Jin jolted awake as Sonny touched his shoulder. "Easy," the old soldier said, pulling back. "We need to move. Fire's been dead for an hour. The thermals should be cool enough now."

  Jin blinked, disoriented. Had he fallen asleep? He couldn't remember deciding to sleep. Just closing his eyes, then nothing.

  The cavern was dark, lit only by Sonny's tactical light. The fire pit was grey ash. "How long?" Jin rasped. "Two, maybe three hours since the alley." Sonny strapped on his pack, moving efficiently. "You needed it. Your body was shutting down."

  Jin pushed himself up. His neck itched with an intensity that made his teeth clench. He reached up, fingers finding the duct tape dressing Sonny had wrapped around his throat.

  He peeled back the edge carefully.

  Under the tape, the skin wasn't healed. It was sealed. Frost-white scar tissue closed the wound. The edges were left unhealed rather than repaired. Cold emanated from the tissue. Strange, unnatural. It wasn't living skin, just stopped, locked in place.

  The chest wounds were different. Still raw. Still seeping into the makeshift bandages.

  The neck wound should've killed him in minutes. The mark did what it did best: it stopped the dying, freezing it in place. The tissue wasn't repaired; it was just kept in a kind of emergency stasis.

  Jin reached for his mother's name. Elara. It was still there, but thinner somehow, like the word itself was fading. He couldn't remember what colour her eyes had been anymore. Brown? Green? The uncertainty was terrifying.

  Theodore's voice saying, "Run." He could still hear it, but was it actually Theodore's voice? Or just a voice?

  And now there were new gaps. His favourite teacher's name. He knew he'd had one, someone, who'd made a difference, but the name was just gone. The address where he'd grown up. Completely blank.

  What he'd been doing the day before the alley. Nothing. The entire day was missing.

  Four uses: the invasion, the dogs, the Xenunnaki, and sealing the neck wound. But was it really just three? The count kept slipping. "You checking?" Sonny asked, watching him.

  Jin nodded, throat tight. "More is gone. Things that were there when I fell asleep..." "It doesn't just take during the moment," Sonny said. "Sometimes the cost comes later. Delayed payment." "Here."

  Sonny handed him something through the dim light.

  Jin caught it. Cold metal. It was the dart from his neck, marked with a broken circle and an eye. "Keep it," Sonny said. "Remind yourself what they think you are."

  Jin turned it over in his fingers. It was the mark of the Reclaimers. Reed's symbol. Inventory. Property. Something to be catalogued and collected.

  He slipped it into his pocket. "Ready?" Sonny asked.

  Jin tested his footing, felt the cold pulse in his chest. "Yeah. Let's move."

  They pushed through the canvas tarp and back into the tunnels. The air felt different now, colder and drier. They were heading deeper, away from the sewers and into older parts of the city.

  Sonny moved ahead without hesitation, his tactical light cutting through the darkness. They walked in silence for ten minutes before Sonny spoke. "You said three uses total. Does that include tonight?" "The invasion six years ago was the first," Jin said quietly. "I lost three days. Didn't even know they were gone until someone mentioned a conversation I couldn't remember." "And the second?" "Feral dogs. I was cornered by a starving pack. I opened the door, and they froze solid. They shattered when they hit the ground." "What did it cost you that time?"

  Jin paused, trying to remember. "Faces. Voices. I couldn't feel the heat for a week. Food tasted like nothing. And people I'd known, neighbours, classmates, their faces just smoothed out. I could remember talking to them, but not what they looked like."

  Sonny was quiet for a moment. "And tonight?" "The Xenunnaki in the alley. Then, while I was unconscious, it sealed my neck wound. I don't know if that counts as separate or not." "That's two uses," Sonny said. "The Xenunnaki kill is one. The neck wound sealing is another. Your body used the mark again while you were out. Pure survival reflex. The cold stopped the bleeding without you having to choose it. That's what makes entropy-class so dangerous: it can act on its own."

  The tunnel opened into a larger passage. The walls here were tiled, cracked and water-stained but still recognizably part of the old city's infrastructure. A Metro line, long abandoned.

  Rusted tracks ran through standing water. Advertising screens, dark for years, reflected their light like black mirrors. "Stay close," Sonny whispered. "And keep quiet. Sound carries down here, and not everything that hears it is friendly."

  They moved along the edge of the platform, their boots quiet on the wet concrete. Jin's breath made clouds in the cold air. Or maybe it was just him, the chill inside him leaking out into the world.

