"Now give me back my name."
The child stood at the bottom of the newly opened passage, one small hand extended toward me. Blue light crawled across the walls, illuminating a face I recognized from the fragments tearing through my mind, yet its eyes carried an exhaustion no child should have understood. I remained on the floor, one hand pressed against the stone, and asked the only question that made sense.
"What name?"
The child lowered its hand, disappointment giving way to something resembling pity. "The one they took before they took everything else."
Behind me, my mother made a strangled sound and whispered that I shouldn’t ask it that question. When I demanded to know why, Zero stepped between us and the opening, warning me not to give the child anything until we understood what it wanted. The child tilted its head, looking at Zero with a familiarity that made its next words land like a blow.
"You always say that."
Zero stiffened, then denied knowing it, but the answer came too quickly. The child smiled sadly and said that Zero didn’t remember either, prompting my sister to help the weakened imitation stand while she demanded an explanation. Nobody answered her, so she pointed at the child and asked why a memory could stand inside a hole that hadn’t existed moments earlier, and why it wanted a name it couldn’t provide.
"Because I don’t remember it," the child replied.
Then it pointed at me. "But he does."
The blue line in my palm burned, sending pain through my wrist and settling it behind my eyes. Distorted symbols appeared before my vision before the System responded with three messages.
[MEMORY RECOVERY: 2%.]
[IDENTITY REFERENCE: MISSING.]
[RECOVERY ATTEMPT: BLOCKED.]
The messages vanished before I could study them, but Zero’s expression darkened when I repeated what I’d seen. It explained that an identity reference wasn’t an ordinary memory classification; the System might be attempting to identify something it couldn’t recognize. The child stepped forward, its movement deepening the darkness behind it, and asked me to come closer.
"Tell me your name first," I replied.
The child’s expression hardened. It claimed that the people who carried me away had forbidden anyone from asking, then turned toward my mother and demanded to know why she had obeyed them. She began crying, insisting that the researchers had warned her the name was dangerous and that she had been ordered never to repeat it.
"They were afraid that if you remembered my name, you’d remember what you did," the child told me.
I stared down at it, unable to dismiss the accusation simply because I had been a baby. I was the one who had been carried away, given a life beyond the facility, and allowed to grow up believing my memories were my own. The child had remained somewhere beneath that life, and whether it was a person, a memory, or something created by the structure, its pain was real enough to make the silence unbearable.
I moved toward the opening, but Zero caught my shoulder and warned me that the structure could manipulate my memories. When I told it to come with me, it hesitated, admitting that it might be part of whatever the child was trying to restore. My mother begged me not to descend, but I could no longer keep making decisions based on truths other people were too frightened to tell me.
Nyelle stepped beside me and insisted on coming. I tried to refuse, but she reminded me that protecting her by keeping her away from danger had never stopped the danger from reaching us. Whatever had happened in the facility involved both of us before either of us could understand it, and pretending otherwise would only leave her unprepared.
"Stay close," I told her.
"That almost sounded like a request," she replied, managing a thin smile.
The imitation also insisted on joining us, explaining that the child might know what it was. The child studied the figure before identifying it as the part created when the others had been separated, but it carefully avoided calling the imitation a copy. That distinction mattered, although none of us yet understood why, so I ordered everyone to stay together and to avoid touching anything without warning the others.
The man in the white coat laughed bitterly at the idea that rules would protect us, but another tremor silenced him. Zero finally crossed the threshold, and the blue light dimmed the instant its foot entered the passage. A sharp tone sounded from the device behind us as a new message appeared.
[SECONDARY RESPONSE: APPROACHING ORIGIN.]
The child looked at Zero and whispered that it had come back, but Zero admitted it couldn’t remember leaving. The child’s expression softened as it answered that it knew, then it turned and began descending into the darkness. We followed, with the heartbeat growing stronger around us until I realized it wasn’t inside my chest anymore; it was moving through the walls themselves.
The passage ended at a circular chamber whose pale walls were covered in thousands of shallow grooves. The markings spiraled toward a central platform like veins beneath skin, carrying faint blue light in slow pulses, while a narrow pillar stood at the center with most of its carved symbols worn away. The child approached it and said this was where they had taken something, prompting my mother to stop at the entrance.
"I remember this room," she whispered.
The man in the white coat stared at her in disbelief, but she explained that she had been brought there after the first response. The researchers had told her the experiment succeeded and that I was safe, yet I wouldn’t stop crying or looking toward the pillar, even when they carried me away from it. She believed I had been trying to return, and the child confirmed her suspicion.
My mother admitted she had been afraid that allowing me to touch the pillar would mean losing me. The child reminded her that she had lost it anyway, and no one attempted to comfort her, because none of us could decide what that apology was worth. I approached the pillar as the blue line in my palm brightened, and the System displayed a warning.
[ORIGIN REFERENCE: DETECTED.]
[IDENTITY RECOVERY: AVAILABLE.]
[WARNING: RECOVERY MAY ALTER CURRENT SUBJECT CLASSIFICATION.]
The man in the white coat suggested the System might restore my missing classification, but I reminded him that it had also warned the recovery could change what I was. I wanted to understand why the world was changing, why the System recognized a civilization it claimed wasn’t part of its design, and why my own existence remained an unresolved question. Yet I was beginning to understand that knowledge could carry consequences that no amount of preparation would prevent.
I looked at Nyelle, and she told me not to speak as though I were already gone. Her warning steadied me more than the System’s messages had, so I turned back toward the pillar and stated my condition clearly.
"I want the truth, but I won’t accept anything that makes the decision for me."
The chamber illuminated at once, and the pillar opened to reveal a dark object no larger than a child’s palm. It resembled black glass, but something moved beneath its surface, shifting between silver and blue, and the child reached toward it at the same moment I did. When our fingers touched the object together, the chamber disappeared.
I stood in a white room, watching through glass as a woman held a baby in her arms. Another child stood beside me, crying silently with its hands pressed against the barrier, while a man in a white coat announced that the separation was incomplete. The woman looked down at the baby and asked them to finish it, insisting that if one child had to carry the memory, it should be her.
The child beside me turned, revealing my face as it had looked years ago. Tears shone in its eyes, and it whispered a name I had never heard but somehow recognized more deeply than my own. Before I could repeat it, the vision shattered, leaving me back in the chamber with the black object clenched in my hand.
The System filled my vision with messages.
[ORIGIN MEMORY RECOVERED.]
[ORIGINAL DESIGNATION: RESTORED.]
A final line began to appear, but it glitched before the name could become clear.
[NAME: V—]
The letters dissolved into blue light, replaced by a warning that made my chest tighten.
[IDENTITY CONFLICT: CRITICAL.]
[CURRENT SUBJECT AND ORIGINAL RESPONSE CANNOT BE SEPARATED.]
The child no longer stood beside the pillar. Instead, I felt its presence connected to the heartbeat inside me, not as a voice in my head but as something the structure had never truly allowed to leave. It looked at me with quiet sadness, and for the first time, I understood that it wasn’t asking for an ordinary name.
It was asking for the part of itself that had been taken away.
"You weren’t the one they saved, Veyric," the child whispered.
The blue light went out.
"You were the one they sent away with my name."