Pink Matthews had always been the brightest spark in her class the kind of girl teachers whispered about in the staffroom with phrases like "full scholarship" and "future scientist." At 15, she was driven, ambitious, and had a hunger for knowledge that burned in her like wildfire. Her notebooks were color-coded, her grades spotless, her dreams sharp and sky high.
Until one day, she forgot how to spell her own name.
It started with small things a forgotten homework assignment, the name of her history teacher slipping just out of reach. Then came the bigger things. She stood in the middle of the cafeteria, blinking at her best friend, Liana, not remembering why she felt close to her. She stared at math equations like they were written in a foreign language.
Her brain, once so full of facts, formulas, and dreams, felt hollow. Empty.
And no one understood.
Doctors threw around words like "stress" and "burnout." Her parents whispered behind closed doors, terrified. Her teachers watched her with pity in their eyes. And Pink? She just wanted her mind back.
But the emptiness grew.
Alone and desperate, Pink embarked on a journey to find answers that no MRI or psychiatrist could give her. Guided by fragments of memory and an unshakable need for the truth, she dug into her own past and uncovered more than she bargained for.
Along the way, she met people who each held a mirror to her soul:
— Kian, a boy with a stutter and a sketchpad who saw more than he ever said.
— Ms. Rae, the school counselor with a troubled past and a heart stitched together by empathy.
— Liana, who refused to let Pink disappear, even when Pink begged her to let go.
Through them, Pink faced the questions she'd always buried under good grades and perfect behavior. Who was she, really, without her achievements? Without her memories? Without the sharpness of her brain?
As her "empty brain" condition deepened, so did her insight. She began to understand the weight of expectations her own and everyone else's and how they could crush even the strongest minds. She saw how mental health was a silent war, fought behind locked doors and quiet smiles. And slowly, painfully, she started to rebuild.
Not just her memory.
But her identity.
Empty Brain is a raw, emotional journey through the labyrinth of adolescence, mental health, and the struggle to be seen beyond the labels. It's a story for anyone who's ever felt lost in their own skin, for teens battling anxiety, burnout, or simply the ache of growing up in a world that demands perfection.
Chapter One: The Question She Couldn't Answer
Pink Matthews stared at the board, her pen hovering uselessly above her paper. Around her, the classroom buzzed with the scratch of pens, the ticking of the wall clock, and the occasional cough. Mr. Halberd's question still hung in the air:
"Who wrote To Kill a Mockingbird?"
It was easy. So easy. She knew this.
Didn't she?
Her fingers twitched. Her brain felt like a TV on mute there, but distant. She flipped through mental pages that had once been crisp and indexed. Nothing. Just static.
Liana nudged her from the side. "Are you okay?" she whispered, her eyes scanning Pink's blank sheet.
Pink opened her mouth. Closed it. Then forced a nod.
When the bell rang, she stayed in her seat, staring at the question like it was written in a language she'd never learned. The name wouldn't come. Her throat felt tight.
She had forgotten things before. But not like this.
Not things that mattered.
That night, Pink stared at her bedroom ceiling, the glow of her laptop screen casting soft shadows across her posters of galaxies, equations, and motivational quotes. Her calendar was full of deadlines. Her planner, meticulous. Everything was planned until now.
She grabbed her notebook and scribbled in the corner:
"What is happening to me?"
But the page stayed empty, just like her mind.
And for the first time in her fifteen years, Pink Matthews felt terrified of herself.
Chapter Two: The Missing
Pink didn't tell anyone.
Not her parents, who would only panic. Not her teachers, who would ask too many questions. Not even Liana, who'd probably look at her with that sad, worried face Pink couldn't handle.
Instead, she woke up the next morning and faked a smile.
But as she walked through the school hallway, she felt it again that slow drift. She passed lockers she couldn't remember the code to. Faces she should know. A boy waved at her, called her name. She waved back, pretending.
She had no idea who he was.
By third period, things got worse. Her English teacher handed back essays. Pink stared at hers. There, at the top, was her handwriting but she didn't remember writing it. Not one sentence sparked recognition.
The teacher praised her. "Excellent work, Pink. As always."
She nodded, feeling like a fraud.
Later, in the library, she opened her notebook. Pages were filled with her handwriting, study notes, formulas, and diagrams. But they all looked foreign, like someone else had written them. Like she was reading through someone else's life.
A whisper crept into her head:
"What if you're disappearing?"
She closed the notebook with a snap.
That night, she sat in her room, knees to her chest, and whispered to the fog inside her head.
