Chapter 18 · The Echoes of Failure

"Don't move, Calder. Not one fucking inch."

Memory Seven didn't look like the girl I knew. Her eyes were jagged, leaking a pale, shimmering light that matched the purge wall closing in on us. She had a piece of reinforced glass pressed hard against his throat.

Calder didn't fight it. He stayed frozen, chest heaving. The black ring on his finger pulsed a violent, warning red.

"I can't... I can't explain it to all of you at once," he rasped. His voice sounded like it had been dragged through gravel.

"Explain what?" Another Lena stepped forward—Memory Three. She looked exhausted, clothes torn, a deep scar slicing down her cheek. "Explain how you promised to get us out and then left us to burn in the lower district? Or how you told us the Council was lying, then handed us over the second you got a chance at redemption?"

I backed away, breath hitching. Thirteen of them. Thirteen versions of me, all wearing different scars, all carrying different brands of grief.

And all of them hated him.

"I didn't leave you," Calder whispered. He looked Memory Seven in the eye. "I tried to—"

"You tried to save yourself!" she screamed.