A False Past

The building didn't look like it belonged here. Not anymore.

Wedged between two gleaming glass towers, the Echo City Archives seemed like something the city had forgotten—or deliberately ignored. Its stone façade was cracked, dark with water stains and time. The streetlamp nearby buzzed softly, casting a thin, flickering light across the steps.

Mara stopped at the bottom, looking up. She didn't say anything at first. Just stood there, jaw tight, arms folded against the cold.

Ezra stepped beside her, eyes on the weathered sign above the door. The letters were worn down, some of them barely legible now.

"This is it," he said.

She gave a skeptical look. "Doesn't look like much."

"It never does."

They climbed the stairs. Their footsteps echoed faintly—first on concrete, then on the old stone landing. The kind of silence that followed them wasn't the good kind. It had weight. Like something was listening.

Ezra paused at the top. For a second, he almost turned back. He hated this place. Not for what it was—but for what it kept hidden.

He pulled the door open. It groaned loud enough to make Mara flinch.

Inside, the air changed.

It was cooler than it should've been. Not freezing, but sharp—like it hadn't been stirred in a while. The scent hit next: paper, ink, and something sour underneath. Glue? Old leather? Hard to say.

They stepped into the lobby. The lights buzzed overhead, old bulbs that cast too much shadow for how dim they were. The walls were lined with filing cabinets and tall shelves stacked with record books, some of them slumped sideways like they'd given up standing.

At the front desk, a woman in a gray cardigan flipped slowly through a ledger. She didn't look up. Didn't need to.

Ezra felt the hairs rise on the back of his neck.

Mara leaned in slightly. "I thought this kind of thing was all digital now."

"It is," Ezra said. "This is what they left behind."

She frowned, but didn't say anything more. He knew what she was thinking. This place wasn't just old—it was wrong. The kind of wrong that didn't come from disrepair, but from something deeper. Older.

He motioned toward the hallway just past the front desk.

"Records room's this way," he said.

She followed him without another word, the sound of their footsteps swallowed by the thick silence. Behind them, the door closed again—slow, quiet, final.

The corridor leading to the records wing narrowed as they moved deeper into the building. The walls here weren't made to impress—bare concrete, scuffed and chipped in places, lined with ancient wiring that buzzed faintly overhead. Somewhere in the distance, a pipe let out a slow, steady drip.

Mara hugged her coat tighter around her. "I thought archives were supposed to be climate controlled."

Ezra gave a thin smile. "Not this one. They don't really expect anyone to come looking."

At the end of the hallway, a faded door waited. No sign, no label. Just a handle worn smooth by years of use—or neglect.

He pushed it open, and they stepped into the records room.

It stretched farther than it should have. A long series of shelves, packed floor to ceiling with thick ledgers and worn boxes, cataloged in a system that probably hadn't made sense even when it was new. The air felt heavier here, like something pressed against their lungs, slow and deliberate.

Mara took a hesitant step forward. Her voice dropped to a whisper. "How do we even begin?"

Ezra didn't answer right away. He moved toward one of the shelves, fingers drifting along the dusty spines. Most of the labels had faded. Some were written over in different handwriting, like someone had tried to rewrite the past and got tired halfway through.

"There's a way," he said finally. "It's just not the kind you can Google."

He stopped in front of a box near the middle. Something about it caught his eye—maybe the way it sat crooked on the shelf, like it didn't want to be found.

He pulled it down.

The cardboard was soft with age. The lid gave a dry rustle as he peeled it back. Inside were dozens of thin paper files, stacked tight, each one stamped with a name.

Ezra flipped through them. Each file felt too light, too vague. Some were missing entire pages. Some had strange gaps—entire years left blank.

Then he stopped.

Daniel Finch.

The name was there. Clear. In heavy, even handwriting.

Mara leaned over his shoulder, eyes wide. "That's him.

Ezra opened the file.

But the photo inside wasn't Daniel. The face was wrong. The smile unfamiliar. According to the file, Daniel Finch had worked in sanitation, not engineering. He'd never lived on Harbor Street. He had no recorded family.

Mara's face crumpled. "That's not him. That's not even close."

Ezra nodded slowly, staring at the page.

"They didn't just erase him," he murmured. "They rewrote his entire life."

He flipped through the rest of the file. Every detail was too perfect. Too polished. Like it had been dropped in whole, fully formed, without the usual messiness of a real life.

Mara shook her head. "But I remember him. The real him."

Ezra set the file aside.

"Then your memory's more accurate than the system."

She gave a bitter laugh. "That's not comforting."

"No," he agreed. "But it means we're not crazy."

He looked down at the box. There were dozens more names—people they didn't know yet. People who might have been erased, rewritten, or worse.

This wasn't an isolated incident. This was a pattern

And they were standing in the middle of it.

A low hum rattled the ceiling. Barely noticeable at first—just fluorescent lights flickering overhead, like something powering down.