"I'm still here. I have to be."
No reply.
But deep down, something stirred—fear, yes, but something else too.
A need to know.
Chapter Three: The Boy with the Sketchpad
Pink found the art room by accident.
She'd wandered the halls during lunch, too drained to face her usual table of friends. Her feet led her there quiet, paint-scented, half-lit. A refuge for kids who didn't quite fit into the loudness of the cafeteria.
That's when she saw him.
He sat cross legged on the floor by the window, sketchpad resting on his knees, charcoal staining his fingers. His hoodie sleeves were pushed up, revealing ink-stained wrists. His hair flopped over his eyes, but they were sharp dark and observant.
He didn't look up when she stepped in. Instead, he said, without missing a stroke:
"You're the girl who forgot her own name."
Pink froze. "What?"
Now he looked at her. His eyes were calm, serious. "It's not gossip. I just… noticed."
A wave of heat rose in her face. She turned to leave.
"I forget things, too," he added, quietly.
She paused.
After a long moment, she sat down across from him. He slid the sketchpad so she could see. On it, a drawing of a girl standing in front of a mirror, but the reflection showed static.
Pink swallowed. "That is me."
"I thought it might be."
They sat in silence for a while. The art room hummed with the quiet energy of pencils and stories unsaid.
"What's your name?" she asked.
"Kian," he replied, looking down. "I don't talk a lot. But I listen. And draw."
Pink watched him shade the mirror's edges, eyes tracing every line. Something about him was steadying, like a lighthouse in the fog.
He didn't ask what was wrong. He already knew. And somehow, that made it easier to breathe.
Maybe she wasn't as alone as she thought.
Chapter Four: Holes in the Map
Kian didn't pressure her to talk, which made it easier to talk. She told him things she hadn't told anyone about the blank spots in her memory, the shame, the fear that she was unraveling from the inside out.
He just nodded, listening, sketching her words into images. He showed her one of a girl floating in the sky, tethered to nothing but a string of paper memories slipping from her hands.
"That's how it feels," she whispered.
That afternoon, something changed.
Pink was walking home when she looked up at a familiar street corner and couldn't remember which direction led home. She spun around, dizzy, heart pounding. Her phone buzzed with a message from Liana:
Where are you? Are you okay?
She wasn't.
That night, Pink broke.
She locked her door and dumped her notebooks, journals, and even childhood photo albums onto the floor. She pored over them like they were sacred texts desperate to piece herself back together. Her mind felt like a map full of holes, cities erased, roads leading nowhere.
But in the middle of that chaos, she found something she'd forgotten she wrote:
"If I can name it, I can face it."
It was a line from months ago, written during a school project on mental health. Her own words. Her own fight.
Pink sat back, breathing hard. Maybe this wasn't just about memory. Maybe it was something deeper. Stress? Burnout? Or something else something she hadn't named yet.
But now, she wanted to.
She pulled out a blank page and wrote at the top:
"Project: Me."
Below it, she listed:
Everything she remembered.
Everything she forgot.
People who noticed.
People who didn't.
Feelings she couldn't describe.
The list was messy, unfinished but real.
For the first time in weeks, she didn't feel like she was disappearing.
She felt like she was starting.
Chapter Five: Watching Her Vanish
Liana
It started small.
Pink forgetting a book, or calling someone by the wrong name. At first, Liana had laughed it off joked that Pink's brain was "just buffering." But then came the silence. The blank stares. The way Pink stopped answering texts, or drifted off mid-conversation like she was staring through a glass wall.
Liana noticed.
How could she not? Pink had been her best friend since third grade. They'd traded secrets under blanket forts, built study schedules together, dreamed of colleges in big cities. Pink was the steady one. The sharp one. But now…
Now she seemed like a ghost of herself.
Liana had tried to ask. "Are you okay?"
Pink would always nod.
Liana knew she wasn't.
The worst part wasn't the forgetting.
It was the pretending.
Liana watched her at school sitting in class, eyes glazed; bumping into lockers like she didn't belong there. She saw her walking with that new boy, Kian. He was quiet, strange, artistic. Liana wasn't jealous, but it stung. Pink had always come to her when things fell apart.
And now?
Now she was slipping away.
Liana opened their old scrapbook that night "The Memory Machine," they'd called it. Photos. Song lyrics. Inside jokes scribbled in glitter gel pen. A frozen version of Pink that still smiled and danced barefoot in the rain.
Tears came faster than she expected.
She didn't know how to help.
Didn't know if Pink even wanted help.
But she made a decision that night.
