That night, Mara dreamed.
She rarely did.
In the dream, she stood in a white room. The air smelled sterile. Her head ached. She tried to move and couldn't.
Voices echoed above her.
"Neural response stable.""Begin overwrite sequence."
She woke with a gasp, heart racing, sheets tangled around her legs.
Her apartment felt unfamiliar.
Too clean. Too quiet.
Mara sat up slowly, pressing a hand to her chest.
I don't remember being a child like this, she thought.
The realization hit her harder than any migraine.
Her childhood memories were… thin. Not missing, exactly. Just shallow. Like a story summarized instead of lived.
Mara swung her legs over the side of the bed.
The gaps weren't just in Echoes.
They were in her.
She stared at her reflection in the darkened window.
For the first time in her life, Mara Kade asked herself a question she had never needed before.
What if I'm not remembering wrong—
What if I'm remembering correctly, and that's the problem?
Outside, the city slept peacefully, unaware that its perfect system was beginning to unravel from the inside.
And deep within Mara's mind, something old and buried began to press back.