Chapter 2: The Safe House

I'm still gripping the sticky note when I push through the records room door and into the hallway. The fluorescent lights overhead seem too bright now, the familiar corridor transformed into something hostile. Every door could hide someone watching. Every colleague could be reporting back to Keene.

Eleven days.

"Iris!" A voice calls from behind me, cheerful and oblivious. "Hey, wait up!"

I don't wait. I keep walking, my pace just short of running, heading for the elevators. Footsteps quicken behind me.

"Iris? Are you—"

The elevator doors are closing as I slip inside, and I catch a glimpse of confused faces in the hallway—colleagues whose names I probably know, whose lives intersected with mine during those missing months. People who might have answers or might be part of whatever conspiracy my past self uncovered.

I can't trust any of them.

The lobby feels like a gauntlet. Marcus waves from the reception desk, his mouth forming words I don't stop to hear. I push through the glass doors and into the sharp autumn air, finally allowing myself to breathe.

The train station is two blocks away. I walk fast, clutching the sticky note in my pocket like a talisman. Around me, the city performs its usual Tuesday choreography—businesspeople on lunch breaks, students clustered outside coffee shops, street vendors calling out their wares. Normal. Everything catastrophically normal while my world splinters into fragments I can't piece together.

The eastbound train arrives as I reach the platform. I board without thinking, muscle memory carrying me through the motions of swiping my transit card and finding a seat near the back. Only when the train lurches into motion do I pull out the sticky note again.

The address is written in my handwriting but with a slight tremor I don't usually have. I was stressed when I wrote this. Frightened, maybe. The numbers and street name are precise, but there's a small ink smudge after the unit number, as if my hand had paused there, hovering, deciding whether to commit this information to paper.

237 Westfall Storage, Unit 237, East Industrial District.

I pull out my phone and look up the location. The map shows a cluster of storage facilities near the old manufacturing sector, where warehouses have been converted into artist studios and tech startups but haven't quite gentrified enough to shed their industrial grimness. Twenty-minute train ride from here.

The train car is nearly empty this time of day, just me and an elderly man reading a paper newspaper and a young woman with headphones, her eyes closed, head bobbing slightly to music I can't hear. I watch the city slide past the windows—familiar neighborhoods giving way to commercial strips, then to the no-man's-land between districts where buildings wear their age like scars.

I try to imagine myself making this same journey during those missing months. Did I do it often? Was this storage unit a daily destination or an occasional refuge? Did I take precautions, check for followers, vary my route?

The questions multiply but answers remain stubbornly absent.

The train slows at Eastfall Station, and I disembark into a neighborhood I barely recognize. I've been here before—I must have, the station platform triggers a faint sense of familiarity—but I can't summon specific memories. The buildings here are lower, squatter, built for function rather than aesthetics. Chain-link fences separate properties. Security lights already glow despite the afternoon sun, preparing for the early darkness of late September.

I follow the map on my phone, walking three blocks north and two east. The storage facilities announce themselves with large signs—SECURE STORAGE, CLIMATE CONTROLLED, 24-HOUR ACCESS. Most look identical, variations on a theme of concrete and metal, designed to be maximally forgettable.

Westfall Storage sits at the end of a cul-de-sac, distinguished from its neighbors only by its particular shade of gray and the specific arrangement of security cameras mounted on its corners. I approach slowly, studying the building. Three stories tall, no windows except small vents near the roofline. A keypad-entry gate blocks vehicle access, but there's a pedestrian entrance with a card reader.

The security cameras swivel on their mounts, but their movements seem wrong. Too regular. Too mechanical. I watch one complete its arc and realized it's not actually tracking—it's just rotating through a preset pattern. When I look closer, I can see the indicator lights that should show active recording are dark.

Non-functional cameras at a storage facility. Either the building's security is laughably inadequate, or someone wanted it that way.

I swipe my transit card experimentally against the pedestrian entrance reader, not expecting it to work. It doesn't. There's a call button beside the reader, presumably to summon a staff member, but I don't press it. Instead, I try the door handle.

It turns.

The door opens onto a dim corridor lined with numbered units. The smell hits me immediately—concrete dust, metal, and something chemical I can't identify. Fluorescent tubes flicker overhead, some dead, casting the hallway in patches of light and shadow.

Unit numbers climb sequentially. 201, 203, 205. I pass them slowly, listening. The building is quiet except for the hum of ventilation and the distant sound of traffic. No voices. No movement. Either I'm alone here or everyone else is very still.

