The stray dog had been busy. According to my tracking app, Mr. Gray's device had visited three different neighborhoods, the ferry terminal, and what appeared to be a seafood processing plant near the waterfront. If the suited man was still following it, he'd had a long night.

  I hadn't slept well myself. Every creak of the floorboards, every shadow that shifted as clouds passed over the moon had me sitting bolt upright, certain someone was in my apartment. By dawn, exhaustion had won out over paranoia, and I'd managed maybe two hours of fitful sleep before my alarm jarred me awake.

  Coffee didn't help. My third cup sat cooling beside me as I hunched over my workstation in the museum's research lab, cataloging a new batch of artifacts that had arrived yesterday. The manila folder beside me contained the standard acquisition forms—provenance documentation, import licenses, condition reports—but nothing to explain why these particular items had drawn the attention of a mysterious "acquisition department" I'd never heard of until yesterday.

  "Focus, Reeves," I muttered, rubbing my eyes. The lack of sleep was making it hard to concentrate. That, and the constant feeling of being watched. I'd checked—there were no more tracking devices on my clothing, and the security camera in the corner of the lab was the same one that had been there since I started working at the museum. Yet the prickling sensation between my shoulder blades wouldn't go away.

  The artifact in front of me was the fifth item from the new shipment—a stone tablet approximately eight inches by six, its surface weathered by time but still bearing faint etchings. According to the documentation, it had been recovered from a previously undisturbed chamber beneath an ancient temple complex in Turkey. Carbon dating placed it at around 12,000 years old, predating the temple itself by several millennia.

  As I turned it carefully in my gloved hands, something about the etchings caught my attention. They weren't the usual cuneiform or hieroglyphics I was accustomed to seeing from this region and period. Instead, they formed geometric patterns that seemed oddly familiar.

  I set the tablet down and pulled out my phone, scrolling through the photos I'd taken of my dream journal. There—the pattern I'd drawn three nights ago after waking in a cold sweat, the woman's voice echoing in my mind. It was unmistakably similar to the central motif on the tablet, a series of interconnected triangles and curves that formed a sort of stylized flower.

  My heartbeat quickened. This couldn't be coincidence. First the pendant, now this tablet—both bearing symbols identical to patterns that had haunted my dreams for months.

  I glanced at the security camera. Its small red light glowed steadily, indicating it was operational. I should log this find, note the similarity to known symbology, file it properly in the system. That's what a responsible research assistant would do.

  Instead, I removed my gloves.

  It was against protocol to handle ancient artifacts with bare hands—the oils from skin could damage delicate surfaces—but something stronger than professional ethics was driving me now. I needed to touch the tablet, to feel the etchings beneath my fingertips.

  As my skin made contact with the cool stone, something shifted in my perception. The fluorescent lights seemed to dim, the background noise of the museum fading to a muffled hum. I traced the pattern instinctively, my fingers following the grooves as if they knew the path by heart.

  Like in the dream.

  The thought floated up from some deeper part of my consciousness. Yes—in recent dreams, the amber-eyed woman had guided my hands over similar patterns, her touch gentle but insistent as she showed me how to trace each line, each curve.

  "Remember," she had whispered, her breath warm against my ear. "Your hands remember even if your mind does not."

  The stone warmed beneath my touch, not dramatically but noticeably, as if responding to some energy in my fingertips. I followed the pattern again, more confidently now, feeling a subtle vibration that seemed to resonate up my arm and into my chest.

  Above me, the security camera emitted a sharp pop and went dark, a thin wisp of smoke curling from its housing.

  I jerked my hand away from the tablet, heart pounding. Just like the elevator. Electronics malfunctioning around me, seemingly in response to... what? My touch? My thoughts? The patterns themselves?

  The tablet now appeared ordinary again—just an ancient stone with weathered markings. I reached for my gloves, then hesitated, noticing something strange on my fingertips. Where they had touched the grooves of the pattern, faint lines remained, as if the stone had temporarily imprinted itself on my skin. I rubbed my fingers together, but the marks didn't smudge or fade.

