Chapter 2

They took a table in the Café of Unclaimed Luggage, where the espresso tasted like regret and the windows showed different constellations depending on who paid the bill.

Kade ordered black. Lira ordered nothing. Couriers who accepted free drinks accepted free endings.

“Explain,” she said.

“Three weeks ago, a diplomat arrived at this station with a sealed childhood,” Kade said. “By the time he left, he could not remember his daughter’s face, but he could recite a stranger’s war crimes as autobiography. The sealed memory you carry matches the diplomat’s missing years. If it is implanted in the wrong skull, two lives collapse into one and the courts will call it justice.”

Lira studied the blue pulse in her case. “Who hired me?”

“A name that does not survive being spoken in full. Call them the Continuity Board. They sell clean pasts to people with expensive futures.”

“And you?”

“I keep the station from becoming a marketplace of souls.” Kade’s eyes flicked to the void. “Unsuccessfully, some days.”

A soft tone: Platform 3 boarding. Lira’s implant displayed no corresponding ship. The station was improvising again.

She stood. “If the *Night-Accord* isn’t coming, where does this go?”

Kade rose with her. “To the Archive Under. Where memories go when they outlive their owners. If we shelve it correctly, the diplomat remains himself. If we fail—”

“I become a footnote,” Lira finished.

He almost smiled for real. “You become a chapter. There’s a difference.”

They walked toward a service door marked AUTHORIZED FORGETTING ONLY. The handle was cold. The corridor beyond smelled of ozone and old paper — impossible on a station, perfect for a place that stored people as files.

Lira’s package brightened, as if recognizing home.