Sterben didn't move right away.
The briefcase sat there, half-cracked open like a secret waiting to be noticed. A blue glow pulsed from within, not bright enough to draw a crowd, but too unnatural to ignore. It wasn't just a glow; it was rhythmic. Like a heartbeat.
He crouched down.
Screams didn't follow. No sirens. No shadowy agents. Just the hum of a city that didn't care. People passed by like ghosts in their own loops. Someone reset and laughed, rewinding a spilled coffee onto their shirt. Another adjusted their memory log, deleting a bad date. Life flowed on perfect, polished, untouchable.
Sterben touched the briefcase.
The latch was old-school mechanical. No retina scan, no neural lock. It had clicked open slightly when it hit the ground, enough to tease what was inside: a cylindrical device, smooth, metallic, wired like a spinal cord. He didn't know what it was, but it looked… real. Dangerous.
He looked up.
The girl was gone. Blended into a crowd or erased from it.
Sterben picked up the briefcase, wiped off a smudge of dirt with his sleeve, and stood.
And for the first time all day, maybe all week, someone looked at him.
Across the street, in the reflection of a Reset Center's glass wall, a figure stood. Tall. Still. Dressed in gray.
Watching.
Sterben blinked.
The reflection was gone.
His stomach knotted.
He didn't go home. That would be stupid.
Instead, he took the long way, down subway steps, up again into a different district, down a side street lined with closed food stalls. He ducked into an old transit shelter and sat on the bench, the briefcase on his lap.
The silence finally caught up.
He'd been fired. He had no income. No contacts. No reset.
And now, somehow, he was holding something someone risked their life to run with. Something someone might be willing to kill to get back.
He opened the briefcase fully.
Inside was the device. Beneath it, neatly fitted into foam, was a small, cracked data slate with a blinking red icon: "Do Not Reset."
Sterben stared at it.
A joke?
Or a warning?
He looked up at the sky. It was already dark, light pollution hiding the stars.
A city built on control rewound seconds, scrubbed memories, lives on loop. He didn't belong in it. Never had.
But maybe he had something now.
A reason to stay.
Somewhere else, behind layers of surveillance glass and encryption, someone watched the feed from a traffic drone. The footage showed a girl colliding with a boy. The briefcase falling.
The boy picking it up.
"Who is he?" a voice asked.
A second voice replied: "No registered resets. No anchor points. No data logs. He's... a zero."
"A zero," the first voice repeated, almost amused. "How poetic."
Then the screen went dark.
Sterben didn't sleep that night.
He kept the briefcase under his arm like a lifeline, leaning against the rusted back wall of the transit shelter. The device inside was heavier than it looked. And warm. Not hot like electronics running too long, warm like breath. Like it knew it was being held.
The data slate powered on again in his lap, its cracked surface humming faintly. The blinking red words had shifted:
"ZEROTH. CONNECT?"
Sterben didn't touch it.
He had no idea what it meant.
In the early gray of morning, the city returned to routine. Reset Centers opened with cheerful chimes. Workers streamed by in perfect rhythm, earbuds in, some arguing, some laughing, most preparing for failures they'd never suffer, knowing they could always hit Retry.
Sterben stepped into the flow like a stone in a river. People moved around him, not seeing him. Not noticing he was carrying something heavy, something that didn't belong.
He needed answers. He needed the girl.
He went back to the alley.
Nothing. No sign of her. Just faded chalk graffiti and a crushed energy canister. But near the wall, there was a scuff, a long black streak across the bricks, like someone had tried to climb in a hurry.
He followed it.
It led nowhere.
That afternoon, as he sat in a grimy café pretending to drink his third refill, the slate buzzed again. This time, louder.
He slid it out. The screen read:
"SHE REMEMBERED YOU."
Then it flashed:
"ZEROTH: INITIATING PAIR."
The slate buzzed, then glitched, then burned out, the screen melting into black with a quiet hiss.
Sterben jumped, but no one looked. No one ever looked. Not unless it affected them. Not unless they had to reset something.
He left the café and didn't look back.
His instincts screamed: get rid of it. Drop the briefcase, walk away, find another job, lie on another résumé. Keep surviving.
But the thing was warm again.
He looked down at it as he walked, and for a moment, he swore, he swore it pulsed in sync with his heartbeat.
He turned the corner.
The girl was there.
She stood in the middle of the sidewalk, jacket zipped up to her chin, eyes darting. She looked thinner than before. Wired. Desperate. She spotted him and bolted.
"Wait!" Sterben called.
She ran.
So did he.
They cut through crowds and narrow streets, past food stalls and reset kiosks. The city blurred into noise. Sterben's legs ached. His breath burned. But he didn't stop.
Not like the others would. They'd just reset back to a full tank. But he couldn't. He didn't.
Finally, she slowed. He caught her by the wrist.
"Stop running."
She spun, terrified. "You shouldn't have taken it!"
"You dropped it on me!"
"You should've left it!"
"I don't reset!" he snapped. "I can't just undo yesterday!"
That made her pause.
Her eyes narrowed. "You're a Zero?"
He nodded once.
She looked at him like he'd said he was dying.
"…You really don't know what you're carrying, do you?" she said quietly.
"No."
She glanced over her shoulder, scanning the rooftops.
"We don't have time. You'll be dead before sunset if we stay here."
Sterben held the case tighter. "Then tell me what it is."
She stared at him, jaw set.
Then she said the words that cracked his world open:
"It's a prototype. A memory anchor. One that can't reset. One that remembers everything."
"…Why would anyone want that?"
"Because it's the only way to destroy the system."
She pulled him into the side alley of an old maintenance hub. Vending machines buzzed softly. A flickering wall screen advertised Reset Insurance in neon pastel colors. The irony wasn't lost on either of them.
She looked Sterben over one more time, like she was weighing whether to keep him alive.
Then she exhaled. "My name's Kira Velten."
Sterben nodded slowly. "Sterben… Stein."
"Seriously?" she muttered. "Your name literally means 'to die.'"
"Yeah. Try living with that one."
She looked away, almost amused, but the edge in her eyes didn't leave. "Okay, Sterben. You want the truth? Here's the short version."
She motioned to the briefcase in his hands. "That's the Mnemonic Core. A prototype designed to store consciousness, not memory like we know it, but everything. The full stream of thought, emotion, decision. Unedited. Immutable."
"Unresettable," he muttered.
"Exactly. Built by a research wing of a corporate faction called REMCORE. Think of them like the gods of Reset Tech. They made the system that lets people jump back in time ten seconds. Then thirty. Then minutes. Now… some elites get hours."
"And they want more?"
"They want eternity," Kira said. "But with control."
Sterben narrowed his eyes. "What does that have to do with you?"
"I used to be part of REMCORE," she said. "Top-of-class cognitive engineer. Helped build the thing you're carrying."
"So why run?"
She stared at the wall screen.
Because in the blinking glow of that Reset Insurance ad, she could see her reflection. And in her reflection, fear.
"They wanted to wipe dissidents. Not just reset mistakes, but eliminate entire chains of choice. Edit people into perfection. Anyone who questioned them? Gone. No trial. No memory."
Sterben looked down at the briefcase.
Kira continued, voice low. "So I built the Mnemonic Core. Illegally. Secretly. A way to save someone. Anyone. One mind. Fully preserved. One truth. Carried by a host that couldn't be altered."