but a thought

The coffee machine in Monitoring Division whirred and sputtered, but Lenard barely noticed. His right hand trembled as he stared at it, the ghost of Eden's touch still burning across his palm. The sensation felt both foreign and achingly familiar, like a song heard in childhood suddenly remembered decades later.

Behind him, the bank of monitors cast their crimson glow across the dimly lit room. The red runes pulsed in their usual patterns, yet something had changed. He could feel it in the air, in the subtle vibration of the floor beneath his feet, in the way his chest tightened every time he thought of those brief seconds when their hands had met.

*"Find me."*

The words echoed in his mind, though he couldn't remember hearing them spoken. Lenard was a man of metrics and measurements, of carefully logged anomalies and systematic analysis. He'd built his career on being rational, methodical. But now, sitting in the sterile comfort of the monitoring room, that carefully constructed framework was crumbling.

Seven floors above, Dr. Eden Hayes stood in her private lab, trying to steady her trembling hands enough to analyze the latest readings from Section 7. The numbers blurred before her eyes, and for a moment, she saw instead a corridor lit by white symbols, felt the terror of running through darkness, heard the mechanical whir of something in pursuit.

"Dr. Hayes?" Her assistant's voice crackled through the intercom, startling her back to reality. "The environmental division is reporting unusual fluctuations in the hydroponics lab. The plants..."

"Show me," Eden commanded, pulling up the data on her holoscreen. The readings made her breath catch. Growth patterns had become erratic, with some plants growing at accelerated rates while others withered without apparent cause. The air composition in the chambers showed subtle but significant changes, and the temperature regulation systems were working at 127% normal capacity to maintain stability.

She overlaid these readings with the tunnel monitoring data, and a pattern emerged. Each fluctuation in the environmental systems corresponded perfectly with changes in the runes. As she watched, a cluster of symbols in Section 7 flickered, shifting from deep red to a lighter shade, and somewhere in the hydroponics lab, a cluster of plants suddenly burst into bloom months ahead of schedule.

The implications sent a chill down her spine. The runes weren't just a power source – they were regulators, maintaining some kind of fundamental balance. And they were failing.

In the monitoring room, Lenard had noticed something too. His screens showed cascading patterns of energy fluctuations spreading through the tunnel network. With each pulse, the air felt heavier, charged with something that made the hair on the back of his neck stand up. He found himself rubbing his right hand against his leg, trying to dispel the lingering warmth of Eden's touch.

A memory surfaced, fragmentary and strange: the smell of hydrangeas, a laugh in darkness, the feel of smooth obsidian beneath his fingers. The Core – though he couldn't remember why he knew that name – rising before them like a monument to something ancient and vast.

The building shuddered, a slight tremor that most might have dismissed as imagination. But in their separate rooms, both Lenard and Eden froze, recognition flooding through them. They'd felt this before, in the deep places beneath the city, when the black water had come alive with mechanical purpose.

In Section 7, behind walls marked with slowly dying light, something stirred. Ancient machinery groaned to life, responding to protocols written in languages long forgotten. The Maintenance Protocols had been waiting, watching through cameras disguised as shadows, recording every interaction, every near-miss between the two people who had once threatened everything.

Eden's fingers flew across her console, pulling up restricted files that even her Level 1 clearance barely let her access. References to "The Core" appeared and vanished like ghosts in the data stream. Mentions of "memory containment" and "systemic preservation protocols" flickered past. And there, buried in the oldest files, she found something that made her heart stop: her own name, on documents dated years before she'd ever set foot in the institute.

The sun set over Aidensville, its last rays catching the crystalline spires of the upper levels. In the hydroponics labs, plants twisted toward light sources that hadn't changed position in decades. In the environmental control rooms, technicians frowned at readings that showed oxygen levels fluctuating in patterns that seemed almost purposeful. And deep below, in the darkness where the oldest runes pulsed their fading light, something was changing.

Lenard found himself unable to leave his post, even hours after his shift had ended. Every time he closed his eyes, he saw Eden's face illuminated by white light, heard words spoken in desperate moments: *"Promise me you'll remember."* The rational part of his mind screamed that this was madness, that he should report these experiences to Security. But deeper than logic, stronger than fear, something told him that would be a terrible mistake.

In her office, Eden pressed her hand against the cool glass of the window, looking out over the city she had helped build – though she couldn't remember doing so. The runes were changing faster now, their shift from white to red accelerating like a countdown. With each change, the city's artificial ecosystem showed more signs of strain. It wasn't just the plants anymore; atmospheric processors were struggling, temperature regulations were becoming unstable, and deep in the bedrock, something was awakening.

As night fell over Aidensville, both Eden and Lenard remained at their posts, separated by seven floors but connected by the same growing certainty: the touch that had sparked these memories was only the beginning. The real mystery lay deeper, in the darkness beneath their feet, where red runes pulsed like warning lights and ancient machines stirred to life, preparing for what was to come.

And in Section 7, behind walls marked with symbols older than memory, something waited. Something that remembered what they had chosen to forget. Something that knew why the forgetting had been necessary in the first place.

For in the deepest part of the tunnels, where even the red light feared to reach, the Core stood waiting. Its obsidian surface reflected nothing, but within its depths, white symbols still glowed with the truth of what Lenard and Eden had tried to prevent – and what they might now be forced to remember.