Chapter 2: Fragments of the Self

Kael watched Seraphine pace across his cramped apartment, her movements deliberate but tense. The glow of the city filtered through the window, casting her in a strange light—one that made her look more like a ghost than a living person. She clutched the small device in her hand, knuckles white, as if it was the only thing tethering her to reality.

She stopped abruptly and turned to face him. "Before I show you this," she said, lifting the device, "you need to understand something. What's been done to me... it's not just memory loss. It's deeper than that. It feels like pieces of me—who I was—have been erased. I know I should remember certain things, faces, places… but there's just nothing."

Kael studied her for a moment. He had seen cases like this before—people with gaps in their pasts, entire chapters missing from their lives, victims of crude memory wipes or more advanced experimental techniques. But the look in her eyes, that haunted emptiness, told him that whatever she had been through was beyond even the standard operations he was familiar with.

He gestured to the small, worn table in the center of the room. "Show me."

Seraphine hesitated for a moment before placing the device on the table. It was sleek, black, and no larger than a palm—an extractor, but not the kind Kael had used in his days as a memory architect. This was something else. Something newer.

She activated it, and a thin, translucent screen blinked to life in the air above the device. Lines of data scrolled rapidly across the screen, unreadable to the untrained eye. But Kael recognized some of it—encrypted neural patterns, fragments of what might have once been memories, now disjointed and broken.

"They didn't just take memories from me," Seraphine said quietly. "They replaced them with… something else. Fake memories. Things that never happened. And now, I don't know what's real anymore."

Kael leaned closer, scanning the fragmented data. His mind raced as he tried to make sense of it all. This was more advanced than anything he'd encountered during his time in the industry. Whoever had done this wasn't just erasing her memories; they were systematically rewriting her entire identity.

"How much of you is left?" he asked, his voice quieter than he intended.

Seraphine looked at him with a mix of fear and frustration. "I don't know. I keep remembering things that feel wrong—like they belong to someone else. And the more I try to hold on to the truth, the harder it gets."

Kael exhaled slowly. He could feel his own guilt rising to the surface, the weight of the past pressing down on him. He had seen the damage memory manipulation could cause, but this was something new—something far more dangerous.

"They've layered false memories over your real ones," Kael said, tapping the floating data display. "It's a form of neural interference. It's designed to confuse, make you question everything, until you don't know who you are anymore. Whoever did this… they weren't just trying to erase you. They were trying to rebuild you."

Seraphine sat down across from him, her voice trembling. "Can you undo it?"

Kael hesitated. It was one thing to alter memories, to tweak the past and make it more palatable. But to dig through someone's mind and untangle a web of falsehoods from the truth—that was an entirely different challenge. One wrong move, and he could cause irreversible damage.

"I don't know," he admitted. "It'll take time. And even if I can fix it, there's no guarantee you'll get everything back the way it was."

"Time is something I don't have," Seraphine said, her voice hardening. "Whoever did this to me is still out there, and I can feel them closing in. I need to know why they did this before they finish whatever they started."

Kael rubbed his eyes, the weight of her words sinking in. The Verge was a dangerous place for people like Seraphine, especially if someone powerful had targeted her. He knew all too well how the memory industry worked—how secrets were buried, how inconvenient truths were erased, how lives were rewritten or destroyed at the whim of those with money and power.

"Alright," Kael said, standing up. "I'll do what I can. But I need more than just this device. I need to know everything you remember before the gaps started—who you were, who you were working with, anything that might give us a clue."

Seraphine leaned forward, her hands clasped tightly together. "I was a data broker. I handled information for people… people who didn't want to be found. Then I stumbled onto something I wasn't supposed to see. That's when they came for me."

"Who?" Kael asked, though he suspected the answer.

"A corporation called Vexis. They've been buying up smaller companies, consolidating control over memory tech. I don't know what they're planning, but whatever it is, it's big. And they're willing to erase anyone who gets in their way."

Kael clenched his jaw. Vexis was a name he had hoped to forget. They were one of the corporations that had backed the experiment that went wrong—the same one that had driven him into hiding. If they were involved, it meant Seraphine was part of something much larger than just stolen memories.

He glanced at her again, and for a moment, he saw the reflection of his own past in her eyes—a person caught in the gears of a machine far bigger than they ever realized.

"If Vexis is involved, we need to move fast," Kael said, grabbing his jacket. "They won't stop until they've erased every trace of you. And if they get their hands on you again, there won't be anything left to fix."

Seraphine stood, determination hardening her features. "Then let's not give them the chance."

Kael nodded, though a part of him wondered if they were already too late. As he glanced out the window, the flickering city lights of The Verge felt like a ticking clock, counting down to something inevitable. But for the first time in years, he felt like he was part of something again—something that mattered.

And that feeling terrified him.