(Recovered peripheral fiction · pre-EMH)
The planning cell wasn’t on any map.
It met in the back room of a shuttered civic archive, past shelves of unclaimed records and obsolete permits. Too many people knew about it for it to be official. Too few trusted it for it to last.
Lily noticed Adam immediately—not because he dominated the room, but because he didn’t bother trying to. He leaned against the wall with his arms crossed, listening while others argued logistics, routes, slogans. When he spoke, it was only to puncture false certainty.
“This won’t change anything,” he said calmly, the first time she heard his voice. “Which doesn’t mean we shouldn’t do it. It just means we should stop pretending it’s a turning point.”
Someone snapped at him. Someone else laughed. Lily watched him smile—not kindly, not cruelly, just aware.
Later, when they stood together outside, he told her he didn’t believe in victory. He believed in pressure. In accumulation. In refusing to let systems rest comfortably inside their own lies.
“Rebellion fails,” he said, lighting a cigarette he didn’t smoke. “That’s what makes it honest.”
They fell into each other without ceremony.
There was no long negotiation, no careful unfolding. It happened in borrowed rooms and alleys that smelled of wet concrete. They spoke in fragments. They didn’t ask about childhoods. Adam said names were temporary. Lily agreed, though she didn’t know why.
For a few weeks—maybe less—they allowed themselves the illusion that this version of the world might hold.
The demonstration was scheduled for a memorial plaza named for people no one remembered.
The plaza had been designed to absorb crowds: wide steps, low barriers, polished stone engraved with names that blurred together when viewed at a distance. It was officially neutral ground. No speeches allowed. No amplified sound. Just presence.
That was the idea.
Lily stood beside Adam near the eastern edge, close enough to feel the heat of him through their coats. The crowd pressed in—banners, chants, drums improvised from plastic barrels. Overhead, drones traced lazy arcs, their lenses dark.
Adam leaned close and said something Lily didn’t hear.
She turned her head.
That was when the world tore.
The explosion wasn’t loud at first—it was dense. A pressure wave that collapsed sound inward before releasing it. Stone lifted. Bodies became shapes without names. The plaza filled with white noise and fragments of sky.
Lily felt herself thrown backward. Felt nothing. Felt everything.
Adam’s hand found hers for an instant—not gripping, not desperate. Just present.
Then there was no more plaza.
No more stone.
No more sound.
When Lily woke, the light was wrong.
It came from no visible source. It had weight, like memory. She lay on a smooth surface that reflected her face imperfectly, as if it hadn’t decided which version to keep.
Her body was intact. Her pain was not.
She sat up slowly.
Something was missing.
Not an object. Not a wound.
A person-shaped absence.
She searched her mind for context and found only static. No names. No faces. Just a dull, spreading ache that didn’t attach itself to anything concrete.
She pressed her hand to her chest.
Grief surfaced—raw, unearned, unexplainable.
She didn’t know who she had lost.
Only that she had lost someone important.
Somewhere far away—if “far” still meant anything—the Plaza of Names was already being repaired. Lists were compiled. Numbers adjusted. An incident folded neatly into civic history.
Adam’s name did not appear anywhere.
Lily did not remember him.
But sometimes, when she passed through crowded places, she felt the echo of a hand in hers—and mourned without knowing why.
Most days...
Lily doesn’t think about where she lives.
On an asteroid.
In a city controlled by nano-scale machines.
Erase My Head – the first novel in the X66 Storyverse...
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