  Curious, I dimmed the desk lamp and examined my fingertips in the reduced light. The imprints glowed faintly—a soft, bluish luminescence barely visible even in the dimness. As I watched, they slowly faded, like phosphorescence dying away.

  "Finding anything interesting?"

  Dr. Chen's voice made me start violently. I fumbled for my gloves, knocking over an empty coffee cup in the process.

  "Sorry," I said, fighting to keep my voice steady. "You startled me."

  Dr. Chen stood in the doorway, clipboard in hand, her expression pleasantly neutral—but there was tension in the set of her shoulders, in the way her eyes darted from my face to the tablet and back again.

  "That tablet seems to have caught your attention." Her tone was casual, conversational, but something in it reminded me uncomfortably of Mr. Gray's clinical interest.

  "It has unusual markings," I said, pulling on my gloves with hands that weren't quite steady. "Not typical of the period or region."

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

  "May I?" She approached, extending a hand for the tablet.

  I passed it to her, watching closely. She examined it with professional detachment, turning it over, squinting at the etchings. If she felt anything unusual—warmth, vibration, that strange resonance—her face didn't show it.

  "Interesting," she murmured. "The patterns resemble some found on artifacts from the Mediterranean collection you've been cataloging, don't they? The pendant, for instance."

  My pulse quickened. She had made the connection too. "Yes," I admitted. "There are similarities."

  Dr. Chen handed the tablet back to me, her expression thoughtful. "Have you ever seen patterns like these before? Perhaps in academic journals, or other museum collections?"

  In my dreams. Every night for months. Drawn in my journal since I was nineteen. Appearing on my windows as frost. Glowing under my fingers just now.

  "No," I lied. "Never."

  She studied me for a long moment, her gaze more penetrating than I was comfortable with. I had the distinct impression she knew I was lying.

  "Well," she said finally, "be sure to document your observations thoroughly. Mr. Gray was particularly interested in this shipment."

  There it was—the connection I'd suspected. Mr. Gray, the security camera malfunctions, the tablet, my dreams. They were all pieces of a puzzle I couldn't yet see.

  "I will," I promised, relieved when she finally left me alone with the tablet and my racing thoughts.

  The rest of the day passed in a haze of routine tasks performed by muscle memory while my mind circled endlessly around the implications of what had happened. By closing time, I was exhausted, my head throbbing with the effort of maintaining a normal fa?ade while internally unraveling.

  I took a different route home, watching carefully for any sign of Mr. Gray or other surveillance. The streets seemed clear, but I couldn't shake the feeling of being observed from a distance too great to detect.

  In my apartment, I performed the now-nightly ritual of checking for new tracking devices or other intrusions. Finding none, I collapsed onto my bed, the day's events playing on loop behind my closed eyelids. The tablet. The patterns. The security camera shorting out. Dr. Chen's too-casual questions.

  I must have drifted off, because suddenly the tablet was before me again, floating in a darkness that wasn't quite empty. Its etchings glowed with the same soft blue luminescence I'd seen on my fingertips, pulsing gently like a heartbeat.

  The amber-eyed woman appeared on the other side of the tablet, her face serene, her silver-streaked hair loose around her shoulders. She was beautiful in a way that transcended conventional attractiveness—something in her eyes, her bearing, suggested knowledge and power far beyond her apparent years.

  "You're beginning to see," she said, her voice clear and melodious in the dream-space. "Beginning to feel. But you must remember."

  "Remember what?" I asked, the question emerging without conscious thought. "Who are you?"

  She smiled, a hint of sadness in the expression. "I am many things. A memory. A guide. A part of you that was hidden, that now stirs."

  She gestured to the glowing tablet between us. "Your blood is the key to remembering."

  The statement should have alarmed me, but in the logic of the dream, it made perfect sense. I looked down to find my palm had been cut, blood welling from a neat incision across my lifeline.

  "Like this," the woman said, guiding my bleeding hand to the tablet's surface.

