Mira slammed into solid ground, coughing as the light receded.
Not fading — rewinding.
The shockwave of the memory orb had destabilized more than space. It had unset time. Around her, fractured particles of possibility stitched themselves into place — roads rebuilding, sky forming like film being developed in real time.
Ava landed a moment later, breathing hard beside her, her hand still clasped tightly in Mira's. Neither let go.
The world settled.
Sunlight poured over the rooftops of a city Mira hadn't seen in three years — not in this shape. It was Yarrow City before the burnouts, before the neural privatizations, before the Markets. She could hear voices. Cars. Birds.
But not just that: purpose.
Something lived here.
"I remember this," Mira whispered, her breath catching. "That newsstand. That mural." She turned to Ava with wet eyes. "We painted that together."
Ava nodded. "This is the last intact imprint of Timeline Zero. The one everything else spun off from. The last place we were whole."
They moved through the streets slowly at first, each step testing the stability of the reconstruction. Nothing blurred. The buildings stayed. People passed them and smiled — unaware. Here, memories weren't currency. They were just the past.
And yet, something was off.
"This feels… too perfect," Mira said.
"Because it is," said a voice.
They turned — and there stood her.
Not a clone. Not a false version. Mira recognized her instantly from sync archives long erased: Dr. Halwyn, her former mentor and the lead mind behind the original memory-net infrastructure.
She had been silent since the collapse. Vanished — presumed flushed during the first wave of truth-leaks.
Except she was here.
Alive. And older.
"You made it through," Halwyn said calmly, stepping between the shadows of the alley like she belonged here. "I always thought you might. There were... echoes."
"You knew?" Mira demanded.
"I helped Ava hide the seed," Halwyn replied. "But I didn't think you'd survive that many overwrites." Her expression turned strange — both regretful and proud. "You were more enduring than we built you to be."
"You... built me?" Mira echoed, heart slamming.
Halwyn didn't flinch. "Not in the way you think. You were born, Mira. But your mind — after the rupture — was reconstructed. You consented to it. You just don't remember."
Mira stumbled back. "I agreed to be... rewritten?"
"You agreed to house the map. You were the failsafe for all of us."
Ava stared at her in disbelief. "That's why they erased our thread. That's why they came after her. She wasn't just the whistleblower... she was the archive."
Halwyn nodded. "The extracted memory key you found? That wasn't stolen off the system. It was you. You carried the imprint of Timeline Zero, embedded in subconscious subroutines after the first attempted wipe. You weren't the thief, Mira. You were the vault."
Mira went numb.
The stolen rooftop. The broken fragments. The dissonance in every version of herself. She hadn't lost her memories — she'd been them all along.
Her body wasn't just surviving the loops.
It had been holding the world together without knowing.
A low rumble interrupted the moment.
The ground trembled — softly at first, then with rising pressure.
From far above, in the sky that moments ago seemed peaceful, a shape began to loom.
A black ring.
Slow. Precise. Sinister in the certainty of its orbit.
Halwyn's face paled. "That wasn't supposed to still exist."
"What is it?" Ava said, pulling Mira back instinctively.
"The Recompiler Core — timeline-kill protocol." Halwyn's voice dipped into dread. "When the original world begins to reconstruct outside approved channels, the Core erases it—permanently. That's what they're doing, Mira. They don't care what you remember anymore. They're just going to flatten the timeline—atomize the vault and every trace of the truth along with it."
Ava looked at Mira.
And Mira already knew.
They hadn't come just to remember.
Now they had to defend the truth they'd recovered—or lose it forever.
To be continue...