She wasn't going to let Pink vanish.
Not without
Chapter Six: The Flash
Pink woke gasping.
Her room was quiet, still wrapped in dawn's grey light. But her mind was racing, her heart pounding.
She had remembered something.
Not a name. Not a face. A feeling.
Cold. Metal. Screaming. Then silence.
It had flashed behind her eyelids like lightning so fast she couldn't hold onto it, but enough to shake her to the core. She grabbed her notebook, flipping past sketches and notes until she found a clean page.
"Flash."
She wrote the word, circled it three times.
Something happened.
Something big.
And her brain had buried it.
All day at school, the thought gnawed at her. When she saw Kian at lunch, she told him.
He nodded slowly. "Trauma can mess with memory. Sometimes, your brain hides things to protect you."
Pink stared at him. "So… what am I protecting myself from?"
Kian didn't answer. He just handed her a drawing.
It was her, again this time standing in front of a giant steel door with no handle. Behind it: scribbled chaos. She traced the outline, feeling something stir in her chest. Not fear this time.
Determination.
That afternoon, she walked home instead of taking the bus. She passed the park, the school, the quiet corner with the bookstore. And then there it was.
The alley.
Narrow. Shadowed. Familiar.
She stopped. Her feet wouldn't move. Her brain felt like a frozen screen.
She'd been here before.
Suddenly another flash.
Darkness.
Running.
A voice "Pink, wait!"
Then nothing.
She stumbled backward, clutching her chest.
Whatever happened… it started here.
And if she wanted to take her mind back, she had to find the key to that door inside her.
Even if it scared her.
Chapter Seven: The Key
The alley wouldn't leave her.
That night, Pink lay in bed with her eyes wide open, replaying that flash over and over the steel door, the voice, the fear. Something in that narrow space had cracked her open, split her into before and after.
She had to know.
The next morning, instead of school, she went back.
It was early. The sun hadn't reached the alley's mouth yet. The shadows were long and cold, and Pink's breath fogged the air. She stepped inside slowly, as if each footfall might wake something sleeping.
Halfway down, she stopped.
There a wall. Spray-painted, cracked. But behind a loose brick, something glinted.
Pink hesitated, heart thudding.
She pried it loose.
Inside: a rusted key.
And a folded photo.
Her hands shook as she opened it. The photo was worn and slightly torn at the edges. It was her maybe a year younger standing beside a girl she didn't recognize. Not Liana. Not anyone she could name. The other girl had deep dimples and bright green eyes. They looked… close.
Pink stared.
Why couldn't she remember this girl?
She flipped the photo over. On the back, in faded ink, were three words:
"Don't trust them."
Her stomach dropped.
Them? Who?
She ran her fingers over the girl's face, trying to will the memory back.
Nothing.
But something inside her cracked.
Like the first line of a story trying to push through.
She tucked the key and photo into her jacket and backed out of the alley, scanning every face she passed on the sidewalk. The world suddenly felt less stable. Like her reality wasn't just slipping but rearranging itself behind her back.
That night, she opened her notebook again and wrote:
"The door exists.
I've found the key.
Now I need the truth."
Whatever happened to her wasn't random. It was buried.
And someone maybe everyone was keeping it that way.
Chapter Eight: The Girl in Green Eyes
"I need your help," Pink said, breathless.
Kian looked up from his sketchpad. They were in the art room again her safe place. But today, her voice trembled like a crack running through glass.
She handed him the photo.
He studied it in silence, then the message on the back.
"Don't trust them."
Kian's brows drew together. "You think she's real?"
"I know she's real." Pink paced. "But no one I've asked remembers her. Not Liana, not anyone in school. It's like she was erased."
Kian tilted his head. "Maybe she was."
That sent a chill down Pink's spine.
They scanned the photo for clues background, shadows, clothes. Behind the two girls was a weathered mural of a butterfly with a missing wing. Kian's eyes lit up.
"I know that wall. It's behind the old science wing."
Pink followed him there after school. The wall was still there barely. Graffiti had faded, and weeds crept up its sides, but the butterfly remained.
She stood before it, holding the photo next to it.
Same spot.
Same day.
Her breath caught.
She turned to Kian. "Someone painted over her."
There, in the place the green eyed girl had stood, was a layer of paint slightly darker than the rest. Not by accident. Deliberate.
"Why would someone cover this?" she whispered.
Kian knelt, brushing his hand over the wall. "Maybe she saw something. Maybe you both did."
Pink's heart pounded.
She was no longer just recovering memories.