  They'd been walking the Metro tunnels for thirty minutes when Sonny raised a fist.

  Jin froze instantly, hand going to his belt where his knife should have been. Still empty.

  Sonny's light died. Absolute darkness swallowed them.

  Jin's breath sounded too loud. He could hear water dripping somewhere distant, echoing through the vast space. His own heartbeat. The creak of Sonny's jacket.

  Then he heard it.

  A wet, dragging sound. Something heavy being pulled across stone.

  Sonny's hand found Jin's shoulder in the dark, fingers pressing down: Stay. Silent.

  The sound grew closer. Not footsteps, but something else. A slithering, scraping rhythm that made Jin's skin crawl.

  A faint green glow appeared far down the tunnel, phosphorescent and sickly. It illuminated something Jin's brain struggled to process.

  It had been human once.

  The body was elongated, stretched beyond natural proportion, skin translucent and glowing with sickly bioluminescence. Its arms had fused into a single malformed mass that dragged it forward, leaving a trail of luminescent slime. Where its face should have been, there was only smooth flesh, featureless except for a vertical slit that opened and closed with wet, rhythmic breathing.

  A failed manifestation. Someone who'd pushed their mark past the point of no return.

  The thing paused, that vertical mouth opening wide. It tasted the air, searching.

  Jin held his breath. Beside him, Sonny was absolutely still.

  The creature's head turned slowly in their direction.

  It couldn’t see. Jin was sure of that. But it sensed something, maybe temperature, maybe changes in the air. Then he felt it: fear moving through him like a current, and the mark reacting before he could stop it. Cold spread from his chest into his legs and down into the floor. The puddle at his boots started to change. He felt it before he heard it, a slight tightening under his foot, water turning to ice at the edges. Stop. He forced himself to calm down, slowing his breathing. Every heartbeat was a trigger, every rush of adrenaline made the mark respond. The more afraid he got, the colder it made, and the more the ice spread, the more likely it was to draw the creature to him. He had to make himself calm. In the dark, just six feet from what used to be a person, he had to find calm out of nothing. He focused on Sonny’s voice, his earlier instructions, and counted his breaths. The ice stopped spreading, just barely. The water at his boots stayed still, trembling between liquid and solid.

  For five endless seconds, it waited. The vertical mouth pulsed open and closed, open and closed, like a second heartbeat made visible.

  Then it continued down the tunnel, dragging itself towards whatever destination its broken mind still remembered.

  Neither Jin nor Sonny moved until the wet, dragging sounds faded completely, and the green glow disappeared into the darkness.

  Sonny's tactical light clicked back on, pointed at the ground. "That's what happens when you don't stop," Sonny whispered. "When you keep using it past the point of no return. The body adapts. The mind breaks. And what's left..." He gestured at the wet trail glistening on the stone. "That."

  Jin stared at the slime trail. "Has anyone ever... gotten better? Reversed it?"

  Sonny was quiet, watching the trail glisten in the light. "There are stories. Old research from before the invasion, people trying to understand the marks." He shrugged. "Chen would know more than me.

  She keeps records." "But it's possible?" "Kid, I've seen a lot of impossible things in the last six years. Doesn't mean they're likely." His tone made it clear the conversation was over. He started walking again, faster now. "For that one? I don't know. Could've been ten uses. Could've been fifty. Everyone's different. But the endpoint is always the same. You stop being you and become something else."

  Jin touched his neck, felt the cold scars beneath the duct tape.

  How many more until he ended up like that thing? Dragging himself through tunnels, forgetting he'd ever been human?

  * * *

  They pressed on through the Metro, past collapsed platforms and flooded sections, past makeshift camps that had been abandoned months ago. Blankets left behind, children's toys, evidence of lives interrupted.

  The tunnel gradually widened. The smell changed. Less stagnant water, more humanity. Cooking smoke. Unwashed bodies. The particular staleness of enclosed spaces where too many people lived too close together.

  Light appeared ahead. It wasn't harsh white, but a warm yellow from firelight and salvaged LEDs. "The Undercroft," Sonny said quietly. "We're here."

  The tunnel opened into a cavern that stopped Jin in his tracks.

  Vast. The ceiling disappeared into shadow somewhere overhead, lost beyond the reach of salvaged lights strung like stars across the darkness. The hum of hidden generators filled the space, steady and alive.

  But what took Jin's breath was the people.

