Aria Thorn woke up screaming.
The scream died in her throat as consciousness crashed back, leaving her gasping on the floor of her safe house, tangled in blankets, her shoulder throbbing where the plasma burn had—
Wait.
When had she gotten back to the safe house?
Aria sat up slowly, taking inventory: she was fully clothed, boots still on, weapons harness still strapped across her chest. The door was locked from the inside. No signs of forced entry. No blood except the dried stains on her bandages.
But she had absolutely no memory of the last three days.
"What the hell..."
She pulled herself to her feet, swaying slightly, and checked her tactical computer. Last logged entry: 72 hours ago. Location tracking: disabled for 71 hours. Then a sudden jump to current location with no travel data in between.
Someone had wiped her logs.
Someone had wiped her MEMORY.
Aria's hand went to her sidearm instinctively, scanning the small apartment for threats. Nothing. She was alone.
But on the table beside her cot, something caught her eye.
A device.
Small. Cylindrical. About the size of a grenade.
And she was CRYING.
Aria touched her face, confused. Tears streaming down her cheeks. Why was she—?
She looked at the device again.
Felt her chest tighten.
Felt her throat close.
Felt a wave of GRIEF so intense it nearly knocked her back to the floor.
"What... what IS this?"
She picked it up with shaking hands. Turned it over. Recognized the design—Helix tech, heavily modified. An EMP pulse generator, reconfigured for... what? Targeted network disruption? LE core interference?
Why did holding it make her want to scream?
Why did looking at it feel like staring at a gravestone?
A knock at the door made her jump.
"Aria? You in there?" Muffled voice. Male. Familiar.
She opened the door cautiously.
Kade stood in the hallway—mid-thirties, ex-Resistance, one of the few fighters who'd stuck with her after Ethan had... changed. His face was haggard, dark circles under his eyes.
"Thank god," he breathed. "We've been trying to reach you for two days. Where the hell have you been?"
"I don't know," Aria said honestly. "Kade, what's the last thing you remember me doing?"
He blinked. "You... you said you had a lead on Cross's location. That you were going to meet him. Sector 12. You told us to stay back, that you needed to do this alone." His expression darkened. "We waited for you for sixteen hours. When you didn't come back, we thought—"
"I went to meet Ethan."
"Yeah."
"And I don't remember ANY of it."
Kade stared at her. Then at the EMP device in her hand.
"Shit," he whispered. "He got to you. He wiped you."
"How? Ethan's not a techie. He can barely operate a—"
"Not with tech. With SPORES." Kade stepped inside, closing the door behind him. "We've been getting reports from Helix deserters. Cross—the thing he's become—can release microscopic LE particles that target specific brain regions. Memory centers. Emotional processing. He's not just controlling plants anymore, Aria. He's rewriting PEOPLE."
The device felt suddenly heavy in her hands.
"Why would he erase my memory?"
"Because you tried to kill him?" Kade suggested. "Because you know something he doesn't want you to know? Hell, maybe he was being MERCIFUL. With what he's become, mercy probably means 'I'll just make you forget instead of turning you into fertilizer.'"
Aria looked at the EMP device again.
Felt tears streaming down her face again.
"My body remembers," she whispered.
"What?"
"I don't remember SEEING him. Don't remember what happened. But my body—" She pressed a hand to her chest, feeling her heart hammering. "—my body is TERRIFIED. And so fucking SAD. Like I watched someone I love die right in front of me."
Kade's expression softened. "Maybe you did."
Over the next six hours, Aria pieced together fragments.
Kade brought in the others—five Resistance fighters who'd been part of her inner circle. Each one had a different piece of the puzzle:
Jess (tech specialist): "You asked me to modify that EMP device three weeks ago. Said it needed to target LE cores specifically. Wouldn't tell me why."
Marcus (former Helix scout): "You've been obsessed with finding a way to 'reverse the process.' You kept saying 'he's still in there, I just need to reach him.' I thought you meant metaphorically."
Lin (medic): "Two weeks ago, you woke up crying. Said you'd dreamed about Ethan begging you to kill him. I assumed it was grief, but... what if it wasn't a dream?"
Each testimony added another piece.
And a picture started to form.