She was uncovering something hidden maybe even dangerous.
That night, she spread her notes, the photo, the key across her floor. Threads connected in ways she didn't fully understand yet. But she wasn't afraid this time.
She was ready.
And for the first time in weeks, a word returned to her mind one she hadn't been able to find since this all began:
Hope.
Chapter Nine: Before the Silence
One Year Ago
The sun was high and hot, baking the concrete behind the old science wing. Pink stood with her back to the butterfly mural, squinting at the lens as the green-eyed girl counted down.
"Three… two… one smile!"
The camera clicked. Laughter followed.
Her name was Nova.
Pink remembered it then just for a flicker.
Nova with her chipped nail polish and a laugh like falling dominoes. They weren't just friends. They were something closer. Not in a way Pink had words for yet, but in a way that felt electric.
They'd spent that whole spring in a quiet rebellion: skipping class to paint murals, trading secrets in notebooks, hiding away from a world that felt too loud, too judgmental. With Nova, Pink felt like someone else someone freer, someone brave.
That afternoon, Nova pulled a folded sheet of paper from her backpack. "It's bigger than we thought," she whispered.
Pink frowned. "What is?"
Nova's voice dropped to a hush. "The school's covering things up. That counselor? Ms. Drexler? She's not who she says she is. And I think some of the students—they've been disappearing from the files."
Pink laughed at first. "You sound like you're in a spy movie."
But Nova's eyes were deadly serious. "I'm not kidding."
She opened the paper. Names. Student IDs. Redacted lines. One of the names was scribbled out violently.
Pink stared. "Where did you get this?"
Nova didn't answer.
Instead, she took Pink's hand. "We're going to find out. Together."
They never got the chance.
Later that day, they were walking toward the alley near the back gate Nova gripping the folder, Pink asking too many questions. A sharp noise cracked the air. Nova turned sharply. Her eyes wide.
Then darkness.
The memory ended like a dropped camera. Spinning. Blurred.
Now, Present Day
Pink sat up gasping in her bed. The flashback hit her like a wave. She could barely breathe.
Nova.
That was her name.
She knew her.
And now, someone had erased her.
But not completely.
Pink looked at the photo again with new eyes. She traced Nova's face with her fingertip.
"You're not gone," she whispered. "I'm going to find you."
Chapter Ten: The Pact
Pink didn't sleep.
Her heart thudded like a warning drum through the night, but it wasn't fear that kept her awake.
It was clarity.
She remembered Nova.
Not everything but enough to know this wasn't just about mental health or stress. Something happened to her. Something real. Something that left scars deep enough to rewrite her mind.
The next morning, Pink found Kian before first bell, already sketching in the art room. His charcoal smudged across the page: two girls standing back to back—one in color, one fading into mist.
Pink dropped the photo on the table.
"Her name is Nova," she said.
Kian looked up, stunned. "You remembered?"
She nodded. "Not all of it. But enough to know she didn't just vanish. She found something and she was scared. And now she's gone."
Kian turned the photo over. "Don't trust them. Who's them?"
"I don't know. Teachers. The school. Someone higher up maybe. But I think they made me forget."
Kian leaned in. "You think it was on purpose?"
Pink's throat tightened. "I think someone wanted Nova erased. And I think they tried to do the same to me."
They sat in silence for a moment, letting the weight of that truth settle. Then Kian slid his sketchpad aside and opened a small journal lined, full of observations, fragments, and diagrams.
"I've seen patterns here too," he said. "There are students who leave suddenly. Records that vanish. Teachers who act like they don't exist. It's not just you, Pink. I've been keeping track."
Pink's eyes widened. "Why didn't you tell me?"
Kian's voice was quiet. "Because I didn't have anyone to tell. Until you."
Pink looked at him then not just a quiet boy with a sketchpad, but a mirror of her own loneliness, her own searching. Two pieces of the same broken truth.
"We're going to find out what happened," she said firmly. "To Nova. To me. To everyone."
Kian nodded.
They sealed it with a handshake ink-smudged, trembling.
A pact.
Truth. No matter what.
Chapter Eleven: Eyes in the Halls
The school library was nearly empty during third period quiet enough that even whispers felt like shouts. Pink sat beside Kian at a back table, papers spread between them like puzzle pieces: old yearbooks, club rosters, class schedules. Anything with names.
They weren't looking for Nova.
They were looking for what was missing.
"I know she was in the art club," Pink whispered. "We painted together. But she's not in any photo."
