The following morning hit like a glitch to the skull.
I woke up already sweating, heart hammering in my chest. The sheets clung to me like static. My HUD flickered the moment my eyes opened.
SYSTEM UNSYNCED
ANCHOR SIGNAL FLUCTUATING
Then it corrected itself. Or pretended to.
Kane wasn't in the room. His bed was made military-tight. His locker sealed. No trace of movement. Like he'd never existed.
I sat up slowly. My bones ached like I'd fought all night. Maybe I had. Maybe whatever I fought wasn't done with me yet.
There were marks on my arm. Not bruises. Symbols.
Three short lines.
A gap.
A fourth, crossing them all.
I didn't know what it meant.
But the voice did.
"You're marked. Someone remembered. That's... unexpected."
"Who marked me?"
"Someone who remembers you. Or did. Memory's not so clean these days."
"That's not an answer."
"It's the best kind. The kind that keeps you alive."
I grabbed my jacket and headed out. I didn't bother with the scanner arches this time. They still buzzed red when I passed, still flashed:
VAEL DRAYCE — SCAN FAILED
But no one cared. Not really. I was beneath notice, or beyond protocol. Either way, I was invisible.
The day was a blur. Training modules, drone patrols, and hollow lectures filled the hours. Overseer Solas was gone. In his place stood a substitute instructor with no name, no file. His ID tag was blank. So was his face. Fogged out by the system or maybe by something deeper.
He taught Basic Signal Theory like it was ancient history.
"Anchors," he said, voice filtered through layers of static, "are not people. They are stabilizers. Temporary patches. Human firewalls."
My pen hovered over my notes. I raised my hand.
"What happens when an Anchor fails?"
He turned toward me. His features didn't sharpen. The blur shifted, but never cleared.
"They loop."
The word echoed. For a second, I felt dizzy. Like I'd heard it before. Felt it.
Loop.
I blinked. He'd already turned away.
No one else in the class even reacted.
During free period, I went deeper.
Past Class Z's broken sim halls. Past the echo vaults where walls whispered names. Down to Sublevel 9, where the lights flickered like they were trying to forget what they'd seen.
My HUD dimmed on its own to conserve energy. No signal. No active cams. I was off the map.
I found the mural again.
Painted directly on the concrete support wall, its colors faded but not erased.
A child. Mask cracked. One eye visible—blue like mine. The expression behind the mask was caught between fear and hope.
I touched it.
The world stuttered.
Suddenly I was elsewhere.
A birthday party. Candles flickering. Balloons sagging from strings. Laughter spilled through the air—real, warm, sharp.
A cake. Chocolate. Vanilla frosting. My name carved across it in blue icing:
VAEL — 12 YEARS
No scratches. No redactions. Just a moment. Whole.
Someone was singing. Off-key. The voice cracked halfway through, but didn't stop. I knew it. It clawed at a part of me I didn't know was still alive.
"Make a wish, Vael," the voice said.
I leaned closer to the memory.
And then—
Glass shattering. Lights exploding.
Screams.
The memory tore itself apart, sucked backward into a tunnel of static and light. I tried to hold on.
Then I was back. Sublevel 9. The cold cement under my fingers. The mural still there.
The voice came again, quieter now.
"They can't erase everything. Some memories... bite back."
When I got back to the dorms, Kane was there. Sitting on his bunk, staring at nothing. He didn't look up.
"Where were you?" I asked.
He blinked slowly, like it took effort. "Nowhere."
"You left without saying anything."
He didn't respond.
I stepped closer. His vitals were visible on his wristband. Steady. Too steady.
"Kane... what did they do to you?"
He finally looked at me.
"You weren't in the records this morning. It was like you'd never been here."
I froze.
"They scrubbed your name, Vael. I asked about you and the system said—'Unlisted.'"
I backed away slowly.
"I'm here now."
"For how long?" he whispered.
He turned away again and said nothing more. His eyes were dull. Like something inside had been filed down.
That night, I found a message etched into my HUD screen.
Not system code. Not a file. A message.
Etched.
Remember the Four.
I didn't know what it meant. But the voice spoke again.
"Four fragments. Four echoes. Four failsafes. Your past wasn't deleted. It was disassembled."
"How do I find them?"
"You already have. One. The mural."
"Where are the others?"
"Scattered. Buried. Some might even breathe."
I sat by the window long past lights-out.
Outside, the academy's outer wall flickered. A projection shield—a reminder of how sealed off we all were. Not just physically. Mentally. No questions. No versions. Just status.
Inside, the dorm hallway felt longer than usual. As I watched it stretch into darkness, I saw a brief flicker—like someone was standing there.
I blinked.
Gone.
My HUD logged nothing.
Later, I tried to sleep, but the reflection across the room was still blinking out of sync. I turned the lights off. It blinked again.
This time, the reflection smiled.
Just for a second.
Then it matched me.
I sat up again. My breath fogged the air even though the temperature hadn't dropped. The room was still, but not empty.
I whispered, "Glint... are you seeing this?"
No answer. Not even static.
The HUD flickered once—then displayed a symbol I'd never seen: a circle broken by a diagonal slash.
Then nothing.
I stood and walked slowly toward the mirror.
It stared back.
"You remember more than you admit," the voice finally said. But it didn't come from the HUD.
It came from behind the glass.
A shape moved inside the reflection. Not a perfect mirror version of me—something older, with my eyes but not my skin. Its outline shimmered with static.
I raised my hand.
So did it.
But I didn't move.
It did.
I didn't sleep. Not really.
Just lay awake, heart pounding, trying to remember a life that might not have ever happened. Trying to forget the things that came back anyway.
My memory wasn't mine. My life wasn't clean. But if the system wanted to erase me—
It would have to try harder.