The light inside the brass sphere wasn't blinding because it was bright; it was blinding because it was pure.
In the city of Mnemos, light was always filtered. Neon through rain, sunlight through smog, holograms through static. But this light was clear. Golden. It felt like standing in the center of a sunrise.
Lyric blinked, shielding their eyes. The static in their head—the screaming voices from the Fog—silenced instantly. It was like stepping into a soundproof booth.
"What is this place?" Rook whispered. His voice didn't echo. The acoustics were dead, swallowed by the padded walls of the chamber.
They stepped onto a circular platform made of white ceramic. The room was spherical, lined with thousands of copper wires that pulsed like veins.
And in the center, floating in a column of anti-gravity suspension, was the Anchor.
It wasn't a machine. Not entirely.
It was a glass box, roughly the size of a coffin. Inside, suspended in clear amber fluid, was a young woman. She looked peaceful, eyes closed, dark hair floating around her face. She wore a simple white dress that looked decades out of style.
But her chest…
Her chest was open. The skin had been peeled back surgically. Her heart wasn't just beating; it was glowing. Wires were threaded directly into the ventricles, pumping blue light out into the copper cables that lined the room.
"It's a person," Rook said, his voice shaking. "You said it was a heart. You didn't say the rest of her was attached."
"She's the battery," Valerius said, stepping closer, his face illuminated by the golden glow. "Or the projector. This is the source of the simulation."
Mira walked past them, her eyes scanning the readouts on the base of the platform. She didn't look at the woman's face. She looked at the gauges.
"She's failing," Mira said quietly. "Look at the pulse. It's arrhythmic. The entropy pressure outside is too high. She's having a heart attack in slow motion."
Lyric walked up to the glass.
The woman inside looked… familiar? No, not familiar. She looked real. Her skin had pores. Her fingernails were uneven. She didn't have the glossy perfection of the Guild's memory-constructs.
"Who is she?" Lyric asked.
"Her name is Elara," Mira said, adjusting a dial. "She was Janus's daughter."
Rook choked on air. "His daughter? He hooked his daughter up to a generator?"
"She was dying," Valerius deduced, looking at the scarring on her neck. "Radiation poisoning? From the Outside?"
"Yes," Mira said. "The atmosphere outside collapsed fifty years ago. Janus couldn't save her body. So he saved her mind. He put her in stasis and used her memories of the world before the collapse to build Mnemos. We are literally living inside her dream of a better world."
Lyric looked at the glowing heart. "So if she dies… the dream ends."
"And the Fog eats us all," Rook finished. "No pressure."
Lyric pressed a hand against the glass case.
There was no static. Just a warmth. A feeling of… safety.
"She's in pain," Lyric whispered.
"How do you know?" Valerius asked.
"Because I feel it," Lyric said. "The Void… it's reacting. It wants to take the pain away."
"Don't," Mira snapped, looking up from the console. "If you erase her pain, you erase the memory attached to it. If she forgets why she's holding on, the city dissolves."
"I know," Lyric said, pulling their hand back. "I'm not going to touch her. But we can't just leave her like this. She's suffering."
"We need to stabilize the feed," Mira said. "The connection to the roots is clogged. The data isn't flowing back out. It's building up pressure inside her."
"A blockage?" Rook asked. "Like a plumbing issue?"
"Exactly," Mira said. "But the blockage isn't here. It's at the Primary Junction. About ten miles down the cable line."
"Ten miles?" Rook groaned, sliding down to sit on the white floor. "We just walked for an hour. My feet are bleeding, Mira. Literally."
"We don't have to walk," Valerius said. He was looking at a console on the far side of the room. "There's a maintenance transport. A hyper-loop pod."
"Does it work?" Lyric asked.
"It has power," Valerius said, tapping the screen. "But it requires a bio-key to launch. Janus's DNA."
"We don't have Janus," Rook pointed out.
"We have his blood," Lyric said.
Everyone looked at Lyric.
"The bandage," Lyric said, looking at Valerius. "When we were in the Clocktower. Janus had a cut on his arm from where the glass broke during the Echo attack. You checked him before we left."
Valerius checked his own coat—Lyric's stolen coat. The sleeves were stained with soot and grime.
"I didn't bandage him," Valerius realized. "I just checked his pulse. But…" He looked at his hand. There was a faint, dried smear of rust-colored blood on his thumb.
"It's dried," Mira said. "The scanner needs fresh cells."
"We can rehydrate it," Valerius said, thinking fast. "Saline solution. From the med-kit. It might be enough to fool a fifty-year-old scanner."
Rook dug out the med-kit. "We are really scraping the bottom of the barrel here. Rehydrating blood from a thumb smudge."
Valerius carefully washed his thumb over the scanner plate with a drop of saline.
They waited. The machine hummed.
Access Granted. Administrator Janus detected.
A section of the wall slid open, revealing a small, bullet-shaped pod sitting on a magnetic rail.
"We're in," Valerius said.
"Wait," Lyric said.
Lyric turned back to the glass case. To Elara.
Something was happening inside the tank. The blue light was pulsing faster. Elara's eyelids were fluttering.
"She sees us," Lyric said.
"She's unconscious, Lyric," Mira said. "She's been asleep for decades."
"No," Lyric said. "She's lucid."
Suddenly, the room shifted.
The white walls vanished. The copper wires vanished.
For a heartbeat, they weren't in the Roots.
They were standing in a field of tall, golden wheat. A bright, yellow sun beat down on them. A blue sky stretched horizon to horizon, dotted with white clouds. The air smelled of baked earth and grass.
"What…" Rook spun around, eyes wide. "What is this?"
"It's the First Memory," Valerius whispered, reaching out to touch a stalk of wheat. His hand passed through it. "It's a projection."
A girl was standing in the field. Elara. She looked healthy, happy. She was laughing, pointing at the sky.
Then, she turned to look at Lyric. The laughter stopped. Her face became serious. Sad.
She pointed a finger at Lyric. Then she pointed at the ground.
Dig, she mouthed. Dig deeper.
Then, the image shattered like glass.
They were back in the brass sphere. The warning lights were flashing red.
ALERT. SYSTEM CRITICAL. ANCHOR DE-STABILIZING.
"She projected!" Mira yelled, running to the console. "That spike nearly killed her! We have to go! If we don't clear that blockage in the junction, she burns out in less than an hour!"
"Dig deeper," Lyric whispered. "What did she mean?"
"She meant we need to fix the pipes before the roof falls on our heads!" Rook shouted, grabbing his backpack. "Get in the pod!"
Lyric took one last look at the woman in the glass. She was still again, but a single tear of blue liquid was floating from her eye into the suspension fluid.
"I'll come back," Lyric promised.
Lyric turned and ran for the pod.
They piled in—it was tight, designed for two people, so they were practically sitting on each other's laps.
"Launching!" Valerius slammed the button.
The pod shot forward.
The acceleration was instant. They blurred down the magnetic tunnel, leaving the golden light of the Anchor behind, plunging deeper into the dark machinery of the world.