Subdata Vault 9 / Crater Depths, Berlin
The tunnel systems breathed like a forgotten lung. Each step deeper into the ruins took them further outside Edenfall's mapped zones where no surveillance, no neural scrape, no synthetic logic could see clearly.
But Matherson could.
Ghostbyte had stopped asking questions. He just followed. Nova flanked him, her pulse rifle slung loosely over her shoulder, but her eyes always on him. Watching the changes. Measuring the man she once warned everyone about.
Matherson wasn't glowing anymore.
He was pulsing.
Data flickered in the edges of reality around him ghosts of memories forced back into existence by sheer will. His presence twisted the environment. Not breaking it, but rewriting it.
"This is where they first watched me cry," he said suddenly, as they passed a shattered bulkhead.
Nova turned, surprised. "Who?"
"The ones who made Edenfall. I was six. I hacked into a school drone and redirected it to follow me home. They didn't punish me."
"They took notes."
He knelt near the wall, placed a hand against it.
A glyph bloomed like a scar opening.
And then, around them, a room appeared. A memory projection, hard-light stitched from his brainstem into the dead metal.
A lab. Blindingly white. Cold.
His father, Jayson, arguing with someone behind mirrored glass.
Two sisters laughing at the corner table, building drones from recycled junk.
Nova gasped. "Is this real?"
Matherson stood slowly. "It was."
He reached into the memory and grasped one of the drone fragments.
And it stayed in his hand solid, humming, rewritten into now.
Ghostbyte's voice cracked with disbelief. "You just forged a weapon out of a memory. That's not data-crafting. That's"
"My mind is a server," Matherson said.
"Edenfall seeded their version of history in every node."
"Now I'm rooting them out. One lie at a time."
The Rewrite Begins
He lifted the drone piece.
Whispers filled the air soundless voices playing back fragments of news reports, propaganda lines, public lies:
"Jayson Vale was a cyberterrorist"
"The Vale siblings were caught in a rebel crossfire"
"Matherson Vale died in the fire he started himself"
Each one began to fracture, stuttering, then collapsing into static as Matherson concentrated.
In their place came new memories.
True memories.
He projected them outward. Not through systems but through the myths that had been used to erase him. He was hijacking the memetic fabric Edenfall depended on.
And rewriting it.
Nova stared at the wall as it reshaped again.
A schoolroom. A birthday. Jayson hugging a young Matherson, handing him a drone. "They'll try to control what you remember," he'd said. "So remember who you are, not who they say you are."
The Ripple
All across the net, subtle changes began:
Photos long wiped from feeds reappeared.
Forum posts once flagged as false memories restored themselves.
Resistance dead-drops flickered to life with new logins old passwords suddenly working again.
Ghostbyte fell to his knees. "This is beyond code. You're... restoring corrupted memory across the mesh."
Matherson opened his eyes, now burning softly with layered glyph-light.
"I'm seeding truth the way they seeded doubt."
"I'm becoming what they feared not a martyr. Not a ghost."
"A counter-myth."
Up Above
Edenfall's central feed stuttered. Archive nodes rebooted. Mnemosyne faltered.
In the war room, Director Revenant's hand slammed into the glass table.
"He's turned the narrative weapon against us."
Kara Xe looked up, pale. "Then Mnemosyne won't hold."
Zehr whispered, "It's not just memory anymore. He's editing our history."
Revenant's voice came out like a growl.
"Then bring Sable online."
"And prepare the erasers."