Liora's POV
I didn't notice anything strange when I woke up.
Not at first.
The room looked the same as it had last night. Clothes draped over the back of a chair. My keys on the floor where I had dropped them. A mug I forgot to wash. The usual clutter. The usual smell of old coffee drifting through the air.
I rubbed my face, tried to blink the sleep away, and shuffled toward the door because I thought I heard a knock.
When I opened it, there was no one there.
Just an envelope on the floor.
It was thick and smooth. Heavier than anything that should have shown up at my apartment at eight in the morning. The front had only one word printed across it:
Hayes.
Not "Liora."
Not my full name.
Just the last one, like they wanted to be formal but distant at the same time.
I hesitated before picking it up, and I didn't know why. Something about it felt cold and out of place. Like a wrong note in a familiar song.
But I carried it inside anyway.
I sat on the couch, slid my thumb under the seal, and opened it.
Two pages slipped out. Sharp, crisp paper. The kind that felt expensive. The kind that came from people who wanted to look official.
I started reading.
"This document confirms the transfer of proprietary cognitive sequences from subject: Liora Hayes."
I stared at the page for a long moment, thinking I had misread it.
Cognitive sequences?
Transfer?
Subject?
I kept reading.
"All archived memory data collected between March 3rd and February 28th now falls under the legal and operational authority of Drayce Industries."
My heart kicked once, hard.
Those dates covered a full year.
A year I couldn't clearly remember anyway, but I had always told myself it was because work had drained me. Because stress fogged everything. Because I was forgetful when I pushed too hard.
But this said the memories weren't forgotten. They were taken.
I sat back slowly. The couch felt too soft beneath me. The room felt smaller than it had a minute ago. I reread the sentence again, word by word, hoping it would make sense the second time through.
But it didn't.
My pulse began to run faster as I moved through the rest of the page. Every line was written with that same cold certainty. That same tone that made it sound like they were stating weather conditions instead of telling me something impossible.
A company claimed ownership of a year of my mind.
There was no apology. Not one explanation. Just instructions:
"The subject is required to appear for compliance review within seventy-two hours."
Compliance with what?
I looked up from the paper and glanced around the apartment as if someone was about to jump out and yell that this was a prank. But the place was empty and quiet.
I turned the second page.
At the bottom, printed neatly, was the name of the man who ran the company.
Eylon Drayce
Chief Executive Officer
Drayce Industries
I breathed out slowly, even though my lungs didn't want to relax. I had seen the name online before. He built things ordinary people didn't understand, things beyond normal technology. His company worked in security, neurodata, bioresearch. The kind of fields where mistakes ruined lives.
But I had never met him.
Never contacted his company.
Never signed anything.
Why would his name be on a notice like this?
My fingers tightened around the paper. A dull ache formed in my stomach, spreading upward like cold water.
I needed proof that this is fake. Some tiny detail I missed. A typo or misplaced stamp. I grabbed my phone and opened my gallery.
The photos jumped from March 2nd to March 5th the following year. One clean skip. I scrolled slower, hoping something would appear if I looked hard enough.
But nothing appeared.
I checked emails, calendar events, my messages, receipts, and even notes.
Everything had the same hole.
March to March.
All gone.
A soft sound escaped me—half disbelief, half panic. I closed my eyes for a moment, trying to remember anything from that missing stretch. A day, a conversation, or a place. Something.
But when I reached for those memories, it felt like leaning over a railing and finding nothing but air below. There was no resistance. No shape, not even a hint of something blurred or distant.
It was blank.
I opened my eyes again because staying still made it worse. The room felt wrong, like I was seeing everything with a new filter. The shelves, the desk, the walls. Familiar things wrapped in a quiet threat I couldn't name.
I stood and walked toward the front door. I didn't know what I expected to find—maybe reassurance that the envelope was the only strange thing in my morning. Maybe signs that this whole thing was harmless.
Instead, I saw the scratches.
They were small, thin marks near the lock. I knelt and traced one with my fingertip. It was sharp. Newer than the rest of the door. Not the kind of mark someone made by accident.
Someone had tried to get in.
My breath caught tight in my chest.
I checked the lock again, slow and careful. Nothing looked obviously broken, but the scratches didn't lie. Someone had worked at this door recently. Someone who knew what they were doing.
I sat back on the floor, the notice still in my hand, and the reality hit harder than before.
The missing year.
The letter.
The demand for compliance.
And now proof that someone had touched my door.
None of this was random.
I tried to picture who could want something from me. I wrote articles. I asked questions about companies, politics and people with too much power. I annoyed the wrong types sometimes, but never enough to make anyone break into my home.
At least, I thought not.
My chest tightened. I held the papers again, scanning the text for anything I missed—any clue that explained how a year of my mind disappeared.
But the notice gave nothing. No reason or warning. Nothing human behind the words.
Just control.
I stood up again because sitting felt dangerous now. My skin prickled like someone was watching. I checked the windows. Then the peephole. The hallway outside was empty.
Still, I locked the door even though it was daytime.
My hands wouldn't stop shaking.
I sat on the couch with the envelope placed in front of me like it might move if I blinked. The room felt sharper. Every creak in the walls and every tiny noise I never noticed before.
I breathed in through my nose. Held it and let it go slowly. I had covered stories on people who panicked until they couldn't think. I was not going to be one of them.
But my voice shook when I whispered, "What happened to me?"
The question hung in the air, heavier than the envelope.
The only thing I knew for sure was this:
A year of my memory had been stolen.
Someone left a warning wrapped in legal language, and someone marked my door.