"The one I made before you disappeared."
Nyelle’s words seemed to empty the chamber of every other sound.
Veyric looked at the phone inside the room. Its screen continued to glow, displaying his name beneath the incoming call notification. Eleven years earlier. The date was impossible, but Nyelle wasn’t looking at the date anymore. She was staring at the device as though it had brought back something she had spent her entire life trying not to remember. Her expression had changed in a way he couldn’t explain; she looked frightened, but there was something more painful beneath it, something that had been waiting for this moment long before they entered the chamber.
"You said you remembered that call," he said. "What happened?"
Nyelle swallowed. "I was looking for you."
"When?"
"I don’t know exactly. I was younger. Much younger." She rubbed her forehead, trying to gather the pieces before they slipped away. "I remember being alone in a building. There were people outside, but nobody could hear me. I called you because I thought you would come."
Veyric frowned. "I was with you when you were younger."
"I know."
"We grew up together."
"I know, Veyric!"
Her voice cracked. She looked away, struggling to control herself. "That’s what I thought too. But I remember making that call. I remember waiting for you. And I remember someone telling me you couldn’t come back."
Veyric searched her face. He wanted to dismiss it, to tell her that the chamber was putting false memories into their heads, but he had already seen their mother standing beside a child’s bed in a room he had never visited. The memory had been too vivid to ignore, and Nyelle’s reaction was not something he could explain away as fear.
Their mother moved toward her. "Nyelle, listen to me. You may be remembering something that didn’t happen."
Nyelle turned on her. "Then why do I remember crying?"
Their mother stopped.
The question hung between them. Veyric watched his sister’s expression, remembering the recording that had played only moments earlier. It had sounded like her, and the words had carried a desperation he had never heard in her voice before. If the call was eleven years old, then it belonged to a time when their lives should have been ordinary, long before the blackout and the creatures and the impossible world outside.
He looked at the phone again.
The call continued ringing, but no sound came from it now. The screen showed a duration counter that had begun counting upward.
He hadn’t answered.
"It’s already connected," the figure said.
Veyric turned. "What do you mean?"
"The call doesn’t need you to answer. It only needs you to recognize the voice."
The phone stopped ringing.
A message appeared.
VOICE RECOGNITION COMPLETE.
Then another.
MEMORY ACCESS: GRANTED.
The room brightened.
Veyric felt a sudden pressure behind his eyes. He reached for the edge of the doorway, but his fingers closed around nothing. The familiar chamber vanished, replaced by a corridor with white walls and bright overhead lights. He stood in the middle of it, looking down at a much smaller hand held inside his own.
A child’s hand.
Nyelle’s.
She was crying.
"Don’t leave me," she said.
Veyric tried to speak, but the memory continued without him. He could feel the small fingers gripping his hand, their desperate pressure strangely familiar. The corridor stretched ahead, its lights humming overhead, and a faint mechanical noise came from somewhere behind the walls.
A woman stood at the far end.
Their mother, younger than he had ever seen her, wore a white coat with a small circular symbol pinned near the collar. Her posture was different from the woman Veyric knew. She stood with the certainty of someone accustomed to giving instructions and expecting them to be followed.
"Take him to the lower room," she said.
Someone behind Veyric reached for his shoulder.
Nyelle grabbed his other hand.
"No! He’s coming with me!"
Their mother approached. She crouched in front of Nyelle and gently removed her fingers from Veyric’s hand. The younger Nyelle fought to hold on, but the woman’s grip was firm. Veyric tried to move, tried to turn toward whoever was reaching for him, but his body would not obey.
"Listen carefully," their mother said. "You must forget this place."
The younger Nyelle shook her head.
"I won’t."
"You have to."
"Why?"
Their mother looked toward Veyric.
For a moment, her expression changed. The authority disappeared, replaced by something almost unbearable. Her eyes lingered on him as if she were looking at someone she might never see again.
"Because if he remembers, they’ll find him."
The memory shattered.
Veyric stumbled backward into the chamber. His shoulder struck the doorway, and Nyelle caught his arm before he lost his balance. The sudden return of the pale-lit room made his head throb, but the image of their mother in the white coat remained painfully clear.
"What did you see?" Nyelle asked.
He stared at their mother.
"You took me somewhere."
She looked as though she had been struck.
"I saw you," he continued. "You were wearing a white coat. You told someone to take me to a lower room."
Their mother covered her mouth.
"And you told Nyelle to forget."
"I don’t remember."
