The Harvest ended. But something stayed behind.And Ava was starting to remember what she was never meant to.
The silence had grown teeth.
It didn't soothe. It bit. And it lingered.
Two days after the sky dimmed and the Harvest ended, the Archive still hadn't remembered how to breathe.
Ava moved like a ghost through the compound. Her boots made no sound against the polished metal floor. The lighting was too soft, too flickery—like the walls were afraid to fully illuminate themselves. Every few feet, a section of ceiling hummed without powering on.
Even the air felt wrong. Heavier. As if the Archive itself was trying to forget what had happened inside it.
She passed a woman in a technician's coat sitting on the floor outside the neural calibration lab, legs folded beneath her, staring into her own hands like they weren't hers. Down the hall, a man muttered into a blank data slate, arguing with someone who wasn't responding.
Others just sat with their backs to the walls.
