The alley smelled like wet cardboard and gasoline. Dani sat on the cold asphalt with her back to the brick wall, legs drawn up, fingers curled loosely around her knees. The streetlight above her sputtered in uneven bursts, catching the strands of her hair and flashing them dull gold for a moment before letting them fade back into shadow. She hadn't gone home. She hadn't gone anywhere.
Her jacket was still damp from the rain earlier. She hadn't noticed until now—until the cold started seeping into her skin. But even that didn't pull her all the way back into the moment.
Her mind kept circling the same thing, like a dog worrying a bone until it was nothing but splinters: Lance's voice. I don't need Rico. I need you. No—wait. That wasn't what he said. That was her. What he had said... it was worse. It had landed like a stone in her chest.
"Do you even care about me," he'd asked, "or just Rico?"
She'd hesitated. Not because she didn't have an answer—she did. But the words had stuck in her throat, like something was physically stopping them from leaving her.
And now here she was, in a dead-end alley behind a drugstore that never closed, feeling like the whole city was watching her from the dark.
She wanted to believe it wasn't true. That she did care about Lance—maybe not the way she had cared for Rico, but in a way that mattered. But the hesitation had been real. That was the problem. It had been instinctive.
Her throat tightened, her chest hurting with a slow, spreading ache.
She lowered her head and closed her eyes. The hum of the streetlamp turned into a kind of white noise, and she let herself slip for a moment—let her thoughts slide away from the alley and into the Archive Below.
The memory came without warning.
Cold, gray halls lined with shelves. Shelves that didn't hold books, or files, or even anything you could name. Just shapes that pulsed faintly, like half-remembered thoughts trying to breathe. She'd walked through the quiet, the sound of her boots echoing too loud in a place where sound didn't quite behave. And there—on a wall like it was meant to be found—was the schematic.
DANI. V. ITERATION 2B.
That part was burned into her memory. No matter how many times she tried to tell herself it was nothing—just a label, just a coincidence—the way the letters seemed to press inward when she looked at them had never left her.
Back then, she'd shoved it aside, because there had been too much else to deal with. But now, in this cold alley, with Lance's words still cutting, she couldn't stop thinking about it.
If there was a 2B... what had happened to 2A?
The thought made her fingers twitch against her knees.
"Dani?"
She looked up.
Myra stood at the mouth of the alley, silhouetted against the weak spill of light from the drugstore's sign. She was short, wearing an oversized coat and a knitted scarf that looked like it had been through several winters. There was nothing sharp about her—no edge, no threat. She didn't move like Sector Delta's other operatives, all precision and posture. Myra moved like someone who was more used to fitting into a room than taking it over.
When she stepped closer, Dani saw her face—round, with laugh lines that hadn't quite faded despite the worry in her eyes.
"Been looking for you," Myra said softly, as if raising her voice might shatter something between them.
Dani didn't answer.
Myra sighed, stepping into the alley and lowering herself onto the ground beside her. "You're freezing." She glanced at the wet pavement, then at Dani's damp jacket. "Why the hell are you out here?"
Dani shrugged, eyes fixed on the far wall. "Didn't feel like going anywhere."
"That's not an answer."
"Maybe I don't have one."
They sat in silence for a moment. Myra didn't fidget or try to fill the air, and Dani was grateful for that.
Finally, Myra said, "I heard about the mess at the station."
Dani's jaw tightened.
"Not the details," Myra added quickly, "just... enough to know you've been through something tonight." She paused. "Something bad."
Dani almost laughed, but it came out as a sharp exhale. "Bad doesn't cover it."
"You want to talk about it?"
"No."
"Alright," Myra said simply. She leaned back against the wall, looking up at the slice of night sky between the buildings. "Then I'll just sit here."
That almost broke something in Dani. She didn't know why. Maybe because Myra wasn't asking for anything—wasn't trying to pull her somewhere she didn't want to go.
She swallowed hard, blinking fast.
"You ever feel like you're... not real?" Dani asked suddenly, the words slipping out before she could stop them.
Myra turned her head, eyes narrowing slightly. "Not real?"
"Like... you're just a copy of someone else. Or maybe just a shadow."
Myra studied her for a moment, then said, "I think everyone feels like that sometimes. But I think for you, it's... different."
Dani's chest tightened.
