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 moment Aeris opened the glyph, the world fell away.

Like gravity reversed—like everything she knew about time cracked wide open.

She didn't drop into shadowspace.She dropped into something older.Something Lira had been hiding at the root of everything.

The Scene Unfolds

The room was cold. Stone walls. Real ones. No Grid here.

A single chair sat in the center of a circular chamber—like the one Aeris had found in the false grave, but this was no simulation. This was the origin point.

In the chair sat Lira.

Aeris stepped forward. She knew this wasn't real-time. It was a recorded imprint. But it wasn't passive. This memory knew she was here.

"Welcome, Aeris," Lira said. "This is the memory they buried beneath everything. Even beneath me."

"This is the moment I stopped believing in the system."

A younger Lira—no scars, no secrets yet—stood in a Nexus lab. Around her, technicians worked with hushed reverence. In a tank nearby, a child floated in a memory pod.

Wired into a prototype memory loop.

"They told me it was a test. That the neural loop would help you learn faster. Form stronger memories. Make you special."

"What they didn't tell me… was that you were the control group. That they fed you fake trauma. Engineered friendships. Implanted fears."

"Your entire childhood was a simulation designed to test emotional resilience under false identity stress."

Lira hadn't planted the murder memory as a manipulation.

She had planted it as a counterweight—a codebreaker designed to collapse the synthetic structure built around Aeris's past.

Everything Aeris believed about herself—the loss of their parents, the archivist trials, the first mission that "went wrong"—was scripted by Nexus.

Back in the Chamber

"You always thought I was trying to control you. But I was trying to give you the only thing I couldn't give myself."

"A memory that was real."

She reached out—not to touch—but to offer something.

Aeris instinctively extended her hand.

The glyph slid into her skin like water.

The Real Memory Unlocked

Aeris on the floor of a burning archive.

Lira above, shielding them from a collapsing server—her last act before the lab caved in.

She'd saved them.

And let the system believe she died—because she knew it would never stop coming for Aeris.

Aeris snapped back into her body, gasping.

Kael—both of them—rushed to her side.

She looked at them, eyes glassy but clear.

"I remember everything," she said.

End of Chapter 21.

The True Memory