The sky over Istanbul was red.
Not from sunset, but from the data haze — thousands of satellites weaving synthetic clouds over the skyline to blur surveillance. Beneath that veil, the city pulsed like a living organism. Messy, loud, encrypted. It was one of the last places on Earth where analog shadows still existed. A digital blackout zone.
And it was Sera Talib's home now.
Layla stepped off the underground rail into the Kâğıthane district — a maze of black markets, safehouses, and memory-divers leaking edited narratives in exchange for gold, guns, or silence. The locals called it the Grey Circuit.
Everything here was off-grid.
Even you, if you paid the right price.
She adjusted her coat and hood, scanning faces. Scars, glass eyes, neural implants pulsing beneath tattoos. Everyone here had something to hide — and most of them wanted to forget. Layla needed to do the opposite.
She walked past a sign written in cracked neon:
"WE DON'T SELL TRUTH. JUST BETTER FICTIONS."
It reminded her of Sera. Always clever with irony. Always dangerous with emotion.
The contact's name was Ammar, an old smuggler Layla once used to extract refugees with deleted memories. She found him in a hookah den, smoking something that made his pupils dilate like full moons.
"Layla Rami," he said, voice thick. "Haven't seen you since Geneva burned."
"It didn't burn."
"No," he said, smirking. "But they burned your file."
She didn't reply. He tapped a code into his terminal. A projector lit up the table with a flickering heat-map.
"Sera's been active. Trades in memory shards, runs her own ops now. She doesn't work for anyone."
"Where is she?"
Ammar hesitated.
"Even if I knew, you think she'd want to see you?"
Layla lowered her hood. "I'm not asking if she wants to. I'm asking where."
Three hours later, she stood in front of a graffiti-covered warehouse in the Galata ruins — no cameras, no drones, just an old door with a rusted handle and a memory-lock scanner.
She pressed her thumb to it.
Access denied.
Then she whispered: "Time fractals bloom in the dark."
A private phrase. From another life.
The scanner blinked green.
The door opened.
Inside was a cathedral of machines.
Cables hung like ivy. Old-school servers hummed with analog power. On the far wall, a projector displayed memory reels like film — images looping in shadows: a crying child, a fire on water, a woman with half a face blurred out.
In the center of the room stood Sera Talib.
Still beautiful. Still armored in coldness.
She didn't turn around.
"I knew you'd come," she said.
Layla stayed still. "Didn't know I'd be welcome."
"You're not."
Finally, Sera turned.
Dark curls, cybernetic eye glowing faintly blue, the scar across her jaw deeper than Layla remembered. Her presence hadn't softened. But her eyes — they still held something raw beneath the hardware.
"You brought a virus into my city," Sera said.
"I brought a question."
"I don't owe you answers."
"No. But you owe yourself the truth."
That hit something.
Layla pulled the recorder from Geneva out of her coat and placed it on the table.
"My voice. From six years ago. From a clinic I don't remember ever being in."
Sera's face didn't move. But her fingers tensed.
"You were part of the recursion trials," she said finally. "You volunteered. Then panicked halfway through and tried to wipe yourself."
"I don't remember volunteering."
"That was the point."
Layla stepped closer.
"Did you help them do it?"
Sera didn't blink. "I helped you escape."
Silence.
Then Sera turned toward the reels on the wall. One showed Layla — younger, pale, strapped to a bed, screaming as a technician adjusted the feed beside her.
"You begged me to delete what they implanted," Sera said. "I didn't. I archived it."
Layla swallowed.
"Why?"
"Because I knew one day you'd need it."
Sera walked over to a wall safe and pulled out an old drive. Dusty. Labeled with one word:
RECURSION.
"I kept this hidden from everyone," she said. "Not for you. For me. Because I saw what was on it — and if the world ever finds out what Moreau really built…"
She trailed off.
Layla took the drive.
"Then show me."
Sera inserted the device into the reel deck. The images changed. Video files — distorted, glitching. A room with a chair. A man's voice — Moreau's — explaining something to a team of doctors.
"Recursion is not a memory. It is an echo of a timeline. A living loop. Once initiated, the subject begins to overwrite their own reality, layering edits on top of edits until they no longer recognize the present."
Another file.
"Subject Seven has demonstrated full loop integrity. She believes this is her first cycle. It is her twelfth."
Layla gripped the table.
"Twelve?"
Sera looked at her. "You've done this before, Layla. Again and again. You keep coming back."
"Why?"
Sera's voice softened.
"Because you never let yourself forget."
A noise outside.
A soft click.
Then static.
Sera turned.
"Did you bring anyone?"
"No."
The lights flickered.
The reel on the wall cracked.
Then the voice returned.
"Subject Seven has remembered. Phase II is now active."
The screen went black.
And from outside the warehouse door, the mirrored reflection of a man passed — just for a second — too perfect to be real.
The Mirrored Man was watching.