  When my palm pressed against the stone, the patterns flared brighter, almost painfully intense. The etchings seemed to lift from the tablet, transferring to my skin like a brand. But instead of burning, they sank beneath the surface, moving under my skin like living things, flowing up my arm in intricate, glowing patterns.

  "Remember," the woman whispered, her amber eyes—so like my own—holding mine as the patterns spread across my chest, my other arm, climbing toward my throat.

  "Remember what?" I gasped, the patterns now reaching my jaw, crawling toward my eyes.

  "Everything," she said simply.

  The patterns covered my face, and suddenly I was looking through them, seeing the world as a complex grid of interconnected energy, every object, every person outlined in light, trailing history like comet tails—

  I jerked awake with a cry, heart hammering against my ribs. My hands felt strange, heavy, tingling. I fumbled for the bedside lamp, knocking over a glass of water in the process.

  Light flooded the room, and I stared in shock at my hands. They were covered in ink—black lines forming the patterns from my dream, from the tablet. The same geometric shapes, spirals, and angles that had haunted me for months.

  I hadn't gone to bed with a pen. I hadn't drawn on myself. Yet here was the evidence that while I slept, some part of me had been actively recreating the patterns on my skin.

  Shaking, I stumbled to the bathroom and thrust my hands under the faucet, watching as the ink swirled down the drain. But as the water washed away the surface marks, something strange happened—for a moment, just a moment, the patterns seemed to move beneath my skin, glowing faintly before fading away.

  I'm losing my mind.

  The thought was almost comforting in its simplicity. If I was simply going crazy, then there were no tablets with ancient patterns, no suited men following me, no women with amber eyes telling me to remember. Just a breakdown, a psychotic episode, something that could be treated with medication and therapy.

  My phone chimed from the bedroom—the distinctive tone I'd set for security alerts. I'd installed a basic motion detection system after moving in, more out of general urban caution than any specific fear. It had never gone off before.

  Still dripping water, I returned to the bedroom and picked up my phone. The alert showed motion detected in my apartment at 3:14 AM—while I was supposedly alone, asleep in my bed.

  My hand shook as I opened the video feed. The footage showed my darkened bedroom, illuminated only by the faint glow of streetlights through the blinds. I could make out my own form under the covers, apparently deep in sleep.

  For several seconds, nothing happened. Then the image dissolved into static, white noise filling the screen for almost thirty seconds before clearing again to show my bedroom, unchanged.

  I frowned, rewinding to watch the static portion again. Something about it seemed wrong—not just technical interference, but almost as if something was moving within the visual noise.

  I downloaded the clip and opened it in a basic video editor, adjusting the contrast and brightness, slowing the playback to quarter speed. As the static played frame by frame, my blood turned to ice.

  There, just for a moment—perhaps three or four frames—a figure stood beside my bed. Tall, indistinct, more shadow than substance, but undeniably present. It leaned over my sleeping form, one elongated limb extended toward my hands—the same hands I'd woken to find covered in the patterns.

  I dropped the phone as if it had burned me, backing away until I hit the wall. The figure in the video had been exactly like the presence I'd felt in the elevator—not quite human, not quite there, yet undeniably real.

  And it had been in my apartment. Standing over me while I slept. Doing... what?

  The patterns on my hands. The dream of the tablet. The woman's words: Your blood is the key to remembering.

  My gaze darted to the bedside table where my dream journal lay. I'd been documenting the symbols for months, drawn to them by some compulsion I couldn't explain. But what if I wasn't creating them? What if I was remembering them, as the woman kept insisting?

  And what if I wasn't the only one interested in what those memories might contain?

  The security camera in the lab. The tracker in my jacket. Mr. Gray's surveillance. Dr. Chen's questions about the tablet. The shadow figure standing over me as I slept.

  They were all connected, all part of something larger than I could comprehend. And at the center of it all were the patterns—ancient, powerful, and somehow a part of me.

  I picked up my phone again, staring at the frozen image of the shadow figure. Its outline seemed to shimmer, even in the still frame, as if it existed partly in our reality and partly somewhere else.

  Just like the patterns beneath my skin.