"Explain," Lyric said. The voice was calm. Too calm.
Lyric stepped away from the green screen, cutting off Rook's path to the door. In the artificial silence of the tower—now that the jammer had killed the static—the sound of Rook's boots shuffling on the floor sounded like sandpaper.
"Veyne, look, don't do anything crazy," Rook said, holding his hands up. "The message is trying to mess with you. It's what they do."
"The message says you know who I am," Lyric said, walking closer. "It says I didn't escape alone."
"It's a psych-op!" Rook yelled, his voice cracking. "They're trying to split us up!"
Lyric stopped two feet from him. "In the drainage tunnel, you asked me about Unit 7 like it was a ghost story. You acted surprised when Silas told us about the Silents. You acted like a kid who just found a stray dog."
Lyric's gray eyes were hard.
"Was that an act, Rook?"
Rook opened his mouth, then closed it. He looked at the door, then back at Lyric. He slumped against the console, the energy draining out of him.
"It wasn't all an act," Rook muttered, looking at the floor. "I really was surprised you erased the drone. I didn't know you could do that part."
"So you did know me."
"Yeah," Rook whispered. "Yeah, I knew you."
Lyric felt a cold knot tighten in their stomach. "Who am I?"
"You're the person who saved my life," Rook said, finally looking up. "And you're the person who hired me."
Lyric blinked. "I hired you?"
"Three days ago," Rook said, talking fast now, like he wanted to get it all out before Lyric decided to erase him. "You came to the Slags. You were wearing that coat. You had the pendant. You looked… scary. Different. You weren't confused like you are now. You were cold."
Rook rubbed the back of his neck.
"You paid me five hundred credits to drive a transport truck. You said you needed to get out of the city, but you couldn't pass the scanners because your 'print' was in the system. You said you had a plan to wipe your own print."
"The amnesia," Lyric realized. "I did it to myself."
"You said it was the only way to beat the trackers," Rook said. "If you don't remember being a Silent, the psychic bloodhounds can't sniff you out. You told me to drop you in the alley. You told me to wait. And you made me promise one thing."
"What?"
"You said: 'If I wake up, don't tell me who I was. Let me be blank. If you tell me, the programming might come back.'" Rook looked at Lyric with desperate eyes. "I didn't lie to hurt you, Veyne. I lied because you paid me to lie."
Lyric stared at the kid. It made sense. It explained why Rook was there so fast. It explained why he stuck around.
"And the photo?" Lyric asked softly. "The one I lost. The silhouette I erased. Who was it?"
Rook hesitated. "I don't know. You burned it before you got in the truck. You said it was the reason you were leaving. You said… you said you couldn't do the job anymore."
Lyric turned away, looking at the dark console. I erased my past to save my future. It was a desperate move. A suicide of the mind.
"You should have told me," Lyric said.
"I was going to!" Rook argued. "But then you started erasing drones and fighting ninjas! I was scared, okay? You're terrifying when you switch on."
Beep.
The console chirped again.
Lyric spun around. The green text on the screen vanished. A new line appeared.
> CONVERSATION LOGGED.
> DISTRACTION SUCCESSFUL.
> BREACHING.
Lyric's eyes went wide. "It was a stall."
BOOM.
The heavy iron door at the bottom of the tower—the one they had welded shut—blew inward. The sound vibrated up the spiral staircase like a gunshot in a canyon.
"They're inside," Lyric said.
"They used the hardline to keep us talking while they set the charges," Rook groaned, grabbing his backpack. "We're idiots."
"We need to move," Lyric said. "Is there another way down?"
"No," Rook said, panic rising. "It's a lighthouse, Veyne! It's one way up, one way down!"
Lyric ran to the window. It was a hundred-foot drop into the fog. The Fog-Eaters were gone, scattered by the silence, but the drop alone would kill them.
Heavy boots clanged on the metal stairs below. Fast. Disciplined. Not the shambling of mutants. This was the Guild.
"Can we fight them?" Rook asked, pulling out his laser cutter.
"Not in a narrow stairwell," Lyric said. "They have armor, weapons, and numbers. And if they're Silents, they can erase our will to fight before we even throw a punch."
Lyric looked around the room. Consoles, wires, the massive copper coil of the jammer…
"The coil," Lyric said.
"What about it?"
"It's generating a field, right? A Zone of Silence."
"Yeah, it pushes the memory radiation out."
"What happens if we reverse the polarity?" Lyric asked. "Instead of pushing it out… we suck it in."
Rook looked at the machine, then at Lyric. "You want to turn this thing into a memory vacuum? Veyne, that'll overcharge the core! It'll blow the top off the tower!"
"Exactly," Lyric said. "It'll create a shockwave. It might knock them out. Or at least buy us a way out."
"And us?" Rook shouted. "We're standing right next to it!"
"We hide in the core casing," Lyric pointed to the thick lead shielding around the base of the machine. "It's shielded. It's tight, but we'll fit."
