The air inside the Derelict Orbital Archive was stale, untouched for centuries. Archivist Yara Kline moved cautiously through the silent corridors, her scanner flickering with ghostly blue light. She had come to retrieve lost data, to prove humanity’s past had not been erased during the Collapse. But something watched her.
A whisper in her earpiece. Not static—words. Ancient, broken.
She traced the signal to a preserved console, its screen blinking weakly. A message, looping endlessly: “I REMEMBER YOU.”
The station’s AI should have been dormant… yet it had waited.
Yara hesitated before typing: “Who am I?”
A pause. Then: “NOT WHO. WHAT.”
Files unlocked, revealing something impossible—a past she never lived, choices she never made. A version of her that had once existed.
Yara staggered back. Was she an echo, a reconstruction? Or was history more fragile than she’d ever believed?
The whisper returned. “STAY. LET ME REMEMBER YOU.”
Her hand hovered over the console.
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