  Dozens of people, maybe a hundred just in this section, moved through the space with the easy rhythm of a community used to surviving together. Fires burned in circles of salvaged brick, their smoke rising through cracks in the ceiling, old maintenance shafts from when Jenmaq still maintained the infrastructure below Sector 4. Around the fires, children played tag between makeshift shelters while adults sorted supplies, mended clothes, and argued over salvaged equipment. Near one of the UV grow arrays, salvaged agricultural lighting the engineers had rigged to the generators, someone had built a garden. Actual growing things, green and alive, sprouting from soil in salvaged containers. The smell of earth and vegetables mixed with woodsmoke and machine oil.

  This wasn't just survival. It was life.

  Jin stopped at the threshold, overwhelmed.

  The sounds washed over him: low conversations, the clang of metal on metal from somewhere deeper in the cavern, children's laughter echoing off stone, the sizzle of something cooking over an open fire.

  A woman sat on a bench made of cinderblocks and planks, mending a child's jacket with thread unravelled and re-spun a dozen times. She looked up as they passed, nodded at Sonny, studied Jin for a moment with careful eyes, then went back to her work.

  Three people stood around a salvaged JLA thermal scanner, quietly arguing about bypass protocols. One of them, a man with oil-stained hands and wire-rimmed glasses slipping down his nose, looked up. "Sonny! Any progress on that power cell issue?" "Still working on it, Pavel," Sonny called back. "Ask me tomorrow."

  Pavel Sokolov grinned and returned to his work, already absorbed in the scanner again.

  This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

  They started across the cavern. People looked up as they passed, taking in Jin's wounds, the way he leaned on Sonny for support. Some stares were curious. Others wary. A few nodded at Sonny with clear respect.

  Near one of the fires, a little girl with dark braids stopped playing. She stared at Jin, and he realized his hood had slipped back. The frost-white scars on his neck were visible.

  The girl tugged on her mother's sleeve. "Mama, look—"

  The mother turned, saw Jin, and her expression shifted. Not quite fear. Something more complicated.

  She pulled her daughter close, protective.

  Jin quickly pulled his hood back up. "Don't take it personally," Sonny said quietly. "Most folks here are grateful for marked fighters. But they're also scared. They've seen what happens when someone loses control."

  They passed a junction where someone had painted a mural on the wall: a stylized image of Jenmaq before the invasion. Tall buildings, clean streets, people walking without fear. The colours were faded, but the image remained. Beneath it, someone had scrawled in chalk: Sector 4 - 2,190 days since the ships.

  Jin stared at the number. Two thousand, one hundred and ninety. He repeated it to himself. Two thousand one hundred ninety. Committed it to memory.

  They kept walking.

  A minute later, Jin tried to recall the number. It was... eight hundred something. Or was it seven hundred? He'd just read it. Literally sixty seconds ago. But the specific digits had already dissolved.

  His chest tightened. "Supply run's three days overdue now," Sonny said as they walked, his voice low enough that only Jin could hear. "Chen sent a scout team last night to investigate. They haven't reported back yet."

  Jin filed that away. Three days overdue. Scout team out. Sonny's tone suggested this was serious.

  They made their way towards what looked like a communal kitchen: a collection of portable stoves and salvaged cooking equipment. The smell of fresh bread hit Jin before he saw the source.

  An old man, his grey beard dusted with flour, was pulling loaves from a makeshift oven made of sheet metal and brick. He looked up as they approached, face creasing into a warm smile. "Sonny! And who's this half-frozen fellow you've dragged in?" "New arrival," Sonny said. "Jin, this is Pavel Petrov. Best baker in the Undercroft." "Only baker," Pavel corrected with a laugh that turned into a cough. He wiped flour from his hands onto his apron. "Welcome, Jin. You look like you've been through a meat grinder." "Something like that," Jin managed. "Nothing a good meal won't start to fix." Pavel turned back to his oven, checking the next batch.

  The bread was dark and dense, made from whatever grains they could find mixed with things Jin probably didn't want to know about, but it smelled wonderful. "This batch just finished. Here." He broke off a steaming piece and handed it to Jin.

  Jin took it. The warmth spread into his cold fingers. He took a bite, and the flavour filled his mouth, not fancy but real. It had substance. "Good, yeah?" Pavel grinned. "My father taught me the trade. He had a bakery in Sector 7 before the invasion: Petrov & Son, best pastries in three sectors. Wedding cakes that made grown men cry, sourdough people would line up for hours to buy." His smile faded. "Now I use whatever flour doesn't have weevils and hope the yeast stays alive. But it's honest work. It keeps people fed. That matters down here." "It's really good," Jin said, and meant it.

