SEQUENT: Memory Hunter — 002: “All Debts Remembered”

The tunnel breathes. Echo hates that she still notices. She’s lived here all her life, as far back as she can remember, anyway. The way the walls gently flex when the trains pass above ground, how condensation drips like sweat from rust overhead. She’s remembered it from so many different points of view, she should be used to it by now. The city’s bones hum here. Dead infrastructure still twitching under the weight of something newer, crueler. Something more living, but far less alive. Like her mind.

She steps over a cracked rail. Her boots echo.

No one’s followed her. She's checked six times. She looks over her shoulder. Seven.

In her hand, around and around, she rolls the cracked memory bead she stole from Glen. Cracked, faded, but still a flicker of something. 

Around and around.

“Katya,” she mumbles. “Why did she call me Katya?” she asks the mist. 

There’s a gate at the far end ahead, welded shut and lined with old riot foam. Beside it, someone’s carved a phrase into the concrete with surgical precision: All debts remembered.

Echo scoffs. “Cute.”

She knocks twice on the steel panel next to the graffiti. Then twice more. Pause. One knock. Standard knock pattern for when you’re desperate enough to believe in ghosts.

No response. Echo waits.

Katya? That voice. Claire’s voice. An echo of the memory.

“Who is she, Claire?” she asks the wall.  

The wall answers with a slow hiss. It doesn’t open—not really, not entirely, anyway. A hatch unlatches, revealing a sliver of motionless air and soft blue light. Just wide enough, just enough space for Echo’s hand, wrist, and sequencer. 

She inserts her wrist. The slit squelches. Its light pulses.

A voice, genderless and static-fuzzed, filters through. “Payment accepted.”

“I didn’t authorize any payment,” Echo says, pulling her arm from the wall.

The wall doesn’t let go.

“Let me go,” Echo says. 

The silence feels deliberate. Judging. Then, “You will.” With a soft click, the hatch yawns open. Finally, it releases her arm.

The room inside smells like oxidized metal and old breath. It’s small—barely big enough to stand without ducking. Machines crowd the corners. Fleshy processors sag from wires like artificial lungs. A place hidden inside a hidden place.

A half-circle desk, grown rather than built, sits in the center. Behind it, sits the broker. He’s older than she expected. Or maybe just overused. His skin has the texture memories get when they’ve been played too many times—soft, blurry at the edges, nearly transparent. 

One of the broker’s eyes is glass. The other shines too brightly.

“You’re Echo,” he says like he’s already said it a hundred times before. “Not many would vouch for you, but the ones who did… Well, you’re here, aren’t you?”

“You have something for me,” she replies.

He doesn’t ask what. Just nods.

“Sit,” he says, though there’s no chair. A panel grows from the floor and molds itself to match her weight as she lowers. The surface beneath her is warm. Organic. Mossy.

“Comfy. Bit damp, actually,” she says. “I’m here for a job. If you don’t have one, you’re not the only broker in the city.”

“You’re bleeding,” he says. “Internally. Memory leak.”

He smiles. His teeth dazzle, displaying S M I L E in some knockoff Old English font, scrolling from incisor to bicuspid to molar and back around again.

Echo doesn’t smile back. Echo taps the side of her sequencer. “You got a job for me or not? Extraction, deletion, inception, push, pull, I’m not picky.”

“Still running a Series 7 interface,” he mutters. “Outdated. Dangerous.”

“Are you flirting? Because I’m not interested.”

That garners a flicker of something behind his too-bright eye. Approval? Nostalgia? Regret? Shame. It’s usually shame. Both of his smiles fade. He turns, types something into a floating display. Glyphs she doesn’t recognize cascade across the interface.

“You looking for suppressors? Or something more… substantial?” he asks.

“I’m looking for a job. I can handle the rest,” she says.

“I don’t send little birds with broken wings out to fly,” he says.

She can’t argue with that. Well, she can. She chooses not to. 

“I’m looking for control,” Echo says.

“No such thing,” he replies.

“You know that I know that you know that isn’t true,” she says.

He nods, resigned. 

“It will cost you,” he says.

“I authorize payment,” she says. “Take it off the top of whatever job you’ve got for me, yeah?”

“Something more.” He points a long, curved finger at the cracked bead rolling around Echo’s hand.

“It’s cracked,” she says.

He nods.

“Suit yourself,” she says, rolling the bead across the table. 

He catches it. He smiles again. 

His teeth display F O L L O W  M E.

She grits hers. Now she’ll have to get that back.