The horizon was gray with frost,wind howled through the broken highway like the roar of something alive, dragging sand, dust, and shards of old civilization across the cracked asphalt.Three figures moved against it,silhouettes in motion.Ethan, Leanna,and Elara.They had been traveling for hours since dawn, using an old military transport vehicle that groaned at every bend. Braxton City was long behind them now, its skyline fading into a haze of smog and memory.Leanna was at the wheel, her eyes sharp and restless. The dashboard flickered dimly under her hand, the fuel gauge kissing empty.Ethan sat beside her, silent, staring out at the desolation beyond the windshield.Elara was behind them, typing furiously on a portable console linked to the neural scanner pulsing faint blue beside Ethan’s headrest.“You’re quiet,” Leanna finally said, breaking the silence.Ethan didn’t answer right away. His gaze was distant, toward the direction of the North, where the world became white and me

Light swallowed everything.It wasn’t fire, it was large amounts of pure data.It burned through the air like electricity and tore reality apart in shattering pulses of white and blue.Ethan was thrown backward. His body hit the floor hard, and then… he wasn’t falling anymore.He was drifting.For a moment, there was no up or down,Just fragments.Images floated around him, scenes from a past life flickering like holograms suspended in air, little girl chasing butterflies,a woman laughing in sunlight,a pair of trembling hands covered in blood.Then a voice, small and trembling:“Papa… where are you?”Ethan turned, and the world around him began to rebuild itself, piece by piece.He stood in the middle of a meadow, the sky was blue,unnaturally blue, and the sunlight felt too warm, too perfect.The smell of jasmine drifted in the wind.Ethan’s breath caught. He knew this place.It was the Memory Garden, the one he had built in the virtual sandbox for Aria when she was dying. It was her h

The morning was too quiet.Inside the safehouse, the hum of machinery and the soft beeping of monitors filled the silence. Outside, mist clung to the mountains like a living thing, wrapping everything in a pale haze.Ethan sat at the long steel table, eyes fixed on the screen displaying a moving line of neural data. Elara paced behind him, her boots clicking sharply. Leanna stood near the window, arms crossed, eyes distant.On the table was a single line of text flashing red:“HOST DETECTED ….SIGNAL EMBEDDED IN NEURAL NETWORK."Elara broke the silence first.“So you’re saying Voss uploaded himself into one of us?”Ethan’s voice was flat. “Yes. He wasn’t trying to escape the explosion,he was relocating. His final backup must’ve piggybacked onto a nearby neural implant.”Leanna frowned. “And everyone here has one.”The room grew still.Everyone did. Every member of the field team had a neural interface linked to the Braxton core.Ethan’s gaze swept across the screen showing biometric da

The evening shadows crept across the polished marble floors of Braxton Pharmaceuticals as Ethan left the boardroom. The entire day had been a storm,meetings, contracts, and the persistent headache of remembering nothing yet being expected to recall everything. Leanna had stood by his side through it all, quietly guiding him, subtly protecting him from suspicious glances.But tonight, something felt… off.As he stepped into the hallway, a tall figure stood at the far end. The man was dressed in a dark trench coat, his face obscured by the dim light, but the way he stood…. almost motionless, deliberate,made Ethan’s instincts prickle.“Can I help you?” Ethan asked, his voice echoing softly.The man didn’t reply. Instead, he slowly turned and walked away, disappearing down the corner. Ethan frowned. That hallway led only to his private elevator,no one except authorized personnel should be there.He started after him, his heartbeat quickening.When he reached the corner, the man was gone.

The helicopter blades tore through the night sky like a roaring beast. Ethan and Leanna crouched behind a fallen log, their clothes streaked with dirt and smoke. The air pulsed with light from the search beams sweeping across the forest.“Two choppers,” Leanna murmured, counting the rhythmic thrum above them. “They’ve deployed tactical squads. We need to move…now.”But Ethan wasn’t listening. He was staring at his trembling hands, at the faint scar across his left wrist. It glowed faintly under the moonlight, like a line of silver light beneath his skin.He rubbed it, and a jolt of pain shot up his arm,followed by an image flashing in his head.A sterile room. A circular device strapped around his wrist. His own voice saying:“If I lose myself… this will bring me back.”Ethan gasped and nearly fell backward. Leanna grabbed him, alarmed. “Ethan! What’s happening?”He clenched his wrist. “There’s something… implanted. Something I left behind.”Leanna’s eyes widened. “You’re remembering.