Kian flipped another yearbook page. Blank smiles. Names printed like they were set in stone. "This isn't just deletion," he said. "It's revision. They rewrote her out."
Pink's fingers trembled as she traced a class photo ten students, space for eleven. One face clearly cropped out.
"What kind of school does this?" she asked.
Kian didn't answer.
A shadow passed behind the bookshelf. Pink froze. Someone was watching.
Kian noticed too. He slid the yearbook into his bag casually. "Don't look. Just listen."
Footsteps. Slow. Measured. Then gone.
Pink exhaled.
They gathered their things quickly, nerves electric. As they reached the hallway, Pink spotted her Ms. Drexler. The school counselor.
Smiling.
But her eyes didn't match the smile.
They were cold. Calculating.
"Pink," she said sweetly. "You've missed our last two appointments."
Pink nodded slowly. "I've been… busy."
Ms. Drexler's smile didn't move. "Just remember, my door is always open. For talking. Or anything else you need."
Pink's stomach dropped.
The way she said "anything else" made it feel like a threat.
As Drexler walked away, Kian whispered, "That's the same woman Nova warned you about, isn't it?"
Pink nodded. "She knows. She knows we're looking."
They left school through the back gate.
Something had changed.
They weren't just uncovering secrets now.
They were being hunted.
Chapter Twelve: The Records Room
It was almost midnight when they returned.
The school stood like a sleeping giant, the windows dark and glassy. The main doors were locked, but the side gate near the boiler room the one Kian had "accidentally" jammed open earlier that day swung wide with a soft creak.
Pink's breath fogged in the cool air. Her heart drummed in her ears.
"You sure about this?" Kian asked, holding the flashlight.
"No," Pink whispered. "But we don't get answers by waiting."
They moved like shadows through the hallways, each step echoing too loudly, the school suddenly unfamiliar in the dark. At the end of the west wing sat the records room a door no student was supposed to open.
The key Nova left burned cold in Pink's pocket.
She slid it into the lock.
It clicked.
Inside, shelves stretched floor to ceiling. Filing cabinets. Boxes labeled with initials and ID numbers. It smelled like dust and forgotten things.
They worked quickly. Pink searched under N for Nova no file. She checked her own name nothing. Even Kian's file was missing.
"They've cleaned everything," she said. "But why leave the room?"
Kian opened a drawer near the back, filled with shredded paper. "Maybe they didn't think anyone would get this far."
Then they found it.
A thick folder marked "Incident 83-L."
No name.
But inside: a photo. Nova, Pink, and two unfamiliar adults standing near a hallway exit.
Stamped across the top:
UNAUTHORIZED CONTACT. SUBJECT DISRUPTED. MEMORY CLEANSED.
Pink staggered back. "They… they wiped me. On purpose."
Kian read faster. "They're testing something. A program. Psychological alteration under controlled environments. Students are the subjects."
Pink's hands curled into fists. "We're experiments."
Suddenly the lights flickered.
A loud clunk echoed from the hallway.
They froze.
Kian turned off the flashlight. "We're not alone."
Footsteps. Heavy. Deliberate. Drawing closer.
Pink grabbed the file. "We need to run. Now."
They darted through the emergency exit at the back, alarms silent disabled. As they disappeared into the night, Pink didn't look back.
She held the file tight to her chest.
Nova had tried to stop this.
Now it was up to her.
Chapter Thirteen: The Protocol
They didn't go home.
Pink and Kian camped out in the abandoned train yard behind the neighborhood park, surrounded by rusted metal and silence. It was the only place Pink felt like she could think.
The folder from the records room lay open between them, its pages lit by the dull glow of Kian's flashlight.
Inside: a project outline.
Codename: Protocol Echo.
A psychological trial, disguised as a student wellness program. Selected students were chosen for "memory response testing" without consent. Officially, it was a cognitive health initiative. Unofficially
"It's brainwashing," Kian said quietly.
Pink's stomach turned. "They erased Nova because she knew. And they did it to me too. But why didn't it work all the way?"
Kian flipped to the last page. "It says memory suppression is unstable. Some minds resist reject the erasure like a virus."
Pink looked at him, realization blooming in her chest.
"That's what I've been feeling. The flashes. The fog. It's me fighting it."
There was one more document.
A list of current subjects. Names and ID numbers. Some crossed out. Others circled. One name stopped her cold.
Liana March.
Status: Pending Alteration.
Pink felt the air leave her lungs. "They're going after her."
Kian's face tightened. "They know you're remembering. So they're going after everyone connected to you."
Pink stood. "We have to get to her before they do."
