By morning, the room felt heavier. Not with sound—there was almost none—but with anticipation. Every movement was more deliberate. Every silence more loaded.
Ysel rolled the portable interface across the floor between them, its flickering display casting thin blue light on their faces. Lines of Aurelis's internal mapping flickered onscreen—tunnels, wiring grids, sublayer accesses rarely patrolled.
"We hit this point here," she said, tapping an intersection beneath the memory routing chambers. "If we can overload the core conduit for just eleven seconds, it'll blind the local registry grid. Long enough to extract one archived memory string."
Kael studied the map. "And that memory?"
"Buried. Locked from citizen access. Something they didn't delete, just... buried. Kael thinks it's a name," she said, glancing at Eira.
Eira's breath caught.
"A name?"
Kael nodded. "I saw fragments. Before the archives rewrote the trail. It wasn't formatted. Not system-issued. Someone wanted it hidden, not erased."
A silence fell again.
They all knew what that meant. A name from before. A remnant of the human world, untouched by the city's calibration.
"I'm in," Eira said before she could talk herself out of it. Her voice sounded stronger than she felt.
Ysel smiled faintly. "Good. We move tomorrow night."
The risk would be immense.
But something in Eira stirred.
Not fear.
Resolve.
They didn't talk much that day.
It wasn't silence born of fear, but of focus. Each of them moved through the safehouse like threads in separate patterns—drifting, crossing, pulling back.
Eira sat alone near the grated vent where filtered light poured in like diluted sunlight. She hadn't realized how long she'd been watching the dust motes until Kael sat beside her, folding his knees to mirror hers.
"Do you ever think about what we'll do... after?" he asked quietly.
She tilted her head. "After what?"
"After we break something big. If we succeed. If we run. If we live."
The word if lingered too long.
"I used to," she admitted. "Back when I still thought about futures."
Kael didn't push. He just sat with her, his shoulder close enough to warm the air between them.
"I see flashes sometimes," he said. "Not memories. Not dreams. Just... pieces. Like my mother's hand in mine. The sound of her voice. My name on her breath."
Eira looked at him.
"What did it sound like?"
He didn't answer right away.
Then, quietly: "Like someone saw me. Not who I was supposed to be. Just... me."
She looked back toward the vent.
"I think I want that," she whispered.
Across the room, Ysel sorted equipment—small EMP coils, coded disruptors, a cracked visor she'd been patching for weeks. She wasn't as open with her memories, but her hands trembled slightly when she thought no one was watching.
Later, the three of them gathered for their final check. No ceremony. No grand speeches.
Kael handed Eira a small ring of copper wire threaded with black cloth.
"What's this?" she asked.
"Found it near an old schooling unit. I thought it might've been jewelry, once. Or maybe a toy."
Eira ran her fingers across it. It was rough. Imperfect. Real.
"I thought you could wear it," Kael said, shrugging slightly. "To remember."
She slipped it over her wrist. The cloth barely held.
"I won't forget," she said.
The safehouse dimmed as the outer lights shifted to dusk-tone. Somewhere beyond the walls, the city hummed in perfect, calculated cadence. The Registry would be sweeping for anomalies within the hour.
Ysel sealed the equipment bag and slung it over her shoulder. Her voice was steady when she spoke.
"If we don't come back, we still made something they can't erase."
Eira nodded. She didn't know if her legs would carry her through what came next.
But her heart did.
The quiet before was over.
The faultlines were ready.
And so were they.