#Unauthorized Retrieval
#002
Asher didn't sleep that night.
Sleep required peace. And peace had never come cheap in Ether District.
He sat on the rusting floor of his pod, knees pulled to his chest, staring at the screen embedded in the wall. The message still hovered there, blinking faintly, like a heartbeat.
> Unauthorized memory fragment recovered.
Origin: Unknown.
Subject: Asher Vale.
Memory ID: Locked.
Retrieval complete.
There was no sender, no data trail, no code signature. Just the fragment.
And that voice.
"Asher—don't let go."
He clenched his fists.
He hadn't heard that voice in ten years. Hadn't even known he'd forgotten it.
But now… now it lived just beneath his skin. It burned behind his eyes like an afterimage. Every time he blinked, he saw fire. Every breath tasted like smoke.
And worst of all—he didn't know who the child was.
---
By morning, Ether District was awake and loud again.
The pod hissed open, and he stepped into the chaos. Cars without wheels drifted down broken skyrails. Drones scanned faces in the crowd. Vendors hawked neuro-filters and cheap memories on blackmarket loops.
Asher blended in, hood up, eyes low.
He moved fast. Not toward work—but away from it.
Bliss Corp would've flagged his console by now. The system didn't tolerate anomalies. Unauthorized memory retrievals were serious—dangerous. Especially when the subject was you.
Especially when you weren't supposed to have any memories left.
He turned down an alley, weaving through trashbots and the scent of scorched ozone, until he reached a half-collapsed stairwell leading underground.
A keypad blinked. He entered a twelve-digit override.
Welcome, User: Vale.
Status: Contractor 413.
Division: Black Tier Extraction.
Clearance: Denied.
What?
He frowned. His clearance had never failed before.
He tapped again.
Clearance: Denied.
A cold chill crept up his spine. That wasn't just an error.
He was being locked out.
---
BlissCorp Central was a city within a city, a spire of glass and circuitry that pierced the smog like a needle. It ruled the soul market—legally and otherwise. They controlled extractions, auctions, suppression protocols, and digital identities.
And they had just shut him out of the system.
Asher stepped back into the alley, mind racing. Someone inside knew. Someone had seen the retrieval.
And they didn't want him in the building anymore.
That only left one option.
---
Eden.
The name came unbidden, like a whisper from a dream.
He hadn't thought about her in years.
Not since…
He shook the thought away and headed east.
Through tunnels and back alleys, past forgotten zones where graffiti grew like ivy and old tech whispered to itself in static bursts. He passed an AI shrine, flickering with holographic prayers, and a child who stared at him with silver eyes and said nothing.
Finally, he reached the outskirts—Zone Thirteen. Unregulated. Unscanned. Off-grid.
It was here that Eden worked.
---
She was waiting for him.
Not in the "I knew you'd come" way. More like the "I knew you'd eventually get desperate enough" kind.
Her arms were crossed. Her hair—a mess of dark coils—was tucked under a soldering cap. Sparks flew from a workbench behind her where a disassembled drone twitched like it was dreaming.
"Asher Vale," she said, without turning around. "You smell like government tracking dust and bad decisions."
"You always did know how to say hello," he replied.
"You're early. Or late. Depending on what flavor of betrayal you're bringing today."
He sighed. "I need your help."
She finally turned. Her eyes narrowed.
"You never ask for help."
He held up his wrist console, displaying the blinking message.
Eden took one look—and the sarcasm drained from her face.
"You accessed a blocked memory."
He nodded.
"That's suicide."
"I didn't do it. Someone sent it to me."
She stepped closer. Her voice dropped.
"Someone inside Bliss?"
"No trace," he said. "No signature. Just… the fragment."
Her fingers twitched like she wanted to slap him—or hug him. Instead, she turned to her desk and began typing.
"Sit. And don't move. If someone traced you here, I'm vaporizing your bones."
---
Twenty minutes passed.
She worked in silence. He watched the half-lit room, the way the dust danced through the beams of old light, the way her hands never shook even when the world did.
Finally, she looked up.
"I know what this is."
He leaned forward.
"It's a memory key," she said. "Someone bypassed your deletion protocol and sent a seed. It's not just a memory. It's a trigger."
"A trigger for what?"
Her expression darkened.
"For everything they erased."
---
[End of Chapter Two]