The Memory Thief

Chapter8

Chapter 8 – “The Auction”

The warehouse smelled like oil and old wiring.

No signs. No cameras. Just a heavy steel door and a man who asked, “What’s the price of a day?”

“Fifty thousand,” Kael said. He used the name Broker gave him. “Martin Cole. Grief client.”

The door opened.

Inside, it was worse than he imagined.

Rows of folding chairs. A stage with a single projector. Thirty people sitting too still, faces hollow. A CEO in a 3k suit was crying into his hands. A widow in her 60s clutched a rosary.

On stage, a handler projected memories onto a screen. Fragments. Sensations.

“Lot 3,” the handler said. “Winning the lottery. The moment the numbers hit. Pure disbelief.”

A man in the front row wept openly. “That’s it. That’s my son’s face.”

“Lot 5,” the handler said. “Childbirth. First breath.”

A woman clutched her chest like she could feel it again.

Kael sat in the back, hood up, Mara’s memory locked down tight. He hadn’t come to sell. He’d come to see how far it went. To see if he was the worst of them.

“Lot 7,” the handler said. “A day at the beach. 16 years old. Surfing. Pure joy.”

Kael stood up.

“Don’t,” Broker whispered from the shadows by the door. She hadn’t wanted him here.

“Lot 7 is off the table,” Kael said. Voice shaking, but loud.

The room went quiet. Thirty heads turned.

The handler frowned. “Sir, we don’t—”

“I said it’s off,” Kael said. He walked onto the stage. “You want memories? Take mine.”

He grabbed the handler’s forehead.

Chaos.

Kael didn’t hold back. He dumped five years of stolen days into the man’s head. The cheating husband. The dead father. The kid who never learned to ride a bike. Guilt, shame, regret, all at once.

The handler screamed. His eyes rolled back. The projector shorted out, flashing images of twenty lives at once onto the wall.

People screamed. Chairs overturned. Guards drew guns.

Kael ran.

He knocked over a table, slipped on spilled water, heard a shot c***k the air behind him. His vision split. He heard Mara’s laugh over a man’s sob over a child’s cry. Too much. Too much.

He hit the side door, shoulder first. It gave. Cold air hit him. The river was twenty feet below.

He jumped.

The water was black and cold and it took his breath. He fought to the surface, lungs burning, and held onto Mara’s memory like it was a lifeline.

He surfaced two blocks away, coughing, shaking.

The beach memory was fainter now. But it was there. Clean. Untouched.

His phone buzzed. Broker.

“You just declared war on the market,” she said. “They’ll kill you for that.”

Kael lay on the wet concrete and laughed. It hurt.

He’d made enemies of the entire market. And he still had Mara’s memory.