Nathan didn't sleep.
The link request had ended. But it hadn't left. His mind still hummed with the forbidden prompt: Do you remember what's real? It echoed behind every thought, like a question etched onto his neural lining. The Protocol didn't do that. It was never supposed to.
The next morning, he skipped debrief. Skipped the bureau. Skipped everything.
He went back to the alley.
Maren's body had already been transferred. Nothing left but blood dust, a shattered med-pack, and those little yellow markers—like breadcrumbs on concrete, guiding no one.
He stood where she had died. Stared up.
The clinic window was dark.
No silhouette. No glow.
He knew what he'd seen. The shape. The posture. Not hers. Someone else. Someone watching. If they'd been running a scanner—especially one off-grid—there'd be trace emissions.
Nathan pulled out his own unit, set it to passively read. The device blinked. Calibrated.
Then a soft ping.
Residual neural imprint detected.
His breath caught.
It had been real.
The clinic above had shut down two years ago. Tenbridge Neurological was once a top-tier implant facility—until a case of memory sabotage hit the news. Some patient woke up speaking a stranger's childhood, claiming he'd served in wars he'd never seen. The scandal unraveled the company.
Nathan found the side door. It had once required clearance codes. Now it opened with pressure.
He slipped inside.
The air was warm. That wasn't right. The building wasn't powered.
Inside, the hallways were dusted and empty, but not derelict. No mold. No rot. Nothing decayed. Just silence.
His scanner pulsed again.
Low-frequency memory signature detected. Unknown origin.
Someone was still using this place.
Nathan reached the second floor. The door he remembered—suite 208—was unmarked.
He touched the handle.
Cold.
Then a voice, sudden and flat, burst through his neural interface.
"You're close, Nathan."
He spun around. No one.
The door clicked and opened on its own.
He stepped inside.
The lights blinked, revealing a single wall covered in ceramic shielding. In the center, a scanning pod. Old-model. Illegal after the amendments. It ran on direct bleed—unfiltered memory transfers. No ethics protocols.
On the opposite wall, a console booted up.
User Detected. Emotional tether calibrated.
Welcome back, Nathan.
He stepped closer.
The screen displayed a name.
Not his.
Not Maren's.
It read: Eli Vanross.
The name twisted in his mind. He hadn't heard it in years. Not since his early training. Vanross was one of the founding minds behind Silencer Protocol.
And he had disappeared.