The word landed like a pebble in dark water. Around them, the safehouse hummed with low life—filaments of power in the wall, the faint tick of a clock—but the sound of children laughing continued in the file, as though daring the silence to swallow it.

Mara crouched, turning the player toward the light. On the screen, the waveform bore a clean absence in the middle—an almost surgical blank. Hilix’s pulse narrowed. The Meridian could purge a memory, sure, but they left tracks. This was different: a hole cut not to erase guilt but to excise a name.

At the threshold of the day, Hilix decided she would go to the Archive. Not to hand herself over, but to find the missing thing, and determine why a child’s laugh could undo her.

She reached for the file and, for the first time since the Incident, allowed herself to press play.

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