The air was thicker now not with smoke, but with memory. And memory was heavier than ash.
Mira stood in the center of what used to be Velmora’s Broadcast Dome, now reduced to twisted girders and shattered glass. Her boots crunched over blackened circuitry. She raised a micro-recorder to her lips and whispered, "They’re calling it peace again. But the sirens never stopped."
Across the city, Cassandra stood under a concrete viaduct, her hands covered in plasma-burn scars, fresh from sabotaging another vault. The memory serum had spread faster than any of them anticipated. Thirty-seven recorded incidents. Ten confirmed casualties. All bearing one name screamed from the lips of the infected: hers.
"They’re erasing me in real-time," she muttered. "This isn’t a doctrine. It’s a purge by memor