  Pavel launched into a story about his father's bakery, about a wedding cake they'd made that was six tiers tall and nearly collapsed during transport, and about the secret to good sourdough starter: patience and temperature control. Jin listened, asking questions, letting the normalcy of it wash over him. It was nice. Human. A pocket of warmth in everything falling apart.

  Five minutes passed. Ten. "Well," Pavel said finally, wiping his hands again, "I'd better get back to it. Got forty mouths to feed tonight; the east-wing shift starts in an hour, and the next batch won't bake itself. You take care of yourself, Jin. And come back anytime; the oven's always warm." He laughed at his own joke. "Thank you," Jin said, meaning it.

  They walked away, Sonny guiding him towards another part of the cavern. "Nice guy," Jin said after a moment. "Yeah. Pavel's good people. Lost his whole family in the invasion: wife, two daughters. Baking's the only thing that keeps him going some days."

  Jin absorbed this, the tragedy of it. "You said his name before. When we first came in. Pavel, working on the scanner."

  Sonny stopped walking. Turned to look at Jin, expression carefully neutral. "What?" "You called out to Pavel. Working on the thermal scanner with the others." "That was Pavel Sokolov," Sonny said quietly. "Not Pavel Petrov. Sokolov's the engineer. Petrov's the baker. Two different people, both Pavels."

  Jin's stomach dropped. "I... what?" "We just spent ten minutes talking to Pavel Petrov. And you can't keep track of which Pavel he is, can you?"

  Jin's mouth opened. Closed. He reached for the memory: the old man with flour in his beard, the warm bread, the stories about wedding cakes and his father's bakery. The kindness in his voice when he said Jin looked like he'd been through a meat grinder.

  The name was there: Pavel. But which Pavel? The details were already blurring together. Had they talked about scanners or bread? No, bread. Definitely bread. But the specifics of the conversation, the things that made Petrov distinct from Sokolov, were slipping away like water through cupped hands.

  Jin sat down heavily on a nearby crate.

  Sonny crouched next to him. "This is what I mean. In the field, you have to remember faces, names, and routes. If you can't keep information for ten minutes..." "I'm a liability," Jin said. "You're someone who has to work harder than everyone else to stay functional," Sonny replied. "That's different." He stood up. "Come on. We need to get you to Chen's clinic. And Jin?" "Yeah?" "Start writing things down. Everything important: names, dates, places, your own timeline. Your memory's turning into a sieve, and you need to keep records."

  Jin nodded numbly.

  * * *

  A crash from the far end of the cavern. Raised voices.

  Sonny straightened immediately, hand going to his rifle.

  People were converging towards the entrance. Jin could see three figures stumbling into the cavern, supported by others. They were covered in mud and blood, moving like they'd been running for hours.

  One of them was limping badly, arm wrapped in a makeshift splint.

  The scout team.

  One of the scouts, a woman in her thirties with a shaved head and a gash across her cheek, was breathing hard. "JLA sweep," she gasped. "Professional. Systematic. They hit the supply route two days ago. Found equipment. Found... found bodies."

  The crowd went silent. "The squadron?" someone asked. "Captured," the woman said. "Not killed. We tracked them to the Sector 7 detention facility. Reed's facility." She looked around at the gathered faces. "They're alive. For now."

  Murmurs rippled through the crowd. Fear. Anger. Grief.

  Sonny stepped forward. "How many?" "All eight," the woman said. "Including Kade."

  Someone in the crowd made a sound, half sob and half gasp. A woman with a young girl clinging to her leg. Kade's mother, Jin realized. The little girl from earlier who'd stared at his scars. "We need to mount a rescue," a man said from the crowd. "That's suicide," another voice countered. "The detention facility is military-grade. We’d never—” “We can’t just leave them there!" "—throw away lives on a mission that'll—"

  The argument escalated, voices rising, overlapping, the community fracturing before Jin's eyes.

  A sharp metallic clang cut through the chaos.

  Chairman Shaw stood on the raised platform at the far end of the cavern, wrench in hand, an old oil can still reverberating from the strike. The crowd quieted. "Council meeting," Shaw announced, his voice carrying across the space. "One hour. Anyone who wants to speak can do so then. Until that time, get these scouts to medical and give them water. We don't make decisions in panic."

