Chapter 14 · Memory With Teeth

The memory had teeth and it was eating me alive.

I was six years old. My mother's hands smelled like engine grease and cinnamon. She was teaching me to splice fiber-optic cable in the basement of our apartment on Outpost Vega. The light was yellow. The walls were blue. Her voice was warm.

None of it was real.

I knew that. I knew it the way you know you're dreaming right before you wake up. But the memory didn't care. It kept playing. Kept folding me into its arms. My mother smiled and her face was wrong. Too smooth. Too generic. A placeholder face generated by whatever program had written my childhood into my brain.

"Kira."

Senna's voice came from somewhere far away. Another world. The real one.

"Kira, you need to let it go."

I couldn't. The memory had hooks in me. It was showing me my tenth birthday now. A cake with too-bright frosting. Friends whose names I couldn't remember. I was laughing. I was happy.

I was a lie.

"Kira, I'm right here. Follow my voice."

I tried. I reached for Senna's voice like a drowning person reaches for air. But the memory pulled harder.