BLOODCAPE
Chapter 144 – Where the Memory Began

Chapter 144: Chapter 144 – Where the Memory Began

The air beneath Sector Seven tasted like rust and static.

A mile of silence stretched in either direction along the abandoned tram line, broken only by the slow drip of condensation through rotting roof vents. Hernan sat alone at the edge of a crumbling platform, elbows on his knees, staring at a fractured transit map that no longer corresponded to anything in the city above.

Faint green glows marked line names that had long since been deleted from public record: Indigo Reach. West Ten Spiral. Leviathan Loop. The map claimed to show direction — but the world it mapped had been erased.

He didn’t remember those stations clearly.

But he remembered remembering them.

That was worse.

Footsteps echoed long before Aya appeared. Steady, soft, deliberate. She didn’t speak. Didn’t try to be seen. She just arrived.

Without asking, she slid down beside him, cross-legged. The sign above them looped endlessly, failing to finish its last message: "Please wait behind the—"

Nothing else.

Their shadows stretched long across the rusting tracks, cast by a lone overhead fixture that buzzed like an exhausted insect. Hernan didn’t look at her.

"You weren’t in your room," she said finally.

"I’m not in much of anything these days."

She said nothing. Just watched him.

"You once told Iro," she said after a beat, "this line was where you chased your first suspect without clearance."

He nodded.

"Fifteen years ago. Suspect ran through here, ducked off grid. I followed. Caught him two blocks down."

"That in your record?"

"No."

"Then maybe it’s the one thing they haven’t overwritten."

His laugh — if it was that — came short and dry.

Aya handed him a crumpled protein pack from her coat. He took a piece, chewed without tasting.

"I keep wondering," Hernan said, "if I stop B... if I somehow survive this... what exactly am I winning back? The memories I’m fighting for—" He paused. "What if they’re already false? Spliced in years ago, during some protocol update no one caught?"

She didn’t argue. She waited.

"I wake up remembering my mother’s voice. A scar I don’t recall earning. An officer I once called brother." He looked at his gloved hand. "What if the real Hernan died years ago? What if I’m just a pattern that outlived the purpose it was built for?"

Aya spoke without softness.

"My third year in Zodiac, I broke op protocol. Stayed behind during a city pullout. Thought I could broker peace."

She stopped.

"I failed. Six people died. One was a kid. The footage? Gone. Logs corrupted. But official record says it was a clean extraction."

She met his eyes.

"I still remember the smell of blood on my gloves."

"Then it happened."

"I don’t know," she said. "Maybe I made it up to justify the weight I carry."

"Why keep it?"

"Because whether it’s real or not, it changed me."

They sat in that truth.

Hernan leaned back, spine resting against the cold wall.

"Intent doesn’t survive in this city," he said. "Only impressions do. What’s true doesn’t win. Only what’s easier to believe."

His voice cracked.

"What if I’m not the ghost?" he whispered. "What if I’m the echo?"

Aya looked him straight in the eye.

"You might be."

He waited for contradiction. Denial. Comfort.

She gave none.

"But echoes don’t choose how they begin," she said. "Only where they stop."

The tram map above them glitched — and for a flickering second, a station name blinked into view. A station no longer spoken aloud.

Aya extended her hand. Not to pull him up.

Just to be there.

He took it.

And for a moment, presence was enough.

Dekra’s hideout was colder.

It sat near the edge of the city’s outer dome, in a layer that had once monitored early atmospheric testing. Now it was silent: walls of busted servers and retooled cabling, patched together with insulation wrap and processor foam. Neural readers blinked pale blue and red across every surface, casting long reflections on the polished steel floor.

Aya leaned over a console, knuckles white. Iro stood at the rear entrance, cross-checking routes and fallback options. Hernan sat motionless, hands resting in his lap like a soldier between lives.

Dekra’s hands moved fast, threading data through ancient ports with precision. The tension in her shoulders was unreadable — but her eyes burned with quiet fire.

Then her hands stopped.

"Got it," she said. Flat. Final.

Aya turned to her. "What?"

Dekra keyed in a command. A red box bloomed on the main screen.

SCORPIO SYSTEM ALERT: RECURSION LOCK INITIATEDT-MINUS 36:04:51 TO MEMORY INTEGRITY RECONCILIATIONIDENTITY MERGE PRIORITY: ECHO PROTOCOL BETA-ZERO

Iro blinked. "What’s a recursion lock?"

Dekra’s voice dropped.

"It’s the end of choice."

Aya’s tone sharpened. "Clarify."

"If the city can’t converge on a single emotional identity," Dekra said, "Scorpio forces resolution. It wipes the overlapping memories. Deletes all conflicting emotional anchors. Rebuilds around the dominant thread."

"Erasing everything else?" Hernan asked.

Dekra nodded.

"Everything you were. Everything he’s become. Gone. Only the city’s consensus survives."

Aya whispered, "That’s not memory. That’s genocide."

Dekra turned back to the terminal. "And B’s preparing for it. I intercepted a feed."

She keyed another line.

The screen shimmered to life.

Hernan’s face appeared.

But not Hernan.

Echo B stood in a bare room. Same coat. Same build. Same hair.

His voice was steady, calm.

"Sector Five. Morning mist. First field command. Jenkins on my right..."

The voice didn’t crack. The phrasing was perfect. The memories accurate.

But it was wrong.

Too clean. Too rehearsed. No breath between the beats. No pause in the pain.

Aya flinched. "He’s rehearsing you."

"Wearing me," Hernan muttered.

The video cut.

Silence.

Dekra’s voice followed: "The feed came from inside the Nexus."

Aya blinked. "I thought it was sealed."

"It isn’t anymore. Scorpio opened it under an urban memory directive. He’s rerouting public emotion into the city’s original neuro-spine — the Nexus cathedral."

"If anything from your real mind still exists," she added, "it’s there."

"But so is B," Iro said.

"Of course he is," Dekra replied.

Aya turned to Hernan.

"What do we do?"

Hernan stood. Walked slowly toward the terminal.

Watched his own stolen memories flicker back into black.

Then said, low:

"Then we meet where the memory began."

Aya met his gaze.

"The Nexus."

He nodded.

Outside, the storm above the dome rolled with silent pressure.

Thirty-six hours left.

One last place.

Not to prove who he was.

But to end the question forever.