Altaran's skeletal skyline collapsed behind us as the stolen hovercraft rattled low over the fractured arteries of the industrial sprawl. Engines sputtered with dying protests, cutting through the smog-thick air that draped the canal sectors like a funeral shroud.
Vesper slumped beside me, her frame barely upright, skin washed pale under the erratic glow bleeding from the cracked dashboard. Her neural ports still hummed faint, unstable resonance—the aftershocks of being torn from engineered stasis too early.
"Stay with me," I muttered, adjusting the failing controls, one eye flicking between the static-warped navscreen and her hollowed expression.
Her eyes fluttered open, grey irises clouded with the haze of fractured memory. Recognition ghosted across her features—brief, frail, buried beneath the static noise of whatever they'd done to her.
"Where…?" Her voice rasped, brittle as rusted glass.
"Off-grid," I answered, scanning the skyline. "For now. But Solis doesn't fall behind for long."
Her gaze drifted down to her wrist, where the embedded shard pulsed faint blue—echoing the fragments pressed beneath my coat like coiled veins of forgotten history.
"They broke us," she whispered, voice tight with a distant ache.
"And now," I replied, throttling hard as the hovercraft banked beneath a skeletal aqueduct, "we break them back."
Coordinates burned faint against my retinal overlay—Ravel's signature imprint buried beneath encrypted glyphs. We cut low, weaving through rusted beams and hanging tarp veils sagging with mold and forgotten tech.
The alcove revealed itself: jagged concrete half-devoured by ivy, circuit boards and bio-hacked neural arrays stacked like relics of a war Altaran pretends never happened.
Ravel stepped from the shadows, copper clasps glinting in her pinned-back hair, expression sharp as glass.
"You brought her," she observed, eyes locking onto Vesper.
"She remembers pieces," I confirmed, guiding Vesper down, her legs buckling slightly.
Ravel's mismatched gaze flicked from Vesper to the faint pulse lines mapping my jacket. Her cybernetic eye narrowed.
"The resonance is accelerating," she muttered, activating the diagnostic relays wired across her workbench. "Two synced fragments shouldn't align this fast."
"The vault bypassed safeguards," I replied, voice low. "Forced the connection."
Ravel's frown deepened as her fingers traced across the faint projection screens—neural schematics blooming like fractured constellations.
"You risked instability," she warned. "More shards reactivating without full integration? Your minds fracture further."
I met her stare, steady. "Or we fracture the lies they built."
Vesper leaned into me, her breath trembling, fragmented recognition warring behind her eyes.
"They left me locked," she whispered, voice raw. "Why?"
"Because you remember," I answered. "And the pieces you carry? They terrify them."
Ravel's schematics adjusted, overlaying our neural patterns—a map littered with fractured gaps and encrypted scars.
"Twelve shards," she confirmed. "You have three now. Nine remain—buried deep, hidden in vaults they don't want you reaching."
I watched the projection flicker, shards pulsing faint, like distant stars syncing one by one.
"We go after the fourth," I declared.
Vesper's hand found mine, grip faint but steady, something solid threading through the uncertainty.
Ravel transmitted fresh coordinates—another forgotten sector buried beneath Altaran's rotting infrastructure.
"But remember," she warned, expression grim, "each shard you recover… wakes more than memory. It wakes the version of you they tried to erase."
Outside, the city groaned under its own rust and secrets.
The hunt wasn't slowing.
The hunt was sharpening.
And the echoes of who I used to be… were crawling back to life.