Kian nodded, already packing up. "We expose this. All of it. No more hiding."
As they disappeared into the shadows, Pink felt something sharp return to her a part of herself that had been buried in the fog.
Not just her memory.
Her purpose.
Chapter Fourteen: Too Late
Pink didn't wait for morning.
She and Kian left the train yard before sunrise, the folder sealed in Kian's bag like a time bomb. Every streetlight they passed cast long, uneasy shadows.
They reached Liana's house just after six.
Pink knocked. Once. Twice. Harder.
Liana's mother answered, sleepy and confused. "Pink? What's wrong?"
"I need to see her," Pink said breathlessly. "It's urgent. Please."
Her mother hesitated, then slowly opened the door wider.
But Pink already knew something was wrong.
Liana sat at the kitchen table, perfectly still. Her eyes glassy. A mug of untouched tea in front of her. Her phone turned off.
Pink rushed forward. "Liana?"
Liana blinked. Smiled faintly.
"Hi, Pink. Are we… supposed to have a quiz today?"
Pink froze.
Liana's voice was off. Her tone too even. Her eyes too blank.
"Do you remember Nova?" Pink asked softly.
Liana tilted her head. "Nova who?"
Kian stepped forward. "They already did it. She's been altered."
Liana's mother looked between them. "What's going on?"
Pink's throat tightened. "She was on their list. Protocol Echo. They wiped her."
Liana's smile didn't waver. "You're acting strange. Maybe you should talk to Ms. Drexler."
Pink backed away slowly. It was like watching someone she loved disappear in front of her eyes.
Kian put a hand on her shoulder. "We're too late for her."
"No," Pink whispered. "We're not too late for everyone."
Outside, the wind howled low through the streets. The world felt colder. More fragile.
But now, Pink wasn't just remem
bering the past.
She was fighting for the future.
Chapter Fifteen: The Broadcast
They knew time was running out.
After what happened to Liana, Pink could feel it like static in her veins. Whoever was behind Protocol Echo wouldn't let her stay awake much longer.
"We go public," she told Kian, sitting in his garage, their makeshift base now littered with folders, maps, and hand-written notes. "We get this out before they come for us."
Kian hesitated. "Once this is out, there's no going back."
"I don't want to go back," Pink said. "I want them to know what they did."
The plan was dangerous but simple.
They hacked into the school's internal broadcast system, scheduled for the weekly morning announcements. It wasn't state-of-the-art just a dusty media room with outdated cameras and a half-dead mic. But it was enough.
Pink stood in front of the camera, heart hammering, folder in hand.
The red light blinked on.
"Good morning," she began, voice steady. "My name is Pink Corren. I'm a student at Windrow High, and I'm here to tell you the truth."
She told them everything.
About the memory loss.
About Nova.
About Protocol Echo.
About the file, the manipulation, the lies. She held up documents, photos, recordings Kian had secretly captured. Names. Numbers. Proof.
"If you've ever felt like something was missing," she said into the lens, "you're not crazy. You're not alone. And you deserve to know what's been taken from you."
Then the feed cut.
Silence.
A knock pounded the door.
Kian's voice rose. "They're here run!"
They escaped out the back, hearts racing.
But they didn't need to stay.
By lunchtime, the whole school buzzed like a live wire. Screenshots. Recordings. Text chains. Students whispering, questioning. Teachers with pale faces. Ms. Drexler nowhere to be found.
Something had cracked.
Not everything.
But enough.
Chapter Sixteen: The Price of Memory
By second period, Pink's face was everywhere.
Students shared the video like wildfire airdropping it in classrooms, whispering about the folder, about Nova, about the memory experiments. Some laughed it off. Some looked afraid. Some, like Elijah and Grace from Pink's homeroom, just stared at her like they were seeing her for the first time.
And maybe they were.
Kian met her outside the math wing, a bruise forming on his cheek. "Coach Denner tried to drag me to the office. I ran."
Pink flinched. "You okay?"
He smirked through the pain. "Worth it."
But not everyone saw it that way.
By lunchtime, Pink was summoned to the front office. Not by a teacher. Not by Ms. Drexler.
By a man in a suit.
He waited in the guidance counselor's chair like he owned it. The name tag on the desk had been flipped. "Ms. Drexler is on extended leave," he said smoothly. "I'm Interim Director Quinn. Have a seat."
Pink didn't move.
He smiled anyway. "You've caused quite a stir, Miss Corren. You and your little activist friend."
"If you're here to scare me," she said, voice steady, "you're too late."