The corridor turns left, then right. More numbers. 215, 217, 219. The units have rolling metal doors like garage doors, secured with padlocks or, in some cases, electronic keypads. A few show signs of regular use—scuff marks on the floor, oil stains, the general wear of frequent access. Others look abandoned, locks rusted, dust thick on their handles.

I'm scanning numbers, looking for 237, when I round another corner and freeze.

A man stands at the far end of the hallway, his back to me, working the lock on one of the units. Dark hair, slightly too long. The particular slope of his shoulders.

My heart stops.

It's him. The man from my fragmentary memory. The face that came with such overwhelming emotion I'd had to brace myself against my apartment window.

I open my mouth to call out, but he's moving away, pulling up the rolling door of his unit with a metallic clatter that echoes through the corridor. He disappears inside, and the door rolls down behind him with a decisive bang.

I stand frozen, breathing hard. Should I follow? Knock on his door? Introduce myself to someone who clearly knows me but whom I can't remember?

Eleven days, Sarah's voice reminds me in my head. Make them count.

I don't have time for detours, for emotional reunions with lovers I've forgotten. I need to find unit 237 and understand what my past self left there.

But I note the unit number as I pass it. 189. I file it away, another fragment to examine later.

237 is at the end of a dead-end corridor on the second floor. I climb a concrete stairwell that smells of mildew and old cigarette smoke, my footsteps echoing in the narrow space. The second-floor hallway is identical to the first—same flickering lights, same industrial grimness.

The unit door is like all the others, a rolling metal gate secured with a lock. But this one has two security features: a standard keypad mounted at shoulder height and, beside it, a small fingerprint scanner that looks newer than everything else in this building. Professional grade. Expensive.

I stare at the scanner for a long moment. Sarah said I gave her this address three weeks ago, which means I was here recently. Which means I still had access. Which means my fingerprint should still work.

Unless whoever's hunting me found this place first. Unless they reset the security. Unless this is a trap.

I press my thumb against the scanner.

It beeps once, a soft affirmative sound, and a green light flashes. Something inside the lock mechanism clicks, and the keypad's display changes from LOCKED to READY.

My fingerprint. My storage unit. My secret.

I grab the handle at the bottom of the rolling door and pull up. The metal gate rises with a rattling groan that seems impossibly loud in the quiet corridor. When it's high enough, I duck under and into the unit, then pull the door back down behind me, sealing myself inside.

Darkness.

I fumble along the wall beside the door until my fingers find a light switch. Fluorescent tubes flicker to life overhead, revealing not the empty metal box I expected but something far stranger.

It's an apartment.

Not a storage unit converted into living space, but an actual, fully furnished studio apartment hidden inside this industrial building. A bed sits against one wall, neatly made with a gray comforter and two pillows. A kitchenette occupies one corner—mini fridge, hot plate, microwave, a small sink with a drying rack holding a single coffee mug. A desk and office chair face the opposite wall. A narrow door that must lead to a bathroom.

Someone lived here. I lived here.

The wrongness of it settles over me like a weight. This isn't a storage unit where you keep old furniture and boxes of college textbooks. This is a safe house. A bolt-hole. A place you maintain when you need to disappear.

I move into the space slowly, taking inventory. The bed looks recently slept in—the pillows have indentations, the comforter shows wrinkles. The kitchenette contains evidence of recent occupation: bread in the small cupboard (not moldy, still soft when I press it), coffee in the freezer, milk in the fridge with an expiration date still two weeks away.

But it's the walls that stop me cold.

Every available surface is covered with papers. Photographs pinned in clusters. News clippings. Printouts of what look like internal documents. Handwritten notes in my writing, some in neat block letters, others in frantic scrawl. And connecting them all, like a spider's web made visible, red string stretching from point to point, creating a pattern my conscious mind doesn't recognize but something deeper responds to with sick recognition.

This is an investigation board. The kind detectives build in movies, the kind conspiracy theorists plaster across basement walls. The kind obsessed people create when they're trying to map connections no one else can see.

I move closer, studying the arrangement. At the center, taking up the most space, are photographs of Dr. Marcus Keene. Professional headshots from the clinic website. Candid shots that look like surveillance photos—Keene getting into his car, Keene meeting someone at a restaurant, Keene entering buildings I don't recognize. Under his photos, notes in my handwriting: "Started Phase Three trials March 2019." "Eleven confirmed subjects, all staff." "IRB approval forged?"

Red strings connect Keene to other faces. Dr. Sarah Vance. Marcus the receptionist. Other clinic staff members I recognize but whose names I can't immediately recall. Each has their own cluster of notes. Some marked with question marks. Others with dates and times. A few with a red X through the corner.

And then I see them. Photographs of myself.

