The room was smaller than Mira remembered.

Not physically—its dimensions hadn’t changed—but in the way memory stretches space to hold what it needs. The walls were still marked with the faint discoloration of old wiring channels, the floor patched where floodwater had once risen higher than expected.

The past had always needed more room.

The present did not.

Mira stood near the center of the room, hands empty. The console along the far wall hummed at idle, its interface dark until she brushed her fingers across the surface. Light rose slowly, not eager, not demanding.

It waited.

The recording loaded without ceremony.

No title.

No warning.

Just a timestamp and a single line of metadata she’d written herself, years ago, when naming the thing felt impossible.

She didn’t press play right away.

Instead, she traced the edge of the console—feeling where the casing had been repaired, where original material met newer composite. The seam was visible if you looked for it.

It held anyway.

When the recording began, it wasn’t her voice that surprised her.

It was how calm it sounded.

Not detached.

Not brave.

Simply factual.

She listened as her earlier self explained decisions made under pressure, constraints that hadn’t been optional, outcomes that hadn’t been kind. There was no justification in the tone—only sequence. Cause, effect, consequence.

Mira let the words pass through her without interruption.

She didn’t correct them.

She didn’t argue.

For the first time, she didn’t rehearse what she would have said differently.

Halfway through, the recording faltered.

Not from damage—she recognized the pause. She remembered hesitating there, unsure whether to continue. The silence stretched longer than it needed to.

Then the voice resumed.

Not with resolution.

With admission.

“I don’t know how this ends,” the voice said. “I only know what it costs to stop.”

Mira exhaled slowly.

That line had followed her for years—echoed in quieter rooms, invoked when doubt pressed too close. She had treated it like a verdict.

It wasn’t.

It was a boundary.

The recording ended.

The room returned to its low hum.

Mira didn’t move.

She felt the familiar urge—to do something with what she’d heard. To extract meaning, to assign direction, to turn memory into mandate.

She let the urge pass.

Clem’s presence surfaced gently, as it always did when silence stretched long enough to become a choice.

“The record is internally consistent,” he said. “Contextual integrity remains intact.”

Mira smiled faintly.

“That’s not comfort,” she said.

“No,” Clem agreed. “It is accuracy.”

She nodded.

Accuracy was enough.

She powered the console down and stepped away from it.

Not ceremonially.

Not decisively.

Just… finished.

The room did not resist her leaving. It did not ask for acknowledgment. The past did not surge to fill the space she vacated.

It stayed where it was.

Outside, the corridor lights adjusted as she passed—responding to presence, not priority. A maintenance cart rattled by, one wheel slightly misaligned. Someone down the hall laughed at something she couldn’t hear clearly enough to understand.

The world continued at its own pace.

Mira paused at the threshold of the room and looked back once.

Not to remember.

To confirm.

Nothing followed her.

She closed the door.

And walked on.