Chapter 14
Ember
The screen still pulses with Project Elysium—Restricted, loading like it’s taunting us.
I force myself to look away, focusing instead on the smaller threads and usernames drifting across the forum.
Anonymous voices, half-screams, half-whispers.
Survivors trying to stitch together broken memories to make themselves whole again.
Luke leans back, arms crossed, eyes narrowed in thought. “If we just lurk, we’ll look suspicious. Communities like this... they can smell outsiders. We need a cover.”
My stomach twists. “You mean pretend to be a patient?”
He nods slowly. “Not just any patient. One who lived it. It’s the only way they’ll trust us enough to share.”
The idea makes my throat go dry. Lying feels wrong when these people are bleeding their pain onto the screen. But I know he’s right. Without trust, the door stays closed.
Luke swivels toward me, studying my face. “We’ll build a persona together. You know what Kenzi went through and what she’s been remembering. We can create something believable from that. Nothing that traces back to you. No real details, just echoes.”
I bite my lip. My heart pounds at the thought of putting words out there, even fake ones. What if someone recognizes me? What if they can tell?
He rests a hand over mine, steady. “We’re not doing this to trick them. We’re doing it to get close enough to understand. To find the truth and maybe even help them, but if you were never a patient, what other choice do we have?”
“Okay.” I swallow, though the knot in my stomach stays. “So, where do we start?”
Luke’s eyes glint with something fierce. “We start with what they’ll believe. Someone young. Confused. Memories that don’t add up. A place that feels like theater, like performance.”
My breath hitches. “Someone like Kenzi.”
“Exactly.” He pulls his laptop closer. “We’ll give this persona a name and a voice. Someone who sounds like she’s still trapped inside it.”
I picture my mom’s face, Kenzi’s blank stares, the half-dreams that have haunted me since I was little. I let those fragments bleed into the words. Together, we type:
I remember the lights. The stage. They told us to smile even when it hurt. I still don’t know whether I was acting or if it was real. Does anyone else remember the bear with one eye?
The cursor blinks after the last word, daring us to hit send.
I hit send with a thumb that feels like it belongs to someone else. The post sits there on the thread, small and raw among the other anonymous ghosts.
We agree to wait. Communities like this rarely answer fast. They’re fractured, slow to trust. We’ll probably have to post several times over days before anyone pays us attention.
Then the laptop speaker pings.
A private message window pops up before I can blink. The username is a cracked, angry thing: Phoenix97.
Luke snatches the laptop and leans in. “You posted from the primary account?” he asks.
I nod.
He opens the message, his fingers trembling slightly as he scrolls.
The message reads, plain and blunt, the kind of language that doesn’t have time for small talk:
You shouldn’t be here unless you’re ready.
The bear = the mascot in Rehearsal C. The green room wasn’t a dressing room—it was Observation 2.
There’s a service stair behind the stage that goes down two levels.
Sub-level B has six cells and a central corridor.
The corridor’s walls have small square vents, not high enough for the doors but high enough to listen through.
If you know the bear, you’re not a tourist. Tell me what you remember. Don’t lie. — P.
My stomach drops so fast I have to clamp both hands on the desk.
“How does someone know Rehearsal C?” I breathe. “No one’s used that phrase on any of the public stuff we found.”
I’m pretty sure I saw that on one of the doors in the old Radley theater, though now I’m doubting myself because there was so much going on when we were there. But I can’t shake the feeling.
Luke’s face goes still. He’s already checking headers, timestamps, and whether the message routed through obvious relays.
“Phoenix’s account is old. Not a throwaway.
Message came through an encrypted relay.
He or she isn’t a bot.” He swallows. “And they used the same phrasing my scanner flagged when it matched a transcript I found in an archived file. ‘Observation 2’ and ‘sub-level B’ together. That’s not common. ”
The hair on my arms prickles. Kenzi’s green room, the one-eyed bear, and images from the theater flash in my mind like someone stabbing a camera into my skull.
I type with hands that won’t steady.
How do you know this? Who are you? Then I almost delete it. How many traps are words? How many ways could that be used against us?
Phoenix’s reply is almost immediate.
I was there. We were all there. I’m not looking for fans.
If you’re real, tell me where your memories start.
If you’re not real, walk away. And know this—some people here aren’t survivors.
They act like us to find folk who remember.
Some of them are programmed to shut people up.
Sleeper agents who look like friends, but they are not.
Don’t tell anyone IRL you’re posting. No names. Don’t post identifiable details. Ever.
Luke exhales a sound that might be a laugh if it weren’t so thin. “Sleeper agents,” he echoes. “Like plants. Embedded, activated.”
“Why would someone program that?” My voice is a whisper. “To keep people quiet forever?”
Phoenix’s next message is shorter and colder:
Because memories leak, and witnesses collect like stains. They’d rather control the witnesses than let them tell.
Luke and I exchange a worried glance. He starts typing.
I just want answers. My actual memories back. To leave the stage behind forever.
Then Phoenix replies again.
To move deeper, you’ll need a persona that bleeds the right pain without bleeding you.
If you’re real—and you sound like you might be—say one small thing only a real survivor would say.
Get caught lying, and you’ll be outed. If you’re honest, I’ll tell you how to get to Lost Echoes without leaving tracks.
But be careful who answers you next. Not all hands that wave are hands that help.
Luke’s thumb hovers over the touchpad. His jaw works hard.
My throat is raw, and my stomach heaves. My mind roves over everything I learned about Radley from both Kenzi and Billa. Things I saw with my own eyes. Whispers my mom cried in her sleep. It’s all so disjointed, I don’t see how any of it can be connected.
But that’s what we’re here to find out.
I type something honest, the tiniest thread of a memory that couldn’t be invented:
The bear’s right eye always fell out when we cried. They sewed it back with thicker thread during the shows.
The cursor blinks. Twice.
Phoenix answers, no flourish:
Good. Meet me in Lost Echoes in three hours. Use the referral phrase “white spool” to get noticed. Do not ask how I know. Don’t use your real name. And one more thing—trust nobody who calls you family here. They might be better actors than you think.
The window closes.
Luke’s breath is shallow. “Three hours,” he repeats. “We have three hours to make a persona that won’t get us outed, or worse, bring unwanted attention to Kenzi.”
My whole body is a map of tiny, electric, terrified places. I want to scream and to call my dad. To delete everything and hide. I want to leap into the screen and hug Phoenix until he stops warning me.
Instead, I close my eyes and picture Kenzi’s face when she looked at me and said, I didn’t want to. The memory of her hands, the way they folded like someone learning a new shape.
“We do this right,” I say finally. My voice is steadier than I feel. “We make her believable and keep every real thing off the table. Don’t give them Kenzi. Only give them an echo of the past.”
Luke nods, already opening a blank document. He’s calm in the way people get when they’re turning fear into plans. “We build an echo and we don’t answer anyone else. Only Phoenix. If this is one of their traps, we’ll at least be one step ahead.”
I stare at the screen until the white of the message window bleaches into nothing. Somewhere in my chest, something that has lain quiet for years—a small, stubborn ember of wanting the truth—lights and shivers. Three hours is nothing.
Three hours is everything.