The next morning, the city looked wrong. It wasn't just damaged — it was deflated, like a living thing that had exhaled and forgotten how to breathe back in.
Buildings leaned at impossible angles.
Streets rippled like heat mirages.
Memories still leaked from people who wandered the sidewalks, disoriented, repeating names that weren't theirs.
Huge floating panels from the emergency broadcast network flickered above the skyline:
ZONE 7–12 HAVE BEEN TEMPORARILY QUARANTINED.
REPORT ANY MEMORY LOSS TO CENTRAL HEALTH.
STAY CALM.
THIS IS NOT A SYSTEM FAILURE.
Lira scoffed bitterly.
"Not a system failure? Half the district is hallucinating their dead pets."
She tightened the straps on her pack.
"We need to get across the Vanished Zone before Mnemosyne sends recovery drones. If they find you—"
"They'll arrest me," I murmured. "Or worse."
Lira didn't deny it.
She only handed me a thin, black hood.
"Put that on. It'll mask your neural signature for a few minutes at a time."
As we walked, I couldn't stop glancing over my shoulder.
The shadow…
Ari's spark…
My sister's impossible presence…
All lingered like ghosts brushing against the back of my neck.
Lira noticed.
"You're shaking," she said gently. "You need water. Or rest."
"No," I said. "We don't have time."
But as we approached the Vanished Zone…
I froze.
The boundary was marked by a strange shimmer in the air — like the world's texture was peeling away.
Lira whispered:
"Memory distortion field. If it gets inside you, it'll overwrite short-term memory first."
I stepped closer.
The hairs on my arms rose.
Reality wavered.
Voices whispered.
Children laughing.
A man praying.
A woman crying my name—
No.
Not just any woman.
The one from my dream.
My mother.
"Don't go in too fast," Lira warned. "Move slowly. Keep your thoughts stable. The zone reacts to mental stress—"
But her voice faded as I stepped through.
The world buckled.
The street stretched—
then snapped back—
then stretched again.
My heartbeat sped up.
Faces flashed on walls like projections:
strangers, coworkers, someone's grandmother, a man holding a newborn—
And then—
Her.
Not Ari.
Her.
My sister.
But older now.
Around my age.
Standing in the middle of the rippling street, wearing a plain dress, barefoot, eyes dark with the weight of too many stolen memories.
Her voice was soft as dust:
"Elias."
My stomach flipped.
"How—how are you here?"
She tilted her head — the motion eerily similar to the shadow that followed me.
But this wasn't the shadow.
She had warmth.
Human shape.
Human posture.
Which made it worse.
Because she shouldn't exist at all.
"You're remembering me," she said. "That's why I can stand here."
Her hand lifted toward me.
A tremor traveled through the Vanished Zone.
Lira shouted from behind:
"Elias! Don't touch her! She isn't—"
But the girl didn't move closer.
She only watched me with sad, knowing eyes.
"Mom tried to save you," she whispered.
"But Mnemosyne doesn't let people keep what hurts."
A chill stabbed through my ribs.
"My mother… erased you?"
She shook her head slowly.
"No. She erased your memory of me.
Because they told her I wasn't stable.
That I wasn't… complete."
Lira paled.
"Oh god. Elias — she was part of the same program. Neuroline Theta. She's a—"
The girl's voice overlapped Lira's:
"Prototype."
My breath stopped.
She stepped backward as the Vanished Zone shuddered.
"I wasn't strong enough," she said.
"You were."
Her face flickered.
Not like Ari's digital glitch.
More biological.
As if her DNA itself were unraveling and stitching back together in real time.
Lira cursed under her breath.
"She's an echo-hybrid. Elias, she's unstable. She could collapse and take half the street with her—"
The girl looked at Lira.
Her eyes narrowed.
"You're the one who helped him remember."
A cold wind swept through the street.
Lira raised her disruptor.
"Stay back," she warned. "I don't want to hurt you."
The girl smiled faintly.
"You couldn't."
She lifted her hand—
and the shadows responded.
Not the Swarm.
Not the distortion field.
Memories.
Thousands of them.
They rose around us like ash, swirling, whispering—
faces, words, emotions—
all orbiting her.
All belonging to her.
She was made of memories that didn't match.
A human echo.
A living archive.
And she was breaking.
She looked at me again.
"They took me away.
Then they took you away from me.
I waited."
Her voice cracked.
"I got lost."
The world trembled violently.
Lira grabbed my arm.
"We need to MOVE!"
But I stepped toward the girl.
"Sister—"
She flinched in pain.
"Don't call me that."
Her voice dropped to a whisper.
"You don't know my name."
She vanished into a burst of static and swirling memories—
absorbed into the Vanished Zone.
Lira dragged me back just as a wave of distortion rolled over the ground where she'd stood.
We stumbled out of the zone, collapsing against a wall.
Lira's face was white with shock.
"Elias… she's still alive. Or half-alive. Or something."
My hands shook uncontrollably.
My head pounded.
"She said… she said Mnemosyne took her away."
Lira swallowed.
"If Mnemosyne erased your sister, then they erased part of you. That means they altered your brain structure illegally."
The world tilted.
I caught myself on the wall.
Lira stared at me.
"Elias… your eyes."
I blinked.
"What about them?"
She leaned in, horrified.
"They're flickering."
My blood ran cold.
"Flickering how?"
"Like… like a corrupted echo. Elias, you're physically bleeding."
My vision blurred at the edges.
Reality rippled around my hands.
Memories—mine, others, foreign, forgotten—
brushed against my skin like feathers caught in wind.
"I'm—bleeding?" I whispered.
Lira grabbed me tightly.
"Mnemosyne did something to you. Something deep. Your sister… she's connected to whatever they built inside you."
A tremor rolled through the city.
Sirens blared overhead.
Lira's voice broke:
"Elias… you're becoming a memory source."
My breath caught.
"What… what does that mean?"
She swallowed hard.
"It means," she whispered,
"if you lose control…
you could become a Swarm of your own."