The rain stopped before dawn. Streetlights winked out. The Marais' cobblestones gleamed like a tongue scraped by a knife blade, tasting of rust. We tossed our raincoats in a bin, but the smell of blood clung like oil to our skin. Sophia's card burned in my pocket, a hot coin.
"Mémoire," Alex murmured as we walked. "Latin root. Memory. Memorial. Mourning. Three meanings."
"Mourn first. Memorialize second. Then get the memory back." I kicked an empty bottle aside. "Don't mix the order."
At the end of Rue des Rosiers, a derelict metro entrance gaped. Its rusted shutter was half-raised, revealing a dark escalator shaft like a toothless mouth. The same Ω symbol was spray-painted on the lintel, but below it, small letters added:
"The door opens only at the Bone Clock's thirteenth chime."
I crouched, fingers finding a thin seam near the graffiti. Not paint. Metal. A gentle pry, and a cement-textured magnetic plate fell away, revealing an old rotary dial. The brass wheel was worn smooth, its numbers only half-visible: 1, 3, 7, 9, 0.
"Sophia's time of death," Alex whispered. "01:37."
My fingers turned the dial. Click. Click. Click. Stopping at 1-3-7-9-0.
Deep within the iron door, heavy gears meshed like a yawn in the dark.
The escalator groaned into reluctant motion, descending.
Damp air thickened with mold, machine oil, and something older – the scent of bone ash.
A vaulted wooden door waited at the bottom. Its lintel was inlaid with real bone fragments: ox, bird, human, pieced into a vast clock face. No hands. Only thirteen cracks radiating from the center. Gilded dust seeped from the cracks, time ground to powder.
A brass pull-ring hung beside it. As Alex reached out, the Bone Clock chimed.
Bong—
The first strike vibrated in my chest.
Bong—
The second made my heart skip.
Bong... Bong... Bong...
Thirteen strikes, each shorter than the last. A countdown.
With the final chime, the door slid silently open.
Inside was an inverted cathedral.
The vaulted ceiling was beneath our feet. Pews hung upside down overhead. Stained glass lay shattered, its fragments floating like stardust. The only upright structure was a colossal mechanical heart. Copper conduits like arteries snaked from it, each terminating in one of thirteen glass coffins.
Inside each coffin lay a face—a waxwork? No. Real human skin, peeled, stretched, suspended in amber fluid.
I recognized the third instantly: Maya, the Mumbai dancer, beads of sweat still seeming to cling to her cheekbones.
The seventh: Sophia, her death-smile perfectly preserved.
At the heart's center, suspended, lay an open copy of Les Fleurs du Mal.
The pages were blank. Except on the thirteenth line, handwritten script appeared:
"Feed it memory. Bleed it truth."
Alex stepped forward, fingertips brushing the page.
Humm—
Blue light pulsed through the copper conduits like an IV drip.
The entire space began to rotate. Pews, coffins, stardust… all tumbled over. Only the heart remained still.
Alex and I were thrown upward by the shifting gravity, crashing onto what had been the ceiling—now the floor.
A seam split open in the mechanical heart. Inside lay a smaller chip, smaller than a fingernail, etched with Ω.
"The master chip for Archive Zero," Alex's voice shook. "Sophia hid it here with her death."
I reached for it. The heart snapped shut. Blue light flared red.
An alarm wailed from deep within the copper pipes, a swarm of startled bats.
The floor beneath us dropped away. We fell, the entire inverted cathedral plunging with us.
In the darkness, only the pages of Les Fleurs du Mal still glowed, a stubborn lamp.
Falling.
Falling.
A jarring CRUNCH of metal locking into place. The light died.
When illumination returned, we stood in a completely different corridor—
White walls. White ceiling. The smell of antiseptic.
An electronic clock on the wall blinked to life: 03:13.
Beneath it, the NeuroSync logo.
Sophia's card vibrated faintly in my pocket.
I looked down. Blood-red words had bloomed on its surface:
"Welcome home."