UBONG_IBOK

She remembers a murder that hasn’t happened yet. The question is—who dies, and can she stop it in time?

In the year 2189, Aeris Calderon is a neural archivist—one of the few licensed to map, retrieve, and even edit memories in the Nexus Grid. After a classified mission goes wrong, Aeris wakes up with a memory that isn’t hers: a brutal murder… and a killer’s face she’s never seen before.

Only one problem—the event hasn't happened yet.

Haunted by this rogue memory, Aeris goes on the run from the very system she once upheld. In her search for the truth, she’s forced to rely on Kael, a mysterious fugitive with encrypted memories of his own—and a connection to the murder that might not be coincidence.

As the clock ticks and timelines twist, Aeris must untangle reality from illusion, love from manipulation, and fate from design. Because the memory isn’t just a glitch.

It’s a warning.

And someone is willing to kill to keep it buried.

THE MEMORY CODE

The gridport docked silently at the Haze Periphery, a rusting transit ring clinging to the edge of Nexus airspace like it knew it wasn't supposed to be there. Half of it didn't work. The other half was unlicensed. That's why Aeris and Kael were here.

No scanners. No enforcers. No questions.

Aeris walked with her hood up, the memory fragment still pulsing quietly in her neural thread. Each pulse a soft tick in her skull. A reminder: this was real. This was now. Her sister was alive. And playing a longer game than anyone realized.

Kael walked beside her, arm braced, but steady. The wound was healing. He hadn't spoken much since the memory vault.

Everything they said might be traceable.

Lira had buried the seed deep. The only way Aeris even found it was through magic—raw, unstable, not part of any Grid protocol. It scared her how natural it felt now. Like it had always been there, waiting.

Kael stopped suddenly, pointing at a dim corridor off the main hangar.

They moved fast, ducking through rusted metal and forgotten tech until they reached the contact: an old vendor cart reprogrammed as a memory proxy. The woman inside was spliced, neural cords trailing from her shaved scalp into the cart's back wall. Her eyes flickered with static as they approached.

"We're not here for a trade," Aeris said.

Kael stepped forward. "We need to trace a black-seeded memory through Nexus shadowspace. Level Zero or lower. Deep crawl."

The woman blinked. Once. Twice. Then slowly reached for a cable beneath the cart.

"You'll need a guide," she said. "Not me. I'm too slow."

She pulled the cable, revealing a smaller device underneath—compact, dirty, and humming with compressed code.

"This," she said, "is Trace-9. It's not legal. It's not stable. It's not clean."

"We're not any of those things either," Aeris said.

The vendor nodded once. "Then plug in and bleed."

"No," she said. "But I trust what comes after less."

The jack hissed as it entered her temple.

Flash-In: Nexus Shadowspace

A space Lira had written into the system itself. A neural alleyway no one else could map. And at the center, a flickering loop.

And a shadow stood over her, half-lit. Someone Aeris couldn't quite see.

She moved toward it, heart pounding—

The loop ended. Crashed. Ejected her from the dive.

Aeris gasped, ripping the jack from her skull.

"There's another version of you," she whispered. "And I don't think it's you."

The Unwritten Path