Eliora didn't answer right away.
Aaren's question—"Have we met before?"—hung in the air like a note unresolved. It pulsed between them, soft and demanding, as if the room itself had turned to listen.
She should have lied.
Said no. That would have been safe.
But his voice wasn't confrontational. It was… searching. Not like a man asking for facts, but like someone who had been drifting alone for far too long, hoping that just once, someone would drift back.
"I don't think so," she said carefully. "I'd remember."
He tilted his head slightly, as if hearing something beneath her words. "I doubt that. People forget all the time."
She glanced down at the chip he had given her, still warm in her hand. "Dreams aren't the same as memories."
Aaren leaned back in his chair. "They feel the same, sometimes. And some dreams don't fade."
That was the problem. His dreams weren't fading.
And neither was the feeling in her chest—the gentle ache, the soft gravity pulling her toward something unnamed. She'd felt it the moment he stepped into her office, before he even spoke. Not recognition, exactly, but resonance. As if her very cells responded to him.
She slid the chip into the reader. A quiet hum followed, and then the screen in front of her flickered to life.
Five files appeared.
Each one labeled only by date.
She opened the most recent.
A shoreline emerged in soft pastels. The lake was still, the sky low and bruised with autumn. Two figures stood at the edge: a woman with dark hair, wind-tangled, and a man whose face never turned fully to the viewer. Their outlines blurred, as if captured by a dreamer's eye.
Then came the sound: laughter, bright and weightless. The woman spun, her boots kicking up red leaves.
Aaren's voice—recorded as narration—spoke in a hush:
> "I don't know her name. But I love the way she laughs. It feels like I used to laugh with her, too."
Eliora's hand went still on the console.
That laugh.
It sounded like hers.
Exactly like hers.
Not in some vague, dreamy way—but precise. A tone she recognized from her own rare moments of joy. And the man in the vision… the way he tilted his head, the way his fingers flexed at his side like he was always listening for something—
She paused the memory.
Aaren waited silently, head slightly bowed, like a monk in contemplation.
"I need to run an analysis," she said, standing. "These dreams—if they're based on real memory, there might be remnants stored in your neural patterns. Would you permit a scan?"
"I was hoping you'd ask."
He followed her without hesitation into the adjacent room. It was quieter here, dimmer, more intimate. The lights were amber-toned, meant to soothe. The air smelled faintly of lavender and old books.
She guided him gently to the scanning chair.
He sat, hands resting on the arms, blind eyes facing forward.
"Are you nervous?" she asked, adjusting the nodes on his temples.
"I'm curious," he said. "That's different."
"You know this might show nothing."
"I'd rather know it's nothing than wonder forever if it was everything."
She nodded, even though he couldn't see her.
The scan began with a soft chime. Lines of data lit up across the screen. Brainwave patterns, memory clusters, electromagnetic pulses—all dancing in symphony. Eliora's fingers danced across the interface, separating and tracing each signal like a composer studying an unfinished score.
Then—
She stopped.
A flash of familiar frequency.
A memory node tagged as archived—but not erased.
It had her identifier on it.
Her extraction code.
Yet she had no recollection of the session.
The timestamp was from two years ago.
She double-checked.
It was real.
She had worked on Aaren before.
She had erased something.
And her own mind had been scrubbed clean of the record.
Her heart skipped a beat.
Eliora removed the headset gently. Aaren opened his eyes, even though they still saw nothing.
"You found something," he said, sensing her pause.
"Yes," she whispered. "A trace."
"Of her?"
She hesitated. "Of someone."
Aaren turned his head slightly toward her voice. "Does she sound… like you?"
She inhaled sharply.
His question was too specific. Too close. It wasn't the first time he'd wondered that. She could feel it. Somehow, deep down, part of him knew.
She opened her mouth, ready to deflect, to lie, to detach.
But then he said, almost brokenly:
> "Sometimes I dream of waking up next to her. I never see her face. But I always reach out and whisper her name before I forget it. And every time I do… it feels like I've already lost her."
Eliora turned away so he wouldn't hear the breath catch in her throat.
There was something there. Something ancient and wounded. Not just from him—but inside her, too. A grief without source. A goodbye never spoken.
Maybe they had met before.
Maybe they had loved.
And maybe—just maybe—they had been stolen from each other.
She faced him again.
"I want to try something," she said. "A deep scan. Riskier. But it might unlock more."
Aaren smiled faintly.
"Then let's risk it."