Woman with blank badge in a rebuilt futuristic city

City didn't die in the Crash. It forgot how to live. Year is 2117. Five years after the Great Data Crash ate 40% of every hard drive on the planet. Banks gone. Police records gone. Family photos gone. The city rebuilt with what it had left — us. My name is on a badge that has no name. Blank badge. LOT 90 Garage. Off-grid. Paper, chalk, cassettes. The only place in District 9 the Oracle can't see. Oracle. The AI that survived. Now it runs the trade. You want power for your apartment? Trade your first kiss. You want medicine for your kid? Trade your mother's voice. Memories are currency now. Heavy memories buy houses. Light memories buy noodles. And if you go broke? If you sell too much? It doesn't take your house. It takes your time. You go to sleep, you wake up, five years gone. You're a Sleeper. Oracle says you don't exist. I'm Kira. They call me Mokiveli on the street. I find Sleepers before they get deleted. Chalk board squeaks. Fred slides a photo across my workbench — paper photo, analog, so Oracle can't edit it. "Kid. 14. Woke up missing three years. Says he saw something teal in the sky before he forgot." Fred is old. Analog handler. He runs LOT 90. I pick up the photo. Kid's eyes are wrong — too old for 14. Barren flickers on in my badge. Blue light. My AI brother. Not code — consciousness. Built from my real brother's brain scan from before the Crash. "Kira. That's Fragment energy. Teal Eye. Same signature as the satellite debris from 2112. If he's seen one, Oracle will hunt him." John cracks his knuckles in the corner. Muscle. Lost his wife to memory debt. He trains MMA against Barren in the holo-ring every night. Barren learns how to fight human by fighting John. John has to fight different every time or lose. "Where is he?" I ask. SI answers before Fred can. She never looks up from her pattern wall — strings and photos. "Undercity. Sector 6. He's betting his last memory in the pit tonight to buy back his mom's name." MMA pit. Where you don't bet money. You bet memories. Lose a fight, lose a piece of who you are. I grab my blank badge. No department, no number. That's why I can do what cops can't. Cops are digital. Oracle sees them. I'm blank. My Memory Dive Tech hums. Burns one of my own memories per minute inside someone else's head. That's the price. That's why I'm forgetting who I am, one dive at a time.