THE UPLOADED CHILD
The memory was worse than she remembered.
She was four years old. Small. Scared. Standing in the doorway of her mother’s lab.
Her mother was on the floor. Not moving. Her eyes were open, staring at nothing. A syringe lay beside her hand. The contents—a blue liquid that Nova would later learn was a lethal dose of a homemade sedative—had been emptied into her veins.
Nova had stood there for a long time. She didn’t cry. She didn’t scream. She just stood, waiting for her mother to wake up.
Her mother never woke up.
The memory faded. Nova opened her eyes.
She was crying.
The Memory Thief was holding a small jar now, glowing with a soft blue light. Her memory. Her pain. Her secret.
“It’s beautiful,” he whispered.
“It’s not beautiful. It’s horrible.”
“Horror can be beautiful. In the right light.”
He tucked the jar onto a shelf. Then he turned back to her.
“The way to the Cage is through the Warden’s fortress. But you cannot enter the fortress as yourself. The Warden knows your face. Your code. Your signature.”
“Then how?”
“There is a child. Uploaded when she was four years old. She has been in Elysium for twenty years. She has never aged. She has never forgotten. She knows the fortress better than anyone.”
“Where is she?”
The Memory Thief pointed to a door in the corner of the labyrinth. A door that hadn’t been there before.
“The Outer Reaches. The gray fog. She wanders there, alone, looking for her mother.” He paused. “Her name is Wren. She is the only one who can help you. And she is the only one you cannot save.”
“What do you mean?”
“The Warden has marked her for deletion. Her memory is failing. In a few weeks, maybe less, she will fade. Become part of the fog. Forgotten.”
Nova walked to the door.
“Then I’ll save her.”
The Memory Thief laughed again, but this time it sounded almost sad.
“You can’t save everyone, Nova. That’s the first lesson of Elysium.”
She opened the door.
The gray fog swallowed her.