We left just before sunrise.
Elara drove a sleek, matte-black car with no plates and windows tinted too dark to be legal. She didn't speak for the first ten minutes. Her hands gripped the wheel with intent, eyes fixed on the road like every turn could hold a threat. I sat beside her in silence, the weight of last night pressing heavy on my chest. The notebook entries haunted me. The sketch of the machine. The phrase:
"Memory is the last prison."
If I had erased my own mind, then what version of myself had decided that was necessary? What had I seen, done, or become that made forgetting seem like salvation? And why was Elara still here, helping me through this broken maze of myself? "I used to think silence was peaceful," I muttered, breaking the quiet. She glanced at me. "And now?"
"Now it just feels… dangerous. Like something's waiting to be said."She smiled faintly, almost sadly. "You always were better with words when things were falling apart." I looked out the window. The city was beginning to stir — tired shopkeepers lifting shutters, kids in uniforms yawning at bus stops, the world moving on while I remained in limbo. "Where are we going exactly?" I asked. "To the warehouse," she said. "The original RESET site. You told me never to go there alone, even after everything. You said… if something ever happened to you, we'd go together." "So you waited." "For two years," she said. "I waited."
The city faded behind us, replaced by long empty roads and industrial ruins. Half-finished overpasses, broken billboards, crumbling factories swallowed by weeds. Like the graveyard of progress. Eventually, she pulled off the road onto a dirt track. Trees lined both sides, dark and jagged like twisted memories. The car slowed as we approached a wide chain-link gate—its lock rusted through, the sign above it faded.
"Verne Labs – Experimental Division"Private Property. Trespassers Will Be Prosecuted. Elara parked beside the gate.
"We're here," she said quietly. I stepped out. The air was damp and still. A crow cawed from somewhere in the trees. The warehouse stood ahead like a monolith—steel walls streaked with time, windows broken, vines creeping over the roof. And yet… something about it still thrummed with dormant energy.
We walked up the cracked concrete path. The front door had been forced open long ago. Inside, the smell hit me first—dust, oil, and faint chemicals. My footsteps echoed as we entered the massive main room. This wasn't just a lab. It was a cathedral of forgotten science. Wires hung like vines. Computers sat dead and dust-covered. In the center stood a massive circular platform surrounded by broken glass and scorched floor tiles. And at its heart… the Machine.
Rest . It looked like a metallic cocoon cracked open from within. Cables fed into it from every angle. Its surface, once polished, was now marred by scratches, burn marks, and carvings.I stepped closer.
Etched into one side — in my own handwriting — was a phrase:
"THIS WAS NEVER MEANT TO SAVE ANYONE."
Elara stayed near the door. "I never saw it like this," she said. "You kept it hidden. Said it wasn't ready. Said no one should be allowed to use it."
I ran my fingers along the frame. The metal was ice cold.
"Then why did I use it?"
She hesitated. "Because they were going to steal it. Marcus and the investors. They wanted to rewrite people's minds. Not to heal them — to control them." I turned to her sharply. "You mean like brainwashing?" "Yes. To remove guilt, reshape loyalty, make people programmable. You wanted to destroy it. But they were always watching, always two steps ahead." "And so I used it on myself first.""To hide the data," she whispered. "You buried it in your own head. And then wiped the path to it."I staggered back slightly."And now they're coming for me again."
We explored the lab in silence. Old files. Dried-up whiteboards. Screens that once lit up with endless code now black and lifeless. Each room was like a ghost of the man I used to be. Pieces of a puzzle I no longer knew how to solve. In a drawer near the back office, I found a tablet. Its battery was miraculously still alive — a blinking red line on the corner. I powered it on.
The screen lit up with a single message:
"Aiden: If you're reading this, it means you forgot. And they know."
Elara read it over my shoulder. "I remember this," she said. "You wrote the message before the last test. I saw you record it, but you encrypted the rest." I tapped the screen.A video file loaded. The timestamp: exactly two years ago. I pressed play.
The video showed me — older, sharper, more intense. Eyes sunken, stubble across my jaw, voice raspy like I hadn't slept in days. "If I'm seeing this… I've lost everything. Which means the plan worked. That means they can't find it. Not unless they get to me again." He leaned forward, closer to the camera. "Elara, if you're there — don't trust anyone. Not even the ones who helped us. They've all been turned."
His voice cracked.
"The code is buried. Deep. In places no one will think to look. You'll need the map. It's hidden in the last place I ever felt safe." "My father's cabin." The screen glitched. Static.
Then one final line before it died:
"If they find me first, burn everything. Even me."
We stood there frozen. The machine behind us hummed faintly, as if it remembered too.I turned to Elara. "Your family… your father… he had a cabin?" She shook her head. "No. That wasn't meant for me." Realization hit me like ice."He was talking to himself," I said. "To the version of himself after the wipe. Me." Elara's expression was unreadable. "So what do we do now?"I clenched the tablet tightly.
"We find the cabin. And the map. Before they do." Back in the car, I sat silently, the video echoing in my mind. The pieces were falling into place, but the picture was still fractured. I knew now that I had buried something — data, memories, maybe even answers — somewhere remote, and now the only way forward was to become the man I once was… without losing the man I had become.
Elara started the engine. Her hands trembled slightly on the wheel. "You're shaking," I said gently. She nodded. "I was hoping this wouldn't be necessary." "But you came anyway." "Because I believed in you," she whispered. "Even when you didn't."
As we pulled away from the warehouse, I looked back one last time. And in that final glance, for just a moment, I thought I saw movement inside. A shadow near the machine. A figure watching from the dark. I blinked — and it was gone. Or maybe it was never there.
Or maybe… Just maybe…They had never left.