"You've always been... a little out of step," Myra said. "Not in a bad way. Just... like you were built to deal with things most people can't even look at."
That made Dani glance at her sharply. "Built?"
Myra shrugged. "Poor choice of words. I just mean—you've seen things, handled things, survived things that should've broken you. And you... don't break. Not really."
The words felt too close to the truth. Too close to what Dani had seen in that schematic in the Archive.
She looked down at her hands. "Sometimes I think maybe I should have."
"Broken?"
"Yeah."
Myra didn't say anything for a long moment. Then she leaned in slightly, her voice softer. "You lost someone. Someone important."
Dani's throat closed.
"I know you don't talk about him," Myra went on, "but I can tell. And I think maybe tonight made you feel like you lost him all over again."
Dani felt the sting behind her eyes, and she tried to blink it away. But the tears came anyway, silent and hot, cutting through the cold on her skin.
She didn't sob. She didn't make a sound. But Myra saw, and she reached over, resting a hand gently on Dani's shoulder.
"You don't have to be okay right now," Myra said. "You just have to make it to the next hour. Then the hour after that."
Dani nodded once, quickly, like if she lingered she'd fall apart completely.
They stayed like that for a while—Myra keeping her hand there, steady and grounding, Dani staring at the ground but feeling just a little less like she was drowning.
And somewhere under it all, beneath the grief and the exhaustion, the thought still pulsed in her mind.
Iteration 2B.
She didn't know why, but it felt like the start of something she wasn't ready to face.
Not yet.
They didn't talk for a while. The hum of the city's night traffic was a distant thing, muffled by the walls of the alley. Dani's tears had long since dried, leaving only the ache. Myra stayed beside her, knees pulled to her chest, the two of them just existing in the same small patch of the world.
"My brother used to sit with me like this," Myra said after a long pause, her voice light but frayed at the edges. "Before I lost him. Sometimes... it was the only time the noise in my head stopped."
Dani didn't look at her, but the corner of her mouth twitched. "I get that."
The silence that followed wasn't heavy. It was... shared. Myra let her head rest back against the wall, her eyes half-shut. Dani mirrored her without thinking, their shoulders brushing lightly.
For the first time in what felt like weeks, Dani's mind wasn't racing ahead or chasing ghosts. It was just here. With Myra. Breathing.
No one tried to fill the air. Neither of them had to.
✢✢✢✢
NOT FRANK'S was never quiet, but Kenton could make it feel that way.From his corner booth, the neon beer sign's buzz was louder than the muttered conversations. The slow drip of the ancient soda tap was louder than the sports commentator on the mounted TV. Every sound stood out in isolation—each one cataloged, named, and filed away in his head like glass specimens.
The drink in front of him had gone lukewarm an hour ago. A thin ring of condensation marked the wood beneath it, but he hadn't moved it. Moving it meant acknowledging it was there. And acknowledging it meant deciding whether or not to drink it. Decisions meant attention.
Kenton had gotten good at avoiding attention.
The small notebook in his hands was open to a sketched crystalline lattice diagram—angles mapped with precision, side notes in the margin about "density irregularities at growth point." He'd written them last night, but hadn't actually read them today. The pages were just something to look at when the world around him felt too close.
Someone at the bar laughed—a sharp, cracking sound that made his shoulders tense. He kept his gaze on the sketch, waiting for the noise to pass.
Drift Backward — Sector Delta
It was always like this at Delta.
He remembered the briefing room—gray walls, plastic chairs, a screen playing back grainy footage of some urban breach. Dani was standing, gesturing toward the corner of the frame where a figure slipped out of view."…and that's when they tried to double back. The north hall was—"
"South hall," Kenton had said, without looking up from the incident report in his hands.
Dani blinked. "…what?"
"They doubled back toward the south hall, not north. The map's inverted here." He pointed at the diagram, voice even. "If you look—"
She stared at him for a second, then let the pause hang. "…Right. South hall." She went on with the report.
No one else looked at him. Not in thanks, not in irritation. It was as if he hadn't spoken at all.At the time, Kenton had thought: At least I was right.Now, he wasn't sure what that had ever been worth.
In the cafeteria, the same pattern played out.
He'd sit alone with a tray—nutrient packs and tea—and his data tablet propped up against the salt dispenser. There'd be a table across the room where three other agents sat, laughing over some half-forgotten story.
