The knock echoed through Ione's apartment like a memory trying to return.
Long. Short. Short. Long.
She stood frozen, her breath shallow, her body still humming from the emotional crash of viewing Zara's crystal. The knock came again, and with it, something stirred in her chest—a flicker of fear… and something older. Recognition.
Ione slid her hand beneath the table, fingers wrapping around the grip of the pulse pistol she kept taped underneath. She crossed the room without a sound, pressed her back to the door, and activated the peephole cam.
No one.
Just static fuzz.
No signal.
They were jamming her systems.
She backed away slowly. Thought fast.
Whoever was out there didn't want to break in. Not yet. They wanted her to open it.
Which meant one of two things: either it was a memory enforcer, waiting for a mistake…
Or someone who knew her better than she remembered.
She flicked off the safety, disengaged the lock, and opened the door.
Nothing.
Empty hallway.
No sound.
Except—
A small, folded red coat lay on the floor. Children's size. Stained at the hem. Fraying at the cuffs.
Ione stared at it, heart thudding. Her mind screamed to slam the door. Burn it. Forget it.
But her fingers reached down and touched the fabric like it was sacred.
---
She didn't remember the girl in the red coat.
Not fully.
But every time she saw that shade of scarlet—on a street sign, a ribbon, a dream—it pulled at something buried. Like a song with no lyrics. A name without a face.
She lifted the coat carefully and found something inside.
A small memory crystal sewn into the lining. Illegal. Off-grid.
No ID. No encryption key.
Just a note, handwritten on paper—real paper, rare as diamonds.
> "If you remember her, they'll come.
If you forget, she dies."
Her hands trembled.
She slammed the door and sealed every lock, every bolt, then dropped the crystal into her reader.
The screen flickered once. Then again. Then steadied.
---
She was inside the memory.
A snowy street, glowing under amber lamps.
A little girl, no older than seven, stood at the edge of a white stone bridge. Red coat. Black boots. Her hair was short and wild, her cheeks flushed from cold and joy.
She laughed—an innocent, radiant sound—and looked straight at Ione.
"You're late."
Ione choked on air. Her hands weren't hers anymore—they were smaller. Softer. She was seeing from the girl's perspective now.
The bridge shimmered around her.
And then it happened.
A sharp flash—like lightning in her mind.
A figure stepped from the shadows at the end of the bridge. A tall woman, face obscured, wearing a Mnemosyne technician's coat.
The girl's laughter died.
"Time to forget," the woman whispered.
The memory fractured.
---
Ione yanked the jack from her temple, gasping for breath.
Her vision blurred.
Blood from her nose again. More this time.
That wasn't just a stored moment. It was a live imprint—a raw echo embedded in her neural pathways.
Dangerous. Illegal. Intimate.
Someone hadn't just shared a memory.
They'd given her back her own.
She sat in silence, heart pounding.
Who was the girl?
Was it her?
Or was it Zara?
The more she tried to grasp it, the more it slipped through her mental fingers like smoke.
---
Ione pulled open her closet and pushed aside her clothes until she reached the metal panel behind them. With effort, she slid it away, revealing the hidden wall safe—a relic from before the war.
She placed the red coat inside.
If Mnemosyne was watching—and she was sure now they were—this was a declaration.
She remembered.
And someone didn't want her to.
---
Her comm rang, encrypted line.
Only one person had that channel.
"Eris," said a male voice. "You're being watched."
She didn't answer immediately.
"Kade?"
A pause.
"Yeah. You saw something, didn't you?"
More than she could explain in one breath.
"What do you know about red coats?"
He swore under his breath. "You need to leave your apartment. Now."
"I can handle it."
"No. You can't. They're coming with a Displacer. You've got ten minutes before they walk through your walls like ghosts."
Ione's skin crawled.
Displacers were Mnemosyne's newest weapon—technicians injected with a chemical that allowed them to phase through memory-stabilized structures.
Not physical ghosts. But worse—people who could walk into your mind while your body was still breathing.
"I've booked you a passage through the underline," Kade said quickly. "Pack nothing. Take no crystals. Burn the coat."
"No," Ione said coldly. "It's mine."
She heard him sigh.
"Then hide it better than you ever hid yourself."
---
Nine minutes later, Ione stood beneath the old rail yard under Sector 12, breathing the copper-sweet air of the forgotten tunnels. Her pistol was hidden in her sleeve, her neural scrambler clipped to her collarbone.
Kade met her at the bottom of the steps.
His face was lean, shadowed, marked with old memory scars along his jaw—visible signs of someone who'd stolen too many moments that weren't his.
"You're lucky I care," he muttered.
"I'm lucky someone remembers me at all," she said.
He looked at her differently then. "They were wrong to take what they took."
She said nothing.
He turned and walked toward the underline transport—an old freight cart modified to carry people who didn't officially exist.
As they climbed in, he handed her a new neural jack.
"Use this next time you dive," he said. "It'll keep your mind from bleeding."
"Why?" she asked. "Why help me now?"
He hesitated, then met her eyes.
"Because I remember you," he said. "Before Mnemosyne made sure you didn't remember me."