Quinn tilted his head. "No. Not scare. I'm here to offer you clarity. You're confused. Frightened. None of this is your fault."
"I remember Nova."
"Do you?" His eyes gleamed. "Or do you remember what someone wanted you to?"
Pink's hands clenched. "You erased people. You used us. Like lab rats."
"We guided you," he replied. "We helped remove the parts of yourselves that hurt. Pain. Failure. Grief. Isn't that what adolescence begs for? Relief?"
"No," Pink said. "We want truth."
Quinn leaned back. "Truth is unstable. Dangerous."
"So am I."
The room went quiet.
Quinn smiled again, thin and sharp. "Very well. But know this once you cross a line, there's no erasing what comes next."
Pink turned to leave.
"I don't want to erase anything ever again," she said. "I want to remember."
Chapter Seventeen: Awakening
By morning, Windrow High was different.
Students flooded the halls with questions. They shared stories lost memories, dreams that felt real, people they swore they once knew. Even teachers looked uneasy, glancing over their shoulders, canceling lessons mid-class.
Pink walked through it all like a storm.
They called her brave. Crazy. Liar. Hero.
But none of that mattered. What mattered was that the silence had been broken.
Then came the note.
Folded, taped to her locker. Just three words in sharp, rushed handwriting:
She's still alive.
Pink's hands shook as she read it again. The paper smelled faintly of charcoal and rain.
Kian met her by the old supply closet, where they used to sketch together after school. "It wasn't from me," he said, studying the note. "But whoever wrote it knew you'd come here."
Inside the closet was a small envelope wedged between broken shelves. It held a flash drive.
They didn't wait. They ran to Kian's house, plugged it into his laptop, and watched the screen flicker to life.
A video.
Grainy, timestamped three weeks ago.
Nova.
Tired. Pale. Alive.
She sat in a plain room, like a basement or underground facility. She looked straight into the camera.
"If you're seeing this, it means I failed. But you didn't."
Pink's breath caught.
"I tried to stop them. Protocol Echo isn't just a school experiment. It's a government-funded pilot emotional suppression through memory reconfiguration. They want to scale it. Control it."
She leaned closer to the camera.
"But some of us fight back. Some of us remember. If you're awake… find me. I left a trail. I don't have much time."
The video cut.
Silence.
Pink turned to Kian. "She's alive. We can find her."
He nodded, fire in his eyes. "Then let's finish what she started."
Outside, thunder rumbled low and promising.
A storm was coming.
But this time, Pink wasn't hiding from it.
She was it.
Chapter Eighteen: Breadcrumbs
Nova had left more than a message.
The flash drive also held a series of cryptic files: maps with red circles, fragments of surveillance logs, audio recordings marked only by timestamps. One line stood out in a digital note:
"Echoes leave patterns. Look where no one's listening."
Pink and Kian huddled over the files in the attic of Kian's house safer than the garage now, away from windows, away from the men in suits who had started showing up parked down the street.
"I think it's an old radio tower," Kian said, pointing at one of the red-circled locations on the map. "Just off the ridge behind Camp Solis. It's been inactive for years."
Pink's heart raced. "That's where we start."
They left that night.
The trail led them through thickets and up overgrown paths. At the top of the hill stood a crumbling structure—metal skeletal, wires dangling like roots, a control shack nestled beside it.
The lock was old. Kian popped it in seconds.
Inside, the air was stale and humming.
And then they saw it.
Scrawled on the wall in chalk, faint but unmistakable:
"Keep remembering." N
Underneath it, tucked behind a loose panel, a torn notebook.
Nova's handwriting filled the pages. Notes about the program. Surveillance times. Names of other students. And at the end, a single page labeled "Failsafe."
It described a hardwired transmitter hidden beneath the school part of the old civil defense system. Nova believed it could be repurposed to send a real broadcast. Unfiltered. Untraceable.
A message they couldn't shut down.
Pink felt her spine straighten. "She built a way out."
"She built a revolution," Kian murmured.
They took the notebook.
This wasn't just a rescue anymore.
It was a war to wake everyone up.
Chapter Nineteen: Below
The notebook shook in Pink's hands as they stood outside Windrow High, just past midnight.
They had circled back under cover of darkness, ducking motion sensors, avoiding patrols that weren't school security anymore. Men with earpieces. Dark cars with covered plates. Protocol Echo was no longer hiding behind faculty IDs it had grown teeth.
"Entrance is under the stage," Kian whispered. "Old service hatch. Nova marked it."
Pink swallowed hard. "Let's finish this."
