Chapter10
331 Words
Chapter 10 – “The Choice”
Twelve hours left.
The beach memory was degrading. Colors duller. Sound muffled. Soon it would be gone, and Kael would be left with nothing but the guilt.
Three options.
Give it to Dorian. Lose it forever.
Keep it. Become the Hollow.
Do something new.
Kael chose option three.
He went to St. Luke’s, Room 12. Hospice common room. Six patients, all dying, all awake.
“I have a story,” Kael said.
Mrs. Lin, 78, asked, “Is it a happy one?”
Marcus, 17, asked, “Does she kiss anyone?”
Mr. Delgado asked, “Does she make it?”
Kael smiled. “She makes it for one day.”
He told them Mara’s 16th birthday. Not the memory itself—he couldn’t give that. But the story. The sun. The salt. The laugh. The way Dorian carried her back to the blanket. He told it twice. Once as it happened. Once as Mara might have told it, if she’d lived.
Mrs. Lin cried and said, “I can smell the salt.”
Marcus asked, “Was she scared?”
Kael said, “No. She was brave. Stupid brave.”
Mr. Delgado stopped coughing.
For 20 minutes, the room wasn’t a hospice. It was a beach.
When he finished, the memory faded from him.
It felt like losing a limb and realizing you could still move the fingers that weren’t there. Cold. Empty. But lighter.
He remembered telling the story. That stayed.
That night, Kael slept without dreaming for the first time in five years.
Broker called as he left St. Luke’s.
“We have a problem,” she said. “Someone’s erasing people’s entire lives. Not 24 hours. All of it. We need you.”
Kael stopped walking.
“I don’t steal memories anymore,” he said.
“Good,” Broker said. “You’ll find who’s doing it.”
“I don’t steal memories anymore. But I’ll find who’s doing it.”
- Writer