I'm standing beside the dark-haired man from my memory, his arm around my waist. We're smiling at the camera, and the expression on my face is one I almost don't recognize—unguarded, genuinely happy. The photo is candid, taken by someone else, at what looks like a park or outdoor cafe.

More photos. Me and the same man getting into a car together. Walking down a street, hands linked. Standing on what might be a rooftop or balcony, his lips pressed to my temple while I lean into him.

Under the photos, a single note in my handwriting: "Daniel Rourke. Memory engineer. Recruited by Keene 2018. Suspicious of Phase Three. Approached me February."

Daniel. His name is Daniel.

I touch one of the photographs, my finger hovering over his face. Daniel Rourke. Memory engineer. The man I loved during the months I can't remember. The man whose voice I heard screaming my name in that fragmentary flash of memory.

What happened to you, Daniel? What happened to us?

I tear myself away from the photos and move to the desk. Three external hard drives sit in a neat row, each labeled with dates spanning the missing months. A laptop, closed, with a sticky note on top reading "Password changed weekly—check notebook." A filing box, the cardboard kind lawyers use, stuffed with papers.

I open the box first. Inside, printed photographs—surveillance footage stills, by the look of them. Patients entering and leaving the clinic. The time stamps show early morning hours, late nights, times when the clinic should be closed. I recognize some faces from my client list. Others are strangers.

But several photos show something else: patients leaving the clinic with someone supporting them, helping them walk. The post-procedure disorientation is normal, expected. What's not normal is where they're going. Instead of being escorted to the recovery suite or helped into waiting cars, these patients are being led to a service entrance I recognize from the clinic's basement level.

The basement level where we store equipment and supplies. Where no patient should ever go.

I set the photos aside and reach for the laptop, but something catches my eye—a glint of metal in the corner. I look up and see it: a small device mounted near the ceiling, disguised as a smoke detector but not quite right. The lens is too large. The angle too deliberate.

A hidden camera.

I stand and move closer, studying it. The indicator light is dark, but when I press my finger against a small button on its side, the light flashes green. Active. Recording. Or at least, it was until the battery died or the memory card filled.

My past self was documenting everything. Not just building an investigation board but creating a visual record of her work here.

The camera's memory card slot is accessible from the bottom. I carefully remove the card—a high-capacity SD card, the kind that can hold hours of footage. There's a card reader on the desk, attached to the laptop by a short cable.

I insert the card and open the laptop, grateful when the login screen appears. At least this device is still functional. The password prompt stares at me, cursor blinking.

The sticky note said to check the notebook. I scan the desk and find it—a small spiral-bound notebook tucked under a stack of papers. Inside, pages of dates and corresponding strings of characters. Passwords, changed weekly, exactly as the note promised.

The most recent date is from three weeks ago. I type in the corresponding password, and the laptop unlocks.

The desktop is organized with the precision I recognize as my own. Folders labeled by date. A video player already open, a file queued and ready to play. The filename: "WATCH THIS FIRST.wmv"

Of course my past self would leave instructions. Of course she'd anticipate that the version of me who stumbled into this safe house would be lost, confused, grasping for context.

I click play.

The video opens on my own face, closer than comfortable, the angle slightly off as if I was setting up the camera and hadn't quite centered myself in the frame. I look terrible—hair pulled back messily, dark circles under my eyes, the kind of exhaustion that comes from too many nights without sleep.

"If you're watching this," my recorded self says, her voice rough and urgent, "then it happened. They got to you. Keene got to you. Or maybe you went to him. Doesn't matter now."

On screen, I rub my eyes and lean back slightly, and I can see more of the room behind me. This room. This safe house. The investigation board visible over my shoulder.

"I don't know how much they took," the recording continues. "Could be weeks. Could be months. I'm recording this three weeks after I first came to Daniel, two weeks after we confirmed what Keene's doing. So if they took everything from that point forward..." She pauses, calculating. "You're missing about six months. Maybe more if you're seeing this later than I hope."

Six months. She knew. She predicted this.

"First thing you need to understand," recorded-me says, leaning forward again, her eyes intense and fixed on the camera, "is that the memory vault technology doesn't work the way they told us. It never did. Extraction isn't a one-way process. The vaults have write-capability. Hidden, buried in firmware that took Daniel months to find, but it's there. You can extract a memory, alter it, and put it back. Or you can fabricate a memory from scratch and implant it. Make someone remember something that never happened."

My hands are shaking. I grip the edge of the desk to steady them.