One day, someone had come up to him—a tall woman with a badge he didn't know—and started to ask about a breach containment protocol. She hadn't even finished her sentence before he launched into a full technical breakdown: cause-effect chains, possible contingencies, worst-case deviations.
By the time he stopped talking, she was already halfway toward the door. "Thanks," she'd said over her shoulder.
He'd eaten the rest of his lunch in silence. At the time, he told himself she was just in a hurry. Looking back, he knew better.
The hallway encounter was harder to forget.
His predecessor was leaning against the wall near the Sector archives—a man in his fifties, hair salt-and-peppe. Kenton remembered stopping, remembering the awkward nod they exchanged.
"Kenton," the man had said, watching him with unreadable eyes, "you think knowledge is how you get people to notice you. But all it does is keep them from knowing you."
Kenton had smiled—polite, dismissive—and said something about "being useful in the ways that matter."The man had just nodded once, as if the conversation had already ended, and walked away.
Kenton hadn't thought about it for years. Now, in the half-light of NOT FRANK'S, the words felt heavier than any crystal in his hands.
The bartender—Six, who wasn't named Six—called something toward him, but Kenton just waved vaguely without turning.
Instead, he slipped out the side door, notebook tucked into his jacket. The air in the alley was damp, smelling faintly of rain that hadn't fallen yet.
From his pocket, he pulled a shard of something pale and angular: a piece of crystal he'd been nurturing for weeks. Its surface caught the faint neon spill from the bar sign, refracting it into strange, crawling shadows on the brick wall.
He crouched, holding it between both hands, and let himself focus. His breath slowed. The lattice in the shard began to shift—edges pushing outward, spines lengthening like skeletal fingers. The crystal grew in branching patterns, splitting and curling toward his palms.
The air around it thickened.
A man passing the mouth of the alley slowed. His eyes caught on the shard. He stepped closer, expression uncertain."That's…" The man frowned. "…that's not how I remember it looking."
Kenton blinked. "…What do you mean?"
The man rubbed his forehead. "I swear, I saw one of those last week. Looked nothing like that. Hell—now I can't even remember what it did look like." He laughed nervously and backed away. "Weird. Forget I said anything."
The man left. The shadows on the wall shifted again, and for a second Kenton thought they formed words.
His mind worked quickly:
He'd always corrected people when they were wrong.
Now, somehow, the world was accepting his corrections—rewriting itself around them.
Not just facts… but memories.
The idea sent a quiet shiver down his spine.For the first time, control didn't just mean knowing. It meant deciding what others believed.
And that was dangerous.
He stared at the shard, the branching crystal still unfurling under his hands. His reflection warped in its facets—too sharp, too certain.
Kenton wasn't sure if he could stop.
His fingers trembled as the crystalline shard pulsed faintly in his palm. He had no idea when or how the power had blossomed, but it was there now—a strange tether between himself and the very fabric of perception.
He closed his eyes briefly, willing the crystal to respond. The lattice shifted again, folding and unfolding, but this time something deeper rippled outward, beyond the shard.
When Kenton opened his eyes, the alley felt subtly… off. The brick walls seemed to pulse in slow waves, and the scattered trash glimmered briefly in unnatural colors.
He turned sharply when footsteps echoed behind him. It was a small girl—no older than ten—dressed in a threadbare coat, her gaze flicking warily over the strange light bathing the alley.
"You're not from around here, are you?" Kenton asked, voice softer than usual.
The girl didn't answer. Instead, she stared at the shard, eyes wide. And then, suddenly, she blinked and shook her head like clearing a fog.
"I don't know why I thought I saw something." Her voice was thin and unsure.
Kenton nodded slowly, heart pounding.
It's working.
He realized then that his power wasn't just about shaping crystals. It was bending the memories and perceptions of others—making them forget or misremember what they had just seen.
A dangerous kind of influence, subtle and insidious.
But when Kenton looked down at the shard, he felt an unexpected thrill.
He had never felt this kind of control before—not just over facts, but over reality as others experienced it.
The crystal shimmered in his hand, branching outward like a web, reaching silently into the shadows.
His mind drifted to the others—Dani and Lance—both battling their own horrors and transformations.
He was alone in this new power, and maybe that was for the best.
Because if he lost control, if he let it slip—
He wouldn't just lose himself.
He might lose everything.