Refraction Point

Zayn stared at the girl.

The chamber seemed to constrict around them—memory threads dimming, the air thickening with something unspoken. The girl's accusation echoed long after the words had stopped.

"You left me behind."

"I don't remember," Zayn whispered.

The girl's flickering eyes shimmered with something older than anger—grief aged into silence.

Fry scanned the containment threads. "She's real. The data's stable, but the origin's buried too deep. Some kind of... suppressive lock."

Althea stepped forward cautiously. "We might be able to lift the memory suppression. But it won't be pretty. These things are sealed for a reason."

Patch took one look at Zayn and muttered, "Great. More trauma. Should've packed existential band-aids."

Zayn took a slow breath. "Do it."

Althea raised her Karnyx and connected it to the girl's thread.

There was a low hum, a spike of static, and then—

Everything went dark.

A memory unfolded.

But it wasn't a memory from Zayn's perspective. It was hers.

He saw a young girl in a white research coat, barefoot in a sterile facility. No windows. She played with floating data-ribbons, laughing. A voice called to her—gentle, kind. The name she answered to...

He couldn't hear it. The sound was drowned by static every time.

More flashes: the facility alarms blaring. People in black uniforms. The girl hidden beneath a console, clutching a glowing shard.

Then—Zayn.

Not this Zayn. A younger one. Frantic, shouting her name—still inaudible. He held her hand. Promised he'd come back.

He never did.

Zayn jolted awake.

The girl's projection remained, more stable now. Her features fully rendered. Auburn hair. Soft eyes hardened by time.

"Who are you?" Zayn asked again.

The girl didn't blink. "You promised."

"I was a child," he said, shaking. "I don't remember this. I didn't even know you existed."

"But I did," she said. "And that should have been enough."

Fry looked between them, brows furrowed. "That facility... It wasn't on any record. Could she have been part of a black-site recursion experiment?"

Althea checked her readings again. "There's a name here. Faint... encoded in the memory thread itself."

The glyphs unraveled slowly.

One word.

Riven.

Zayn's breath hitched.

"I've seen that word before. Not a name. A designation."

Patch frowned. "Like a prototype ID?"

"Or a project name," Fry said. "One that never made it to the public archives."

Zayn looked at the girl. "Are you Riven?"

She nodded slowly.

"No," she said, correcting herself. "I was. Now I'm what's left."

They stayed silent for a long time.

Then Patch quietly asked, "So what now? You gonna adopt your forgotten recursion sister and go on family therapy quests?"

Zayn let out a humorless chuckle. "I don't know. But she's coming with us."

Riven tilted her head. "There are others. Like me. Lost. Fragmented. Waiting."

"Where?" Althea asked.

Riven stepped back into her containment thread. It pulsed, sending out six beams of light—scattered in different directions.

Fry's voice dropped. "These are coordinates. Across the Real... and beyond."

Zayn whispered, "Vela was pointing us to more than just danger. She was pointing us to them."

Riven's voice, soft now, echoed one last time:

"Find them. Or the Real won't survive what's coming."