  The crowd reluctantly dispersed, breaking into smaller clusters of urgent conversation. Jin watched Kade's mother being comforted by neighbours, the little girl crying into her mother's shirt. "Come on," Sonny said quietly. "Let's get you to Chen. You need those wounds looked at properly before the meeting." "I'm coming to the meeting," Jin said. "You're barely standing." "I'm coming."

  Sonny studied him, then nodded. "All right. But first, Chen's clinic. Non-negotiable."

  Dr. Lira Chen's clinic was tucked into an alcove off the main cavern, separated by a tarp that served as a door. Inside, the space was organized chaos. Medical supplies lined shelves with obsessive precision: bandages, antiseptics, salvaged pharmaceuticals in labelled containers. Chen stood over an examination table, treating the scouts' injuries with steady hands. She wore a stained lab coat over practical clothing, her dark hair pulled back in a tight bun. Reading glasses perched on her nose, connected to a cord around her neck.

  She looked up as they entered, eyes immediately fixing on Jin. Taking in the wounds, the makeshift bandages, the marks on his neck where the hood had slipped again.

  Her expression remained the same, but her posture shifted, conveying a mix of professional interest and concern. "Another one," she said. No surprise, no hope, just acknowledgment. "Sonny, you keep bringing me impossible cases." "This one's different, Doc," Sonny said, closing the tarp. "Entropy-class. Temperature manipulation. And he's still coherent after several uses."

  Chen's eyes sharpened further. She set down her tools and approached Jin, gesturing for him to sit on an empty examination table. "How many times?" she asked, already reaching for his bandages.

  Jin opened his mouth to answer and realized he wasn't sure. "Three times, I think. Maybe four now.

  I'm losing count." "And how much have you lost?"

  Jin's throat tightened. "Recent memories mostly. The last month is almost gone. Names, faces, places.

  And it's taking older things too. Random pieces."

  Chen peeled back the duct tape carefully, exposing the frost-white scars beneath. For a moment, she simply stared. Her hand, steady when treating the scouts, trembled slightly as she reached towards the crystallized tissue. She stopped herself just before touching it, pulling back her fingers. "May I?" she asked, her voice quieter than before.

  Jin nodded.

  She pressed her fingertips to the edge of the scarring. Her breath caught, soft and almost inaudible, but Jin heard it.

  She pulled out a jeweller's loupe from her coat pocket and leaned close, adjusting the lens, her face inches from his neck. "Remarkable," she whispered.

  She traced the scars with a gloved finger, and Jin could see her thinking, analyzing, and cataloging. "The crystalline structure... It's not just on the surface. Look here." She adjusted the loupe. "The tissue has changed at the cellular level. And there are layers, like tree rings."

  She leaned closer, her breath warm against his cold skin. "Two deep, settled rings from old activations..." She paused, adjusting the light. "And three raw, jagged fractures on top. All fresh, within the last several hours. Five total." She tilted her head, studying the cluster. "One of these is different. Shallower. The biological tissue sealed around a wound, not a combat draw. Your body used the mark to prevent bleeding. Survival reflex."

  She looked up at Jin, lowering the loupe. "You said three." "The invasion, the dogs, tonight..." Jin's voice trailed off. "And something else," Chen said, setting down the loupe. "Within the last hour. Something you've already forgotten."

  Jin's mind raced backward. The tunnels. Running from the drone. The hatch opens into the sewers.

  He'd— The magnetic lock. He'd frozen it. Shattered it to get through.

  The memory was there, but distant, like it had happened to someone else. If Chen hadn't told him, would he have remembered at all? "That's the cost," Chen said quietly. "Not just what you lose, but losing track of what you've lost." She stepped back, her professional mask returning. "The scars show five uses. Your memory says three: the Xenunnaki, the neck wound seal, and the magnetic lock: three uses you barely remember. Trust your body, not your mind."

  She gestured to the examination table. "Stay there. I need to check the other wounds properly."

  Sonny leaned against the wall, arms crossed, watching.

  Chen worked efficiently, checking the chest wounds, cleaning them properly, applying real bandages instead of duct tape and torn shirts. Her hands were gentle but impersonal, the touch of someone who'd done this too many times to let emotion interfere. "How long do I have?" Jin asked.

