The wind was a knife honed against the sea. 79 degrees North. The polar night lingered, the sun a slow, reluctant resurrection below the horizon. The Norwegian supply ship Arctic Tern bucked through pack ice. Its prow light split the fog, illuminating the distant white dome—NeuroSync's subglacial base—a metal molar embedded in the permafrost.
Shivering inside rented arctic gear, I watched Alex at the railing. Frost feathered his lashes, knuckles white where he gripped the cold metal. He clutched the faded photograph from the safe: teenage Alex beside Kaelen Shaw, this very dome gleaming new behind them. Now, it was scarred with bullet-hole repairs.
"Thirteen years," he murmured. "She's waited thirteen years."
I checked the Glock—metal protesting the cold with tiny creaks. "Then let's not keep the host waiting."
The ship docked against floating ice. A Finnish supply officer, face ravaged by frostbite, handed us forged maintenance badges. His eyes lingered on my camera bag. "No penguin photos," he grunted. "Copyrighted."
We slipped into the base with a convoy of tracked cargo haulers. The first airlock hissed shut. An iris scanner flashed yellow at my eye—the mechanical one, a Kabul souvenir. The guard frowned. Alex reached past, fingers brushing the scanner's housing. Green light. Benjamin's ghost danced in his touch.
The elevator plunged six hundred meters. Pressure squeezed eardrums. The doors opened on a wave of warmth and lemon-scented antiseptic—like stepping into a Singapore mall. Sterile white corridors, soft lighting, NeuroSync slogans scrolling on walls:
"MEMORY IS FREEDOM."
Freedom my ass. I tugged my hat lower.
Pushing a maintenance cart, we headed for Sector D-4—the main server coolant conduits. The map on the thumb drive pointed to a disused maintenance shaft there, a direct route to the core of the Memory Well.
The map ended there. Below, Shaw's own red question mark.
D-4 was deserted. Only the rhythmic glug of coolant echoed. I pried open a vent, revealing a meter-wide shaft, its metal ladder slick with ice rime. Alex descended first. I followed, locking the grate behind us. Darkness swallowed everything but the ghostly blue pulse of coolant pipes above.
The shaft dropped ninety meters. Every ten meters, the temperature plunged two degrees. Ice formed on my lashes, feeling fled my fingers. Solid ground at last—an abandoned utility tunnel. Water seeped from walls, freezing into dagger-like icicles. At the tunnel's end, a blast door stood ajar, crimson alarm light bleeding through the gap.
Beyond lay the base's true heart: an inverted cylindrical chamber, thirty meters high, fifty wide—an upended missile silo. Its walls were studded with transparent tanks, each filled with mercury suspending a human brain—whole, sliced, or just the hippocampus. They floated like frozen galaxies.
Dominating the center, the largest tank bore a single label:
[A.REYES — ORIGINAL — Cryo-Sealed: 2011.03.13]
My gaze locked onto it. That pale grey matter, once inside teenage Alex's skull, had birthed the Omega Project. Now, it lay inert as a forgotten stone.
"She's waiting for me to put it back," Alex's voice echoed in the vast space.
"Or destroy it?" I countered.
He didn't answer. Instead, he walked towards the control platform—a glass bridge suspended over the void, its surface iced, cracking dangerously underfoot.
The console screen flickered to life. Kaelen Shaw's face materialized, her quantum projection sharper than at Rue des Rosiers. She wore a white lab coat, an Ω pin on her lapel. Behind her, the Northern Lights writhed outside a glass office.
"Welcome to Time Zero, Alex," she smiled. "You brought the key."
She meant the thumb drive. I slipped it deeper into my inner pocket, but a camera caught the movement.
"Lena Kovac," she turned to me. "I've wanted to thank you. Without you, he wouldn't be here."
The tanks flanking the bridge pulsed with sudden light. Every brain discharged simultaneously, creating a sea of blue lightning.
"Liquid nitrogen injection begins above the ice cap in thirty seconds," Shaw continued. "This chamber will flash-freeze to minus 196 Celsius. Organic matter vitrifies instantly. Your final choice—"
A countdown flashed on screen: 00:00:30
Option A: Upload the drive. Release REVERSAL.exe. All memories return. Chamber self-destructs. We die with it.
Option B: Surrender the drive. Chamber powers down. We live. The seven memories remain sealed forever.
Option C: Destroy the console. Chain reaction detonation. Base collapses. Arctic Sea floods in.
00:00:20
I drew the Glock, shot the camera lens to shards.
Alex slammed his palm on a hidden console button—the glass bridge dropped like a stone.
We crashed onto the chamber floor, landing on a pile of insulated maintenance mats.
Above us, the tanks shuddered violently. The mercury began to boil.