Paris at dusk.
The sky bled amber—soft yet searing—like it had heard too many names spoken in silence.
Linh stood before a building with no sign, no plaque. Nothing tourist-worthy. Only a brushed steel keypad and a motion sensor blinking like a restless eye.
She hesitated.
Then typed the code sent by a journalist whose voice she only knew through encrypted audio.
#472-MAI-01
A low buzz. The door slid open with a metallic sigh. Cold air rushed out—sharp, sterile, like machines remembering how to breathe.
She stepped in.
A narrow stairwell spiraled downward, lit by vertical red bars. Her shadow broke across each step—fragmented, as if her body was being scanned and disassembled.
At the bottom: a vault of silence.
One man waited. Gray coat. Round glasses. His French was crisp, like a diplomat forced to remember his past.
"You're the girl from Vietnam?"
She nodded. "I'm Linh."
"You're not here to find her," he said quietly. "You're here to find what she left behind."
They called it the Archive of Erasure.
Not because it erased names—
But because it archived the act of forgetting.
On every wall: thread-bound boxes. No labels. No categories. Just numbers. Like coffins that never had corpses.
The man placed a small parcel on the table.
Not a file.
A cloth.
Burnt at the edges. Black thread stitched into one corner:
M-07 / Code Name: Mai
Linh's hands trembled as she touched it. The fabric was stiff with ash—but something in it still felt warm, like breath frozen mid-exhale.
"Where did this come from?"
"Recovered in 2009," he said. "From a facility burned to the ground. We salvaged thirteen cloths. Only two were legible."
She swallowed hard. "Did she… survive?"
A long silence.
"We don't think she died in the fire," he said. "But we never found her."
Later, they left her alone in the archive.
She opened another box.
Inside: scrambled transcripts—partially decrypted, some lines decayed into noise. But fragments survived.
"Subject M-07 reported multiple unauthorized subcontacts." "Refer to file H-01. Possible memory breach if exposed to original environment." "Recommendation: relocate both subjects outside system perimeter."
Linh's spine prickled.
H-01.
She traced the Vietnamese phrase again—barely a whisper on the page:
"…Could trigger memory if returned to original surroundings."
Her mind jumped to Huyền. The girl with the embroidered "H." The girl who had stared at her once—not like a stranger—but like someone trying to remember.
That night, an unmarked envelope was slid under her hotel door. Inside: one message.
Stop looking. She's gone.
And a redacted page. Only one line survived:
"If M-07 is found near subject H, activate Clean Sweep Protocol."
Clean Sweep.
Not silence. Not forgetting.
Erasure.
She sat at a café near Montparnasse Tower, the lights above folding the sky into static and shadow.
An old man approached, eyes soft but cautious.
"You're Linh?"
"Yes."
"I knew M-07."
Her heart stopped.
"She didn't die?" she asked.
"No. She ran. Not from enemies—from the system that promised to protect her."
"Why?"
"Because H-01 wasn't just a subject. She was a child. Used in emotional encoding. Genetic imprinting. And Mai… chose not to forget her."
He opened a velvet pouch.
Inside: a handkerchief. Stitched—crooked and worn—with the letter: H.
"She left this behind. Told me, 'If anyone finds the trail, they'll know where it ends.'"
Linh took it. Her fingers closed around it like it might vanish if she blinked.
That night, she didn't try to write for publication. She simply opened her notebook and began:
"If M-07 lived… If H-01 still breathes… Then the girl with the stitched H is not just another survivor. Maybe she was the reason Mai never came back."
She looked out the window. The city flickered below, unaware.
In her dream, she walked through a room made of thread. Each strand bore a name. Some erased. Some whispered. Some waiting to be spoken again.
And at the very center—
A letter: H
Still breathing.