"Keene has been running trials for three years," the recording goes on. "Started with simple modifications—changing small details in extracted memories, seeing if the subjects noticed. They didn't. Then he moved to implantation. Creating memories whole-cloth and inserting them during what the subjects thought was standard extraction."

Recorded-me reaches off-screen and holds up a document. Even on the small laptop screen, I can make out the letterhead: Mnemosyne Clinic Internal Research Division.

"Phase Three," she says, "is full personality reconstruction. Not just implanting memories but using them to fundamentally alter who someone is. Their beliefs, their relationships, their core identity. Keene thinks he can cure mental illness this way. Depression, trauma, personality disorders—just rewrite the memories that shaped the patient's psyche, install new ones, create a new person wearing the old person's face."

She sets down the document and looks directly into the camera.

"He chose eleven subjects for Phase Three. All clinic staff, because we have mandatory annual psychological evaluations, because our medical records are accessible to him, because he knows us well enough to predict who'll be compliant. Sarah is one of them. Marcus. Dr. Chen from radiology. Eight others whose names are on the board behind me."

A chill runs through me.

"And he chose you. Me. Us." Recorded-me's voice drops lower. "I found my name on the subject roster two weeks ago. Phase Three trial, scheduled to begin March 16. He was going to use me to test whether he could implant loyalty. Erase whatever made me question him and replace it with unwavering trust in his work."

March 16. The day after my last clear memory. The day my medical file says I requested voluntary leave.

"But I had an advantage he didn't count on," the recording continues. "I had Daniel. Daniel designed half the firmware Keene's exploiting. He knew how to look for what shouldn't be there. He found the hidden code. He helped me understand what was happening."

Her expression shifts, softens for just a moment. "Daniel wanted me to run. Take what we found, go to the authorities, burn it all down. But we both knew that wouldn't work. Keene has connections. Money. The kind of legal protection that makes whistleblowers disappear. We needed proof so solid no one could deny it. We needed time to gather everything, to build a case that couldn't be dismissed."

She leans forward again, and I can see tears at the corners of her eyes.

"So I made a choice. I let Keene think he was winning. I requested leave, came to him pretending to be burnt out, vulnerable, trusting. I let him schedule the procedure. But before he could implant what he wanted, I had Daniel extract everything—every memory from the day I first suspected something to the day I walked into Keene's office. All of it, stored in my vault, locked with a code only I knew then and only I can know now."

She wipes her eyes roughly.

"I'm telling you this because in—" she glances off-screen, checking something, "—in eleven days, maybe less depending on when you're watching this, Keene is going to make his move. He's been watching you since you came back from leave, making sure his implanted memories took hold, confirming you're the loyal colleague he tried to create. But he's paranoid. Smart. He'll test you, and when you fail that test because you're not actually the person he tried to make you, he'll come for the evidence."

She gestures around the room. "This safe house. These files. Everything Daniel and I collected. He knows I had help. He knows someone was feeding me information. He'll want it all destroyed and anyone who helped me silenced."

The tears are flowing freely now, but her voice remains steady.

"Daniel is in unit 189. Same building, two floors down. He's been maintaining his own investigation, cross-referencing everything I found. If something happens to me—if I fail to check in with him, if I don't show up when I'm supposed to—he has instructions to take everything to federal authorities. Medical ethics board. FBI. Anyone who'll listen."

She pauses, breathing hard. "But that's the backup plan. The nuclear option. Because going public means destroying the clinic, putting hundreds of patients at risk, ruining careers of people like Sarah who didn't know what Keene was doing. So the first option, the better option, is you finish what I started."

Recorded-me reaches off-screen again and pulls over a folder, opening it to show pages dense with text and diagrams.

"Everything you need is here. Patient records showing the real procedures versus what's documented. Technical schematics proving the vaults can write. Financial records showing Keene's offshore accounts where he's been funneling research money. Testimony from Daniel explaining how the technology works. Video evidence of unauthorized procedures."

She sets down the folder and leans close to the camera one more time.

"You have eleven days. Maybe less. Keene will move against you when he's certain you're not under his control anymore. Sarah will help if you ask her right, but be careful—she's been modified too, and I don't know how deep her programming goes. Daniel can be trusted completely. He loves you. You love him. Even if you can't remember it now, that's real."

Her voice breaks on the last word. She takes a shaky breath, composes herself.

"I chose to forget because I needed Keene to believe he won. Because I needed to hide what I know somewhere even a memory scan couldn't find it. And because—" her voice drops to a whisper, "—because I couldn't carry it anymore. Knowing what he did to people. Knowing he was going to do it to me. Knowing that Daniel and I had to stay apart, pretend not to know each other, act like strangers while Keene watched for any sign of continued connection. I couldn't live with that and stay functional. So I chose this."

