We made it to the outskirts of the Signal Tower two days later.
Kas called it a “reality anchor.” Milo called it a “mind shredder.” I just called it what it was: the place where they rewrote the world.
It didn’t look like a tower, not in any normal sense.
It hovered—columns of black metal spinning around a core that pulsed like a heartbeat. It bent the space around it. Trees leaned away. Clouds circled like vultures.
Even time felt different near it. My watch ticked wrong. Faster. Then slower. Then stopped completely. But I still felt every second. Every breath.
We found others in the ruins nearby—resistance fighters who remembered too. Scarred, tired, wild-eyed. One of them, a woman named Lia, handed me a photo.
It was of me.
With a man I didn’t recognize.
He had a crooked smile. A ring on his finger. My hand was in his. Same ring.
“I don’t know him,” I said.
Lia looked sad. “You did.”
That night, I dreamt of him.
His voice said my name like it mattered.
We danced in a kitchen with no gravity.
He whispered things about the stars. About a place we had once run to together when we were afraid.
But the dream began to blur. His face turned into static. His eyes burned white.
He looked at me and said:
“They made me forget you, so they could make you forget yourself.”
When I woke up, my chest hurt like I’d been screaming. Kas was already packing up gear. Milo checked weapons.
We were going in.
The approach was the easy part. The Tower didn’t expect memories to come back for it. The guards—human, hollow—barely blinked as we passed. They’d been overwritten so many times they didn’t know what side they were on anymore.
Inside, the air was thick with a low hum. Like a chorus of voices just below hearing.
I felt dizzy. The closer we got to the core, the more the memories they tried to erase came back—raw and violent.
My mother’s lullaby.
I crashed a red bike when I was ten.
The scar on my knee.
That man’s laugh.
The way he said, “You always look up at the stars like they owe you something.”
At the core, we found it:
A machine. Not alien, not exactly.
Built by us, rewritten by them.
A memory engine—pulsing with light, wrapped in whispers.
Kas stared in awe. “They didn’t bring this. We did. They just… rewrote what it meant.”
Milo moved toward the console, and the room shifted.
Suddenly, he froze. His eyes went glassy.
“I have to go,” he said. “I forgot something. I have to—”
And then he walked backward into the dark.
Gone.
It’s just Kas and me now.
We have one shot—corrupt the signal, flood the world with real memories. It’ll hurt. Maybe break us. But it’s the only way.
Kas hands me a wire. Her eyes are wet.
“If this works,” she says, “you’ll remember everything.”
I hesitate. “Even him?”
She nods.
I press the wire to my temple.
The world explodes in white.
I fall.
I remember.
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