We sprinted through the broken streets as sirens wailed above us.
The sky was a sickening gray-blue, fractured with digital artifacts — reality flickering like a corrupted screen.
Lira dragged me behind a wrecked transport, breathing hard.
"Elias—listen to me. Mnemosyne is deploying their net. If we're inside its radius when it activates, it'll fry your cognition."
I swallowed, dizzy.
"What net?"
She pointed upward.
A spiderweb of shimmering silver lines unfurled across the clouds, spreading outward like a massive digital canopy.
The Cognitive Suppression Net.
Designed to neutralize rogue Archivists.
And—
my pulse quickened painfully—
entities like me.
"What does it do?" I whispered.
"It shuts down neural activity," Lira said. "First memories, then speech, then motor control. If you stay conscious through that—"
She didn't finish.
She didn't need to.
My head throbbed violently.
The bleed pulsed in waves, blurring the edges of my vision.
"Lira—my eyes—" I gasped.
She grabbed my face.
They flickered gold then black then gold again —
like someone was switching channels inside my skull.
"Elias," she said urgently, "you need to focus. Your bleed is reacting to the net—if it hits you like this, you'll either collapse… or explode with memory discharge."
My hands shook uncontrollably.
"What if that's what Mnemosyne wants?"
Lira froze.
"…Then they'll follow the blast straight to you."
A thunderous crack tore through the sky.
The net shimmered violently.
Lira's expression darkened.
"They're activating it."
She gripped my wrist hard.
"We need to reach the outskirts. Now."
The city was dying.
As we ran, buildings flickered between states:
burned, whole, half-dismantled, forgotten.
People collapsed on sidewalks, clutching their heads.
Some cried out names that weren't theirs.
Some stared blankly as memories leaked from their eyes like smoke.
Some ran in circles, trapped in looped moments of their past.
And some—
some dissolved entirely, their bodies turning to ash-like memory particles.
The world blurred around me.
I stumbled.
A wave of heat surged up my spine.
The bleed flared bright.
Lira caught me.
"Talk to me. Elias—look at me. Stay grounded."
"I—I can't," I gasped. "It's too loud."
"What is?"
"Everything."
I pressed my palms against my skull, trying to hold my mind in place.
But it slipped.
It slipped—
And the world broke open.
Suddenly—
I wasn't in the street.
I was in a living room I didn't recognize.
A child sat on the couch, crying into her hands.
The TV flickered with a cartoon I'd never seen.
Someone argued in the kitchen—two voices I didn't know.
"Whose memory is this?" I whispered.
Behind me—
a long shadow stretched across the floor.
I turned slowly.
The entity stood in the doorway.
Its head tilted.
"Not yours."
The living room dissolved.
Another memory formed.
A woman curled in a bathtub, clutching her knees, sobbing silently.
The shadow leaned over her.
"Not hers."
Another memory.
A car accident—
sirens—
someone dying—
"Not theirs."
Dozens of memories crashed into me at once—
foreign
violent
intimate
pointless
beautiful
awful
I couldn't breathe.
My knees buckled.
The shadow knelt in front of me.
"Let go," it whispered.
"And I will help you remember the one memory that matters."
A cold, soft touch pressed against my forehead.
"Her name."
My sister's.
The one I still didn't know.
The one Mnemosyne carved out of me.
A scream tore from my throat—
"ELIAS!"
A voice broke through the hallucination like a lightning strike.
Lira.
I snapped back to the street, gasping, collapsing into her arms.
She held my face between her hands.
"Stay with me! Elias—you're bleeding everywhere—"
Golden tears dripped down my cheeks.
Golden sweat beaded on my skin.
My fingers left smudges of shimmering dust on her jacket.
I wasn't human right now.
I wasn't stable.
I wasn't safe.
The shadow lingered at the edge of my vision.
It didn't disappear this time.
It walked beside me.
Matching my pace.
Watching.
Waiting.
Then—sudden warmth.
A breath.
A touch.
Something brushed my shoulder.
Something gentle.
Familiar.
I froze.
A faint glow appeared beside me—
just a small pulse of light, fluttering like a dying firefly.
Lira gasped.
"Oh my god—Elias—"
Ari.
Not whole.
Not solid.
Not alive.
But here.
Her glow trembled as if struggling to form a shape.
"Eli…"
A faint whisper.
Barely sound.
Barely memory.
My breath broke.
"Ari…? Ari, is that—"
Lira pulled me forward.
"Elias—we can't stop! She's only here because your bleed is interacting with her last echo. Move!"
But I couldn't move.
Not yet.
Ari's tiny spark floated up to my face, pulsing with one clear emotion—
fear.
Fear for me.
Fear of what I was becoming.
Her voice—smaller now—whispered:
"Don't… let them take you… Eli…"
Then—
CRACK.
A blast from the sky.
The Cognitive Suppression Net jolted to life.
Ari's spark flickered—
and vanished.
I reached out desperately—
But there was nothing left to hold.
Only fading dust.
Lira tugged my arm urgently.
"ELIAS—RUN!"
And I ran.
Like a man chasing the last dying light of someone he loved