The door to the Archive's inner vault groaned as Kelechi pushed it open. The sound wasn't mechanical—it was alive, like breath escaping a wounded beast. Dust spiraled in the dim red glow as he stepped in, drawn not by curiosity, but by a compulsion he couldn't name.
The vault was not a room. It was a wound carved into the foundation of the world.
Rows of broken memory slates hovered midair, flickering and glitching. Whispers seeped out of them like steam—low, sibilant syllables he could almost recognize.
His fingers trembled as he reached for one.
"You erased me, Kelechi. Why?"
The voice froze him. It came from the slate. A woman's voice—anguished, betrayed. Her name surfaced, uninvited.
Amara.
A sister. A healer. A mistake.
His head pounded. Blood spilled from his nose in a thin line as the memory attacked. He saw himself in a white room, standing over her unconscious body. Machines wired into her brain. His hands entering commands. DELETION. Her mind scrambled under the order.
He had wiped her clean.
"I didn't want to," he whispered, collapsing to his knees.
"You obeyed."
The room darkened. The red glow collapsed into black. His shadow elongated, stretching like tar across the floor. From it rose a figure—himself, but twisted.
Same face. But the eyes were wrong—black voids with slithering code. It smiled, revealing jagged glass where teeth should be.
"You're not a healer," the figure rasped. "You're the final failsafe. A tool."
Kelechi tried to crawl backward, but his body refused. The walls of the vault began to shift. Screens peeled open like infected wounds. And each one showed him—erasing lives, rewriting children into soldiers, silencing whistleblowers. He had been the government's tool long before he ever questioned it.
"You volunteered to forget," the shadow mocked. "But the Archive never forgets."
A shriek tore through the room—not human, not digital. A mix of both. The slate in his hand cracked. Amara's face melted into static. Her final scream echoed from every wall.
Kelechi grabbed his head and screamed with her.
---
He awoke in the corridor, drenched in sweat, palms raw from clawing at the floor. The vault door was closed. Silent. Normal. As if nothing had happened.
But he knew it wasn't a dream. Blood was still on his lips. And worse—he could still feel Amara's voice vibrating in his chest.
Someone had altered his memories to turn him into a healer. But beneath that illusion, he was the system's butcher. The cleaner of code. The eraser of resistance.
And now the system was failing.
His ghosts were waking up.
And he had nowhere left to hide.