She straightens, wipes her face one final time. "The code to your memory vault is in Daniel's unit. He doesn't know that—I couldn't risk telling him, couldn't risk Keene extracting it from him if things went wrong. But it's there, hidden in a way only you'll understand. If you need those memories back, if you need to remember everything, go to him. But be warned—there's a reason I locked them away. A reason I chose not to carry them."

The recording freezes, her face caught mid-expression, then the screen goes black.

I sit in the silence of the safe house, my heart pounding, my mind racing through implications and connections and revelations that rewrite everything I thought I understood.

Keene isn't just performing unauthorized research. He's committing assault, stripping away people's identities and replacing them with fabricated ones. And I was going to be his next victim.

No. I was his victim. I just escaped by erasing myself first.

I look around the safe house with new understanding. The investigation board. The surveillance footage. The encrypted hard drives. This isn't paranoia. This is documentation. Evidence. Everything I need to destroy Marcus Keene and expose what he's done.

Eleven days.

I need to move faster.

I turn back to the desk and start going through papers with systematic efficiency. The folder recorded-me showed on camera is right where she left it, thick with documentation. I flip through it quickly, my eyes scanning for key points.

Patient consent forms with signatures that don't match the handwriting samples on file. Financial records showing wire transfers to offshore accounts. Email correspondence between Keene and someone named Dr. Elizabeth Marsh discussing "subject compliance" and "personality integration success rates."

And then, buried in the middle of the stack, I find it: a photograph.

Me and Dr. Keene at what looks like a formal dinner. Both of us in evening wear, glasses of wine, smiling at the camera. The photo is from five years ago according to the date stamp in the corner. I'm younger, my hair styled differently, wearing a dress I vaguely remember buying for some clinic function.

I flip the photo over.

On the back, in my handwriting: "Before I knew what he was."

Before I knew.

Which means there was a time when I trusted him. When we were, if not friends, then at least friendly colleagues. When I saw him as a brilliant researcher pushing boundaries rather than a predator exploiting vulnerable people.

The betrayal hits me fresh, visceral. He wasn't just targeting strangers. He was targeting people who knew him, trusted him, worked alongside him.

People like me.

I set the photo aside and keep digging through the folder. More evidence. More documentation. Technical schematics that mean nothing to my untrained eye but that Daniel could presumably explain. Patient intake forms. Recovery notes. Everything meticulously organized, cross-referenced, prepared for presentation to authorities.

And underneath everything else, a document that makes my blood run cold.

It's a technical schematic, labeled "Memory Vault Device - Model MV-7 (Current Production)." The diagram shows the internal components of the vault technology—processors, storage modules, biometric security features. Standard hardware, exactly what I've seen in training materials.

But in red ink, someone—Daniel, I assume, based on the handwriting that's not mine—has circled a component labeled "Bi-Directional Neural Interface Port" and drawn an arrow to a handwritten note: "THIS SHOULD NOT EXIST. Read-only devices don't need two-way communication with neural tissue. Write-capability CONFIRMED."

Below that, more notes in red: "Firmware contains hidden partition with memory fabrication protocols. Encrypted but accessible with admin credentials. All vaults manufactured after 2019 contain this feature. Earlier models retrofitted during 'security updates' in 2020."

Every vault. Every single device we've implanted in patients' heads for the past five years has the capability to not just extract memories but to alter them. To create them. To fundamentally rewrite human consciousness.

And nobody knows except Keene and whoever else is part of this conspiracy.

I sit back in the desk chair, overwhelmed. The scope of this is staggering. It's not just a rogue doctor performing unauthorized research. It's a systematic deception that implicates the entire foundation of the memory deletion industry.

How many people have been modified without their knowledge? How many clients did I personally counsel, guide through the extraction process, help seal away their trauma—never knowing that someone might later access those vaults, change those memories, return them altered?

The nausea returns, and I have to close my eyes and breathe slowly until it passes.

When I open them again, I notice something I missed before. A locked drawer in the desk, secured with a small padlock. I try the handle. Locked tight.

I scan the safe house, looking for a key. It's not on the desk, not on any obvious hook or shelf. Where would I hide a key?

My eyes land on the bookshelf beside the bed. A dozen books, mostly technical manuals about neurology and memory formation, a few novels that must be for escape reading. And one book that looks different from the others—a thick hardcover with a cracked spine, the kind of book that's been read many times.

I pull it from the shelf. "The Odyssey," translated by Robert Fagles. I open the cover and pages fall out, cut away from the center to create a hollow space.

