Dawn rose over Vienna like an apology, soft, gray, and reluctant.
The city stirred beneath it slowly, unaware that its foundations had shifted in the night, that every government node within six kilometers of the Musikverein had pulsed once, then gone silent. Somewhere in the sky above, satellites blinked, choked on corrupted signatures, and fell dumb to the earth.
Inside a forgotten flat in the 5th district, Alon sat by a window that no longer showed a future.
The room was bare except for a single chair, a stained kettle, and the boy curled beneath Nora’s coat on a worn couch. He slept without dreaming now. Whatever had been inside him, the archive, the residue, the echo, had been released with the cube. His breath was slow. Clean.
Alon watched the steam rise from his chipped mug, one hand resting on a folder left for him in the night. A courier had slipped it beneath the door at 4:03 AM. No name. No return address.
Just a symbol on the flap:
✶
The emblem of what remained of Europe’s black operations council. A star that no longer guided, only watched.
Inside the folder:
– A flight manifest.
– A diplomatic clearance ID.
– A single line written in tight black ink.
Debrief in Geneva. Burn the past or be buried in it.
Nora stood in the bathroom doorway, hair damp, face bare, robe wrapped tight.
“You going?”
Alon didn’t answer.
She crossed the floor. Took the folder from him. Scanned the page.
“Geneva wants to know how it ends,” she murmured.
“They want to rewrite it before anyone else does.”
Nora folded the paper once. Twice. Then tucked it into the flame of the gas stove.
The fire took it greedily.
She didn’t flinch as it curled into ash.
“We tell our version.”
Alon looked at her.
“And if no one listens?”
“Then we whisper it louder.”
The boy woke after noon.
No tears.
Just a long stare at the ceiling before sitting upright.
His first words were soft.
“I don’t feel them anymore.”
Nora crouched beside him. “The echoes?”
He nodded.
“They’re gone. But something stayed.”
Alon poured him tea.
“What stayed?”
The boy smiled, faint and crooked.
“Your names.”
He reached into the pocket of Nora’s coat and pulled out a crumpled photograph, aged, torn at the edges. The one they’d recovered from Haifa. The bookstore.
Three people stood in the frame: Nora, Alon… and Yael.
Behind them, someone had written in Hebrew:
זכרו אותנו לא על מה שאיבדנו, אלא על מה שניסינו להציל.
Remember us not for what we lost, but for what we tried to save.
That night, they climbed the stairs to the roof.
Below, the city buzzed, its truths and fictions still indistinguishable. Screens glowed in coffee shops, diplomats dined behind soundproof glass, and somewhere, someone was already building a new system with a cleaner name.
But for now, just for now, Regenesis was over.
Not destroyed.
Not conquered.
Known.
Nora leaned against Alon’s shoulder, fingers laced in his. They didn’t speak.
The boy watched the stars with the kind of stillness only survivors possess.
And in the silence, something healed.
Not perfectly.
Not completely.
But enough.