They didn't run far.
The tunnel split into multiple corridors—one collapsed, another blocked with rusted freight, and the last just wide enough for a person to squeeze through sideways. Cael pulled Lyra into it, his steps practiced, body close to the walls.
The drone's hum echoed behind them like an insect trapped in glass. The air was thick, metallic, and the dust from the old ducts clung to their skin. Each footstep was swallowed by damp concrete and silence.
They twisted through a narrowing shaft until they reached an old junction sealed off by a rusted grate. Cael slid it shut and slapped a faint magnetic disruptor against it.
"Won't last long," he murmured. "Just enough to mislead the sensors."
Lyra nodded, though her breath trembled. Her pulse hadn't settled since the train.
They entered a sub-chamber—a forgotten maintenance alcove tucked behind collapsed piping. Broken panels sparked faintly with dying voltage. The smell of iron and mildew coated everything. It was a relic of a world that had once run on human maintenance, before drones replaced touch with precision.
Cael crouched near a console embedded in the wall, its surface scratched with initials and old faction symbols faded by time. He pried open a side panel and pulled wires apart until he uncovered a transmitter no larger than a child's toy.
"This used to be one of ours. Before the Oracle blanketed every signal. Now they think these nodes are dead."
He twisted a knob. A low chime buzzed, followed by broken static. Then:
"Trace confirmed. Code Lyra. Passage permitted."
A soft hiss responded. The wall behind the console shifted slightly before revealing a vertical shaft with handholds embedded into the wall.
"I didn't expect them to still have this keyed to your name," Cael said, watching her closely.
"Why would they?" she whispered.
"Because you were never supposed to forget. But they made you. Like the rest of us."
The climb down took several minutes. The air grew colder the deeper they went, tinged with damp stone and forgotten time. The shaft opened into an underground platform—a submerged station long abandoned and half-flooded.
Lyra stepped cautiously, her boots sinking slightly into puddles as flickering lights overhead reflected on the rippling surface. Remnants of posters clung to walls in shreds, their slogans unreadable beneath layers of mold and soot.
Here, the silence felt heavier, broken only by the distant groan of failing infrastructure. Vines of cable snaked overhead like veins of a long-dead giant.
Cael led her along a thin maintenance ledge until they reached a large, semi-submerged terminal pulsing with soft light. The surrounding equipment looked impossibly old, yet active. Fiberlines blinked green, blue, and white in steady intervals.
"This is the Archive," Cael said quietly. "Or what's left of it. Before the Oracle purged physical data, this place stored every independent broadcast, every unsanctioned memory."
Lyra stared at the core. Her reflection stared back—blurred, fractured by the water.
The screen came to life. A scan passed silently across her face.
"Welcome back, Lyra M. Calder."
She gasped, stepping back.
"I don't remember this," she said. "I've never—"
"You have," Cael said. "This place knows you better than you know yourself."
The interface unfolded like a lotus, displaying corrupted video logs in a fragmented mosaic. She reached out, brushing her fingers across one tile.
It played shakily: a younger version of herself, standing beside Cael and a stern-looking man in a long coat. Another tile showed her giving a speech to a crowd in shadows. Then another—she was on her knees, crying. Each image passed like a pulse through her.
"I was part of this," she said slowly. "Not just a witness. I was… leading it?"
"More than that," Cael replied. "You sparked it."
Her chest tightened.
"But why would I forget something so important?"
Cael hesitated, jaw tightening.
"Because you asked to. After they captured you. You were broken, Lyra. You begged us to erase you before you said anything. We used one of the earliest memory-lock protocols. It had to be irreversible."
She gripped her arms, the cold finally reaching her bones. The console hummed quietly, indifferent.
"I don't remember choosing that."
"You weren't meant to. It was your protection. But now something's changed. The system's cracking. The Oracle is no longer perfect."
"What do we do?" she asked.
"We reconnect the Archive. Reach the outer zones. Let others remember."
He handed her a slim drive the size of a coin. It glowed softly in her hand.
"This holds a mapped route. Dead channels, untraceable paths. But the clock's ticking. Drones won't take long to backtrack us."
She looked up at him. "Why wait all this time?"
Cael's gaze softened. "Because you were the only one who could wake the others. I've kept the spark alive. But you—" he paused, "you were the fire."
The ground shuddered. A low vibration rolled beneath their feet.
Boots. Dozens. Synchronized. Close.
Cael turned, pulling her gently.
"Ready?"
Lyra looked at the screen one last time.
She nodded.
They vanished into the dark.