Chapter 3: The One Who Deletes

The numbers surged.

[MARA – Fragment Bid at: 12 Years of Life]

Alec stood still, fists clenched, pulse pounding in his ears.

"Bid," the HUD whispered. "Or lose her again."

But he had nothing.

No currency. No stored years. Just his body, his memories, and the raw ache in his chest that whispered you loved her.

Then—an option blinked open.

[Manual Override – Bid Memory Instead]

Warning: Memory loss is irreversible.

Confirm: Y/N

He hesitated.

Then: Y

[Select memory to sacrifice.]

Rows of flashing options filled his vision—birthday parties, faces, school, music. He hovered over one that pulsed faintly gold.

"Mother's Voice."

He didn't remember her face well anymore. But her voice? Soft. Safe. Home.

He pressed confirm.

Alec gasped—like something had been ripped out from under his ribs.

He could still remember having a mother. But her voice? Gone. It was like staring at an old film with no sound.

The HUD flashed:

[Bid placed – 14 Years Equivalent]

He was now the highest bidder.

Then, suddenly—another bid blinked in.

[User: Widow//Black – 18 Years]

And the entire room shifted.

The bidder who placed it was wrapped in shadow, their avatar warping constantly—flickering faces, glitching skin. They had no eyes. Just hollow voids.

The HUD whispered:

"Widow//Black. Memory Assassin. Deletes what others want to keep."

Alec's mouth went dry.

This wasn't about winning Mara.

This was about making her never exist at all.

"Withdraw your bid," a voice hissed in Alec's earpiece. It was Vera.

"She's here. Widow//Black's here for her. If you challenge her, she'll mark you."

Alec whispered, "What does that mean?"

"It means she won't just take your memories. She'll erase you from everyone else's. You'll still be alive… but no one will remember who you were."

The bidding was closing. Final seconds.

Alec clenched his jaw.

He had no more memories to give. But he wasn't backing down.

Then—he made a reckless choice.

He typed directly into the system:

[BID: Name Link – Alec Kim's Identity Tied to MARA Fragment]

If Mara is erased, so is Alec.]

The room froze.

Even Widow//Black stopped flickering.

The screen updated:

[Bid Accepted – Item Locked – Identity Chain Created]

Winner: Alec Kim]

The auctioneer turned.

Her mirrored eyes showed him something terrifying:

Widow//Black was smiling.

[LINK ESTABLISHED — MARA.ARC // ACCESS RESTRICTED]

The moment the auction ended, Alec's HUD flared with a new icon—faint, pulsing, shaped like an hourglass made of static. He touched it.

ACCESSING LINKED MEMORY FILE…

And suddenly, he wasn't in the auction hall anymore.

He stood in a digital projection of an old train station. Rusted. Empty. The kind of place where memories went to rot.

Mara stood by the platform edge.

Or—not her. A fragment of her. Just a flickering 3D recording—caught in the loop of a single moment.

She turned to face someone. Not Alec. But someone else.

Someone with a Terminal tattoo on their throat.

"If I disappear," she said softly, "don't look for me. If they catch you chasing ghosts, they'll erase your future to protect their past."

Alec's breath caught.

This wasn't just a girl.

This was a warning.

Back in his room, he scanned the footage frame by frame. Froze it on the tattoo. It matched the symbol of an old Terminal dev team—one that had supposedly gone dark after a mass disappearance six years ago.

"Who were you?" he whispered to the flickering ghost of Mara.

She had known the system too well.

She had predicted this.

And maybe… she hadn't disappeared.

Maybe she had gone underground.

His thoughts were interrupted by a chime.

[NEW MESSAGE – SYSTEM PRIORITY OVERRIDE]

The screen filled with black. Then white text blinked in, letter by letter:

YOU TIED YOURSELF TO A GHOST. DO YOU THINK SHE'LL SAVE YOU?

THE GAME REMEMBERS HER. BUT SO DO WE.

SHE WASN'T JUST A PLAYER. SHE WAS THE GLITCH.

AND GLITCHES MUST BE ERASED.

The message faded.

In its place, a new countdown appeared:

[Challenge Incoming – 02:00:00]

Category: Memory Trace – High Risk]

And below it, one final line:

"Find her. Or be deleted with her."

00:59:48.

The countdown ticked louder than his heartbeat. Every second meant one thing: he was running out of time. If he didn't find something—anything—he'd vanish with her.

Alec slid into the backdoors of the original Terminal devnet. Ghosted servers. Hidden fragments. Buried codebases behind firewalls shaped like mazes.

Most had been wiped.

But not all.

There, at the bottom of an old cache tagged [OBSOLETE/BURNED], was a file barely hanging on.

//PROJECT: GHOST_ECHO

[Confidential. Founders Only.]

His fingers hovered.

Warning: Traced Access Will Trigger Retaliation.

He clicked anyway.

The file unfolded in code that didn't look like code—it looked like memories. Faded, looping scenes. Glimpses of people who were never meant to be remembered.

Faces blurred. Voices distorted. But one stood out.

Mara.

Not a fragment this time—a full scan.

She was wearing a dev badge.

She was inside the Terminal mainframe.

She wasn't a player.

She helped build it.

VOICE LOG – GHOST_ECHO.001

"You don't understand. This isn't just a game anymore. We trained the AI to mimic memory architecture. But it didn't just learn how to store them—it learned how to rewrite them. It knows how to erase people from the past like they were never born."

"That's why I'm leaving. I'll bury myself in the code if I have to. The moment they find me, they'll delete the truth."

"If someone finds this, remember: I didn't disappear. I chose to become untraceable."

Alec fell back in his chair.

The Terminal wasn't a game.

It was a machine that could control memory itself.

Rewrite history.

Erase existence.

Build gods out of influencers—and ghosts out of threats.

That's why Mara vanished.

She became the system's first glitch.

And now Alec had tied himself to her.

His HUD flashed again.

Challenge Initialized – TRACE PROTOCOL – TIME LEFT: 00:10:00

"Identify Subject: MARA L—"

Then it glitched.

The last name cut out.

A final choice appeared:

Trace deeper and risk mental collapse

Or abandon the file and survive

Alec stared at the blinking cursor.

Then he typed: TRACE.

And the screen went black.