Chicago, 3 AM. Rain smeared neon lights across Michigan Avenue.
I crouched behind a fire hydrant, my telephoto lens aimed at a nameless gray building across the street. The shutter fired ten frames per second, like a machine gun. On the camera's screen, men in white coats loaded black body bags into a van, their movements clinical, like handling frozen beef.
The camera's LCD screen reflected my face: dark circles, cracked lips, the scar above my left eyebrow still unstitched from the Kabul bombing two years ago. Shrapnel had done my cosmetic surgery. Photos lie; scars don't.
A yawn crackled in my earpiece from the news desk night shift. "Lena, got anything? We're going to press with a blank front page if you don't have something soon."
"Give me ten minutes," I hissed. "Or get me a lawyer."
I hit send, uploading the latest nine shots to encrypted cloud storage. The next instant, a barefoot man burst onto the street corner—hospital gown, bloodstained, wet hair plastered to his forehead. He looked like he'd fled straight from an operating table into the downpour. Three security guards in tactical vests chased him.
The shutter clicked automatically.
Through the viewfinder, he looked up, his gaze piercing the rain curtain to meet the lens. My finger froze mid-burst—his pupils weren't those of a fugitive, but a lost child, terror mixed with desperate appeal.
"Move!" A guard bellowed. A rifle butt struck a bystander. A black van screeched to a halt, spraying water waist-high. Surrounded in the headlights, the man suddenly dropped low—too fast, like a film skip. The next moment, he rolled under the van chassis, emerged on the other side, and lunged straight for my fire hydrant.
We collided. My camera slammed into his chest with a metallic crack. He grabbed my wrist; his palm was burning hot.
"Help me." His English was halting, accented in a way I couldn't place. "They'll kill me."
Boots pounded closer. Instinct screamed to back away—years in war zones taught me: don't pick up trouble in someone else's country. But rain streamed down his neck, washing away blood to reveal a fresh surgical suture. I knew that cut: the mark of a military-grade neural implant.
"With me." The words surprised even me.
I yanked him into an alley, looping the camera strap tight around my wrist. Rain made the pavement slick; we scrambled like foxes caught in headlights. Behind us, the sharp rack of a slide. Bullets whizzed past my ear, exploding sparks against brick.
Over a dumpster, through soggy cardboard, up a fire escape—five floors in forty seconds. I gasped like a broken bellows, but he shoved the roof door open first.
Wind whipped harder up here, rain driving sideways. I knelt, yanking off a tarp to reveal my hideout: a repurposed camper van turned mobile darkroom, solar panels glinting dully under the rain.
"Inside." I pushed him.
The door slammed shut, muffling the storm. Rain drummed on the metal roof like countless knuckles.
The interior light flickered on. He huddled in a fold-out chair, arms wrapped around his knees, knuckles white. I tossed him an old towel. He wiped his face; the towel bloomed instantly rose-red with blood and water.
"Name." I raised my camera, lens pointed, finger hovering over the shutter.
"Alex... Reyes?" He sounded like he was reading someone else's ID. "Maybe a codename. I'm not sure."
"Why are they chasing you?"
He looked up. His irises were a pale amber under the light.
"Because there are seven people's memories in my head."
I laughed, the sound sharp like hearing a madman's rambling in a warzone. But his next words choked the laugh in my throat.
"One of them is yours."
The van light flickered twice. The rain outside seemed suddenly distant. My fingers brushed the memory card slot on my camera—the card holding all tonight's photos of body bags.
"Explain." My voice was sandpaper dry.
He closed his eyes, as if listening to distant music.
"I saw Kabul. The market. Yellow dust. Smell of roasting lamb. The click of your shutter two seconds before the blast." He opened his eyes, each word deliberate. "In the viewfinder... a little girl in a red headscarf. Handing you a daisy as you took her picture."
*Click—*
That was the last undeveloped frame in my memory. Never uploaded. Never published.
The camera slipped from my hands and clattered to the floor.
The rain had stopped. Outside, sirens began converging from all directions.
My own heartbeat pounded in my ears, faster than any shutter.