The city never truly slept. Even at midnight, the sprawl of Veyra hummed with the constant undercurrent of movement; the rumble of distant trains beneath the streets; the low murmur of generators feeding neon signs that bled their colors into the fog. Tonight, however, the city seemed quieter than usual. The mist hung heavy, muting even the restless thrum of traffic.
Kael pulled his coat tighter around himself as he and Elara stepped out of his apartment building. The air smelled faintly metallic, as if the fog carried traces of rust and ozone. It clung to their skin and hair, softening the edges of buildings until even familiar streets felt distorted.
Elara walked beside him, her gaze flicking to every shadow. She had insisted on coming; after the mirror shattering, staying inside the apartment had felt impossible. Something about the fragments unnerved her, as if she had seen her own life breaking in them. Now she kept close, her shoulders tense, her movements deliberate.
"You're sure we're not being followed?" she asked, her voice low.
Kael glanced over his shoulder. The mist swallowed the street behind them, rendering it an indistinct blur of pale lamps and silhouettes of parked cars. He hesitated before answering. "I'm not sure of anything anymore."
She gave a short, humorless laugh. "Comforting."
He didn't reply. Words seemed inadequate when even the air felt compromised, filled with echoes he couldn't quite name.
---
They turned into one of the narrower side streets, where cracked pavement glistened with moisture and dim shopfronts stood shuttered. Kael kept his steps measured, his mind replaying the fragments he had seen in Elara's memories. The disjointed flashes; white corridors, the sound of restrained breathing, voices that never resolved into clarity, felt closer now, as if the city itself whispered them back.
"Where are we going?" Elara asked.
"I want to check something," Kael replied. "The Archives branch on Harrow Street. If anyone tampered with your memories, there might be a trace in their system logs."
Her brow furrowed. "Wouldn't that be risky? You're already on thin ground just having looked at my records."
"I know," he said, lowering his voice. "But if Project Oblivion is real, there has to be some digital fingerprint. Something they couldn't erase."
She didn't argue further, though her posture betrayed unease. They walked in silence for several minutes, their footfalls softened by the damp ground.
Then, faintly, Kael heard it; an echo. Not footsteps exactly, but something that mirrored their rhythm a few paces behind. He froze mid-step, and Elara stopped too, following his gaze into the fog.
"Did you hear that?" she whispered.
He nodded, heart hammering. The sound stopped the moment they did. The street stretched empty behind them, lamplight fractured by mist. Yet Kael felt it; a presence lingering just out of sight.
"Keep walking," he murmured. "Don't look back."
---
They moved forward, faster now, though not quite running. Kael's mind raced. It could be nothing; stray cat, a drunk weaving his way home. But the precision of the echoes unsettled him. Whoever followed them wanted to be heard just enough to instill fear.
As they neared an intersection, a figure appeared briefly in the fog ahead, silhouetted by the glow of a streetlamp. Tall, motionless, almost waiting. Elara grabbed Kael's arm.
"Do you see..."
"Yes," Kael cut in. His pulse quickened.
Before they could decide whether to turn or keep going, the figure dissolved back into the mist, as if the fog itself had swallowed them.
Elara's grip tightened. "This isn't random."
Kael swallowed hard. "No. It's not."
---
They finally reached Harrow Street, where the public facade of the Archive branch loomed. Its glass doors reflected the hazy glow of the streetlights, but the lobby beyond was dark. The building should have been closed at this hour, yet Kael knew the night shift kept the servers humming.
He swiped his access card, pulse jumping when the reader blinked green. The lock released with a muted click. Elara cast him a wary look but followed as he pushed the door open.
Inside, the air smelled faintly of disinfectant and machine oil. The silence pressed against them, amplifying the sound of their footsteps on the polished tile floor. Kael led her past the darkened reception desk, through a corridor lined with abstract murals meant to humanize the sterility of the place.
They stopped at a secure door leading to the server wing. Kael hesitated, then keyed in his credentials. The lock released more reluctantly this time, as if the system itself resisted.
"After this," Elara whispered, "there's no going back."
Kael glanced at her. Her face was pale in the dim light, but her eyes were steady. "There wasn't any going back after the café," he said.
She nodded once, and they stepped through.
---
The server wing stretched ahead like a cathedral of glass and steel. Rows of humming towers blinked with status lights, casting the chamber in shifting shades of green and blue. The mist hadn't followed them here, but Kael felt its echo all the same; a sense of concealment, as though secrets lingered in the air between the machines.
He moved to a console, hands shaking slightly as he activated it. The system greeted him with sterile efficiency, prompting for clearance. He entered his codes, bypassing the usual logging process with a trick he had learned years ago.
"What are you looking for?" Elara asked, her voice hushed despite the emptiness.
"System anomalies. Gaps in the memory logs. Anything that doesn't add up." His fingers flew over the keys, pulling up lines of encrypted data.
The monitor filled with timestamps and access entries. Most looked routine; citizens uploading, deleting, reviewing. But Kael's eyes narrowed as he spotted irregularities. A sequence of blank intervals, registered under an anonymous clearance level. Each block was exactly thirteen minutes long.
He leaned closer. "Here. Look."
Elara stepped beside him, reading over his shoulder. "What does it mean?"
"Someone pulled segments from the archive. Clean extractions, no residue. Except…" He tapped a key, bringing up metadata. "These blanks align with your record."
Her breath caught. "So they really did..."
"Yes. They took parts of you. And they didn't bother hiding it, not completely."
Elara backed away from the screen, her arms wrapped around herself. The truth seemed to weigh visibly on her.
Kael forced himself to keep scanning. "There's something else. These extraction logs are tied to a restricted access group. Not internal security, not public oversight. Something off-book."
His stomach tightened as he traced the encrypted tag. A single designation surfaced, half-erased, but still legible.
OBLIVION || Echo-7
Kael froze. The word pulsed on the screen, stark and undeniable.
Elara's voice broke the silence. "That's it, isn't it? Project Oblivion."
He didn't answer immediately. His throat felt dry, his mind a storm. The fragments, the whispers, the surveillance; it all circled back here.
Finally, he said, "Yes. And whatever Echo-7 is, it's not meant to be found."
---
A sudden noise jolted them both; a faint click, like a door opening somewhere down the corridor. Kael killed the console, plunging the monitor into darkness. They stood frozen, listening.
Footsteps. Slow, deliberate, moving closer.
Elara's hand brushed his, trembling. He grabbed it instinctively, holding tight. The hum of the servers masked the intruder's exact position, but the rhythm of the steps was unmistakable. Someone was in the building with them.
Kael scanned the room, eyes catching on a narrow maintenance hatch near the far wall. Without speaking, he tugged Elara toward it. They slipped behind the rows of servers, crouching low, the hum swallowing their movement.
The footsteps entered the chamber. A shadow stretched across the floor, elongated by the blinking lights.
Elara pressed her back to the wall, breathing shallow. Kael could feel her pulse racing through her grip.
The figure paused, as if listening. Then, in a voice low and distorted, it whispered:
"You shouldn't be here."
The sound wasn't just spoken; it resonated strangely, as if echoing directly in their minds. Kael felt the hairs on his neck rise.
Elara's eyes widened in panic. She mouthed: What was that?
Kael didn't answer. His thoughts churned, but one truth settled in his chest like lead.
Whatever Project Oblivion was, it had already reached into them.
And it wasn't going to let go.