They slipped into the auditorium. Moonlight spilled through cracked windows, casting long shadows across the velvet curtains. The hatch was exactly where Nova had written it would be: half-covered by a stack of broken risers.
It opened with a rusted groan.
Ladder rungs led into blackness.
They climbed.
Beneath the stage, a cold, narrow tunnel stretched deep under the school. The air was thick, metallic. Pipes lined the walls, some dripping, some humming faintly. Pink could feel it this place wasn't on any school blueprint.
Ten minutes in, they found the transmitter room.
A rusted steel door with a faded label:
"ECHO CORE."
Kian pushed it open slowly. Inside: a control panel, dusty and cracked but intact. Old cables. A microphone wired into a glowing red light.
It was real.
And active.
Pink approached the mic. Her reflection shimmered faintly in the glass. "We can do this, right?"
Kian adjusted the wires. "We boost the range with the backup battery, tie into the school's wiring. Once it's live, they can't shut it off without cutting power to the whole district."
"Let's wake them up," she said.
But just as Kian reached for the switch—
A voice behind them.
"Well done, Pink."
They spun.
Quinn.
Flanked by two agents. Calm. Polished. Unafraid.
"You've made it farther than anyone. But it ends here."
Pink stepped between him and the mic.
"No," she said. "It begins here."
And she hit the switch.
Chapter Twenty: The Voice That Echoes
The transmitter roared to life.
Sparks burst from the panel as Pink gripped the mic with shaking hands. Behind her, Quinn cursed and lunged forward but Kian tackled him to the floor, slamming a pipe into one of the agent's knees.
Pink didn't flinch.
She leaned in.
And spoke.
"This is Pink Corren, broadcasting from beneath Windrow High. If you're hearing this, it means you're still free."
Her voice trembled at first but only for a moment.
"They tried to erase us. They tried to rewrite who we are. You ever forget someone you swore you loved? Lose a memory that felt important but you couldn't explain why? You're not broken. You were targeted."
She held up the notebook.
"This is real. Protocol Echo is real. And we are not experiments. We are people. We are students. We are awake."
Outside the school, radios crackled. Phones buzzed with hijacked FM signals. Households across town blinked to life as the message poured through car speakers, old radios, Bluetooth speakers still connected.
Pink kept going.
"To everyone who remembers flashes. Feelings. Gaps in time this is your proof. They erased Nova. They tried to erase me. And now they're coming for anyone who knows. But we are stronger than their silence."
The floor rumbled.
Then—
A second voice cut through.
"Pink?"
She froze.
It wasn't the transmitter.
It was from her earpiece.
Crackling. Weak.
But unmistakable.
Nova.
"Nova where are you?"
"I found another way in," she said, voice ragged. "They moved me upstate, but I escaped. I've been trying to get back. I heard your broadcast. You did it."
Pink's throat caught. "We're not done."
"No," Nova said. "Now we finish this together."
And the world, for the first time in what felt like forever, listened.
Chapter Twenty-One: The Reunion
Nova's signal cut in and out as Pink and Kian scrambled from the transmitter room, chased by the blare of alarms.
"She said she's close," Pink gasped, gripping the notebook to her chest. "Upstate she must've followed the broadcast."
"She's heading here," Kian said. "She's risking everything."
So were they.
By the time they emerged from the tunnel beneath the school, sirens echoed in the distance. But something was different.
Students had gathered outside the school gates dozens at first, then more. Some held their phones up, recording. Others chanted Pink's name. A few carried hand-painted signs:
"We Remember."
"Where Is Nova?"
"Empty Brain, Full Heart."
They had heard her.
Inside, administrators scrambled to contain the chaos. But the story was out. The media had picked up the hijacked broadcast. News vans circled. Parents were demanding answers.
And then—
A black motorcycle tore up the main road.
Pink turned.
Nova skidded to a stop, ripped off her helmet.
And smiled.
The air collapsed between them as Pink ran forward. They crashed into a hug that nearly knocked them both down.
"You're real," Pink breathed.
"You saved me," Nova whispered.
Kian grinned. "We're not done yet."
Together, the three stood before the school, the crowd, the cameras.
And behind them, Quinn emerged escorted by uniformed officers, face pale with fury.
The crowd parted.
"Any last words, Quinn?" Nova asked, voice cutting.
He said nothing.
But his silence spoke volumes.
Pink raised her voice. "We're not just students. We're not weak. And we're not empty. We are who we choose to be. And no one, no system gets to steal that."
The crowd roared.
And this time, no one could erase it.