"Attention all Sprouts!"

  Those words had been spoken countless of times, both through the intercoms and in person, but somehow, with that specific announcement, IS-131 felt that something was... off.

  Memory was something that everyone under the care of Damara, and even those outside of it, had shown issues with.

  Gaps in one's memory suddenly appearing and disappearing.

  Echoes of experiences and conversations that they had no recollection of gnawing at the back of people's conscious, in some rarer instances.

  But, ultimately, there was a term for the phenomenon that people could fall back on:

  Anemoia. Noun.

  "Nostalgia for a time or place that one has never known."

  With a large majority of the population being relegated to monotonous tasks in order to maintain the few civilizations that arose after the start of the New World, it was easy to write off most cases as days blending together - details of events being blurred and jumbled as they danced around the recesses of one's mind.

  However, for those with more static, non-linear lifestyles, such as the Sprouts of Damara, the most subtle differences or familiarities in a person's memory are easier to pick out.

  "Thirty-One!!!"

  The cheerful calling of her roommate wasn't anything new, but somehow that call, in her mind, overlapped with something else.

  A cry wracked with a mixture of fear and despair and rage, entirely different from the whimsy that she was so used to.

  The sound, on its own, clawing away at her ears as she sat awake was grating enough, but as she laid down under the impression that rest would help her, there was nothing in the physical world to distract her racing thoughts.

  In sleep, it was all she could focus on.

  The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

  Darkness and silence, interrupted by the ghosts of memories past, threatening to drag her down to the depths of insanity with each vision that overtook her senses.

  "Isiel!"

  Her friends ─ her family, calling out to her with a name she didn't recognize.

  One instant, turning to her with gleams in their eyes and joy in their tones. The next, choking over their own blood, for reasons she couldn't pull together.

  "Lead them well, won't you?"

  A voice she recognized well, almost insulting with how thinly it attempted to veil its mockery with a tone so sickeningly sweet.

  "You're like the sun, so keep shining, no matter what."

  The slothful, red-haired boy she knew stared back at her, smiling despite the grievous wounds that littered his form.

  "I'll tear myself apart as many times as I need to, as long as you die with me."

  The joyful visage of her purple-haired companion marred with a cold rage that burned deeper than any she had seen before.

  "We will start anew, once again. Perhaps this time, you'll come closer to the finish line?"

  Then came a voice completely alien to her. Methodical. Monotonous. Too empty and lifeless to be mockery.

  She could only latch onto it for a moment before those that she recognized circled back to the front of her senses.

  Calls, cries, of her name overwhelmed her, joy and despair mingling too quickly to process, until finally she awoke in a cold sweat.

  Finally, her vision was clear ─ as clear as it could be through the haze of tears ─ yet she found no comfort.

  The only company she had was her own thoughts, as much as she tried to shush them. Sleep had only made the pounding in her head worse, and both C-099 and W-101 had yet to return, it seemed.

  IS-131 once again found herself wrestling with questions ─ even more than she had when she laid down for rest.

  Once again she wondered if the answers to her problems lied with the one who oversaw the facility in which she stood, as they always had in the past, but once again did something in her scream "No".

  Although... Perhaps she could find some alternative.

  The same gut feeling that told her where she shouldn't go gave her a hunch where she should.

  With an action decided on, the Expression from which her designation was derived came to life.

  She stood from her bed and exited the room, and like that, as if finally answering her silent pleas for something to ease her sudden pain, a string formed before her.

  A thin yet unmistakable golden thread stretching far along the corridor, laying the path for the destination she had in mind.

  Her eyes stayed trained on it, not knowing what it was leading her to, but knowing that its hue meant something positive awaited her...