The footsteps were getting louder. They were halfway up.
"Do it," Lyric ordered.
Rook didn't argue. He scrambled to the console and started ripping wires out. "Okay, okay! I need to bypass the safety. Give me thirty seconds!"
Lyric ran to the door of the control room. They grabbed a heavy metal locker and dragged it in front of the door. It wouldn't hold them for long, but it would slow them down.
"Unit 7," a voice called from the other side of the door. It was smooth, synthetic, and calm. "There is nowhere to run. Open the door and we will only wipe the last three days. You can return to service."
"I quit!" Lyric shouted back.
"Resignation is not an option," the voice said.
A glowing blue blade sliced through the metal door like it was butter.
"Rook!" Lyric yelled.
"Done!" Rook shouted. He slammed a final switch.
The hum of the machine changed. It went from a steady drone to a high-pitched scream. The air in the room suddenly felt heavy, like the pressure before a thunderstorm.
"Get in!" Lyric grabbed Rook and shoved him into the small crawlspace beneath the copper coil. It was cramped, smelling of hot ozone and dust.
Lyric squeezed in after him and pulled the lead panel shut just as the control room door kicked open.
Through the crack in the panel, Lyric saw three Silents storm the room. They looked sleek and deadly in their black armor.
"Target is—" one began.
Then the machine hit critical mass.
It wasn't an explosion of fire. It was an implosion of sound.
CRACK.
The world turned white. The sound was so loud it didn't register as noise; it registered as a punch to the gut.
Lyric felt the floor drop.
The top of the Lighthouse—the concrete roof, the glass, the consoles—blew outward. The Silents were lifted off their feet, flailing as the pressure wave blasted them out into the foggy night.
The floor beneath the machine crumbled.
"Hold on!" Lyric screamed, grabbing Rook's jacket.
The lead casing they were hiding in tipped over, sliding off the disintegrating platform.
They fell.
Not all the way to the ground—the casing slammed into the metal stairs twenty feet down, spinning, sliding, banging against the railing.
Clang. Bam. CRUNCH.
They came to a halt, wedged against the wall of the stairwell. Dust and concrete rained down on them.
Lyric kicked the panel open and crawled out, coughing. The control room above was gone. The sky was open above them.
"Rook?" Lyric called.
Rook crawled out, face covered in gray dust, goggles cracked. He checked his arms. "I'm alive. I think I'm alive."
"The Silents?"
"Blown away," Rook coughed. "Literally."
Lyric looked down the stairs. The explosion had collapsed the upper flight, blocking the path for anyone coming up. But the vibration had weakened the whole tower. The concrete was groaning.
"We have to go," Lyric said, pulling Rook up. "This whole thing is coming down."
They scrambled down the remaining stairs, slipping on rubble. When they reached the bottom, the heavy iron door was hanging off its hinges.
They burst out into the fog.
They didn't stop running until they reached the edge of the Graveyard, collapsing behind a mound of old tires.
Behind them, the Lighthouse groaned one last time. The top half of the tower leaned slowly, then sheared off, crashing into the valley of junk with a sound that shook the ground.
Silence returned to the Graveyard.
Rook lay on his back, panting. "You're crazy. You know that? You are absolutely 100% crazy."
Lyric sat against the tires, wiping blood from a cut on their cheek. "I'm not crazy, Rook. I'm just expensive."
Rook laughed, a breathless, hysterical sound. "Yeah. Yeah, I guess you are."
He sat up, looking at Lyric with a new expression. The fear was gone. The suspicion was gone.
"Okay," Rook said. "You know the truth now. I was your driver. I lied. Are we good?"
Lyric looked at the kid. They thought about the betrayal. Then they thought about the truck, the escape, and the fact that Rook had just rigged a bomb to save them.
"You got me out," Lyric said. "And you didn't sell me out when the message came through."
"I'm a professional," Rook said, trying to look tough despite the dust on his face.
"We're good," Lyric said. "For now."
Lyric stood up and looked at the horizon. The fog was thinning.
"But we have a problem," Lyric said.
"What?"
"I blew up the jammer," Lyric said, tapping their temple. "The static is coming back."
Rook groaned. "Great. So we're back to headaches and voices?"
"Worse," Lyric said, looking at their hand. It was trembling. "The Guild knows I'm alive. They know I have my memories back—or at least, that I know who I was. They won't send hunters next time."
"What will they send?"
"An Architect," Lyric said. The name came from the muscle memory, cold and sharp.
Rook went pale. "An Architect? You mean the ones who rewrite cities?"
"We need to leave the Outskirts," Lyric said. "We need to go where they can't rewrite."
"And where is that?"
Lyric looked at the burning wreckage of the Lighthouse.
"The Underground," Lyric said. "Deep down. Where the Memory Market has its heart. I need to find the person in that photo I burned."
"I told you, I don't know who it was," Rook said.
"No," Lyric said. "But the Memory Market remembers everything. If I erased someone, there's a receipt somewhere. And we're going to find it."