The sound of sharp knocking on the door woke Karn at half past six.
He rose with a stinging headache—a chronic side effect of constantly sifting through other people's memories. His doctors had warned him, but this was his life.
The knocking repeated, quick and irregular, not the pace of a delivery man.
Karn pulled on a T-shirt, checked the clip of his pistol, and approached the door cautiously. Peeking through the viewer, he saw no one.
He slowly opened the door, gun tucked behind him. The hallway was empty, bathed in the cool morning light. The only thing left was a medium-sized brown cardboard box resting on his doorstep. It was light.
Karn glanced up. The CCTV camera was covered with black tape. Whoever delivered this didn't want to be seen.
He carefully dragged the package inside, locked his door with three bolts, and placed the box on the table. He grabbed his portable scanner, sweeping it for explosives.
Green light. Safe.
The Black Drive
Karn used a knife to cut the tape. Inside, nestled in foam, were two items that made him tense up:
An old NM-Reader Gen1, a portable memory interface model discontinued a decade ago. It was notorious for causing "Memory Bleeding"—a dangerous mental fragmentation where separate memories merged, sometimes driving users insane or suicidal.
A thick, unlabeled black memory drive, the size of a thumb.
At the bottom of the box was a piece of plain white paper with a printed message:
The Truth You Forgot.
Do you want to know?
March 15, 2048
Ten years lost.
Karn felt a sudden chill. March 15, 2048. That was the day his own past vanished—the exact date of the gap in his own memories.
He picked up the drive. It felt heavy, cold, and antique. The side bore a serial number: MN-055782-BLK.
Karn's fingers flew across his keyboard, researching the serial code. BLK stood for "Black Drive." These were early experimental drives used by Mnemosyne. In the current age, all traded memories were "filtered" to remove extreme emotions and prevent psychological harm.
But the Black Drive was different. It stored the raw data—every pure, unfiltered feeling, every spike of pain, without compromise or edit.
Karn stared at the drive. One voice in his head screamed, "Don't plug it in. It's a trap." Another whispered, "This is the answer you've been searching for."
Who sent this? Why? Was this a genuine piece of his missing history, or a lethal setup?
Taking a deep, shaky breath, Karn made his choice. He slotted the Black Drive into the Gen1 Reader. He put on his own neural connection cap, but set the intensity level to a safety-conscious 30%.
His finger hit the Start button.
Darkness consumed everything.