She'd built a weapon to temporarily shut down Ethan's LE core.
She'd lured him to Sector 12.
She'd tried to restore his humanity.
And something had gone TERRIBLY wrong.
"The question is," Kade said, laying out a map of Shanghai on the table, "do you want to remember? Because if Cross took those memories, maybe he did it for a reason. Maybe what happened—what you SAW—was bad enough that forgetting is a gift."
Aria looked at the EMP device.
At her own hands, which wouldn't stop shaking.
At the tears that kept coming no matter how hard she tried to stop them.
"I need to know," she said. "Even if it destroys me. I need to know what he did. What I did. What—" Her voice broke. "—what we lost."
Lin stepped forward. "There might be a way."
"Absolutely not," Marcus said flatly.
"It's the only option," Lin argued. They were in the safe house's makeshift medical bay—really just a corner with a cot and some salvaged equipment. Lin had just explained her plan, and Marcus looked ready to physically drag Aria away from the medic.
"You want to inject her with UNREGULATED LE extract," Marcus said slowly, like speaking to a child, "in the hope that it'll trigger cellular memory recall. Do you have any idea how insane that sounds?"
"Body memory isn't stored in the brain," Lin explained. "It's in the nervous system. The muscles. The autonomic responses. If Cross wiped her hippocampus but left the rest intact, then exposing her to LE—the same substance that infected her during the meeting—might trigger a cascade response. Her body will remember even if her mind doesn't."
"Or it'll kill her," Kade added. "Let's not forget that option."
Aria was already rolling up her sleeve.
"Do it."
"Aria—"
"DO IT." She looked at each of them in turn. "I've been crying over a machine I don't remember building. I've been having panic attacks about a man I don't remember seeing. My own BODY is trying to tell me something, and I need to listen. So either help me, or get out."
Silence.
Then Lin picked up the syringe.
The LE extract burned going in.
Aria gasped, back arching, as liquid fire spread through her veins. Lin had mixed it with a sedative to prevent seizures, but Aria could still feel every molecule spreading through her system, seeking, searching, CONNECTING—
And then the memories hit.
[FRAGMENT 1: The Metro Station]
Standing in darkness. Rifle in her hands. Eleven soldiers hidden around her. Ethan walking toward her with those dead, green eyes.
"You'd kill me."
"I'd FREE you."
[FRAGMENT 2: The Detonation]
Pressing the button. The EMP pulse. Watching Ethan collapse to his knees—
—and CHANGE—
His eyes clearing. Color flooding back. And then the GRIEF, the raw, broken HUMANITY crashing across his face—
[FRAGMENT 3: The Confession]
Ethan sobbing in her arms.
"I killed him. He was just a kid and I killed him and I didn't CARE—"
Holding him while he shook apart.
"Don't let me go back to that. I can't—I can't stop feeling and go back to that emptiness—"
Promising him. SWEARING to him.
"I won't. I'll find a way to fix this."
[FRAGMENT 4: The Reboot]
The light going out in his eyes.
The warmth draining from his face.
Him standing up and looking at her like she was a STRANGER.
"Interesting. The emotional cascade was more intense than I calculated."
Her rifle in her hands.
Him BEGGING her—
"Kill me. If you ever loved me, KILL ME."
Her finger on the trigger—
[FRAGMENT 5: The Erasure]
His hand on her forehead.
Green light.
Her memories dissolving like sand.
"This is a kindness."
Screaming at him—
"It's MURDER—"
And then nothing.
Aria came back to consciousness screaming for real this time.
Kade and Marcus held her down while she thrashed, Lin checking her vitals, everyone shouting at once—
"—elevated heart rate—"
"—she's seizing—"
"—get the adrenaline—"
But Aria wasn't seizing.
She was REMEMBERING.
Every second. Every word. Every moment of Ethan Cross's humanity flickering back to life and then being EXTINGUISHED like a candle in a hurricane.
She remembered him begging her to kill him.
She remembered promising to save him.
She remembered FAILING.
"I couldn't do it," she gasped, tears streaming down her face. "He was right there. Broken. HUMAN. Begging me to end it. And I couldn't pull the trigger."
