Vienna bustled beneath the sunlight, its streets filled with traffic and the aroma of coffee. Everything basked in a seemingly normal order. But I knew all too well that turbulent currents lurked beneath it. I had just escaped the rules' hunters, the "Name-Catchers," at the cost of two permanently erased memories and the even greedier New Shackle within me.
I blended into the crowd, my stride seemingly no different from those around me, but my senses were stretched to their limits. Every glint of reflected light, every sudden sound, could herald the Name-Catchers' return or Echo's all-pervasive scrutiny. My left wrist had stopped turning transparent, but a deeper emptiness, born of having my memories gouged out, persisted like background noise.
I needed information, a hiding place, and a better understanding of the Name-Catchers. Above all, I needed clues to the Spring of Birth. All of that pointed to one place-the city's shadowed side, the gray zone where information and danger coexisted. But I could no longer casually use the notebook's power to "search." I could not afford the New Shackle's price.
I remembered the physician in Between Echoes. He clearly knew a great deal, but he was an enormous risk himself. Still, he had mentioned that the Name-Catchers were sensitive to "names"... Perhaps I could exploit that, though I needed more detailed information to figure out how.
As I wandered aimlessly, considering my next move, a fierce wave of dizziness struck. It was not from injury or blood loss, but the mental weakness left by having memories extracted. I braced myself against a roadside advertising board and barely kept my footing. Through my blurred vision, a news brief on the board caught my attention-a research report on recent abnormal fluctuations in the city's groundwater system, illustrated with an old map