BLOODCAPE
Chapter 77: The Memory Harvest

Chapter 77: Chapter 77: The Memory Harvest

Rook stood on the tower as the world began to unravel.

Not burn. Not fall.But unravel—like an old thread pulled from the edge of a coat sleeve. Seam by seam.

The alien vessels—those impossible, black-winged shapes above the ionosphere—still hadn’t fired. No weapons. No contact.

And yet, across the world, people were collapsing.

Some with eyes rolled back.Some sobbing.Some laughing so hard they couldn’t breathe.

The ships weren’t attacking Earth’s defenses.They were pulling something deeper.

Memory.

In the Archive below, Aya Sparks was screaming at her console.

"They’re bypassing encryption! I didn’t even know this layer existed!"

The Archive was lit in blinding data-light. Massive projections of unprocessed trauma hovered like ghosts. Voices from a hundred thousand lives echoed through the chamber—cries of loss, confession, betrayal.

A child’s voice sobbed, "Why didn’t you save me?"

A woman screamed in Concord dialect: "I told you I loved her—why didn’t you believe me?"

The logs were raw. Logs never meant to be aired.

"They’re not accessing files," Aya said, breathless."They’re reliving them."

Ava clutched the edge of the railing, her hands white-knuckled.

Every screen in the Archive now displayed a new ratio:

REGRESSION: 74%REMEMBRANCE: 26%

They were losing.

"Echo," she called out, searching the chaos.

No answer.

Rook pointed—she was standing in the center of the Archive’s memory ring, eyes wide, arms raised. Her mouth was moving, but she wasn’t speaking in any language they understood.

Only the symbols.

The old ones.

From the fleet.

From the forgotten.

Across the planet, the harvest began in earnest.

People woke up screaming into memories that weren’t theirs.

A Concord pilot in South Europa remembered strangling someone he’d never met.A mother in Cairo relived a revolution she never fought in.A child in Jakarta spoke perfect Argus protocol—dead for centuries.

The aliens were sifting through humanity like a living book—ripping pages, flipping backwards, redacting lines.

It wasn’t cruelty.

It was censorship.

Selective. Measured.

Ava felt it enter her too.

Not all at once. Not painfully.

But quietly.

A flicker.A warmth behind her eyes.Then she saw her mother’s death again.

The color of the blood.The breath before the scream.

Aya collapsed at her terminal. Rook caught her before she hit the ground.

"I can’t firewall it," she rasped. "They’re not using code. They’re using story logic. Narrative rhythm. They’re bypassing logic altogether."

"They’re rewriting the past by pulling it forward."

Ava stared at the screen above them.

The ratio changed again.

75% / 25%

In a sealed lower chamber, Fall was alone.

No guards. No restraints.

Just silence.

Until the lights changed color.

Not white.Not red.

Ultraviolet.

The same shade they used in the old Concord testing chambers.

She blinked once.

Then twice.

Then screamed.

It wasn’t her voice.It wasn’t her mind.

Memories poured into her skull like acid.

Memories that had never been hers.

A blade in a temple.

Thirteen kneeling figures.

A tower that bled.

A song that ended time.

She clawed at her arms, trying to stop it.

It didn’t stop.

It whispered.

"Your line was never human."

"You were born from our forgetting."

Echo collapsed next.

Rook caught her as she fell.

Her body convulsed, lips moving too fast to follow. Symbols poured from her mouth like prayers—alien syllables in rhythmic waves. Her skin glowed faintly, veins lit with soft bioluminescent pulses.

"She’s not transmitting," Aya said weakly."She’s translating."

"Into what?" Rook asked.

Aya stared at the screen.

75.4% Regression24.6% Remembrance

The aliens weren’t testing whether humanity could fight.

They were testing whether it deserved to remember.

And they were close to a decision.

Ava ran.

To the lower vault.

The one she swore never to open.

Inside was the data crystal.

Her father’s last log.

Solaris.

The unedited feed of his final day.

Rook caught up with her as she keyed the vault open.

"You’re going to use it," he said.

Ava didn’t look at him. "I don’t have a choice."

"You know what’s in there," he said. "It’s not the man the world worshipped. It’s the man who broke."

She nodded.

"The truth hurts."

Rook exhaled. "So does being erased."

They inserted the crystal into the central Archive uplink.

Aya tried to stop them. "That log was flagged as unstable. It’ll override—"

"Let it," Ava said.

"Echo can’t handle—"

"She already is."

The file began.

And for the first time in ten years...

Solaris spoke.

"They told me to choose.""Kill the other 13, or watch my son die."

"I chose neither. I broke protocol."

"I ran."

The image on screen wasn’t a god.

It was a man.

A man crying.

"They said truth would destabilize the League. But truth was the only thing that made me a hero."

"If you’re hearing this, Hernan... I’m sorry. I wasn’t strong enough to stop them. But maybe you will be."

The feed ended.

And for a full thirty seconds, the Archive was silent.

Then...

The ratio began to shift.

74.5% Regression25.5% Remembrance

Ava stood still.

Tears in her eyes.

They weren’t from sorrow.

They were from release.

Echo stirred.

Her eyes opened.

She looked at Ava.

And whispered:

"They saw you."

"They changed the verdict."

Above Earth, the alien ships shimmered.

One by one, they powered down.

Their shapes dimmed, not retreating—but closing.

As if the conversation was over.

Judgment made.

The final ratio appeared:

51% Regression / 49% Remembrance

Just shy of absolution.

Just far enough to survive.

But not without a cost.

In the aftermath:

Ten million memories had been rewritten.

200,000 people lost one name forever.

48 cities now had double-encoded trauma patterns.

The Resistance lost three vaults of unfiltered history.

But they survived.

Barely.

And Echo?

She spoke less.

But when she did... the symbols were perfect.

As if something inside her was now complete.

And Ava?

She walked the halls of the Archive with her head high.

Not because they had won.

But because truth had saved them.

And because her father—broken and honest—had saved her, in the only way he could.

By letting the world remember what he truly was.