The girl in the mirror wasn't real.
Ione Vale stared at her own reflection like it was a stranger's. Chestnut hair tucked into a braid, eyes a dull shade of green that always looked more tired than alive. No makeup. No earrings. A forgettable face—that was the point.
You couldn't be memorable in her line of work.
She pulled on her coat, the lining stitched with black-market tech. Pulse dampeners, retinal scramblers, a dermal pass that would fool low-level scanners. She pressed her thumb to the chip embedded in her wrist. A soft chirp confirmed identity spoofing was live.
She wasn't Ione Vale anymore.
She was Eris, certified Memory Diver. Unlicensed. Unregistered. Untraceable.
Outside, the rain whispered against the concrete jungle of Sector 9, a part of the city where secrets lived in shadow and the air always smelled faintly of burnt static. Neon signs flickered in glitching pink and blue, illuminating the endless flow of synthetic humanity.
Ione hated this part of town. Too many desperate people. Too many eyes pretending not to see.
She walked fast, weaving through the crowd, past street preachers ranting about soul theft and teenage girls offering joy-fragments for twenty creds a smile. One boy held up a sign that read:
"BUY ONE: A First Kiss or a Goodbye. Your Choice."
Ione looked away.
She had a job to do.
---
The door to the clinic was almost invisible between two rusting vending machines. She rapped on it in the pattern: long, short, short, long.
A hiss. The door slid open.
Inside, the air was sterile, metallic. A man in a worn suit sat on a reclined medical chair, his face gaunt, skin grayed by time and something deeper—decay from within. Not physical. Cognitive.
"Mr. Eliston?" Ione asked.
He turned. His eyes were clouded. "You're the diver?"
She nodded and set her kit on the tray beside him.
"I need you to find something," he rasped. "A memory. It's... it's gone."
"Gone how?"
He hesitated. "Ripped. Like something was stitched there... then torn out. It hurts when I dream."
Ione powered on the MemorySync. It hummed, then began pulsing a soft light that matched the rhythm of his heartbeat.
"Do you remember what the memory was?"
"No," he said. "But it was the happiest moment of my life. And someone stole it."
Her hand paused over the neurojack.
Most clients wanted trauma erased, not joy recovered.
She linked the connector to the base of his skull. A slight hiss, then the world shifted as the memoryscape loaded.
---
Ione blinked and opened her eyes inside the man's mind.
The mindscape was falling apart.
Black, oily fog bled through fractured walls of memory. Disjointed moments floated around her—snippets of birthdays, funerals, rain against a window. A woman's laughter—then silence.
She walked carefully through the fragments, searching for the pulse signature of an anchor memory. A core. Something real.
Then she felt it. A whisper behind the fog.
A little girl. Laughing. On a bridge of white stone.
She reached for it—
—and was thrown backward as static screamed through the mindscape, red warnings flooding her vision.
FORBIDDEN SECTOR. ENCRYPTED BY MNEMOSYNE.
Her breath caught. She hadn't seen that logo since—
No. It couldn't be.
Why would Mnemosyne encrypt a personal memory in an old man's mind?
Unless it wasn't his to begin with.
---
Ione disconnected violently. Blood trickled from her nose.
Mr. Eliston was pale, trembling. "Did you see it?"
"No," she lied. "Fragment's corrupted. Deep damage. I'll need more time."
He nodded slowly, disappointed, and turned away.
Ione cleaned up quickly and slipped out before the machines could detect what she'd seen.
Outside, the night had turned colder. The street was empty except for a stray drone and a flickering ad for Mnemosyne:
> "FORGET. REMEMBER. REPEAT.™
Your past is our future."
She stared at it.
That bridge of white stone… She'd seen it before.
But not in someone else's memory.
She'd seen it in her own.
And that terrified her.
---
Back at her apartment, Ione locked every bolt, drew the blackout curtains, and slid her portable vault from beneath the floorboards.
Inside were three data crystals.
The last remaining memories of her sister, Zara.
She hadn't watched them in years. The pain had been too fresh. But now, her hands moved without permission, sliding one crystal into the reader.
Zara's face flickered into view. Pale, beautiful, eyes too sharp for her age.
"Ione, if you're seeing this... it means you found them. They're watching you now. Mnemosyne doesn't just buy memories anymore. They replace them. Mine weren't taken. They were rewritten."
Ione dropped the crystal. Her heart pounded.
Rewritten?
That was impossible. Illegal. Unthinkable.
Unless...
Unless Ione's memories weren't her own either.
She opened a second crystal. This one was corrupted—half-glitched and stuttering—but a voice came through clear as glass:
"The bridge is real. Look for the girl in the red coat. She knows what they did to us."
---
At that moment, Ione heard a knock.
No—not a knock.
A coded tap.
Long. Short. Short. Long.
Her blood froze.
No one knew that code.
Except her.
And the girl she used to be before Mnemosyne took her.