"Stop saying that!"
The words came out harsher than he intended. He stepped away from her, unable to bear the sight of her frightened expression. He did not want to accuse her, but he could no longer pretend that her lack of memory was enough to protect them from what they were discovering.
For years, he had believed their childhood belonged to them. Whatever difficulties they had faced, whatever memories had faded, they had been a family. Now he was looking at evidence that someone had divided their lives long before the world began changing. Someone had taken him away from Nyelle, and their mother had been there when it happened.
Nyelle still held his arm.
"Did you see me?" she asked.
"Yes."
"What was I doing?"
"You were trying to keep me with you."
Her eyes filled.
Veyric wanted to reach for her, but he didn’t know what to say. He remembered growing up beside her, sharing meals, arguments, jokes, and the small ordinary moments that had made their lives feel real. He had never questioned whether those memories belonged to them. Now he wondered how much of their childhood had been left untouched.
The phone rang again.
This time, the caller was listed as NYELLE — ORIGINAL RECORDING.
The figure immediately moved toward the room. "Don’t let it play."
Veyric blocked its path. "Why?"
"Because the recording is not a memory."
"Then what is it?"
"A response."
The child stepped closer to the doorway. Its gaze shifted between the phone and the people around it. "It’s trying to make the memory happen again."
The System appeared.
[MEMORY RECONSTRUCTION: PARTIAL.]
[RECORDING SOURCE: UNVERIFIED.]
[SUBJECTS DETECTED: TWO.]
[WARNING: RECONSTRUCTION MAY ALTER PRESENT RESPONSE.]
Veyric studied the notification. "If the recording is unverified, why did it grant memory access?"
"Because it doesn’t need the memory to be true," the child replied. "It only needs you to believe it."
Nyelle pulled away from him.
"What if it is true?" she asked.
Nobody answered.
The question was not only about the recording. If the memory was real, then their mother had taken Veyric away from her. If it was false, someone had constructed an image convincing enough to make Nyelle doubt everything she remembered about her family. Either possibility left them with the same problem: they could no longer trust the history they had brought into the chamber.
The phone rang for the third time.
Veyric entered the room.
The device lay exactly where it had been, its cracked screen illuminating the metal table. He reached for it, but the figure seized his shoulder.
"Don’t answer."
"I need to know what happened."
"You need to know what it’s trying to make you do."
Veyric turned toward it. "You said you were made to keep me from answering. Is this what you meant?"
The figure’s expression tightened.
"Yes."
"Then tell me what happens if I answer."
The figure hesitated.
"You remember everything."
Veyric stared at it. "And what happens after that?"
The figure looked toward the dark floor.
"Something remembers you."
Veyric’s hand remained suspended above the phone. He had spent the last several minutes discovering pieces of a past he had never known existed. Each answer had brought another question, but this one felt different. The figure wasn’t warning him about another memory or another voice. It was warning him about something that could recognize him once he remembered who he had been.
The phone stopped ringing.
A new message appeared.
MISSED CALL: VEYRIC.
Nyelle frowned. "Why does it say you called yourself?"
Veyric leaned closer.
The message opened by itself.
A recording began playing.
His own voice emerged from the speaker, younger, frightened, and unmistakably real. The sound was weaker than the voice he knew, but there was no mistaking its rhythm or the way it caught slightly on certain words.
"Nyelle, if you can hear this, don’t come looking for me. They haven’t finished the separation."
A pause followed.
The recording crackled. Something moved in the background, followed by a distant metallic impact. Then the younger voice whispered something that made Veyric’s blood run cold.
"Mother isn’t the one who brought us here."
The recording ended.
Their mother staggered backward.
The child looked at her. "Who brought them here?"
She shook her head, but this time the answer did not come.
Veyric turned from the phone. "You heard it."
Their mother nodded faintly.
"You knew someone else was involved?"
"I don’t know." She pressed a hand against her chest, breathing unevenly. "I don’t remember bringing you here. But I remember the person who gave me the instructions."
The figure stepped away from the table.
Nyelle looked between them. "What instructions?"
Their mother did not answer immediately. Her gaze remained fixed on the figure, and the fear in her face had changed. It was no longer the uncertainty of someone struggling to recover a lost memory. It was the recognition of someone who had finally found the shape of something she had been avoiding.
Veyric moved closer. "Who gave you the instructions?"
Her eyes shifted slowly toward the figure wearing his face.
The figure did not move.
Their mother raised a trembling hand and pointed at it.
"It was you."