Chapter 3: A Lost World Remembered

The swirling neon sky stretched above them as Ryo and Elena boarded an autonomous transport pod on the edge of the older district. The pod vibrated quietly beneath their feet as it lifted off the cracked pavement, gliding over a network of magnetic rails. They sat across from each other, the hum of the city below mixing with the distant chime of wind turbines high in the air.

Elena tilted her head, eyeing Ryo with a sharp, assessing look. “You’ve been quiet since we left the lab. What’s on your mind?”

Ryo drummed his fingers against the armrest of his seat. “That message… about rewriting memories. If it’s true, there might be things we don’t even remember—things they’ve already changed.”

Elena raised a skeptical eyebrow. “And how would we know? There’s no way to tell if we’ve already been... reprogrammed.”

Ryo met her gaze, his voice low and determined. “We find the core. We pull the truth out, piece by piece.”

She crossed her arms, leaning back into her seat. “And what if we find out something we can’t unlearn?”

Ryo didn’t answer right away. He watched the glowing skyline of LUX Metropolis glide past the windows—a city so perfect, it felt like it had been painted into existence. “I’d rather live with the truth, no matter how ugly.”

“Of course you would,” Elena muttered, closing her eyes briefly. “You’d set the whole world on fire just to light your way forward.”

Ryo smirked faintly, but said nothing. The pod shifted, dipping toward an older district hidden beneath the towering platforms of the modern city.

The transport slowed as it approached an overgrown station—a forgotten section of the city, draped in vines and moss. Buildings stood half-sunken into the earth, their glass facades long shattered. The words “Nexus Data Vault” flickered faintly on a sign embedded in the crumbling station wall.

Elena glanced out the window, her green eyes narrowed. “Why do all your plans end with us sneaking into decaying places that smell like wet concrete?”

Ryo shrugged, already on his feet. “Because that’s where people hide the things they don’t want found.”

As the pod hissed to a halt, Ryo jumped out, landing with a soft crunch on a bed of dead leaves. Elena followed with a groan, brushing dirt from her boots. She glanced around, her instincts sharp. “This place feels… heavy.”

Ryo nodded, pulling out a scanner from his jacket. The device blinked faintly, picking up encrypted signals hidden deep below ground. “The Nexus Vault was where the first prototype of the emotional signal was housed. If we’re lucky, we’ll find backup data logs—something that tells us exactly what they changed.”

They moved quietly through the ruins, following the signal deeper into the old complex. Stained glass windows, cracked and smeared with grime, reflected their shadows as they passed. Elena’s footsteps were slow, deliberate, like she was waiting for the walls to shift around them.

After descending a set of corroded stairs, they reached a sealed chamber. Ryo hacked into the control panel with fluid ease. The steel door groaned open, revealing a room lined with forgotten server stacks, their lights flickering dimly, like dying stars.

In the center of the room sat a sleek, hexagonal console surrounded by holo-panels that projected old data streams, flickering with static. As Ryo approached, the streams rearranged themselves into a fragmented projection of the past—shifting moments from alternate timelines, each more unstable than the last.

Elena leaned closer, eyes narrowing at the swirling data. “This… this isn’t history. These are versions of history. Like someone re-edited the world over and over until it finally worked.”

Ryo’s fingers danced across the console, pulling a thread of data from one of the streams. A glowing image unfurled in the air—a snapshot of the original timeline. The scene showed cities in ruins, streets overrun with riots, and desperate leaders gathered in secret, their faces grim.

“This is what it looked like before the emotional network,” Ryo whispered, his throat tight. “A world spiraling into chaos.”

“Perfect harmony built on fear,” Elena murmured, her voice almost reverent. “They didn’t create peace. They just cut out everything that made people... people.”

As they studied the timeline, the console buzzed with a hidden alert—an old, forgotten video message buried in the system. It blinked once, then projected a ghostly figure into the air.

The man in the projection looked haunted—his skin drawn, his eyes sunken. The same man from the audio logs in the previous lab.

“If you’re seeing this, then the network still holds its grip on the world. But listen carefully: the truth can only be found in the first version. You need to uncover the root event—the moment they first tampered with time.”

The figure’s voice cracked, filled with both urgency and exhaustion. “The Tear in Time was never meant to fix the world. It was built to cover up the past. If you go digging, you’ll find things you were never supposed to see. Things that will change you.”

The projection flickered out, leaving a suffocating silence.

Elena exhaled slowly, rubbing the back of her neck. “So let me get this straight: the emotional network isn’t just some social experiment gone wrong—it’s a cover-up for a worse reality?”

Ryo’s jaw tightened. “That’s what it looks like.”

“And now we have to go back to the beginning of all this? To the first event they changed?”

Ryo nodded, determination hardening in his gaze. “If we want the truth, we do.”

Elena crossed her arms, clearly unimpressed. “You really think you can solve everything by diving back into ancient history?”

“No,” Ryo admitted, his voice quieter. “But if I don’t at least try, we’ll be stuck in this false peace forever.”

Elena stared at him, her expression unreadable. Then, with a reluctant sigh, she slung her bag over her shoulder. “Alright, Nakamura. Lead the way.”

They left the chamber, the console’s projection still flickering behind them—a fragile echo of all the things that had been erased. As they ascended the cracked stairwell back to the surface, Ryo couldn’t help but feel the weight of the truth pressing down on him.

Every answer they found only brought more questions.

As they emerged from the Nexus Vault into the cold night air, a subtle tension hung between them. Elena kicked a loose stone, watching it tumble down the empty street. “I have a bad feeling about this.”

Ryo adjusted the strap of his backpack, scanning the horizon. “Me too.”

They stood in silence for a moment longer before the faint hum of engines echoed in the distance. A drone swarm—sleek, black, and menacing—cut through the sky, heading straight toward the old station.

Elena’s eyes widened. “They found us.”

Ryo didn’t hesitate. “Run!”

The two sprinted down the cracked street as the drones descended, their lights blinking like red stars. The truth they had uncovered was dangerous—and now, someone was hunting them for it.