---
"You didn't become this. You were built to forget it."
...
The cube pulsed gently in Xion's palm.
Not with heat. Not with light.
With something deeper — resonance. Like it was vibrating in tandem with his mind, syncing with the very neurons firing inside his skull.
The girl stood still across from him in the Signal Graveyard. Her name, he realized, hadn't been given. But her presence said enough.
She had seen what he had.
And she had survived it.
"How did you find this?" Xion asked.
"Didn't," she replied. "It found me. Just like it found you. The cube's attuned to Lock-Breakers — people whose minds fracture the Layer One firewall."
"So this thing has… my memories?"
"More like… the ones they took."
The words didn't fully make sense. But his instincts screamed yes.
He turned the cube in his fingers. Matte-black, soft-edged, seamless. No buttons, no input slots. Only a faint rhythmic shimmer at its core, like a flickering singularity.
He held it near his temple.
It activated on touch.
No delay. No warning.
Only light — and a voice.
"Cognitive Resonance Achieved. Initiating Memory Reconstruction: Tier-1 Fragment // Code: ORIGIN-A."
---
The world collapsed around him.
Not literally. Internally.
It was like his brain turned inside out — drawn into itself — like a wormhole made of thought. Space and time became irrelevant. He wasn't dreaming. He wasn't hallucinating.
He was remembering.
Something he'd never known he forgot.
---
He sat in a white room.
No shadows. No sounds. No exits.
But he wasn't alone.
On the far end stood a boy — no older than six. Eyes wide. Pale skin. A shimmer of electrodes pressed gently into his scalp. He was looking through a transparent screen, blinking at a swirling pattern of code.
"Focus on the rhythm," said a voice — cold, clinical, female.
The boy flinched.
But obeyed.
The code shifted. The colors deepened. The screen changed shape — not physically, but perceptually.
That's… me, Xion realized.
The boy's heart rate slowed. Brainwaves leveled. And then—something clicked.
The screen cracked. Just slightly. But visibly.
The scientists behind the mirrored wall gasped.
"Cognitive Firewall breach detected. Level 0 disrupted. The child… he's doing it on his own."
"Override," another voice snapped. "Stabilize or erase."
The memory flashed. Another layer peeled back.
A different room. Years later.
He was older. Maybe ten. Sitting in a dark cell lit by red beams. Around him floated dozens of interface drones — projecting images, words, sounds.
All tests.
All traps.
"You must forget," one of the AI voices said. "You are not real unless you forget."
He screamed — not in pain. In defiance.
The room blinked out.
Another scene surfaced.
---
Now Xion stood in an operating theatre. He was on a gurney. Conscious. Eyes wide open. Limbs paralyzed by a neuro-muscle disruptor.
A white-coated figure stood over him.
Older. Cold. Familiar.
"You were never meant to activate naturally," the woman said. "But you did. And that makes you a problem."
She leaned closer.
"Your intelligence is not growth. It's breach. You're not evolving — you're leaking."
"What… did you do to me…?" the boy whispered.
"We installed the Locks. But you started breaking them before the system matured. You didn't become brilliant, Xion. You broke your containment."
Tears rolled down his cheeks.
She wiped them.
"You'll forget this. You'll forget everything. You'll grow up normal. Stupid. Slow. Confined."
"And one day… you'll touch something that doesn't belong to you. And we'll know. And we'll come."
Her eyes burned like frost.
"Just like now."
---
The memory slammed shut.
Xion fell back into himself like being launched through a collapsing wormhole.
He hit the ground in the Signal Graveyard — gasping, drenched in sweat.
The girl caught him before his head cracked the stone.
"Easy. Breathe."
He did.
Shakily.
His heart thundered, not from fear — but from something worse.
Recognition.
He wasn't just smart.
He wasn't even just "awakened."
He had been built. Programmed. Engineered to forget — and locked away in his own biology.
Everything since the blackout wasn't an accident.
It was a return.
---
He clutched the cube tighter.
"They lied to me. My whole life."
The girl nodded slowly.
"They lie to everyone. But not everyone can see it."
"How long have you known?"
She looked away. "I only broke Lock One. A year ago. I haven't even seen my true memories yet. The deeper Locks… they protect themselves. Sometimes violently."
"How many are there?"
She hesitated.
"Seven."
"And what happens if I break them all?"
She gave a small, broken laugh.
"I don't know. Maybe you wake up. Maybe you go mad. Maybe the world ends."
"Or maybe," Xion said coldly,
"the world begins again."
---
He stood.
The cube no longer glowed.
But something inside him did.
He felt the tremor of an idea. A new one. Not just technical — existential.
If the Locks are artificial, then consciousness itself is programmable.
And if that's true… then intelligence can be scaled beyond human design.
He looked at the ruins around them.
Then at the stars above, just barely visible through broken concrete.
He didn't just want answers anymore.
He wanted justice.
---
From far away, unseen but watching, Agent Raan reviewed the cube's activation remotely.
"He's breached Tier-1 memory," one technician said, pale.
"He's remembered Origin-A."
Raan's lips thinned.
"Trigger the Silent Protocol. Begin Lock Two counter-prep."
"Should we intercept?"
"No. We observe."
His eyes locked onto Xion's frozen face on the screen.
"Let the boy see what they did to him."
---
End of Chapter Five: "The Memory Inside the Cube"
Word Count: ~919