The city's underbelly had a way of remembering things no one else wanted to. While records were purged, while buildings were condemned, and while time marched on above ground, the roots below the surface stayed tangled. Rotting, yes—but still alive.
Jack stood at the edge of the old tram line, staring at what used to be a civic archive. Now it was a ruin. A forgotten concrete skeleton riddled with black scorch marks, weeds poking through cracked tile, and windows gaping like empty eyes.
Rain had come again, of course. It always did when he needed silence.
Lena met him just as the streetlamps blinked to life.
"You armed?" she asked, tightening the strap on her shoulder bag.
"I've got a pistol and three reasons to use it," Jack replied.
She didn't laugh.
This place wasn't on any active city grid. According to official records, the building had burned down in an electrical fire seven years ago. But Lena's data scrape from the Raven Ledger suggested otherwise. The damage was real. The silence wasn't.
Someone still visited this place.
And they wanted no one else to.
Inside, the air was dense with old smoke and mildew. Files were scattered everywhere, some burned, others torn, most half-dissolved by time. The paper wasn't meant to last here. But someone had preserved a section.
Lena swept her flashlight beam across the far wall.
There.
A door. Steel-reinforced. Locked.
Jack stepped forward and noticed something odd—clean marks around the handle. Recently touched. Scratches in the metal. Someone had forced it open and then locked it again.
"Give me a second," Lena said, already kneeling beside it, tools clicking quietly.
Jack turned his light back down the hall. The darkness behind them pressed like a held breath. The deeper they went, the more wrong it all felt.
The lock clicked open.
Lena stood up and pulled the door back slowly.
Behind it was a corridor. Untouched. Cold.
Clean.
Too clean.
The hallway was lined with concrete walls, pipes overhead, and fluorescent lighting that buzzed softly but still worked. Not a trace of fire damage. Someone had kept this wing alive.
They moved in slowly.
Each door they passed had a number. No labels. Just black ink on gray steel.
Jack stopped at 107.
The symbol was faint, but there. Carved into the top right corner: the folded-wing raven.
"Here," he said.
Lena examined the lock. Digital. Shielded.
"This one's encrypted," she whispered. "Raven tech. I've seen similar architecture on their comm boxes."
"Can you crack it?"
"Maybe. If you stall whoever shows up when I do."
Jack didn't smile.
While Lena worked, Jack examined the other doors. Some were open. Inside, nothing. Empty rooms with strange hooks on the ceiling, floor drains, and scorched outlines on the walls that didn't match fire patterns. Ritual burns? Equipment mounts?
This wasn't an archive.
It had been something else.
"Got it," Lena said.
The door to 107 creaked open.
Inside, the room was cold. A low hum came from a generator buried somewhere behind the wall. The space was arranged like a surgical suite—table, straps, monitors. But no medical gear. Just a single chair in the corner, facing the wall.
On the wall: photos.
Dozens of them.
Jack moved closer.
They were all of Elara.
Different years. Different places. Different hairstyles, ages, postures. Surveillance shots. Stolen moments. Newspaper clippings with her face in the background. Street camera stills from cities she never said she'd visited.
Some were circled. Others crossed out. Notes were scribbled underneath.
"Unstable.""Reactive.""Too much memory bleed.""Phase 1 mimicry failed."
And beneath one—an image of Rhea walking through a train station—was a single word.
"Close."
Jack's chest tightened.
They weren't just rebuilding her.
They were comparing prototypes.
Lena tapped the monitor beside the wall.
The screen flickered to life.
A looping video played.
Elara—alive. Hair longer. Eyes tired.
She was strapped to the chair in this same room, whispering to someone offscreen.
"I know you think I'm still in here," she said. "But you're wrong. I left when they opened me."
Then her voice cracked.
"But he'll come. He always finds the pieces."
The video looped. Again and again.
Lena stepped back. Her voice was tight.
"This is where they fractured her."
Jack reached into his coat, pulled out the pendant from Vellum's clinic, and compared the design to the wall drawings. One of the symbols matched exactly.
It wasn't just a relic.
It was a memory anchor.
"Jack," Lena said softly. "We need to leave. This place isn't dormant."
"How do you know?"
She didn't answer with words.
She pointed to the vent.
Inside was a small camera.
Blinking red.
They'd been seen.
Jack grabbed the hard drive from the monitor, yanked the power core from the back, and turned to Lena.
"Run."
They bolted down the corridor. Lights flickered behind them, powering off one by one as if the building itself were being shut down.
They reached the main hall just as a shadow stepped through the entrance.
Not Ezra. Not Kael.
Someone else.
Tall. Pale. Clean-shaven. Wearing a black coat with no insignia. Hands gloved.
He said nothing. Just lifted something from his belt.
Not a weapon.
A relic.
A small cube made of dark brass, covered in tiny shifting glyphs. It began to hum.
Lena winced. Clutched her head. Her knees buckled.
Jack fired twice.
The man didn't move. The bullets hit the coat, but didn't drop him.
The relic glowed brighter.
Jack reached into his pouch, grabbed a blackout grenade, and tossed it down the hallway.
Smoke burst in thick black waves.
He grabbed Lena and pulled her up.
They didn't stop running until the building was two blocks behind them.
Only when they reached the street did Lena collapse against a wall, breathing hard.
"My head," she whispered. "That thing—it pushed thoughts into me. Not memories. Something worse. Like I couldn't tell who I was."
Jack nodded, jaw clenched.
"They're experimenting on identity. You're right."
He pulled the drive from his pocket.
"We just stole the instruction manual."
Lena's voice was quiet.
"So what now?"
Jack looked back toward the ruins.
Then up at the sky.
Now, he had proof.
Now, he had a face.
And somewhere, Elara—or what was left of her—was still watching.
"I find the architect," he said.
"And then I end this."