We reached the outskirts just as the Net began to fall.
The sky fractured into silver squares, descending like massive tiles of frost.
Each one shimmered with encoded patterns — neural dampeners, memory silencers, identity locks.
Lira dragged me beneath a collapsed pedestrian bridge.
"This is as far as we can go without leaving the grid," she said breathlessly.
Leaving the grid.
That meant leaving the city, the Echo network, everything.
It also meant—
no more surveillance.
No more Mnemosyne.
No more system.
"Elias," she said quietly, "if we cross that ridge, we disappear. Forever."
My head pulsed.
The bleed throbbed behind my eyes, hot and unstable.
"Maybe disappearing is better," I whispered.
Lira didn't answer.
Instead, she scanned my face — my flickering eyes, trembling hands, gold-stained skin.
"You're halfway to becoming a memory core," she murmured. "If the Net touches you now... God knows what you'll trigger."
"Then we keep going," I said.
She didn't move.
Instead, her eyes softened with something like guilt.
"Before we go any farther… I need to tell you something."
I froze.
Her voice trembled.
"Elias… the first time we met wasn't at the Archive."
My stomach dropped.
"What?"
She swallowed.
"We met when you were a child. You just don't remember. Mnemosyne removed it."
The world narrowed.
"You—knew me?"
She nodded once.
"We were both inside the Neuroline Theta trials."
My breath hitched.
"So you knew my sister too?"
Lira's expression shattered.
"Yes," she whispered. "She was there with us. We were all part of the same experiment."
My pulse hammered violently.
"Why didn't you tell me?"
"Because Mnemosyne will kill me if I do," she said, voice shaking. "Because the first thing they erase is the bond between the subjects. And because—"
Her voice cracked.
"—because I wanted to protect you."
I stepped back, dizzy.
Images flickered behind my eyes—
not mine
not Ari's
not foreign memories
but something else.
Children in white rooms.
Neural helmets.
Doctors speaking softly but too coldly.
A girl laughing.
A boy reading.
A younger Lira humming under her breath.
My mother signing papers through tears.
And another child—
dark hair
bare feet
bright eyes—
My sister.
A sharp pang tore through my skull.
Lira reached toward me.
"Elias—your bleed is reacting. Memories are resurfacing too fast—"
Before she finished—
the air behind us rippled.
Both of us turned.
She stepped out from behind a half-destroyed fence.
Sweat on her brow.
Cuts on her arms.
Barefoot, shivering slightly, but more solid than ever.
My sister.
Not flickering.
Not dissolving.
Human.
Almost.
Her voice trembled.
"You remembered me."
My legs went weak.
"I… I still don't know your name."
"You're close," she whispered, smiling faintly. "It's right there. Behind the last wall."
She stepped toward me—
Then staggered, clutching her chest.
Lira rushed forward.
"She's destabilizing. She can't stay coherent this far from the Archive."
My sister's eyes locked onto mine.
"Say it," she whispered. "Please. Just try."
I squeezed my eyes shut.
Memories slammed into me harder—
her hand in mine,
running through a corridor,
her laughter echoing,
her crying in the dark,
my mother holding us both—
two names.
Two options.
One fading.
One glowing.
Lira placed her hand on my back.
"You can do this. Let it surface."
I took a breath.
Opened my eyes.
Looked at her.
And spoke.
"… Marin."
The name left my mouth like breath finally exhaled after years underwater.
My sister crumpled to her knees, crying—
real tears.
Human tears.
"That's it," she whispered. "That's me."
Then the air split with a deafening crack.
The Net hit the ground.
Reality rippled outward from the city center like a shockwave.
Walls digitized.
Trees pixelated.
Roads erased themselves.
Lira grabbed me, panic exploding across her face.
"Elias—RUN—your memory just reconnected, the system will detect it—"
Too late.
A sound like a thousand voices screaming at once tore down the hillside.
The sky glowed white.
Then—
BOOM.
A column of data shot upward from the city like a pillar of light.
My name echoed through the air, spoken by a hundred synthesized voices:
"SUBJECT: ELIAS RHANE.
UNAUTHORIZED MEMORY RESTORATION DETECTED."
Lira's grip tightened until it hurt.
"Elias—Mnemosyne knows you remembered her name. That was the lock. They're coming."
My sister, Marin, clung to my arm as reality rippled violently around her—
her form struggling to hold together—
"Eli… don't let them take me again…"
I held her close.
The Net trembled overhead.
Mnemosyne's drones turned toward us like a storm of metal wings.
Lira whispered:
"We have to cross the border. Now. All three of us."
But Marin looked at the boundary of the grid—
and shook her head.
"I can't," she whispered. "Out there… I'll unravel."
My heart lurched.
"But—"
She touched my cheek.
"You go.
I'll follow when I'm strong enough."
I shook my head, voice breaking.
"I'm not leaving you."
"You did once," she whispered sadly. "But it wasn't your fault."
The sky ruptured.
Drones descended.
Lira screamed:
"ELIAS—MOVE!"
But I didn't.
Not until Marin leaned in, pressed her forehead to mine—
and whispered her last words in that moment:
"Find the place they erased us.
I'll be waiting."
Then she stepped backward into the distortion—
and disappeared in a shimmer of broken light.
Lira grabbed my wrist, pulling me toward the ridge.
The drones shrieked overhead.
The Net collapsed behind us.
And I ran.
I ran carrying a name—
Marin—
that Mnemosyne had tried so hard to bury.
A name that burned inside me like a fuse.
A name that everything was about to break for.