Inside the hollow, a small key.

Of course. Memory, identity, the journey home—my past self had a sense of humor even in the middle of conspiracy and fear.

I take the key back to the desk and unlock the drawer. Inside, a thin manila folder containing what looks like official clinic documents. I pull them out and spread them across the desk.

My personnel file. Not the sanitized version in the clinic's main database, but what looks like an original, unedited file. I flip through pages of performance reviews, training certifications, medical clearances—all standard.

Until I reach a document dated March 14. Two days before my "voluntary leave."

It's a suspension notice.

"Employee Iris Mitchell is hereby suspended from all duties pending investigation into unauthorized access to patient records and surgical schedules. Employee is restricted from clinic premises and required to surrender all access credentials. Investigation to be conducted by Dr. Marcus Keene, Chief of Medical Services, with findings due April 1."

I read it three times. Suspended. Not on leave. Suspended for unauthorized access to records.

Because I was investigating. Because I found something Keene didn't want found, and he caught me.

But according to my official file, I requested leave. According to everyone at the clinic, I went on voluntary medical leave for burnout and recovery. The suspension was erased from the record, replaced with a narrative that made me look unstable, fragile, in need of the very procedure Keene wanted to perform.

How easy it must have been for him. A suspension notice becomes a leave request. A theft of patient data becomes concern for my mental health. Forced extraction becomes voluntary procedure. And everyone believes it because why wouldn't they? Dr. Keene is respected, brilliant, trusted.

And I'm just a grief counselor who worked too hard and needed a break.

I'm still staring at the suspension notice when I hear it: footsteps in the corridor outside.

I freeze, listening. The footsteps are purposeful, not the random wandering of someone looking for their unit. They're coming closer, heading in this direction with clear intention.

I glance at the rolling metal door. Still closed, still secured. But anyone with override access could open it. Anyone with building security credentials.

Anyone like Dr. Keene.

The footsteps stop directly outside my unit.

A long silence.

Then: three sharp knocks against the metal door.

"Iris?" A man's voice, familiar but not Keene's. Younger. Warmer. "Iris, I know you're in there. I saw you come up. We need to talk."

Daniel.

My heart hammers against my ribs. The man I loved. The man I can't remember. The man who, according to my recorded self, can be trusted completely.

But I've trusted before, and look where it got me.

"Iris, please." His voice sounds strained, urgent. "I've been watching for you. Waiting for you to come back. Sarah told me you'd remember eventually, that you'd find your way here. But we're running out of time. Keene knows. He knows you're not stable, that the implant didn't take. He's planning something for tomorrow. We need to move now."

Tomorrow. Not eleven days. Tomorrow.

Sarah lied. Or Sarah was wrong. Or Sarah is more deeply programmed than my past self realized.

"I'm going to roll up the door," Daniel says. "Don't be afraid. It's me. It's Daniel. You know me even if you can't remember knowing me."

I hear the sound of keypad buttons being pressed. He has the access code. Of course he does—we worked together, planned together. He probably helped me set up this safe house.

The lock clicks. The door begins to roll upward with its characteristic metallic rattle.

I'm still sitting at the desk, frozen, my hand on the suspension notice, surrounded by evidence of a conspiracy that's about to become very immediate and very dangerous.

The door rises high enough to reveal feet, legs, a torso, and finally the face that's been haunting my fragmentary memories. Daniel Rourke, dark hair disheveled, eyes intense and frightened and fixed on me with an expression that contains so much history, so much emotion, so much shared experience that I'm a stranger to.

He steps into the safe house, and the door rolls back down behind him, sealing us both inside.

"Iris," he says, and his voice breaks on my name. "Thank God. I thought—when you didn't come back, when they said you were returning to work like nothing happened, I thought Keene had won. I thought I'd lost you."

He takes a step toward me, hands raised in a gesture that's meant to be reassuring but looks more like pleading.

"We have to leave. Now. Tonight. Keene is planning a clinic-wide meeting tomorrow, and I hacked the agenda—you're listed for 'performance review and memory verification.' That's code. That's what he calls it when he needs to check whether an implant is holding or if he needs to go back in and reinforce it."

I find my voice, though it comes out rough. "How do I know I can trust you?"

The question stops him mid-step. Pain flashes across his face, quickly suppressed. "You don't. You can't. You don't remember me. You don't remember us. You don't remember the last six months we spent falling in love while documenting the worst thing either of us has ever seen."

He pulls something from his pocket—a small thumb drive. "But maybe you'll trust this. It's the code. The six-digit code to unlock your memory vault. Your past self gave it to me three weeks ago, made me memorize it, told me to keep it somewhere even a memory extraction couldn't find it."

