The corridor behind them thundered with mechanical footsteps—too heavy to be human, too precise to be anything but a Registry enforcer.
Eira's lungs burned as she ran, the tethered shard clutched tight in her palm. Its edges dug into her skin, warm and faintly pulsing, as if the memory still lived there, whispering her name.
Ysel led the way through the collapsing access tunnels, her makeshift disruptor lighting short, jarring paths through dust-choked shadows. Kael followed behind, turning just long enough to fling a scrambling device against the floor. It detonated in a static burst—no flames, no light, but the screaming of sensors backfiring in their sockets.
They kept running.
The walls narrowed. The air thickened. Somewhere overhead, a surveillance drone glided by, its hum slipping through the cracks in the ceiling.
Eira's legs faltered. Not from the sprint—but from what she'd heard. Her name. Her mother's voice. A memory that shouldn't exist.
She staggered, hand against the wall. "I heard her," she gasped. "She—she knew me. She remembered."
Kael caught her before she fell, his arm looping under hers. "We can't stop here. If they find us in this corridor, we don't vanish. We disappear."
Ysel snapped a panel off a wall junction and keyed in a bypass. "We're close. Emergency shaft. Sixty seconds if we push."
Footsteps again—closer now.
Not just one unit.
Multiple.
A full trace squad.
They hit the access shaft just as the corridor behind them hissed open, light flooding the chamber.
Eira turned her face away instinctively—but not before catching a glimpse of them:
Figures in ash-colored plating. Smooth helmets. No faces. No voices.
The Ashlines.
Erasure enforcers.
"Move!" Ysel barked.
They dropped into the shaft one by one—Eira last, legs sliding down the chute, sparks flying from the tether still clutched in her grip. The exit flared open—Ysel had overridden the lock.
They tumbled into an abandoned intake basin—disused and rust-streaked, the scent of oxidized metal clinging to the air.
Kael helped Eira to her feet.
No alarms.
No shouts.
Just silence again.
Too much silence.
They waited in it.
Waited for the Registry to follow.
But nothing came.
Only the faint hum of the city returning to itself. As if the Ashlines had already rewritten the corridor they'd fled.
As if they'd never been there at all.
The room was dark except for the dim pulse of a single backup filament. Dust floated in the air like ash. The abandoned basin was silent, but not safe—no part of Aurelis was truly safe anymore.
Eira sat with her back against the wall, legs folded tightly beneath her, the memory shard still in her hand.
She hadn't let it go.
Not once.
Kael sat nearby, hunched forward, hands wrapped around his knees. His hair was damp with sweat, jaw tight. He hadn't spoken since they landed. Neither had Ysel, who paced slowly by the entrance, her eyes scanning the grate above them like a guard trying to believe in control.
But Eira felt it unraveling inside her.
The hum of the city used to be background noise—now it echoed. Now it scratched.
She stared at the shard. Its surface had cooled. But she still felt it—still heard the voice, faint and threaded with something dangerous:
Love.
"I thought she was gone," Eira whispered.
Kael looked over, but didn't interrupt.
"They said it was calibration fatigue. When she stopped singing. When she forgot my name. But I remembered. I always remembered."
Her voice cracked on the last word.
Ysel stopped pacing.
Eira clutched the shard tighter. "I used to think I was malfunctioning. That something in me broke. But maybe... maybe the break was the only real part."
Kael moved beside her. "You weren't broken. You were left behind."
That silence between them cracked open just enough to breathe through. She leaned into his shoulder, just a little. He didn't move.
He just stayed.
Ysel leaned back against the wall. "This is what they tried to burn out of us. Memory. Names. Pain. All the things that prove we feel."
Eira exhaled shakily. "Do you think she remembered me, even when she couldn't say it?"
Kael's answer was soft. "She buried her memory in a place no one would find... unless it was you."
Eira wiped her face with the back of her sleeve. She hadn't even realized she was crying until her skin came away wet.
They sat in the quiet for a long while. Not the blank quiet of Aurelis, but something gentler. Earned.
"I don't want to hide anymore," Eira said. "Not just survive. I want to fight. For the voices still buried. For the ones that still remember."
Kael's fingers brushed hers.
Ysel didn't nod, but her voice was certain.
"Then we plan. And we make them remember what they tried to forget."