The morning air in the Vane Tech lobby tasted like industrial-grade lemon polish and artificial optimism. Adrien stepped out of the elevator, his shoulder bag heavy with the weight of the encrypted drive he didn't remember owning. Every step he took felt like he was walking through knee-deep water—heavy, sluggish, and slightly out of sync with the world.
He stopped at the security desk. Leon was there, slumped in the ergonomic chair with his feet up on the marble counter. He was wearing his standard black flight jacket, his spiky blonde hair caught in the morning sunlight streaming through the glass doors.
"You look like you saw a ghost, Goggles," Leon said, not opening his eyes. "Or did the coffee machine break again?"
Adrien froze. Goggles. The nickname felt like a physical spark jumping across a gap in his brain. It was familiar, yet it felt like a word from a language he hadn't spoken in years.
"Leon," Adrien said, his voice a bit too loud for the quiet lobby. "Did we... did we do something last night?"
Leon opened one eye, squinting at Adrien. He dropped his feet to the floor, his brow furrowed in a rare moment of genuine confusion. "Last night? I was pulling the graveyard shift here. It was dead quiet. I think I napped for four hours straight. Why?"
"I woke up at my desk," Adrien muttered, reaching into his pocket and fingering the neon-pink sticky note. "And I found this. And a drive."
Leon stood up, his movements fluid and sharp—far too sharp for a man who claimed to have spent the night napping. He walked around the counter, his eyes locking onto the small, black drive in Adrien's hand.
"I have this... feeling," Leon said, his voice dropping an octave. He rubbed his chest, right over his heart. "Like I'm missing a rib. Or a lung. It's been driving me crazy since I woke up at 6:00 AM."
Adrien held out the drive. "I think we need to plug this in. Not here. Not on the company network. Somewhere... dark."
"I know a place," Leon said, his hand instinctively dropping to his holster. He paused, looking at his own hand in surprise. "Wait. Why did I just do that? I don't even carry my piece on the lobby shift."
Adrien looked at him, the weight of the mystery pressing down on both of them. "Because we aren't who we think we are, Leon. Not anymore."