He taps his temple. "It's in here, burned into my procedural memory, embedded in a sequence I do every morning. I couldn't forget it if I tried. And I'm giving it to you now because you're going to need those memories back if we're going to survive tomorrow."

He holds out the thumb drive. "Everything's on here. The code. Videos of us together. Evidence your past self wanted you to have. Take it. Or don't. But decide fast, because in about six hours, Keene is going to realize you came to this safe house, and when he does, he'll bring security, backup, maybe police with some fabricated warrant. We need to be gone before then."

I stare at the thumb drive, at Daniel's outstretched hand, at the desperate hope in his eyes.

Eleven days has become tomorrow has become six hours.

The timeline is collapsing, and I'm still sitting here surrounded by evidence I barely understand, being asked to trust a man I don't remember, to make decisions that will determine not just my future but the futures of everyone Keene has victimized.

"What's on the tablet?" I ask, gesturing to the device with the "WATCH THIS FIRST" video file. "My past self made a recording. Instructions. She said you'd help."

"I will help. I am helping." Daniel moves closer but doesn't touch me, respecting the distance I clearly need. "But the instructions were made three weeks ago. Things have changed. Accelerated. Keene is moving faster than we predicted. That meeting tomorrow—it wasn't supposed to happen for another week. Something spooked him."

"What spooked him?"

"You did." Daniel's smile is sad. "You came back different. Not the loyal colleague he tried to create. Different enough that he noticed. Different enough that he knows the implant failed or is failing. So he's moving up his timeline, planning to fix you before you can fully wake up and remember what he did."

I stand from the desk, my legs shaky but functional. "Show me. Show me what's on the drive. Prove you're who you say you are."

Daniel nods and moves to the laptop, inserting the thumb drive into an available port. Files populate on the screen—videos, documents, images. He clicks on a video file dated five months ago.

The video opens on the two of us, sitting together on the bed in this very safe house. We're close, shoulders touching, and the intimacy between us is obvious even in a simple frame. Past-me is talking, explaining something about neural mapping protocols while Daniel listens with complete attention, occasionally asking questions or pointing at the papers spread between us.

At one point, he says something that makes me laugh—really laugh, the kind of genuine joy I can't remember feeling in years. And the way he looks at me when I laugh, the softness in his expression, the tenderness—

That can't be faked. You can't fabricate that kind of emotion.

"Keep watching," Daniel says quietly beside me.

In the video, past-me turns to the camera—she must have set it to record deliberately—and speaks directly to it. To me, watching now from five months in her future.

"If you're seeing this," she says, "then you're in the safe house, and Daniel has given you the code. You're wondering if you can trust him. You're wondering if any of this is real or if it's an elaborate trap. I know because I'd wonder the same thing."

She reaches off-screen and holds up a photograph. Even on the small laptop screen, I can see it's the same photo currently pinned to the investigation board—me and Daniel at the park, happy, together.

"This is real," past-me says. "What we found is real. What Keene did is real. And what Daniel and I feel for each other—that's real too. More real than anything I've felt in years. More real than I knew I was capable of feeling."

She sets down the photo and looks directly at the camera, directly at me.

"I'm going to forget this. I'm going to forget him. I'm going to wake up one morning with a scar behind my ear and six months of my life missing, and I'm going to be terrified and confused and desperate for answers. But I need you to understand—I chose this. Not because I wanted to forget Daniel, but because it was the only way to protect what we found. The only way to hide it somewhere Keene couldn't reach."

Her voice drops lower. "Trust him. Trust yourself. And finish what we started."

The video ends.

I stand in the silence of the safe house, Daniel beside me, the weight of my past self's words settling over everything.

"The code," I finally say. "What is it?"

Daniel pulls the thumb drive from the laptop and hands it to me. "It's written in a file on here. Encrypted, but with a password I know you'll figure out. Your past self was clever that way—she hid things in plain sight, in references only you would understand."

I close my fingers around the drive. "Six hours, you said. Before Keene realizes."

"Maybe less. Maybe we already don't have that long." Daniel moves toward the investigation board, studying it with familiar eyes. "We have two choices. One: we run. Take everything here, go to federal authorities, blow this wide open and hope the evidence is enough to protect us from whatever Keene throws at us legally. Two: we go to the meeting tomorrow. You let Keene think his implant is working, play the loyal colleague, get close enough to gather the final pieces of evidence we need—direct testimony, maybe a recording of him admitting what he's done. Risky, but it gives us an airtight case."

