The signal was fractured, weak—like the echo of a scream trapped in glass. Ione sat cross-legged in the silence of her hideaway, the glow from her modded console casting pale blue light across her face. The stolen drive hummed softly, feeding corrupted data into the air like it was bleeding a ghost.
She watched.
An encrypted interface flickered open. No Mnemosyne seal. No metadata. Just a title, blinking like a pulse:
> ECHO ONE // CLASSIFIED
ZARA V. // UPLINK DATE: [REDACTED]
Ione didn't breathe. She pressed play.
At first, static.
Then the video steadied.
Zara appeared onscreen—alive. Hair shorter. No makeup. Her eyes were steel. Behind her, cracked tiles, dimmed lights. Not Mnemosyne's pristine walls. A basement. Maybe worse.
> "If you're watching this, it means I failed."
Her voice was hoarse.
> "They call it the Memory Market. But it's not just trade—it's conversion. They're not buying memories… they're rewriting the soul."
Zara looked off-camera, as if checking for something. Or someone.
> "We tried to stop them. We failed. They called us traitors. Dissidents. But we were the test group. They used us to refine the DiveNet, to see how much of us could survive… transplanting."
Ione's hands clenched.
This wasn't just a warning. It was a confession.
> "I'm leaving this for you, Ione. Because you weren't supposed to wake up. You weren't supposed to remember."
The screen fuzzed.
Then Zara's face returned, closer this time. Her lip was cut. One eye swollen.
> "They'll come for you, eventually. They always do. You'll start seeing shadows in your memories—glitches. Echoes. That's them. Ghost frames… lingering backups of failed identities."
> "That's what you are."
The file ended.
Ione leaned back, pulse racing. Blood rushed in her ears.
She wasn't just a diver. She was a survivor. A remnant. A goddamn prototype.
---
By morning, the air above the city was full of light haze and distant hums of transit drones. Ione moved through the outer district—Zone 12, unofficially called the Ash Belt—where Mnemosyne's reach was weakest and the Market's black alleys ran deepest.
She passed broken kiosks still bearing flickering advertisements.
> TRADE GRIEF FOR GROWTH.
PAY IN MEMORY. HEAL IN PEACE.
MNEMOSYNE: FORGET BETTER.
The hypocrisy was sickening.
Her destination lay two levels down—beneath a condemned metro line, in the tunnels where noise was currency and privacy, a myth.
The space was cramped and hot, lined with scrapped server cores, candlelight, and rusted neuro-jacks. This was a place called The Underline—a halfway house for divers, burners, and cracked minds.
They didn't speak when she entered.
But one figure stepped forward. He had bronze skin, clouded eyes, and cables laced through his forearms like veins. His name was Kaidan.
A legend. A ghost. And once, Zara's partner.
"You shouldn't be here," he said.
"You uploaded Echo One," Ione replied. "You knew her."
His jaw tensed. "That file was buried for a reason."
Ione held up the drive. "Then tell me why she left it for me."
Kaidan hesitated. The air around them buzzed faintly—memory distortion. They were being watched. Or scanned.
"Because you're not who you think you are."
---
Later, under firelight in the Underline's sealed subchamber, Kaidan told her the truth.
"Mnemosyne's first prototypes weren't machines. They were people. Volunteers. Orphans. Recycled minds." He paused. "We called it Project ECHO."
She knew the name now. It rang like a scar across her bones.
"There were twelve of you. Diver-class hybrids. The plan was to create neural vaults—humans who could store and stream memory like servers. You were built to contain."
Ione's voice was hollow. "What happened?"
"They overreached. Mind-body sync ratios dropped. Nine of you burned out. Two went rogue." He glanced at her. "You were the one who survived… because Zara broke you free."
"She—" Ione swallowed. "She wiped me?"
Kaidan nodded. "To keep you safe. She made you forget yourself so they wouldn't find you. Hid your signature in a false identity. But now, the system's recognizing you again."
Ione felt cold. "Then why am I remembering?"
He handed her a small, flickering chip. Its casing was cracked, but it still pulsed with stored thought.
"Because you're not just remembering. You're rebooting."
---
Later that night, Ione climbed the outer scaffolding of the city's ridge line—where memory wasn't stable and the net signal glitched. It was the safest place to think.
Below her, the city was a maze of neon arteries, with the Mnemosyne spire at its heart, pumping false memories into every district. A tower built from stolen truth.
She slotted the chip Kaidan gave her into her interface.
A single memory bloomed.
She was standing in a white corridor. Zara was beside her—laughing.
"You always look so serious," Zara said, brushing her knuckles along Ione's jaw.
"I'm wired for survival," Ione had replied.
"Maybe. But someone has to remember who we are."
The memory faded, but the warmth lingered.
It wasn't just data. It was real.
Zara had loved her. And Ione had loved her back. That was the truth Mnemosyne had tried to erase.
A sudden voice cracked through her uplink—distorted, masculine.
"Echo unit detected. Prototype 03. Recall sequence initiated."
She ripped the jack free.
They had found her.
And they weren't going to let her remember much longer.