Ezra stepped back from the door, hand still pressed to the frame like it might tell him something more. But it didn't. Whatever had knocked was gone. Or never there to begin with.
"They know," Mara whispered again, her voice fraying at the edges.
Ezra didn't answer. He could still feel the trace of static humming through the wood—a residual shiver that hadn't been there before. A trace left not by fingers or footsteps, but by intention. Whatever presence had been outside… it didn't need to enter. It only needed to be acknowledged.
"They always know," he said quietly. "That's the point."
Mara's arms wrapped tighter around herself. She stood near the window, gaze fixed on the wall beyond it, but she wasn't really looking. Her breath fogged the glass—short, uneven bursts that betrayed more than she wanted to show.
"It felt like something was waiting," she said. "Before the knock. Like the air turned thick, and I—" She stopped. "I couldn't remember what I was about to say."
Ezra turned to her sharply.
"That's how it starts."
She blinked. "What?"
"That shimmer. The blankness. They're not just erasing files, Mara. They're shaving down moments. Thoughts. Seconds. Just enough to make you doubt they were ever yours to begin with."
Mara's voice cracked, low and strained. "But why me?"
He crossed the room, sat at the edge of the table, the weight of everything they'd seen pressing against him like gravity. "I don't think they erased you because you were irrelevant," he said. "I think they erased you because you remembered too well."
Mara's eyes flicked toward him—startled, unsure. But she didn't argue.
"Back there," she said slowly, "when I was in the aisle—before we ran—I touched one of the old drawers. Just brushed it."
Ezra leaned in.
"And?"
"I felt something," she whispered. "Not a memory. Not like you do. It was more like… pressure. Like someone watching me from inside the cabinet. Not a person. Just… presence."
Ezra exhaled through his nose. "You're sensitive. It makes you dangerous."
"To who?" she asked. "To them?"
"To everyone who's forgotten what they're missing."
The air shifted again—subtle, but undeniable. Ezra felt it in his bones first. A hollowing, like the walls themselves were pulling inward. Something brushing just outside perception. A sliver of silence sharp enough to cut.
He turned and moved to the bag. Pulled out the map he'd stolen years ago—one that had never existed in the public records, etched by hand from old city blueprints and memorykeeper testimony. Its edges were brittle. Its center was marked with a red circle.
Blackwood Square.
Mara stared at it, then up at him. "You want to go there? Where even the memories are gone?"
Ezra nodded. "We don't have time to play safe anymore. What happened to Daniel wasn't a test case. It was part of something bigger."
"And you think the Square has answers?"
"No," Ezra said. "I think it has the pieces. If we're fast enough, we might get to them before they're wiped for good."
He reached toward the tinted window and darkened it further, sealing them inside. Outside, the wind moaned through the alley like it was looking for a way in. Dust swirled past in looping, impossible patterns, like something was etching sigils into the night.
Mara stood slowly. Her reflection shimmered in the glass—flickered.
For a split second, Ezra saw two of her. One slightly out of sync. Eyes distant. Mouth open like it was screaming.
Then—gone.
She turned to him.
"What if we find the truth and it erases us, too?"
Ezra stared at her, remembering what the regulators had said in the archive.
Silent retrieval.
"They'll come either way," he said. "But at least this way, we meet them with our eyes open."
He rolled up the map. Packed it carefully. Then he looked at her—really looked.
"You in?"
Mara didn't speak for a long time. She glanced at the door. At the mug still cooling on the table. At the patch of shadow on the far wall that hadn't moved since they arrived, even when the light shifted.
Then she nodded. Once. Sharp.
"I'm in."
A second later, the lights above them dimmed—just a flicker. But they both felt it.
Not a loss of power.
A warning.