"And if I can't play the role convincingly? If he realizes I'm faking?"

"Then he'll have me extracted and you reimplanted before anyone can stop him." Daniel's voice is flat, matter-of-fact. "And everything we've worked for—everything your past self sacrificed—will be erased."

I look at the evidence surrounding me. The investigation board. The files. The schematics proving memory vaults can write. The testimony waiting to be given. Six months of work, of danger, of love and fear and determination.

Six months I chose to forget.

And now, standing in the safe house my past self built, holding a thumb drive containing the code to unlock my own memories, I have to decide: do I trust that past self's judgment? Do I follow the plan she set in motion? Or do I make my own choice, here and now, with the limited information I have?

"Show me everything," I tell Daniel. "All the files. All the evidence. I need to understand what we're dealing with before I can decide what to do next."

He nods and returns to the laptop, pulling up folder after folder. We sit together at the desk—carefully not touching, maintaining the distance my amnesia requires—and he walks me through it all.

Patient files showing discrepancies between reported procedures and actual procedures performed. Financial records proving Keene has been embezzling research funds. Technical documentation that Daniel explains in terms I can almost understand, pointing out the hidden write-capabilities, the fabricated memory protocols, the depth of the deception.

"Here," he says, opening a video file. "This is footage from the hidden camera. Watch."

The video shows this safe house from a slightly elevated angle—the camera's perspective from its hiding place in the fake smoke detector. I watch myself enter the frame, moving with purpose, spreading papers across the desk. Then Daniel enters—the past version of him, five months ago—and they embrace. Not passionately, but with the kind of exhausted relief of two people who've been apart too long and can finally stop pretending.

They talk. I can't hear the audio clearly, but I can see the intensity of the conversation. At one point, past-me starts crying, and past-Daniel holds her, letting her break down completely before helping her pull herself back together.

This happened. This was real. Whatever else is uncertain, the emotion in that footage can't be fabricated.

"I loved you," I say, and it's not quite a question.

"You loved me," Daniel confirms quietly. "And I loved you. Love you. Present tense. Even if you don't remember it, even if you can never remember it—it was real. It is real."

I turn away from the laptop screen, unable to watch anymore. The safe house feels smaller now, the walls closing in. Too much information, too much evidence, too much emotion crowding into a space that already feels overfull.

"I need time," I say. "To process this. To understand what my past self was thinking. To decide what comes next."

"We don't have time." Daniel's voice is gentle but urgent. "Six hours, remember? Maybe less."

"Then I'll work fast."

He studies my face for a long moment, then nods. "Okay. I'll go back to my unit. Give you space. But Iris—when you make your decision, whatever it is, I'm with you. We're in this together, whether you remember it or not."

He moves toward the rolling door, then pauses. "The code to your vault. When you're ready, when you want those memories back—it's on the drive. The encryption password is a word only you would know. Something from your childhood. Something that made you who you are."

Before I can ask what he means, he's raising the door, slipping out, and letting it roll back down behind him. His footsteps fade down the corridor, leaving me alone with evidence of a conspiracy, a love I can't remember, and a choice I have to make.

I turn back to the desk, to the thumb drive still clutched in my hand, to the laptop screen still showing paused footage of two people in love trying to save the world.

Or at least trying to save the small corner of it they can reach.

I insert the thumb drive again and search through the files until I find it: a text document labeled "VAULT_CODE.txt." I open it, and a dialog box appears requesting a password.

A word from my childhood. Something that made me who I am.

I think back, past the missing months, past my career at the clinic, past my training and education. Back to the beginning, to the memory that first taught me why memories matter.

My grandmother, sitting beside me in her garden, telling me stories. Her hands wrinkled and spotted with age, gentle as she braided flowers into my hair. Her voice, warm as summer, speaking a word that meant both "remember" and "hold dear" in the language she'd brought from the old country.

A word I haven't thought about in years but that's been carved into my foundation since I was small enough to sit in her lap.

I type it into the password field: memento.

The encryption breaks. The file opens.

Six digits appear on the screen, simple and devastating: 052847.

The code to unlock my memory vault. The key to six months of experience, emotion, and evidence that I chose to lock away.

I stare at the numbers, memorizing them even as part of me wonders if I should. My past self left warnings. Don't open this. You chose to forget for a reason.

But she also left a way back. She gave Daniel the code. She created this elaborate fail-safe, this breadcrumb trail leading me exactly here, to this moment, to this choice.

Open the vault or trust the warning. Remember or remain in carefully constructed ignorance. Become whole or stay fractured.

The decision sits before me like a door I can't see beyond, and my hand is on the handle, and time is running out.