"So," he said, "now that we both remember each other. What now?"

He explained. The job. The backdoor. The UPD. As he spoke, he watched her face cycle through confusion, horror, and finally, a cold, clinical focus. She was a cutter. She understood the anatomy of a memory.

Three months ago, Kaelen was a top-tier "Cutter"—a freelance neural editor. He’d go into a client’s memory stream, locate a trauma, a phobia, a bad breakup, and with the precision of a diamond scalpel, cut it out. No scars. No side effects. Or so he told himself.

Miriam.