The Core's white light beckoned like a lighthouse in a storm of crimson shadows, its obsidian surface drinking in the reflected glow from the chamber's cursed pools. Lenard and Eden's synchronized footsteps sent ripples through the black water at their feet, each splash echoing their racing heartbeats. Their joined hands had become a lifeline, fingers interwoven so tightly that blood barely flowed to their fingertips.
"Almost there," Eden panted, her silver hair catching the light like mercury. "Lenard, we're actually going to—"
The water at their feet *shifted*.
It wasn't a splash or a wave – it was as if the darkness itself became hungry. The pool beneath them thickened, turned viscous, and then erupted upward with the sound of a thousand whispers becoming screams.
"Eden!" Lenard yanked her closer as chrome-plated tentacles burst from the liquid darkness, their surfaces etched with pulsing symbols. One wrapped around her waist, the metal so cold it burned through her clothes.
"Don't you dare let go!" Eden's fingers clenched harder around his, her nails drawing blood. "Look at me, Lenard. Look at my face!"
He did. God, he did. Memorized every detail – the small scar above her left eyebrow, the flecks of gold in her green eyes, the way her lips trembled even as she tried to be brave. Another tentacle snaked around his chest, crushing the air from his lungs, but he kept his gaze locked on her face.
"I can feel them," she sobbed, her free hand reaching up to grasp his forearm as the mechanical appendages began pulling them apart. "They're already trying to take you from my mind. Please, please don't let them—"
"Fight it!" Lenard growled, wrapping his free hand over hers, trying to strengthen their connection even as the distance between them grew. "Remember the lab, Eden. Remember the day we first—" His words cut off in a gasp of pain as the pressure around his chest increased.
Their feet dragged through the water, leaving parallel furrows in opposite directions. Eden's eyes widened in terror as she felt their grips beginning to slip.
"The garden!" she cried suddenly, tears streaming down her face. "On the roof, where you first kissed me! The hydrangeas were blooming, and you said—"
"—that blue was your favorite color," Lenard finished, the memory burning bright even as he felt others beginning to fade. "Eden, my Eden, please—"
Their hands slipped to just their palms pressing together. The tentacles pulled harder, their mechanical whirring a twisted parody of purring, pleased with their work.
"Find me," Eden begged, her fingers now barely hooked around his. "When everything else is gone, when you can't remember my face or my name or even your own – find me. Promise!"
"I promise!" The words tore from his throat. "Even if I forget everything else, I'll remember that. I'll remember I have to find—"
Their fingers separated with a finality that felt like a gunshot in his chest.
"Your name!" he screamed, fighting against the metal coils that dragged him backward. "Tell me your name one more time!"
Eden stretched toward him, their fingertips almost touching one final time. The space between them might as well have been an ocean. "It's Eden! I'm E—"
The darkness swallowed her, leaving only ripples and echoes.
Lenard thrashed against his restraints, reaching toward where she had been, but already the memories were dissolving like sugar in rain. Her face blurred in his mind – was her hair silver or white? Were her eyes green or grey? Had there been a scar, or was that something he'd imagined?
"Remember," he chanted to himself as the tentacles pulled him into the shadows, away from the Core's pulsing light. "Remember her. Remember... remember..."
What was he supposed to remember?
His hand ached with phantom warmth, as if he'd been holding something precious. Everything felt wrong, incomplete, like a painting with its subject cut out, leaving only the background. There had been someone... hadn't there?
The last thing he saw before consciousness fled was the obsidian pillar, its white symbols still pulsing like a heartbeat. Or perhaps it was morse code, spelling out three words over and over:
Find. Her. Remember.
But remember who?
In the vast chamber, two sets of ripples traveled outward through the black pools, weakening with each ring until they faded to nothing. Like memories. Like promises. Like love letters written in water, destined to vanish before they could be read.
The Core stood silent witness to it all, its light steady and eternal, waiting for hands that might never join again to reach its surface.