Archive of the Stolen Future
By Maryanne Njoki Ndirangu – May 2025
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They met in the catacombs beneath the Obsidian District.
The deeper Arielle descended into the underground tunnels with Kael, the more she felt the world above shrink into fiction. This was the city's true skeleton—a maze of forgotten rails, broken time capsules, ancient security drones covered in rust, and encoded murals that pulsed faintly with symbols that refused to stay still.
Each step felt like entering a layer of reality that had been scrubbed clean from the surface world.
Kael walked ahead, torchlight bouncing against the curved walls. The relic in Arielle's jacket throbbed faintly like a heartbeat, as though it was excited—or afraid.
"What is this place?" she whispered.
Kael glanced back. "A sanctuary. Or it was. For those who remembered what came before."
They stopped at a circular chamber. In its center stood five obelisks, each carved with rotating runes that shimmered slightly in the dark. The air was thick, heavy with static and memory.
Kael stepped forward, placing his hand on the closest monolith.
"We're here," he said.
Soft humming filled the chamber. Then silence.
Then—
A flicker.
One by one, holographic figures materialized around the obelisks. Some were partially pixelated. Others, unnervingly clear. A woman with braided silver hair. A man with a shattered jawline and glowing mechanical eye. A child with no visible face. And two others who remained in shadows.
The silver-haired woman stepped forward first.
Her voice was clear, confident. "Kael. We thought you were dead."
"Almost was," he said with a grim smile. "She saved me."
The woman's gaze turned to Arielle. Her eyes narrowed, calculating.
"She bears it," she murmured. "The relic."
Kael nodded. "And she's Evelyn's daughter."
The silence was immediate. Heavy. Reverent.
"Then she shouldn't be here," said the faceless child. "Not yet."
"She's already been marked," Kael replied. "The Vanguard chased her through the crypts. They know she's active. The timeline is unraveling faster than we predicted."
The mechanical-eyed man growled. "They always strike before we're ready."
Arielle stepped forward, voice firm despite the tremor in her hands. "I didn't ask to be part of this. But my mother died trying to protect something—and now they're coming after me too. I want to know what she died for. I want to know the truth."
The silver-haired woman tilted her head. "Do you believe in time, Arielle Kingsley?"
"I thought I did," she answered. "But now… I don't know what to believe."
"Good," the woman said. "Doubt is the first sign of awakening."
---
The five were called the Timekeepers—guardians of disrupted timelines. Not all of them were human anymore. Some, like the child, had uploaded fragments of themselves into the Archive before their bodies were destroyed. Others existed between worlds, remnants from broken futures.
Kael had once been one of them.
A Timekeeper-turned-fugitive.
He left the Pact after Evelyn's first death—unable to forgive them for not intervening. Now, his return meant something had shifted.
And Arielle? She was a variable they hadn't foreseen.
"She's the last carrier," said the man with the cybernetic jaw. "The Vanguard wiped out all others with access to the relic's interface. If she can unlock the gate to the Master Archive..."
"She can see the original threads," murmured the faceless child. "Even rewrite them."
Arielle's eyes widened. "Rewrite time?"
The silver-haired woman nodded. "Not everything. Not safely. But enough to restore some balance. Enough to unmask the Vanguard's corruption."
"But," she added, "it comes at a cost."
"What kind of cost?"
The woman looked toward Kael.
"She'll need to access the 'Silent Year'—the part of her life she doesn't remember."
Arielle frowned. "I remember everything."
"No," Kael said quietly. "You don't. There's a gap, Arielle. Your mother erased it to protect you. You were six. They tried to take you."
The chamber dimmed. For a moment, all Arielle could hear was the thunder of blood in her ears.
"I… I thought we moved because of debt. Because of war."
Kael stepped closer. "You were taken, Arielle. You vanished for two days. Your mother found you in a sector that no longer exists on the map. She brought you back… and then she made the world forget."
---
That night, Arielle stood alone on the edge of the sanctuary, overlooking an artificial waterfall that shimmered under bio-luminescent light. Everything she knew was fraying.
Her mother had fought a war she never spoke of. Had altered her child's memories. Had left behind a relic that could unlock the future—or destroy it.
A voice broke her thoughts.
"You're angry."
It was the silver-haired woman. She moved like she wasn't fully part of this world—light on her feet, almost translucent in the glow.
"I'm lost," Arielle said. "Why me?"
The woman sighed. "Because you were born in the gap. Between what was and what should have been. You exist outside their edits."