Ezra turned his head. The archival readers on the side wall blinked, one by one, and then went dark.

Mara took a step back. "What is that?"

He didn't answer.

The ambient lights dimmed. The soft whir of ventilation halted, replaced by a rising static. The silence that followed felt pressurized, like the air had thickened.

Then came the sound of boots on stone.

Distant, but fast.

Ezra grabbed Mara's arm. "Someone's coming."

Mara's pulse jumped beneath his grip. "How do they know we're here?"

"I don't think we were ever supposed to get this far."

He pulled her toward the end of the aisle just as the archive's main door groaned open.

Not slammed. Opened.

Deliberate.

Ezra crouched behind one of the filing cabinets, pulling Mara down beside him. Between the rows, he caught a glimpse of movement—shadows cutting across the lamplight. Not uniforms. Suits. Clean-cut. Government issue. Three of them.

Too calm to be rent-a-cops. Too quiet to be law enforcement.

Memory regulators.

They moved like they knew the space. Not searching. Sweeping.

One of them spoke softly into a comm device. "Echo pair identified. No external contact yet. Proceeding with silent retrieval."

Ezra's blood turned cold.

"They're not just here to throw us out," he whispered.

Mara's eyes widened. "They're here to erase us."

A faint click echoed through the room. The sound of a file drawer sliding shut. One of the men had stopped at the row where Ezra had just been searching. Right where her name should've been.

Mara stared at the cabinets, her voice barely audible. "They scrubbed me from the files."

Ezra leaned close. "Then you're the only record left."

She looked at him, the fear sharp behind her eyes—but so was something else.

Resolve.

He nodded once, then motioned toward the far door—the old fire exit behind the stacks. It wasn't part of the active schematic anymore. But he'd seen it when they first came in. Sealed but not alarmed.

He pulled her to her feet.

They ran

The safehouse wasn't much—just a narrow second-floor flat above a closed tailor's shop, tucked behind a row of blackout shutters. Ezra keyed in the manual lock, then pushed the door open with his shoulder.

Inside, the air was still. Dust hung in the corners like old breath. A couch sat in the center of the room, faded and threadbare. There was a kettle, a half-stocked cabinet, and a cracked window with a view of nothing but wall.

Mara stepped in slowly. Her coat was soaked through, her hair stuck to her face in damp strands. She didn't speak, just took it in with a glance. Her jaw was clenched.

Ezra dropped his bag and moved to the small table by the window. He pressed two fingers to the glass and waited until it responded—shifting tint to opaque. They were hidden now.

"You can sit," he said.

Mara didn't.

She stayed standing, staring at the blank wall, her arms crossed tight over her chest.

After a moment: "Do they know where we are?"

"No," Ezra said. "I used a dead route. No network. No trace."

Mara gave a small nod, but she didn't relax.

Ezra turned on the kettle. The sound of boiling water filled the silence. It was the only sound for a while.

Then she said, quietly, "I was gone."

Ezra looked over at her.

"You saw it," she went on, voice low. "In the system. My name wasn't there. My records. My—my life. They wiped it like it never mattered."

He didn't interrupt.

Mara's eyes were glassy, but she didn't cry. She just stood there, trembling in place. "It's not just Daniel. It's me. I was part of it. Whatever they're doing… I wasn't just collateral."

Ezra stepped closer. "You think you were part of the project?"

"I don't know," she said. "But why else would they erase me?"

Ezra didn't answer. He didn't know how.

The kettle clicked off. He poured two mugs and slid one across the table to her. Mara sat finally, taking the cup but not drinking.

"I keep thinking," she said. "If no one remembered me… was I still real?"

Ezra sat across from her. "You're here now."

She looked up at him. "What if that's not enough?"

Silence settled between them again. But it wasn't empty—it was heavy. The kind of silence that comes after the ground falls out from under you.

Ezra leaned forward slightly. "We find out what happened to you. To Daniel. To all of it. We don't stop."

Mara's fingers tightened around the mug. She didn't nod. But she didn't argue either.

A soft knock startled both of them.

Not loud. Not urgent. Just—deliberate.

They both froze.

Ezra rose slowly, hand reaching for the drawer beside the door.

Mara mouthed the question: Did you tell anyone?

He shook his head.

Another knock.

Quieter this time.

Then silence.

Ezra stepped to the door, placed his hand against it, listening. Nothing.

He opened the peephole.

But the hallway was empty.

No footsteps. No voices. No sign of movement.

Just the faint sound of something distant, metallic—like a coin spinning across concrete—then stillness.

He shut the cover slowly, the hairs on his arms rising.

Behind him, Mara whispered: "They know."

***Authors note***

thank you for listening to my storie so far I'm fairly content with this chapter. However, I realize that I have made a mistake in my planning so it'll be a little while before I can get the next one out. Thank you for your patience.