There was a pause, the kind that felt like the first breath after surfacing from deep water.
Kira slid down the wall and sat, knees pulled to her chest. She looked like she hadn't slept in days.
Sterben leaned back beside her, the briefcase still in his lap. "So," he said. "What now? We run for the rest of our lives?"
"No," Kira said. "We find a way to break the system. Permanently."
"That's a big goal."
"You get used to impossible."
Silence again. Not tense. Just tired.
After a while, Sterben glanced sideways. "Why did it say 'She remembered you'?"
Kira didn't answer immediately.
Then: "Because… I did. You were in the program. Once."
Sterben blinked. "What program?"
But she didn't get to answer.
The air shimmered.
A high-pitched hum pierced the alley, followed by a static ripple. The vending machines glitched. The wall screen froze.
Then...a voice crackled through a hidden comm:
"Confirming signature. Zero anomaly present. Engage with nonlethal force. Objective: memory core."
Sterben looked up.
Three figures dropped from the rooftops.
Dull silver armor, faces hidden behind mirrored visors. Pulse gloves hummed on their hands tech designed to knock out nervous systems before victims could even think of resetting.
Kira was already moving.
She shoved Sterben aside as the first bolt seared into the wall behind them.
"Run!"
They bolted down the alley, shadows dancing around them as more agents cut them off. Every turn was blocked, every option collapsed. Until
Kira shouted, "Open it!"
"What?!"
"The briefcase now!"
Sterben fumbled with the latches. The case snapped open.
Inside: a black orb, smooth and faintly glowing, embedded in a curved mount. It pulsed once and then burst into a soft hum, vibrating in his bones.
The world froze.
Literally.
Agents mid-leap hovered in the air. Sparks froze in place. Kira, caught mid-step, blurred like a ghost between seconds.
Sterben stood alone.
A voice echoed from the orb.
"Zeroth recognized. Initiating Recall."
They stumbled into a drainage lot beneath a dead billboard, gasping for air. Sirens howled somewhere far behind them. The city's cold hum returned like nothing had ever happened.
Sterben dropped the briefcase beside him and slumped against the concrete wall.
His hands trembled.
Not from adrenaline from memory.
The world had slowed down. Frozen. Warped. Not just time, but space, thought, himself.
He hadn't seen Kira anymore. He'd seen something else.
A lab.
A voice.
And then
A pair of hands. Gentle, warm. Tucking in his collar. Someone humming. A woman's voice. A man behind her, blurry but tall, speaking in soft German.
His mother. His father.
Memories he didn't know he had.
Memories no reset should have preserved.
Sterben closed his eyes, chest tight.
Kira sat a few feet away, silent.
Neither of them said a word.
The rain had started by the time they found shelter, a rusted tram station at the edge of a transit line long since decommissioned. Graffiti stained the walls. Ivy cracked through the tiles.
Kira paced.
Sterben sat on a bench, the briefcase unopened between his feet. His palms still tingled. Not from electricity from memory.
"Your hands are shaking," Kira said, finally breaking the silence.
"I remembered them," Sterben said. "My parents."
Kira stopped mid-step. "What?"
"I shouldn't. I was two when they died. That's what the file said. House fire. No survivors but me."
"You were archived after that. Transferred between facilities. No stable resets, no permanent residence. You were a ghost in the system." She paused, eyes narrowing. "But if you remembered them… that's pre-Reset consciousness."
"Is that even possible?"
"No."
And yet, it had happened.
Sterben looked up at her. "You said I was in the program once. What did you mean?"
Kira hesitated.
Then she sat across from him, folding her arms. "You were the first trial. The Zeroth Subject. The only child to ever resist synchronization. They tried to implant reset anchors, memory cages, mnemonic filters, nothing stuck. Your mind refused to rewrite. You were immune."
"Then why don't I remember any of it?"
"They wiped you manually. Multiple times. The old way, chemical, surgical, systemic suppression."
She looked away.
"You weren't supposed to survive that."
Sterben let the silence settle again. The rain ticking against the roof sounded like static.
"You said I wasn't supposed to survive," he echoed. "So why did I?"
"I don't know."
That, at least, sounded like the truth.
Elsewhere
A Clean Room in the REMCORE Spire
The man in the suit leaned over the holo-projection, hands clasped behind his back. His name was Director Halbrecht, and he hadn't slept in two days.
The footage from the alley played again. Static distortion. Frozen agents. Time manipulation far beyond public tech limits.
The silhouette of the boy.
"Sterben Stein," the assistant whispered. "He triggered a Class Null event."
Halbrecht tapped a knuckle against his lip.
"Find out how," he said. "And if the girl survives, bring her in. Dead, if necessary."
He turned away.
"The boy," he added, "comes back intact. We need him to remember."
Back at the tram station, Sterben finally spoke again.
"I don't want to run," he said. "I want to find out who I was. What they took from me."
Kira nodded. "Then we find the place where it all began."
"Where's that?"
She stared past him, out at the blinking lights of the city beyond the rain.
"Facility Zero."
Sterben looked at her.
And for the first time truly believed her.