Arielle turned. "You think I can fix time?"
"No," the woman said, softly. "I think you can reveal it."
---
As morning approached, the Timekeepers gathered for one final act.
They gave Arielle a name: the Echo Key.
They couldn't join her on the surface. The Vanguard tracked their energy signatures. But they could grant her one tool.
A memory shard.
Small. Shimmering. Buried deep in her own mind.
Kael placed it in her palm.
"When you're ready to remember," he said, "this will unlock the Silent Year."
She closed her fingers around it.
And for the first time since the cemetery, she didn't feel afraid.
Only determined.
---
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Chapter 4 – The Silent Year
Archive of the Stolen Future
By Maryanne Njoki Ndirangu – May 2025
---
The shard was small—glasslike, curved, and faintly iridescent, like it contained a piece of the moon.
Arielle stared at it in her hand long after the Timekeepers had faded back into their digital recesses. Kael sat nearby, arms crossed, watching her like a hawk watches its wounded prey—not cruelly, but with a certain readiness. As though he expected her to shatter.
"When I use this," she said, her voice dry, "what happens?"
Kael's jaw tightened. "You'll see what was taken. Not as a story. As if you're reliving it."
"And after?"
He looked away. "Some never come back the same."
---
They found a quiet room deep within the sanctuary's west wing—round, stone-lined, padded with old Archive cloth. Arielle sat cross-legged on a memory cushion while Kael activated a proximity field that dampened external signals.
The shard pulsed once.
Twice.
Then it slipped through her skin.
---
Darkness.
Rain.
A child's scream echoing through metal corridors.
She was small again—six years old—hiding behind a broken rail station, clutching a stuffed bear with one missing eye. Voices filtered through the static.
"She's the one. Evelyn's bloodline. The prototype responded to her."
Heavy boots. A gloved hand grabbed her wrist.
She bit it.
The man cursed in a language she didn't know. A crackle of energy—something like electricity but colder. The bear dropped.
They dragged her into a silver pod. Sleek. Cold. Filled with a blue fog that numbed her skin. She pounded on the glass.
Then the fog entered her lungs.
---
New memory.
A chamber.
A figure in white—face obscured—held up a tablet.
"Subject AE-07, age: six. Latency detected. Cross-time imprinting successful."
Another voice. Female. Robotic.
"Memory loop initiated. Emotional inhibitor: active."
Searing pain behind her eyes. A thousand moments collapsing inward. Her brain felt stretched, broken, sewn back together with someone else's hands.
Then—
Her mother.
Not older, not broken, but young. Fierce. Wild-eyed. A blade in one hand, a bleeding wound in her shoulder.
"ARI!" she screamed, voice raw.
The woman in white turned too late.
A blast of sound. Lights shattered. Evelyn tore open the pod with bare hands.
Arielle tried to speak.
But the fog returned.
Her mother whispered: "You won't remember. But one day… you'll find the truth. You'll finish what I started."
---
She gasped awake.
Fell forward, coughing, tears streaming from her eyes. Kael caught her before she hit the floor.
"It was real," she whispered. "They experimented on me."
He nodded grimly. "You were the first child the Vanguard tried to map across time. You weren't just a threat. You were proof."
"Proof of what?"
"That time isn't linear. That some people—people like you—exist between strands. You remember futures that haven't happened yet."
Her hands trembled. "Why didn't my mother tell me?"
"She didn't want you to carry her war. But she knew you'd have to pick it up one day."
Arielle's breath hitched. "What did they do to her?"
Kael looked away. "They broke her. Then they made her watch you forget her."
---
That night, Arielle couldn't sleep.
She stared at the old bear they'd found tucked inside the chamber's artifacts—one glassy eye missing, the fur singed at the edges.
Her childhood wasn't real.
Her memories were lies.
But in the quiet, something stronger stirred.
Not rage.
Resolve.
---
In the morning, she stepped into the Archive's main hall, where Kael and the silver-haired Timekeeper stood beside a map—etched in holograms and cipher.
"I want to find the Master Archive," she said.
Kael blinked. "That's madness."
"Maybe," Arielle replied. "But it's the only place they can't erase me again."
The Timekeeper nodded slowly. "Then you'll need the second relic."
"Second?" Arielle frowned. "There's another?"
"Yes," she said, "and it was hidden in the only place Evelyn trusted more than herself."
"Where?"
The woman smiled faintly.
"Your father's mind."
---