Morning came too soon, as if the night had merely loosened its grip long enough for the lights to turn back on. Nero had not slept. He had only changed chairs.
The workstation in his apartment was still glowing faintly when he stood, system logs scattered across multiple screens, each one meticulously checked and rechecked through the night, each one clean in a way that made his stomach tighten rather than ease. No corruption flags. No residual data. No unauthorized access trails. It was as if the anomaly had never existed at all.
Too clean.
That was what unsettled him most. The empty mug beside him caught his attention, the surface of the coffee inside long gone cold, a thin ring clinging to the porcelain like a timestamp he had forgotten to erase. He stared at it for a moment longer than necessary.
You're losing it, he thought. But the memory refused to fade.
I'm the one who should have been you.
The words looped through his mind as he walked the corridor leading back into the Archive, his steps measured, automatic, as though his body still believed in routine even if his thoughts no longer did. He told himself he could still go back to the way things were—to logging in, verifying credentials, booting systems, drowning himself in harmless data until whatever had happened last night became just another unresolved thought he could bury under work.
The security scanner hummed softly, bathing him in pale blue light as it verified his identity. The gate unlocked with a precise mechanical click.
Inside, the Archive looked unchanged.
Endless rows of terminals stretched before him, each alive with quiet pulses of green, steady and reassuring, the hum returning to its usual measured rhythm. Everything looked ordinary. Harmless.
For a brief moment, Nero almost believed last night hadn't happened.
Almost.
He reached his workstation and settled into his chair, flexing stiff fingers over the keyboard as the system recognized his access key. The familiar startup interface appeared—then vanished, replaced instantly by a window he had never seen before.
[ SYSTEM NOTICE: TEMPORARY OVERSIGHT ][ ASSIGNED — ANALYST H. KRUSATE ]
Nero frowned, leaning closer.
Oversight wasn't routine, especially not for someone at his clearance level. Analysts didn't simply appear at junior archivists' stations without prior notice or documentation. He reached for the assignment details—
"You shouldn't run diagnostics without clearance."
The voice came from behind him.
Nero turned.
A young woman stood near the console behind his station, leaning against it with casual ease, arms folded loosely as if she had been there all along. Her uniform jacket hung half-open, unfastened at the collar, and the dim lighting caught the edge of a single ID tag clipped to her chest.
[ HELINA KRUSATE — ANALYSIS WING ][ LEVEL 4 CLEARANCE ]
She looked calm. Too calm.
"You're… oversight?" Nero asked carefully, his voice lower than usual.
She tilted her head slightly, regarding him with an unreadable expression. "That's what the system says, isn't it?"
"I didn't request any analyst."
"I noticed." A faint, humorless smile crossed her face. "Requests usually come after the damage is done."
Nero hesitated. "Damage?"
She stepped closer, her gaze drifting across the active screens behind him. "Sector Zero-Nine spiked last night. Data storms don't appear out of nowhere." The way she said it made his chest tighten.
"I was here," Nero said. "Just routine checks."
"Mmh." She tapped a finger lightly against one of the displays, then crouched beside his console and withdrew a thin, rectangular device from her pocket. With a practiced motion, she activated it, projecting a holographic waveform into the air between them.
It pulsed slowly, rising and falling like a heartbeat. "Your routine checks fried three relay buffers," she said calmly. "Congratulations."
"That's not possible," Nero replied, frowning. "The system would've—"
"—flagged it?" she finished. "It didn't."
He leaned closer. "Then what am I looking at?" She straightened, meeting his eyes. "The spike pattern from your terminal. Time-stamped at 02:47."
His throat tightened. "What does it mean?"
"That," she said, deactivating the hologram, "is what I came to find out."
There was a pause. Then she added, more quietly, "You triggered something the Archive doesn't have a name for." The way she said it made his skin prickle.
"You talk like you've seen this before," Nero said. "Not this," Helia replied, studying him for a moment longer than necessary. "But something close." He swallowed. "And you're certain it came from my console?"
"Your ID signature is embedded in the waveform," she said, slipping the device back into her pocket. "The system registered it as a living source."
He turned sharply. "A living—what? Signal?"
She regarded him steadily. "Don't act surprised."
He opened his mouth to protest, then stopped. She was right. "You felt it too," she said softly. He didn't ask how she knew. Helia stepped away from the workstation and began walking toward the exit of the row, stopping just before disappearing between the towering server stacks.
"I'll be in Analysis Room Two for the next hour," she said without turning back. "If you plan to keep digging into last night, don't do it alone."
Her tone wasn't a suggestion. It was a warning. She walked away without waiting for a response.
Nero remained seated, watching her disappear between the rows of machines, unease settling deep in his chest. There was something about her composure that didn't sit right—not fear, not urgency, but a kind of controlled restraint, as though she already knew more than she was willing to say.
He spent the next two hours pretending to work.
His hands moved automatically, logging entries and verifying minor data clusters, but his attention kept drifting to the corner system—the terminal that had glowed red the night before. Now it pulsed green, steady and innocent, as if it had never done anything else.
You triggered something the Archive doesn't have a name for.
He couldn't leave it alone.
Nero entered a manual command, attempting to access the locked logs once more. The screen flashed a warning—AUTHORIZATION DENIED—but before he could attempt an override, another window opened by itself.
A single line of text appeared.
You brought it back.
Nero froze.
The words blinked once, waiting.
"Who is this?" he asked quietly.
The response came instantly.
Stop searching.
His pulse quickened. He leaned closer, lowering his voice. "Are you… in the system?"
The reply appeared before the thought had fully formed.
You're still asking the wrong question.
Then the console went black.
Nero stared at his reflection in the dark screen, his heartbeat roaring in his ears. The surface of the monitor was smooth, empty—but behind the faint image of his own face, something flickered.
A shape.
Small.
Too quick.
A boy.
The same pale eyes.The same ghost of a smile.
Nero stumbled to his feet, the air around him suddenly feeling colder, heavier, as though the servers themselves were closing in. A hiss of static rippled faintly through the overhead speakers—subtle, almost playful, like laughter buried deep in noise.
"Nero?"
He spun around.
Helia stood at the end of the row, datapad in hand, her expression sharp the moment she took in his face.
"You saw it again," she said.
It wasn't a question.
He didn't answer.
She approached slowly, deliberately, as if sudden movement might make something worse.
"You didn't imagine it," she said quietly. "Sector Zero-Nine spiked again just now. Whatever is happening here—it's tied to you."
Nero swallowed. "Then tell me what you think this is."
Helia met his gaze.
"I think the Archive isn't just storing events and time," she said.
She hesitated, lowering her voice.
"I think it's keeping something else."
The lights flickered overhead.
A subtle vibration passed through the floor, real enough to feel through his shoes. Every monitor in the row flashed once, just long enough for a single red word to appear—before returning to green.
UNLIVED
Helia looked up sharply. "We need to leave. Now."
Nero turned toward her—but behind her, reflected in the dark glass of a dormant screen, he saw a figure standing among the servers.
A boy, no older than twelve.
His own face.
Watching.
And then the reflection smiled