The stabilizer chair was a smoking ruin.
Cables hung like severed veins.
Sparks dripped from the cracked interface.
The air smelled of burnt circuits and scorched metal.
Lira paced in front of me, blood drying on her cheek.
"Elias, listen carefully," she said, voice tight with urgency.
"You seeing an older Marin… that's not bleed."
My throat tightened.
"What is it then?"
Lira stopped pacing.
Her expression hardened.
"It's evidence of a suppressed future imprint."
I blinked.
"What does that mean?"
"It means," she said slowly,
"that at some point, you and Marin had a future that was recorded."
I felt the world tilt.
"No," I said.
"That's impossible. Marin never lived past childhood."
Lira met my eyes.
"Are you sure about that?"
Her question hit me like a blow.
My memories of Marin were fragmented—
a few solid pieces
and a vast emptiness around them.
Promises.
A hallway.
Her small hand.
But after that?
Nothing.
Just blank space.
A space where a life should be.
I swallowed hard.
"What are you saying, Lira?"
She exhaled slowly.
"I'm saying someone might have—
• Recorded a future projection
• Or created an Echo simulation
• Or stored a path that never came to pass—
and then erased it from Mnemosyne's records."
The room felt smaller.
"I would never create a simulation of Marin."
"I know," Lira said. "But maybe someone else did."
"Why?"
She held my gaze.
"To give her a life she never got."
The idea fractured something inside me.
A life Marin didn't get.
A life she could have had.
A life someone wanted to preserve.
But who?
My mind reeled.
And then the thought came like a whisper:
When I saw her… she knew me.
The older Marin's voice echoed in my memory:
"My name is Marin.
Your Marin."
My heart slammed against my ribs.
"She recognized me. She talked to me like—"
Lira nodded.
"Like she'd lived with you for years. Yes."
I sank back against the wall.
"Lira… that was too real. Too emotional. Too detailed."
She crouched in front of me.
"That's because it was real to someone."
Silence.
A heavy, suffocating silence.
"And the shadow used it," she whispered.
"He weaponized a memory you don't consciously have."
A chill ran down my spine.
"He didn't show me a fantasy," I said.
"He showed me a stolen future."
Lira nodded once.
"Exactly."
The room flickered.
I froze.
"Did you see that?" I whispered.
Lira stiffened.
"Yes."
The overhead light stuttered,
buzzed,
then dimmed.
My chest tightened.
"That wasn't electricity," I said.
"No," Lira murmured.
"That was you."
I touched my temples.
"Me?"
She nodded.
"Elias… your mind is bleeding between present and potential. Between what happened and what was erased."
She stood slowly.
"We need data. We need answers. And to get them, we need to access your suppressed memories the right way."
I stared up at her.
"The right way?"
She nodded grimly.
"We have to go back into your archive."
My stomach dropped.
"Lira—no. After what happened—"
She held up a hand.
"Not the mental plane. Not the bleed."
She walked to the ruined stabilizer console and kicked aside melted metal until she reached a small compartment beneath.
Inside was a compact device—smooth, obsidian-like, with a pulsing blue core.
She lifted it carefully.
"This," she said, "is a root-access Echo decryptor."
I blinked.
"That's illegal."
"Yes," she said plainly.
"And dangerous."
"Lira—where did you even get that?"
She looked at me with a tired, grim smile.
"You think I worked for Mnemosyne and didn't keep a few toys?"
I rubbed my face.
"And what does that thing do?"
"It allows us to bypass Mnemosyne's restrictions and dive into the raw unfiltered archive—before the AI sanitizes or blocks anything."
"So we can find Marin's missing memories?"
Lira nodded.
"And the future memory you saw."
My heart pounded.
"And the connection the shadow stole."
"Yes."
I looked at the device.
Small.
Almost fragile.
"Lira," I whispered, "if we do this… what happens to me?"
She didn't answer immediately.
Her eyes softened.
"You might recover everything," she said quietly.
"Or you might break."
My breath caught.
Marin's voice echoed faintly inside my skull:
"Eli… don't forget me again…"
I closed my eyes.
Then exhaled.
"Do it."
Lira didn't smile.
She only nodded once—
solemn, determined.
She connected the decryptor to my neural band.
The device hummed,
glowed,
and a soft line of blue light extended toward me like a reaching hand.
Lira squeezed my arm.
"We go together."
The light brightened—
Reality thinned—
And then—
A new voice entered my mind.
Soft.
Older.
Broken.
"I missed you."
My eyes flew open.
"Marin?"
But Lira's face twisted—
Fear slashing across it.
"Elias—STOP—THAT'S NOT HER—"
The decryptor pulsed violently.
The room shook.
And the shadow whispered:
"Come see the life you lost."
Everything went white.