The voice of The Echo didn't fade.
It lingered at the edge of Kaelen's perception, a constant, layered whisper beneath the hum of the machinery and the oppressive silence of his room. ...join us... brother... preserver... It was a sound that had no source, emanating from the very air, a psychic pressure against his mind.
He stared at the locket on the shelf. It looked no different, yet it now held the entire emotional weight of a man's love for his sister. It was a beautiful, terrible thing. He had saved the memory, but the cost was seared into his mind: the moment the light left Aris's eyes.
He was a thief. The Archivist's words were no longer an abstract threat; they were his new identity.
The crystalline panel chimed again, its light a harsh intrusion.
[Report: Extraction 7-B. Status: Success. Efficiency: 98.7%. Cognitive Residue: Minimal.]
[Directive: Proceed to Training Simulation. Shelf Gamma-4. Object: 'Shattered Spectacles.']
A training simulation. They were treating this like a skill to be honed. He wanted to scream, to smash the panel, to throw the locket against the obsidian door. But the image of Aris's hollowed-out face stopped him. Resistance meant the Vats. It meant being broken into nothing.
He walked to the shelf labeled Gamma-4. The object was a pair of wire-rimmed spectacles, one lens cracked into a spiderweb. The tag read: "Core Memory: Academic Failure. Subject unable to process perceived inadequacy."
As his fingers brushed the cold metal, the memory didn't flow into him. Instead, the world around him dissolved.
One moment he was in his room, the next he was standing in a sterile, white, endless space. A projection. A simulation.
Before him stood the ghostly image of a young man, maybe his own age, pale and trembling. This wasn't the Condemned, but a perfect mnemonic reconstruction.
"You have ten minutes," the Archivist's voice echoed from nowhere and everywhere. "This is a low-priority, high-clarity memory. The subject's emotional attachment is weak but precise. Extract it. Learn control."
The spectral student looked at him, his eyes wide with shame. "I failed," he whispered, his voice trembling. "Everyone will know I'm a fraud."
Kaelen felt the memory tug at him—the cold sweat, the pounding heart, the devastating sight of a failing grade on a terminal exam. It was a simple, sharp pain.
The old method, the one he'd used instinctively with Aris, was to connect, to empathize, to offer a sanctuary for the memory. But the Archivist wanted control. Efficiency.
He reached out with his mind, not as a fellow sufferer, but as a surgeon. He ignored the boy's fear and focused on the memory itself, visualizing it as a tangible thread of light wrapped around the spectacles. He pulled.
The memory tore free with a painful, ragged sensation. The student's phantom gasped and vanished. The spectacles in Kaelen's hand now hummed with a faint, desolate energy—the crystallized essence of academic shame.
The white space vanished, and he was back in his room, breathing heavily. The extraction had taken less than a minute. It was clean. Brutal. And it left him feeling hollow.
"Acceptable," the Archivist's voice came from a newly revealed intercom in the wall. "But you are still empathizing. You are reliving the memory with them. Do not swim in the current, Kaelen. Stand on the shore and direct its flow. Your emotional investment is a liability."
The intercom fell silent. The lesson was clear: to survive this, he had to become as cold as the system he served.
He placed the spectacles back on the shelf. The whispers of The Echo, which had quieted during the simulation, returned, louder now.
...hurts... a child's voice wept.
...why did you take it?...a woman's voice, full of sorrow.
...you are like the others...a man's voice, heavy with disappointment.
"Leave me alone," Kaelen whispered, pressing the heels of his hands against his eyes.
...we are the same... you hold, they take... we remember... you remember...
The chorus of voices was no longer just an invitation. It was an accusation. It knew what he had done. It felt what he had done.
The panel chimed a third time. This wasn't a directive. It was a live feed. The screen showed a cell. Inside was a woman, her face hardened with defiance, her hands clenched. The tagline appeared below the image.
[Subject: Ilya. Condemned for sedition. Core Memory: Secret meeting with the 'Remnants.' Resistance: Extreme. Scheduled for Standard Cleansing in 6 hours.]
This was his next test. Not a simulation. Not a willing subject like Aris. This was a prisoner of the state, a member of the resistance his friend Lyssa had only whispered about. Her memory wasn't a cherished love; it was a secret. A weapon.
The Echo's whispers surged, the voices coalescing into a single, clear sentence that rang in his mind with the force of a physical blow.
She remembers the truth. Do not be the hand that erases it.
Kaelen stared at the image of the defiant woman, then at the shelf holding Aris's locket. He had become the warden, the extractor, the thief. But as The Echo's plea faded in his mind, he realized a more terrifying truth was dawning.
He was also now the last witness. And if he obeyed his new masters, he would be complicit in silencing the only people who knew what Aethelgard truly was.