Chicago after the rain was like a neon sign unplugged, leaving only damp gray.
Sirens circled three blocks away, unlikely to find this derelict rooftop soon. I yanked down the van's blackout blinds, pushed Alex Reyes into the only armchair, and pulled a Glock 19 from a hidden compartment—magazine full, the slide racking with a sound like breaking bone.
"Ground rules." I placed the gun on the counter, my camera lens now aimed at his chest. "I ask. You answer. Lie, and I toss you back to them."
He stared at the muzzle, his expression clinical, like studying a microscope slide. "Okay."
"Name?"
"Alex Reyes. Thirty-two. Ph.D. in Neural Interfaces. Former Lead Researcher at NeuroSync."
"Former?"
"Listed as voluntary departure. Actually, I was formatted." He tapped the suture on his neck. "They wiped my long-term memory, then stitched in fragments from others. Seven lives. Seven ghosts."
I clicked on a recorder. A red light glowed.
"How did you know about that Kabul frame?"
"Because the seventh ghost—" He paused, as if listening to static in headphones. "—is you."
The overhead light suddenly flashed emergency red. The solar inverter whined. Swearing under my breath, I yanked my laptop open and plugged in the camera's SD card. An auto-decrypt progress bar crawled across the screen:
**[File: KABUL_2019_RAW_117.NEF]**
The decryption finished. The thumbnail loaded: the girl in the red headscarf holding a daisy, my own smile blurred in the background. Ice traced my spine—that photo had never been exported, locked on a read-only card.
"The chip in my head has remote read capability," Alex explained softly. "NeuroSync calls it 'Archive Zero'. Syncs sensory data from subjects. When your camera got within ten centimeters of me just now... it copied."
I slammed the laptop shut.
"So, you're my external hard drive now?"
"Not just yours." He held out his left hand, palm up. Beneath the veins, a silver thread seemed to writhe like a living thing. "Maya. Viktor. Sophia. Benjamin. Amina. Diego... and you, Lena Kovac. Seven lives fighting for space in one brain," he gave a bitter smile. "And I've lost my own share."
I pulled up an offline map on my phone, zooming in on Chicago's west side. A red line pulsed from the gray building, its endpoint flashing:
**[NeuroSync Security Response Center - ETA 4min]**
"They have thermal drones." I killed the screen, flipped up the rear floor panel, and revealed an aluminum case hidden beneath. "Before we run, we plug the back door."
Inside was a war correspondent's illicit toolkit: burner phones, a signal jammer, a NATO-spec medkit, and a metal cube smaller than my palm—an EMP pulse charge.
"Fries electronics within two hundred meters. Drones included." I shoved it into Alex's hand. "Keep it close. Triggers in ten seconds."
He looked up at me, rainwater dripping from his hair onto the floor. "Why are you helping me?"
"Because I want the story." I holstered the Glock at my back and zipped my jacket. "And because—" I pointed at his temple. "—my memories are in there. I want them back."
The distant whine of rotors grew louder, like hungry mosquitoes.
I pushed open the roof hatch. Cold air flooded in.
"Ready?"
He took a deep breath. For an instant, his pupils flashed with seven different colors, like a short-circuiting rainbow.
"Run."
The next second, we plunged into the darkest hour before dawn.