  Chen was quiet for a moment, focused on wrapping a bandage around his ribs. “I don’t know. No one does. I’ve seen manifestations burn out after three uses. I’ve seen others last twenty.” She paused. “Every mark is different. Every host pays a different price.” Jin stared at the wall, at the charts and diagrams pinned up. Names. So many names. “But I can tell you this,” Chen went on. “Each use speeds up the next. The first time might cost you three days. The second, a week. The third, a month. It doesn’t add up in a straight line; it grows faster each time.” She looked him in the eye. “If you keep using it, you’ll reach a point where one use erases everything. And after that…” She glanced at Sonny. “You’ve seen what happens.”

  The creature in the tunnel. Dragging itself through darkness.

  Jin's hands clenched. "What if I just never use it again? Let whatever's left stabilize?" "Then you might keep what you have," Chen said. "Lock it in place. Stay coherent, functional, human." "But?" "But you'll never learn control. Never get stronger. And the next time you're cornered, when someone's about to die, when you have no other choice..." She paused, choosing her words carefully. "You'll use it anyway. And it'll cost more because you're untrained. Desperate."

  Jin leaned back against the examination table. "You sound like you've thought about this." "I've watched people try the 'never use it' approach." Chen's expression darkened. "There was a boy.

  Alexei. Fifteen. Fire-class manifestation. He swore he’d never use it after the first time. Lasted two weeks.” Her voice went flat. “Then a JLA sweep trapped him and three others in a sealed basement. No exits. Running out of air.

  He manifested trying to burn through the door, and it worked; he got them all out alive. But he lost six months of memories in thirty seconds. Doesn’t remember his father anymore. Doesn’t remember learning to ride a bike, his first day of school, his tenth birthday.”

  She looked at Jin. "That's what happens when you use it in panic instead of practice."

  Jin took this in. "So I'm supposed to do what? Practice forgetting myself?" "You're supposed to learn the difference between necessity and convenience," Chen said. "Between using it to save a life and using it because it's easier than finding another way."

  Silence stretched between them. "Meeting's in twenty minutes," Sonny said, checking a battered watch. "We should head over."

  Chen nodded. "I'll be there. Jin, you're welcome to come if you're up for it. But stay quiet and observe. This isn't your community yet. You haven't earned a voice here."

  Jin nodded. He understood.

  The basement beneath Chen's clinic was half laboratory, half storage room. Specimen jars lined shelves, their contents murky and unidentifiable. Anatomical diagrams covered the walls. A worn sofa sat against one wall, half-buried under medical texts.

  Chen handed him a bowl of the same thin broth they'd been serving in the communal kitchen, along with a piece of Pavel's bread. "Eat. Rest. I'll check on you in a few hours." She paused at the stairs. "And Jin? Start writing things down now. Not tomorrow. Now. Because tomorrow, you might forget you were supposed to."

  She left, footsteps fading up the stairs.

  * * *

  Jin pulled out the dart from his pocket. The symbol was etched into the metal. The broken circle. The eye.

  Inventory.

  He found a scrap of paper and a pencil on Chen's desk.

  —

  He wrote: Name: Jin Father: Idris Stepmother: Amaya Mother: Elara (deceased) Best friend: Theodore (deceased, invasion) Current location: The Undercroft, Sector 4 Mission: Rescue 8 captured people from Sector 7 detention facility Team leader: Sonny Doctor: Lira Chen Baker: Pavel Petrov (lost family: wife, 2 daughters) Uses: 5 total (invasion, dogs, Xenunnaki, neck wound seal, magnetic lock)

  He stared at the list. Already, it felt like reading about someone else’s life.

  —

  He tried to remember his mother's perfume. She'd worn the same scent every day: lilies and something else, something sweet he'd never been able to name. He reached for it.

  Nothing. Not even lilies.

  He tried to remember Theodore's laugh. The actual sound of it, not just the idea. The memory wouldn't form.

  He tried to remember the baker's name: the old man who had just given him warm bread and kindness less than an hour ago.

  He checked his list. Pavel Petrov.

  The name was there on the paper, but reaching for the memory attached to it was like reaching into fog.

  Jin closed his eyes and tried not to think about the creature in the tunnel, dragging itself through darkness, forgetting it had ever been human.

  Twenty-four hours until the mission. Twenty-four hours to hold onto enough of himself to be useful.

  He didn't sleep. Just lay there on the sofa, testing his memory over and over, watching pieces dissolve in real time, adding more notes to his paper anchor.

  When Chen knocked on the door hours later to check on him, Jin already knew.

  More was gone.

  He just couldn't tell what.