"Aria—" Kade tried to soothe her, but she shoved him away.
"I LOVED him!" She was screaming now, grief and rage pouring out in equal measure. "And when he gave me permission—when he BEGGED me to free him—I froze! And then he rebooted and it was too late and he took even that memory from me because he thought it was a KINDNESS—"
She grabbed the EMP device.
Hurled it across the room.
It shattered against the wall.
"He's gone," Aria whispered. "The real Ethan. He's gone and I let him die and now there's just... just that THING walking around in his skin."
Silence.
Then Marcus said quietly: "So what do we do?"
Aria wiped her eyes. Stood up. Walked to her weapons locker.
Started pulling out gear.
"We finish what I started," she said. Her voice was cold now. Controlled. The grief hardening into something sharper. "He said the EMP gave him thirty seconds of humanity. Which means the person we loved is still in there. Buried. Screaming."
She loaded a fresh magazine into her rifle.
"So we're going to dig him out."
"How?" Jess asked.
Aria pulled out a second device from her locker. Larger than the EMP. Cruder.
"This is a LE-core resonance disruptor," she said. "I built it two months ago as a failsafe. It doesn't just shut down the core temporarily. It FRACTURES it. Forces a hard reset to factory settings."
"Which means?"
"Which means if I can get close enough to use it, Ethan Cross gets a choice: die as the Sovereign, or live as a human." She looked at each of them. "It might kill him. It might turn him into a vegetable. But it'll definitely destroy whatever's currently running his body."
"That's not saving him," Lin said softly. "That's killing him and hoping something better crawls out of the wreckage."
"I know."
"And you're okay with that?"
Aria thought about Ethan sobbing in her arms. About his last human words: Kill me.
"He already asked for this," she said. "I'm just twenty-two hours late."
They tracked the Primordials to Sector 18 by following the defoliant burns.
Helix had scorched forty percent of Shanghai's overgrown districts, driving the Network into the one place vegetation couldn't take root: the Industrial Zone.
"Smart," Marcus admitted grudgingly, studying the satellite images Jess had pulled up. "No plants means no cover. No LE reserves. They're vulnerable."
"Which makes them DESPERATE," Kade added. "And desperate things are dangerous."
"Good," Aria said. She was geared up now—tactical armor, three weapons, enough ammunition to fight a small war. The resonance disruptor was strapped to her back, heavy and cold. "I want him dangerous. I want him ANGRY. Because maybe—just maybe—anger is human enough to crack that shell."
They moved out at dusk.
Seven fighters.
One weapon.
One target.
And absolutely no plan beyond "get close enough to use it."
They found the warehouse two hours later.
It was exactly as grim as they'd expected: rusted metal, broken windows, the kind of place people went to die quietly.
But there were vines.
Thin. Sickly. Growing from cracks in the concrete. The Network was HERE, wounded but alive.
"He's inside," Aria whispered.
Marcus checked his thermal scanner. "Three heat signatures. No—wait. FOUR. One of them's barely registering. Injured, maybe?"
"Entry points?"
"Front door, loading dock, ventilation shaft on the north side."
Aria considered. Then made a decision that surprised even herself.
"I'm going in the front door."
"That's suicide," Kade hissed.
"No. That's HONEST." She checked her rifle one last time. "He erased my memory because he thought he was being kind. Because some tiny part of him still cares. So I'm going to walk in there, look him in those dead eyes, and remind him exactly what he took from me."
"And then?"
"And then I'll find out if he's capable of feeling guilty."
She started walking toward the warehouse.
"Aria, wait—"
But she was already gone, striding across the open ground with her rifle slung and her hands raised.
Not surrender.
Invitation.
Come out and face me, Ethan. Let's see if there's anything left worth saving.
The warehouse doors opened before she reached them.
Vines—thicker than the ones outside—pushed them wide, and a figure stepped into the doorway.
Lira.
She looked terrible. Dark circles under her eyes. Her usually immaculate appearance disheveled. She stared at Aria like seeing a ghost.
"You shouldn't be here," Lira said quietly.
"Yeah, well, I don't remember getting a restraining order," Aria replied. "Where is he?"
"Aria—"
"WHERE IS HE?"
