"Elias, back up!"
But I couldn't move.
Because the shadow rose —
slowly —
shaping itself into something almost human.
Almost familiar.
Tall.
Thin.
Head tilted.
Just like in the corridor.
The entity whispered with a dozen overlapping voices:
"We found you."
My blood froze.
Lira stepped between us.
"Back off! He's not your host!"
The entity ignored her.
It leaned close to me—
and for the first time, it spoke in a clear, singular voice.
Not distorted.
Not inhuman.
A woman's voice.
Soft.
Shaking with grief.
"Elias… please remember me."
The world dropped out from under me.
It wasn't Ari's voice.
It was the forgotten woman.
Marin Rhane.
My mother.
The Swarm surged behind her like a tidal wave, drowning the street in shadow.
Lira grabbed my arm.
"We have to go — NOW!"
But I heard something behind me.
Something softer.
A faint golden sound.
A glimmer, falling like dust.
A single spark of light drifted past my shoulder, warm as a fingertip.
My breath hitched.
Ari.
Her dust.
It swirled once in front of me —
hesitant, trembling, trying to shape itself.
Then it formed a single, perfectly clear word in the air:
RUN.
My heart shattered anew.
Lira yanked me backward just as the Swarm lunged.
We sprinted down the street—
dodging collapsing storefronts, flickering memories, people screaming.
The entity's voice echoed behind us:
"ELIAS—DON'T RUN—YOU HAVE TO REMEMBER—"
But Ari's last spark—
her last instinct—
her last will—
guided my legs.
We ran.
Through a city where memories were breaking free from their owners.
Through streets where the past had become a predator.
Through a world unraveling because of me,
because of what Mnemosyne had done to me,
because of the shadow chasing me across two realities.
We didn't stop running until the screams behind us faded.
And when we did—breathless, shaking, covered in dust—
Lira looked at me with wide, horrified eyes.
"Elias… what did Ari leave behind?"
I stood there in the neon glow of a flickering sign.
Sirens howled in the distance.
The shadow-creature still echoed my name.
But I held the spark of Ari's last message like a wound.
"She told me to run."
Lira swallowed hard.
"…Then we're not safe anywhere."
I nodded.
"No. We're not."
I looked out over the burning district —
the first of many —
and whispered:
"But we're not done either."