Echoes of the Unseen

The extraction chair remained still and silent, waiting in the lit room.

The low hum would come later, after calibration, after clearance, after the cold protocols ran their unyielding course. For now, the memory archive held only stillness.

Mireya Cal adjusted her gloves with practiced precision, watching her reflection ripple across the polished steel interface. Every morning began this way, same station, same sequence, same illusion of control. In a place designed to preserve what was lost, routine offered a fragile kind of mercy.

A flicker at the interface's edge caught her eye, a flagged folder marked CAL RIAN–ALERT FRAGMENT.

Her fingers twitched toward the edge, but then they curled back in hesitation, reminding her that today wasn't the day, not yet.

She closed the folder and tagged it as corrupted, convincing herself it was safer to pretend it had never appeared, better to believe in system errors or ghosts lurking within the code than to risk facing the painful truth.

The file could hold anything, a constructed lie, a hidden trap ready to catch her, or a fragile memory, like a buried landmine waiting to explode without warning. Despite all the risks, one thought kept returning to her, what if it was him?

She clenched her hands, willing them to stay still, because her son was dead, honored as a hero, and to believe anything else would feel like a profound betrayal.

The console blinked, showing her clearance code, Authorization, Cal, Mireya, Clearance Level, Tribunal Five. This confirmed her access to the highest security tier.

The neural conductor pack felt heavier in her hand than usual. She slid it across the surface, jaw tight.

Footsteps approached, their soft and hesitant rhythm echoing through the corridor.

A voice from the shadows, noting, "Your comms are off."

She didn't bother to turn around, her voice resolute as she said, "I know."

"You promised me you'd call, but I haven't heard from you in days."

She turned, eyes locking onto Rian standing just beyond the access threshold, younger, thinner, real.

No, her mind snapped back to reality, compelling her to face the painful truth she had buried deep for so long, he was not real. Instead, he existed only as a memory trapped in an endless loop, replaying itself with relentless, mechanical precision. He was gone, vanished beyond reach, leaving nothing but the cold echo of absence.

In this echo, he wore his academy uniform, creased and too large at the shoulders, and his eyes looked tired, weighed down by burdens only time could reveal.

"I was working," she said, her voice hollow with exhaustion.

"You always are," he replied, his tone tinged with both frustration and understanding.

His eyes held no accusation, only quiet disappointment, deep and familiar. His gaze shifted to the neural pack, revealing a subtle concern beneath his calm exterior.

"Are you still scanning for traitors?" the voice asked, breaking the tense silence.

"It's my job," she said, shoulders bearing the weight of reluctant duty.

His silhouette shimmered faintly at the edge of her vision, flickering and distorted in a way that made it unreal, just another loop buried deep within a subject's recall stream. Yet somehow, despite its fragmented nature, it was still him. His presence pressed against her like the aching pain of a wound torn wide open, raw, tender, and aching with a depth that had long refused to heal.

He said, "They've restored Dad's sculpture, the one with the hawk's wing, and thought you might want to come see it for yourself."

She couldn't find the words to respond. Before she could gather her thoughts, he vanished into the thin air like a fading ghost.

She exhaled. "Begin the session."

The hum started. The chair came to life.

Taren Sol lay beneath the sedation mesh, young and unconscious, twitching faintly under the scanner's pulse. Eighteen, suspected of radicalism, and awaiting reconstruction before sentencing.

"You won't feel a thing," she said, though he couldn't hear.

Blue light swept across his temple. Memory bloomed.

An alley. A shadowed dock. A rag in Taren's hand.

And above him, a voice.

"They'll call you a hero, Taren. Just press the mark. I'll cover the exit."

Rian.

Not a simulation. Not a drifted echo. A full imprint. Clear. Alive. Assured.

Mireya recoiled, her heart pounding. Her hands trembled as they hovered over the console.

He's dead.

Yet the memory told a different story, no signs of distortion, no falsified data.

She forced herself to breathe. Cross-referenced tribunal logs. Her son was recorded deceased. Honored at the Capitol Archive. Yet, no retinal scan. No neural tag. Just a name on a stone.

Her hand hovered over the console.

If she submitted the fragment, everything collapsed. Her standing. His memory. Her own survival.

Becoming the mother of a traitor, you undo justice and bury yourself.

She stared at Taren's sleeping form. A boy. Too young to bear the weight.

"I'm sorry," she said.

Then, louder, "Irregularities detected. Proceeding with reconstruction."

She deleted the memory.

Then another, fabricated replacements, Taren acting alone, whispering conspiracies, assembling bombs.

The system accepted the forgeries without hesitation.

Every erasure compressed her ribs tighter until breathing was more suggestion than function. With each keystroke, a piece of her crumbled away, the part that had once sworn to preserve truth above all else.

Three days later, Junior Archivist Jalen Myre intercepted her in the data well. His fingers tapped a discreet rhythm, Protocol Flag 47, internal breach.

"I saw the fragment," he said. "Before it vanished."

She did not blink. "You're mistaken."

"You copied over it. But I made an encrypted backup. Only I can access it."

He looked at her, not with accusation, but empathy.

"You don't have to carry this alone. Sometimes breaking the record is the only way to find truth."

Her grip tightened on her teacup.

"Sometimes breaking it means losing everything."

"Maybe," he said softly. "But maybe it's the only way to start healing."

She stood, moving to the dome's edge. The memory fields shimmered beyond the glass.

"There's no healing in this place, Jalen. Only what holds, and what breaks."

He hesitated. "You're not the only one grieving."

"No," she said.

Then she moved.

The hypo spike slipped from her sleeve, clean and precise. Jalen collapsed without a sound.

The report stated, Archivist Myre, deceased. Cause, memory corruption and psychotic fatigue.

His funeral was quiet. Mireya delivered the eulogy with a steady voice, her hands no longer trembling when she spoke of duty and sacrifice. The guilt had calcified into something harder, more enduring than sorrow.

Taren's execution streamed in gray scale. She watched alone. The Tribunal called her brave. The city called her incorruptible.

One day later, a priority seal pinged in her inbox, MEMORY SURVEILLANCE EXPANSION APPROVED.

The Tribunal cited threats of insurgency and record tampering. Emergency Protocol 7.3 passed, granting total access to citizen memory banks.

"This is not an invasion," High Inquisitor Vellin said. "This is preservation. Archivist Cal's vigilance ensures that memory remains secure."

Mireya watched the broadcast. Vellin stood in the same marble chamber where Rian once argued ethics. Where she had once sworn her oath.

Now, her deception had become doctrine.

She closed the feed.

Outside, children played beneath the new monument, a bronze hawk perched on fractured pillars etched with Truth Preserved.

She recognized the design. Months ago, she had submitted the hawk as a token of mourning. Now it symbolized something else.

One week later, she stepped into the private vault. The door sealed behind her with a hiss.

A single file hovered midair, a boy laughing in the sunlight. Hair tousled. Ash on his cheek.

"Stop, Mom! You're messing it up."

His voice pierced the silence.

She reached out, brushing the edge of the hologram with shaking fingers.

"I'm sorry," she said. "I didn't have a choice."

She stared.

Waited.

No answer came.

Her breath caught.

Then, she selected DELETE.

The light blinked once. Then the file vanished.

Nothing remained on record.

No truth survived. No traitor existed. No son was named.

Only the Archivist, and the perfect memory of justice.