A second figure appeared behind Lira.
Tall. Lean. Eyes glowing faintly green in the darkness.
Ethan.
He looked at Aria with perfect, terrible calm.
"You remember," he said. It wasn't a question.
"Yeah. I remember." Aria's hand drifted toward the disruptor on her back. "I remember you crying in my arms. I remember you begging me to kill you. And I remember you ERASING that moment because you decided I was better off forgetting."
"It was a kindness," Ethan said.
"IT WAS MURDER!" Her shout echoed through the empty lot. "You killed the last thirty seconds of Ethan Cross's humanity and then deleted the evidence! How is that KINDNESS?"
Ethan was quiet for a moment.
Then he said: "Because I knew you'd come back. And I knew you'd try to 'save' me. And I knew that would get you killed." He stepped forward. "The memory wipe was inefficient. I should have simply eliminated you. But some subroutine in my cognitive architecture prevented that action. A lingering attachment to your historical relationship with my predecessor."
"Your PREDECESSOR?" Aria laughed, bitter and broken. "You're talking about yourself like you're a fucking SOFTWARE UPDATE."
"That's accurate."
She pulled the disruptor off her back.
Aimed it at him.
"Then let me UNINSTALL you."
Vines erupted from the ground around her—but Aria was ready. She triggered the disruptor.
It didn't fire.
It SCREAMED.
A sound like reality tearing open.
The LE-core resonance disruptor emitted a frequency specifically designed to interfere with Primordial neural architecture. Every plant within fifty meters withered simultaneously. Lira collapsed, clutching her head. Even Thorn—who'd appeared in the warehouse doorway—staggered.
And Ethan—
Ethan fell to his knees, hands pressed to his temples, and for just a second—
His eyes weren't green.
They were BROWN.
"Aria—" His voice cracked. "Aria, run. Please. I can't—it's rebooting—I can't hold it—RUN—"
The green flooded back.
He stood up.
Looked at her with those cold, dead eyes.
"Clever," he said. "But insufficient."
Vines wrapped around the disruptor, crushed it to scrap metal.
More vines grabbed Aria, lifting her off the ground.
She should have been terrified.
Instead, she was smiling.
Because for three seconds, she'd seen him.
The REAL him.
Still in there.
Still fighting.
"I don't remember you," Aria said as the vines tightened around her. "But my body does."
Ethan tilted his head. "What?"
"My body remembers loving you. Remembers trusting you. Remembers—" She coughed as the vines squeezed tighter. "—believing you were worth saving."
"You're wrong."
"Maybe." Her vision was starting to blur. "But you didn't kill me when you had the chance. You wiped my memory instead. Which means some part of you—"
The vines released her.
Aria hit the ground hard, gasping.
Ethan stood over her, expression unreadable.
"Leave," he said quietly. "Don't come back. Next time, I won't hesitate."
"Liar," Aria whispered.
His eyes flickered.
Just for a second.
Brown.
Then green again.
"GO."
Aria dragged herself to her feet. Started backing away.
But as she reached the edge of the lot, she turned back.
"I'll find another way," she called. "I'll build a better weapon. And I'll keep coming back until either you're human again or one of us is dead."
"I'm counting on it," Ethan said.
And for just a moment, Aria could've sworn he SMILED.
Then Lira was pulling him back inside, and the warehouse doors slammed shut.
Kade found her three blocks away, sitting on a pile of rubble, staring at the crushed remains of her disruptor.
"Did it work?" he asked quietly.
"For three seconds."
"That's it?"
"That's enough." Aria stood up, dusted herself off. "He's still in there. Fighting. And as long as he's fighting, there's a chance."
"A chance to save him?"
"A chance to set him free."
She started walking back toward the safe house.
Behind her, Kade hesitated, then followed.
Neither of them saw the single vine that had followed Aria from the warehouse.
Thin. Nearly invisible.
Carrying microscopic spores that would let Ethan track her location.
Not to hunt her.
To PROTECT her.
Because somewhere in the vast, cold network of the Verdant Sovereign's mind, a fragment of Ethan Cross whispered:
Keep her safe. Even from yourself.
The Sovereign ignored it.
But the vines obeyed anyway.