The sterile scent of disinfectant clung to Kien’s clothes as he stepped out of the Aetheris Tech facility each evening. He always felt a hollowness in his chest, a peculiar fatigue that lingered even after a full night’s sleep. Eight hours of his day, gone. Just like that.
Evelyn was usually waiting in the car, a serene smile on her face. “Long day, my love?” she would ask, her voice soft.
Kien would nod, rubbing his temples. “Just tired.”
But the exhaustion wasn’t normal. He started noticing small things. A faint, precise papercut on his index finger one Tuesday, a line so straight it seemed intentional. Another day, the faint smell of ozone on his jacket, though he never worked near high-voltage equipment in the memory-severance labs.
One morning, as he tied his shoelaces, he found a tiny, intricate knot in one of the laces, unlike anything he’d ever tied himself. It was a subtle, almost imperceptible detail. A message? From whom?
“Kien, are you coming?” Evelyn called from the kitchen.
He quickly untied the knot, feeling a prickle of unease.
The next week, the anomalies grew bolder. He woke with dried ink on his thumb, though he hadn’t touched a pen since he came home. Then, a single, perfectly folded origami crane appeared on his bedside table, a miniature marvel of precision. It wasn’t his style.
He picked up the crane, his brow furrowed. The paper felt cold, almost metallic.
That evening, after his memory-severance shift, he arrived home to find a faint, distinct residue of gallium on the sole of his shoe. Gallium, a low-melting-point metal used in the neural interface devices he was helping to design. Devices he worked on exclusively in the memory-severance lab.
His heart hammered. This wasn’t corporate security. The memory wipes, the exhaustion, the strange messages — his workplace self, unburdened by his personal life, was systematically leaving him clues. It was trying to tell him that his groundbreaking neural code wasn’t being protected; it was being harvested. Without his conscious consent. Without a trace.
“Everything alright?” Evelyn asked, watching him from the doorway, her head tilted.
Kien quickly wiped his shoe on the mat. “Just… tracking something in.”
He knew then. The daily memory severance wasn’t to ensure his focus, or protect corporate secrets from him. It was to steal his work. To take his algorithms, his genius, day by day, leaving him with nothing but exhaustion and vague, unsettling whispers from a self he no longer remembered.
➡️ Read CHAPTER 3 to continue the story
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