The desert wind changed just after midnight.
It swept in low and sudden, carrying fine grit through the broken stone doorway of the safehouse. The oil lamp flickered once, just once, then steadied. A warning only the dust could read.
Alon was already awake.
He moved through the shadows barefoot, silent, a blade in one hand, his other brushing the wall for memory. The safehouse was old, built before satellites, designed for listening, not survival. Its walls held secrets long after voices had stopped speaking.
Nora slept in the corner under a rough blanket, one hand curled beneath her chin, her chest rising slow and even.
She looked peaceful.
Which was a lie.
Because peace doesn’t twitch in its sleep.
She stirred as he approached.
“I felt it too,” she whispered.
“Three outside,” he murmured.
“Two to breach, one to watch.”
She sat up, pulled on her boots. Tied them by touch.
“Regenesis?”
Alon nodded.
“They’re not here to erase us. They’re here to overwrite you.”
She didn’t flinch.
“I can feel it,” she said quietly. “In my head. In the seams of things. Like certain thoughts slide too easy now. Like pieces of me are wearing someone else’s fingerprints.”
Alon crouched beside her.
“Then we burn them out.”
The first strike came fast.
Flash pulse through the window, whiteout burst meant to disorient, not destroy.
They moved before it finished blooming.
Nora rolled left, low, her knife catching the light just as she disappeared into the side corridor. Alon ducked and spun behind the inner wall, counting the seconds between breach and breach.
One. Two. Three.
A boot hit the threshold.
He fired once.
The sound barely echoed, swallowed by thick stone.
The body fell forward, a soft rustle of gear and disbelief.
Two more.
Nora hit the second from behind. Her blade found the soft gap between armor and neck. Quick. Clean. She let him fall into silence.
The third tried to run.
Alon followed him into the open air, moonlight cutting across the plateau like a blade of its own.
They fought in the dust. No shots. Just breath and fists and blood.
Alon didn’t ask who sent him.
He already knew.
They buried the bodies in a shallow trench, marked with stones, unspoken.
Back in the safehouse, Alon wiped his hands on a rag, stared at the old radio panel embedded in the wall.
“You ever wonder,” Nora said behind him, “if we’re just chasing our own shadows?”
He looked at her. Eyes hollow, but sharp.
“I think we’re chasing what’s left of the truth.”
She stepped closer.
“And when that runs out?”
He held her gaze.
“Then we fight for memory.”
He showed her the screen.
The string of code Leah had buried. The one Alon had decrypted line by line. It formed a map, not of places.
But of people.
Names.
Codenames.
Dates.
Missions.
All of them tied to the Regenesis Protocol.
All of them marked REASSIGNMENT COMPLETE.
All but two.
REGEV, ALON.
BEN-MEIR, NORA.
She read it in silence.
Her jaw clenched.
“I’m next,” she said.
“No,” Alon replied. “We are.”
He turned the screen. Showed her the failsafe Leah had embedded in the code. A recursive loop buried deep in the signal architecture of Regenesis. A virus disguised as compliance.
One push, and the system would start eating itself.
No backups.
No recovery.
But it came with a price.
Alon stepped back. “You’d lose everything tied to it. Every memory they touched. Maybe more.”
Her voice didn’t waver.
“I’d rather forget the world than let them rewrite me.”
At sunrise, she placed her thumb against the scanner.
The failsafe loaded.
A warning flashed in red.
“ACTIVATING RECURSION WILL IRREVERSIBLY CORRUPT ALL ACTIVE MEMORY THREADS CONNECTED TO SUBJECT ID.”
She looked at Alon.
He nodded once.
She pressed enter.
For a moment, the air went still.
No sound.
No breath.
Just light.
And then,
The screen went dark.
The servers died.
The silence cracked.
And Nora fell to her knees.
Alon caught her.
Held her.
Her breathing shallow. Her eyes unfocused.
“Nora,” he whispered.
Her lips moved. No sound.
Then,
She looked up.
And blinked.
“…Who are you?”