The silence left behind by the Vigil isn't true silence.
It hums.
Not like machinery. Not like the city.
It's the kind of hum that lives in blood. The kind that fills your bones after fear, when the body hasn't caught up to the mind yet. When you know you're safe—but your skin doesn't believe you.
Eira's hands are still trembling. She folds them beneath her legs, as if hiding the shake will make it go away.
Kael hasn't moved from his place beside the wall. His back is pressed to the panel, eyes closed, lips slightly parted. Not sleeping. Just... still.
Neither of them speak.
Somewhere, far above, the sound of ventilation pulses like a heartbeat. It's irregular. The system will probably fix it tomorrow.
For now, it's their lullaby.
Eira looks at the faint handprint again—the old one, the one left by someone else. It's barely there. Just the suggestion of fingers, scorched into a metal surface that was meant to be sterile forever.
She presses her palm to it.
It's smaller than hers.
A child's.
"I think this place remembers," she says softly.
Kael doesn't open his eyes. "What do you mean?"
"This corridor. This room. That hand." She trails her fingers along the faded outline. "They left something behind. And the system never erased it."
Now he opens his eyes. They're bloodshot at the edges, like someone who hasn't rested properly in days.
"I think everything remembers," he says. "The system just forces us to forget."
She nods slowly.
Then adds, "But not all the way. Some things stay."
They sit like that for another stretch of time, letting their breathing find rhythm again. There's a strange kind of comfort in the in-between. Not safe, not in danger. Just... waiting.
Kael shifts first.
"Do you know where the internal backups are stored?" he asks.
Eira blinks at him. "For what?"
"Behavioral data. Memory flags. Emotional drift logs."
She shakes her head.
"I don't—why would I?"
He looks down, pulling his sleeves over his hands.
"I used to. My parents were Core Engineers. Before Final Calibration."
She studies him. His voice is even, but there's something raw in the way he speaks—like someone trying to tell the truth through glass.
"They worked on something called EchoNet," he continues. "It's what the city uses to detect deviation in thought patterns. Even unspoken ones. It maps neural rhythm to expected behavior."
"And flags anything that doesn't fit," Eira finishes quietly.
Kael nods.
"They used to think it was for protection. That it would help Aurelis become... sustainable. No rebellion. No collapse. Just endless harmony."
"And now?"
"They don't think anymore."
Eira's throat tightens.
She doesn't know what she expected, but hearing it like that—so plainly—makes her chest feel heavier.
Kael pushes himself to stand, brushing dust from the hem of his uniform. He moves carefully, like his body still remembers what it's like to be hunted.
"We should get back," he says.
Eira hesitates.
"I don't want to go yet."
He looks down at her, surprised. "Why?"
She hugs her knees to her chest.
"Because this is the first place I've felt... like myself. Since I was little. I don't know what this room is. I don't even know why the system abandoned it. But... I think it forgot something important when it did."
Kael walks a few paces away. He presses his palm to the sealed chamber door but doesn't open it.
"Then maybe it's a place we come back to," he says.
Eira rises. Her knees pop slightly from the cold. Not loud enough to register.
She steps beside him.
"Not too often," she says. "Or it'll notice."
Kael smiles, faintly.
"Right. A secret needs silence."
They walk back through the corridors with measured steps, keeping a perfect distance between them. No eye contact. No words.
Aurelis is always watching.
But there's something different now. Eira feels it in the way her fingers no longer twitch—they pulse. As if something inside her has reawakened. Like memory isn't just drifting anymore.
It's taking root.
In her room, the artificial dawn cycle begins. The lights warm. Her mirror wakes, scanning her expression for fatigue and imbalance.
Eira forces her face into neutral.
She answers the system's routine questions. Submits her sleep report. Runs through her stretches, posture analysis, nutrition intake forecast.
But when it says, "Emotional baseline within acceptable range," she doesn't believe it.
She's not within range.
Not anymore.