“I knew you’d come back.”
M-03’s voice belonged to Johan Remer.
Aaron stood frozen in front of the third bed.
A-07.
Year 317 of the Royal Calendar, winter, the twelfth day.
Memory transfer compatibility: confirmed.
The name on his access badge and the number on the bed plaque overlapped in his vision.
The numbers and date were far too exact to be a coincidence. But his memories were far too intact for him to accept it as fact.
Nine years ago, Aaron spent the winter at a small repair shop in the north.
At least, that was how he remembered it.
“What does that mean?”
M-03 didn’t answer.
Its glass eyes, devoid even of their usual blue light, remained fixed on Aaron. The fact that it had opened its eyes and spoken with its power supply cut off made no sense to begin with.
Ria approached the automaton.
“We need to shut it down again.”
“It just said it knows about my past.”
“That doesn’t prove it’s Johan.”
“Senior Researcher, you erased my records.”
Ria’s hand stopped.
Aaron looked at her face.
There was no surprise. No denial.
He didn’t even need to search for the missing pieces anymore.
“Why did you erase them?”
“We need to find a way out first.”
“That’s the fourth time you’ve given me that answer today.”
“Move before it becomes the fifth.”
The sound of metal being cut came from beyond the ventilation shaft.
The safety inspection team seemed to have given up on the locking pin and decided to tear out the grate itself.
Ria moved toward the back of the room, passing the beds lined along the wall. In a corner piled with old drawers and medical instruments, she found a handle and pulled it.
Nothing happened.
“Is it broken?”
“This section’s been sealed for three years.”
“It would be stranger if it weren’t broken.”
Aaron laid M-03 on the floor, then joined Ria.
The handle was connected to a locking shaft inside the wall. Black rust had spread along the shaft, and the thin tube that transmitted pressure had been crushed in the middle.
The cause of the malfunction was simple.
“If I straighten the tube, will that do it?”
“I thought you were diagnosed with a condition that meant you weren’t supposed to use your hands.”
“You don’t believe that anymore either, Senior Researcher.”
Aaron gripped the crushed tube with his bandaged hand.
Pain climbed from his palm to his elbow.
Without changing expression, he slid a metal ruler into the gap. As he pried the tube open little by little, compressed air trapped inside hissed out.
Hiss.
A gear shifted one notch beyond the wall.
Ria pulled the handle again.
This time, the wall on the opposite side of the room opened by barely two finger-widths.
Cold air slipped through the gap.
“It opened.”
“Not wide enough for anyone to get through.”
“The good news is that we can fix it.”
“And the bad news?”
Aaron listened to the cutting sound coming from the ventilation shaft behind them.
“The people over there can fix things too.”
Ria let out a short breath.
It wasn’t a laugh, but her expression relaxed a little.
Together, they worked the locking shaft.
Aaron straightened the tube while Ria pulled the handle over and over. On the third attempt, the wall opened wide enough for one person to squeeze through.
A narrow staircase descended on the other side.
“Where does it lead?”
“The outer passage of the Fourth Experimental Zone.”
“A place that doesn’t exist is larger than I expected.”
“There was a lot that had to be hidden.”
Ria started down the stairs first.
Aaron caught her by the arm.
“Answer me before we go.”
“Aaron.”
“Am I A-07?”
The cutting noise stopped for a moment.
Someone shouted from outside.
“Internal lock confirmed. Prepare for forced entry.”
Time was running out.
Ria looked back and forth between the stairs and Aaron.
“Yes.”
It was one word.
That one word shook the nine years Aaron thought he knew.
“When did you find out?”
“When your application landed on my desk.”
“Is that why you hired me?”
“That’s why I tried to keep you from getting hired.”
The answer was unexpected.
Aaron narrowed his eyes.
Ria continued.
“But the day after I objected, your hiring was finalized. Someone brought you here.”
“Who?”
“I kept watch over your file to find out.”
“Why did you erase the records from nine years ago?”
Ria’s gaze shifted to the third bed.
“To send you back.”
“Where?”
“Somewhere you could live as an ordinary person.”
Aaron couldn’t laugh.
The ordinary life he’d wanted was one where he repaired other people’s machines and worried about making rent. When he realized that even that life might have been chosen for him by someone else, the pain in his hand briefly faded into the distance.
