The next morning, Beijing felt colder than usual, not because of the weather, but because of the eyes Zahra could feel on her back.
She walked to class in silence, but her senses were sharp, alert. Every step felt louder. Every glance from a passer-by felt loaded. When she turned the corner past the Chemistry building, she noticed the same man she'd seen twice before leaning against a lamppost, pretending to scroll through his phone. He didn't follow her directly, but he didn't leave either. By the time she sat down in her lecture hall, her hands were trembling.
That evening, Elijah messaged her:
"Meet me at the East Bridge. 9pm. Dress warm. Don't tell anyone."
When she arrived, the snow had begun to fall again. Elijah stood under the bridge, hoodie pulled up, his face shadowed.
"I have something," he said, pulling a flash drive from his pocket. "Encrypted documents. From one of the older campus servers. Medical records. Patient logs. Lab transfers. It's all here."
"Where did you get this?"
"A student hacker. Paid him with imported Ghanaian coffee and two English textbooks. Don't ask."
She laughed despite the tension. "You're impossible. Effective, though."
He handed her the drive, but before she could pocket it, headlights flashed from the other side of the bridge. A black car. Unmarked. Its engine idled, silent but ominous.
Elijah stiffened. "We need to go. Now."
They ran, ducking into the side alleys behind the bridge. Zahra clutched the drive tight as adrenaline pushed her forward. The car didn't follow, but when they finally stopped, hearts racing, they both knew this was no coincidence.
Back at the dorm, they examined the files on an old laptop Elijah had rigged with anti-tracking software. The records were deeply redacted, names blacked out, but Zahra recognized several of the test subjects. African names, medical notes in Chinese, and codes she couldn't understand. But one file caught her eye.
"Subject 9: Neurological Response Patterns - Detected fluctuations suggest potential memory echo transmission." She read it three times.
"Memory echo transmission," she whispered. "What does that even mean?". "Maybe… they believed trauma or genetic memory could carry over? That test subjects could inherit more than biology, maybe even fragments of the past?" "Like instinct?" she murmured. "But deeper?"
Elijah looked at her, expression unreadable. "Have you been having… dreams?"
She froze.
The night before, she had seen a burning building. A hospital room. A man shouting in Mandarin. A hand on her shoulder whispering, Run. Don't look back.
She nodded slowly.
"They're not just dreams," Elijah said. "They're memories. Yours. Or someone else's. Someone who lived through it."
Zahra stared at the screen, where her father's name appeared in the margins of a long-forgotten trial.
Something told her she was standing on the edge of a truth more terrifying than she had imagined. And the shadows were only beginning to stir.