The room was white—too white, as if it had forgotten how to carry shadows. Sterile walls pulsed with soft light from embedded panels. A faint humming came from the neural stabilizer, and the air tasted of electricity and secrets. Eliora sat behind the glass partition, unmoving, her eyes locked on the man strapped to the chair. She blinked slowly, deliberately—like someone trying not to feel too much.
He was her sixth client that month. Or maybe her seventh. In a world where memory could be erased, reshaped, or stolen, counting became a cruel trick. Sometimes, even her own reflections felt like echoes—familiar, but hollow.
The man, hulking and bruised from some street brawl, groaned as the interface cap tightened around his head. Two assistants moved around him like vapor—silent, masked, sterile. He had paid a fortune for this one act of erasure. The system would remove a violent evening from his mind: fists, blood, a scream, a moment he wished had never existed.
"Vitals stable," came the soft voice of the assistant monitoring the console.
"Begin sedative drip," Eliora replied, her voice like silk draped over steel.
"Confirmed."
The man slurred, "Do it quick," then dropped into stillness.
Eliora leaned over the biometric panel. Her gloved finger hovered for a moment. The pad accepted her print with a soft click, and then—
Light.
A cascade of memories unfolded in midair—delicate, glowing strands hovering above the console. They shimmered like threads of starlight in water, each one vibrating with raw emotion: rage, guilt, shame. But beneath them, buried like a pearl in mud, was something unexpected.
A single strand glowed warmer than the others. Quieter. Tender.
She tapped to isolate it.
Five seconds of memory. A man kneeling on concrete, eyes wide in regret, lips trembling as he whispered, "I'm sorry," to no one at all. His hand, still stained with blood, trembled.
Eliora's throat tightened.
Others would have discarded it without pause. Just a flaw in the sequence. A contradiction.
But she had learned long ago that contradictions were where humanity lived.
She copied the strand. Quietly. Illegally.
The law called it memory theft. Punishable by exile—your identity erased, your core overwritten until even your reflection in the mirror recoiled in confusion. But Eliora didn't steal for money. She didn't sell the memories she preserved. She collected them like fragile artifacts. Reminders that even the worst of us sometimes reached for the light.
That night, the city above her pulsed with neon apathy. The streets hummed with hovercrafts and digital noise, but below, in her secret vault—an old, sealed-off library beneath a forgotten museum—time was slower. Truer.
Memory orbs floated in a suspended display, hundreds of them spinning gently like constellations frozen mid-dance. Each one held a moment stolen from time—an apology, a kiss, a laugh too delicate to be left behind.
She catalogued the new one: Apology, accidental, violent man, soft voice.
And she played it once.
Just once.
The flicker of regret in his voice was enough to make her close her eyes and inhale like she had touched something sacred. Then she tucked it away.
It was only after midnight when her comm pad buzzed. The sharp vibration startled her. Few people had access to that channel.
NEW CLIENT REQUEST — ANONYMOUS TIER ALPHA
Her pulse slowed. Alpha-tier clients never came through ordinary channels. They were encrypted, high-risk, wrapped in layers of secrecy—and danger.
She opened the file.
Client Request: Constructed Memory Implant
Details: A woman by a lake. Autumn light. Laughter shared. Identity unknown. Client dreams of her frequently. Wants the memory to feel real.
Client Identifier: AAREN
She froze.
Aaren.
The name echoed through her mind, as though someone had whispered it inside her skull. Softly, but insistently.
She read it again.
Aaren.
It wasn't a common name. And yet it felt—familiar. Not just in the way names do when they remind you of someone, but in the way music sometimes finds your heart before your ears.
She leaned back in her chair, staring at the screen as if it might blink back. Her hand lifted to the back of her neck, brushing against a faint, crescent-shaped scar. Barely visible. But always there.
She'd had it since the day she woke up in this city—with no memories of where she had been before.
Coincidence? Perhaps.
She scanned the rest of the request. It was vague—intentionally so. Most clients asked for fantasy, for crafted memories of people who never existed. But this one…
This one felt like longing. Not fantasy.
Then she reached the last line of the file:
"If the memory already exists, please find it."
A chill curled down her spine.
It was a strange thing, fear wrapped in recognition. Her breath caught, her thoughts scattering like dust through sunlight.
Because deep in her core—beneath all the erased years and buried truths—something stirred. A shadow of a heartbeat.
A name she didn't remember loving. A song she didn't remember hearing. A face she didn't remember kissing.
But something inside her whispered: