The next message came three days later.
Different phrasing. Same impossible routing.
We don't use names anymore. Names make us easier to erase.Meet us if you want the rest of the truth.
Coordinates followed.
Mara didn't hesitate this time.
The location was beneath the city, in a section of transit infrastructure decommissioned decades earlier. Emergency lights cast long, sickly shadows across concrete walls layered with old warnings and newer graffiti.
Three figures waited for her.
They looked ordinary. That was the most unsettling part.
One woman stepped forward. Her hair was gray at the temples, her eyes sharp.
"We're archivists," she said. "Or what's left of them."
"You helped build Witness Echoes," Mara said.
"Yes," the woman replied. "And then we realized what they were actually being used for."
Another archivist spoke. "The dying brain is chaotic. It hallucinates. It contradicts itself. Early Echoes terrified people because they didn't make sense."
"So you cleaned them," Mara said.
"We fixed them," the woman corrected softly. "We made them survivable. We wrote narratives people could accept."
Mara felt something cold settle in her chest.
"You overwrite memories," she said.
"Yes."
"You don't record truth."
"We record stability."
Silence stretched between them.
"Why me?" Mara asked.
The woman met her gaze.
"Because you can see the edits," she said. "And because you always could."