She sketches what she sees. But not what's in front of her. What's buried. What's left behind. And now Rook sees it too.
Scene: Archive Annex, Lower Wing – 7:03 p.m.
It was quiet. Too quiet for this wing.
No guards. No cleaning drones. Just dust in the corners and the faint hum of old server nodes no one had touched in months.
Rook stood outside the classroom window, watching Callum alone at her desk.
She was sketching again.
This ti with charcoal.
Every line dragged slow. Confident. Like she wasn't trying to draw, but excavate.
The image forming was a corridor.
Dim lighting. A polished door. A specific insignia etched at its base.
And under the drawing, in crisp, practiced handwriting:
"I rember the way your mother whispered. Like rain trying not to wake the leaves."
Rook's heart stopped.
That line.
That wasn't hers.
That wasn't public.
That was sothing his mother used to say when he was a toddler, right before tucking him in. It wasn't a poem. It wasn't in any database.
It was hers. And it was dead.
He entered without knocking.
Scene: Classroom Interior
Callum didn't look up.
"You found it."
"You wrote a ghost's voice."
"I didn't write it," she said.
"I've never told anyone that phrase."
"You didn't need to."
Rook stepped forward.
"What are you?"
She finally looked at him. Her eyes weren't frightened. They were tired.
"I'm a mory chaser. I draw the things that leave echoes. It started when I was six."
He stared at her.
She went on:
"People leave trails, even after they're gone. Not just footsteps — emotional signatures. Most of the ti, they fade. But yours?""Yours cuts through walls."
She reached into her bag and pulled out a small, worn sketchbook.
Flipped it open.
Page after page. All of him.
From behind. From above. Hands clenched. Head bowed. Laughter he never rembered laughing. Monts he never thought anyone saw.
"I draw the things no one admits happened," she said.
"And your mother's phrase?" he asked.
Callum hesitated.
"I don't know how I saw it. I was sketching soone else. One of the Zodiac ca into my workshop last year. Just watched . Told to draw whatever I felt."
"Which Zodiac?"
She didn't answer.
Instead, she handed him a loose page.
A sketch.
Leo Virex.
Smiling.
And standing outside the orphanage where Reina raised him.
Scene: Rooftop Tower 2 – Later That Night
Aya t Rook beneath the communications array.
He handed her the drawing.
She stared.
"This was months ago."
He nodded.
"He's been watching longer than we thought."
Aya's eyes narrowed. "And she rembers your mother's voice."
"She doesn't rember. She echoes."
Rook looked out over the city.
His hands tightened.
"They're not just erasing the past.They're collecting it.Sorting through it.And if they're keeping her around—"
"They're keeping more," Aya finished.
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