Cherreads

Chapter 15 - chapter 15

Scene: Rooftop — Just Before Sunrise

The sky fractures between bruised indigo and pale gold. Wind whips around them, stinging, alive.

Mark stands shakily, something unreadable in his eyes.

Mark:My real name was Kevin.

The name wave like sound in a dream.

Kim and Amari exchange glances. That name mean something.

Amari:Kevin that's one of the Original Five.

Amari (quietly):The ones who built the Resistance Core.

Scene: Hidden Old Library

They go down again, deeper than before. Behind them, the city heartbeat like a warning and Amari use Kevin voiceprint a whisper to open the sealed.

Inside: stone walls, blinking in glass.

Kim finds a memory shard. Slots it into an old projector. Light blooms.

Scene: Memory Recording — 17 Years Ago

The shard plays:

Kevin — younger, fierce-eyed, a leader. Standing in front of a gathering of outcasts. Behind him, that symbol again — the eye with no pupil.

Kevin (in recording):

If they can edit our truth, we'll write over *their* lies. Layer by layer. Code by code. Until the world *remembers*.

From the shadows: The Her from Mark's visions — not afraid, but leading

Her name flashes briefly: Ayame

She holds the crystal pendant — the one from the static.

Ayame:

We go tonight. Before The Ruling locks the city.

Ayame: Archive — Present

Mark clutches his chest. The pendant is somehow *in his pocket now*.

Amari (soft): If Ayame was real, then she might still be... trapped in the static.

Amari:Or worse — used by the Witnesses to bait memory-sensitive returners like you.

Kim:Either way, we find her.

Scene: Abandoned Neural Lab — Sector 12

Once a government dream-mapping facility. Now gutted, haunted by static echo.

The group power on the Core Console the only interface capable of decoding living memories.

Mark:She was the last thing I saw before they wiped me.If I go back in… I might not come out.

Kim hands him the crystal pendant.

Kim:You already didn't come out. This is the way back.

Scene: The Dream Rupture Within the Core

Mark lies on the interface bed. His body stills.

Inside: reality fractures. He's Kevin again in uniform, a city burning behind him.

He hears her.

Ayame (faint):

Kevin, run they're inside the rewrite stream!

A dozen Witnesses descend. Their forms now clearer a code leaking from their skin like oil, mouths not mouths.

But Ayame reaches him. Their hands meet —

and in that moment, something ancient flares.

Scene: Edge of the Rewrite

Kevin and Ayame stand at a cliff of raw data. Below the city, stripped to bones. Above — an eye watching.

Ayame:If you wake, you have to carry it. *The origin shard*. It's the only way to reverse what they've done.

Kevin (Mark):What if I forget again?

Ayame:Then I'll remind you. As many times as it takes.

She presses the pendant into his hand.

Scene: Reality Lab

Mark convulses. The machines spike.

Then stillness.

He wakes, eyes burning gold briefly.

Mark (soft):She's alive.And they're afraid of her.

Amari:Who?

Mark:The last source of code. The one thing that they couldn't rewrite.

Kim:Where is she?

Mark:They buried her...At Anchor Zero.

TO BE CONTINUED

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