“Did you erase my memories too, Senior Researcher?”
Ria didn’t answer.
This silence was different from the others.
It wasn’t the silence of pretending not to know. It was the silence of choosing her words in front of a truth she didn’t want to admit.
“Not all of them.”
“So you erased some.”
“I didn’t erase them. I blocked them.”
“What’s the difference?”
“Erased memories don’t come back. Blocked memories do if the conditions are right.”
Ria looked at M-03’s chest panel.
“Like a memory fixation core.”
Aaron looked at the automaton too.
M-03 had closed its eyes again.
The blue crystal inside it wasn’t a power source. It was a device that held memories in place. If Johan’s voice and the records from nine years ago had become mixed together inside it, something similar might have remained inside Aaron as well.
“What are the conditions?”
“A place. A person. An aether reaction. A powerful shock.”
Ria’s gaze dropped to Aaron’s hand.
“You encountered three of those today.”
The grate behind them rang loudly.
A screw popped loose and rolled across the floor.
He wanted to ask more.
But if they caught him before he could ask the next question, he felt he might never hear the answers again.
Aaron picked up M-03.
“Let’s go down.”
Ria looked at him.
“Do you trust me?”
“No.”
Aaron stepped onto the stairs.
“You’re the only person who can answer me, so I’m taking you with me.”
Their relationship hadn’t improved.
They simply couldn’t abandon each other now.
Ria went down first.
Aaron followed with M-03 in his arms. The stairs were steep and narrow. Each step made the old metal plates give off a low clang.
The sound of the wall above them being forced open reached them.
The safety inspection team had entered the room.
“There’s a passage!”
“Track Senior Researcher Moren and the contract researcher!”
Ria lit a gas lamp below.
Faint light revealed the passage.
Old pipes and electrical wires tangled across the walls, while stains shaped like small footprints continued along the floor.
Children had walked this way.
Aaron tried not to step on the stains, then gave up. The passage was too narrow to avoid them.
“What kind of experiments did they conduct here?”
“Experiments to transfer memories into machines.”
“On children?”
“Adult memories collapsed too easily after an aether reaction.”
Ria’s voice lowered.
“They thought children’s memories weren’t fully formed yet, so they’d adhere better.”
Aaron tightened his arms around M-03.
Someone had chosen him as an experimental subject.
Someone had erased those records.
And someone had brought him back here as a researcher nine years later.
None of it had been his choice.
An iron door appeared at the end of the passage.
Ria pressed the pressure-operated lock beside it.
A red light came on.
“Access denied.”
The mechanical voice echoed out.
“Is there another way?”
“No.”
Footsteps came from behind them.
The safety inspection team was coming down the stairs.
Aaron examined the iron door and its lock. The mechanism was old, but it still had power. A brass plate for user identification was attached beneath the handle.
“Only registered researchers can open it?”
“Only someone with clearance from before the closure.”
Ria held her access badge to it.
The red light didn’t change.
“My clearance was deleted three years ago.”
Aaron pulled out his own access badge.
“There’s no way it’ll open for a contract card.”
“Considering everything that’s happened today, it’d be stranger if it didn’t.”
He pressed his badge to the brass plate.
Gears turned inside the lock.
The red light went out.
A blue light came on instead.
“Subject A-07 confirmed.”
Ria’s face hardened.
The iron door opened slowly.
Beyond it was a small control room.
Most of the instrument panels covering the walls were powered down. In the center, a single old record terminal glowed blue.
As Aaron stepped inside, the terminal activated on its own.
A sheet of paper slid out from beneath the machine.
A sentence that had just been entered was printed across it.
A-07 return confirmed.
Resuming the Fourth Memory Transfer Experiment.
Ria snatched up the paper.
“This isn’t an automatic log.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means someone just woke this device up.”
The control room’s instrument panels lit up one by one.
Pressure-gauge needles began to move, and the sound of a massive engine turning rose from beneath the floor.
Aaron looked at the user display on the central terminal.
Active account.
Johan Remer.
The name of a researcher listed as deceased three years ago.
A man’s voice came through the terminal.
“Aaron.”
M-03 opened its eyes in Aaron’s arms.
The terminal and the automaton spoke at the same time.
“Now I’ll give your memories back.”