Echoes of a Wiped Slate

Liskra is a brilliant, painfully shy sleep-specialist working at the brutalist Volkhov Sanatorium. After being publicly humiliated and demoted by the Chief Medical Officer for her stubborn refusal to abandon dying patients, she is assigned an impossible case: Vochak, the feared Commander of the Iron Magistrate. Vochak suffers from lethal, chemically-induced insomnia. He is also tearing the subterranean city of Oplot apart in a violent, obsessive search. During a deadly toxic spore-storm and grid blackout, a mysterious woman used him for a desperate one-night stand, then vanished without a trace, wiping all security footage and leaving absolutely nothing behind. Vochak wants her found, believing she was a saboteur who stole state secrets. What neither of them knows is that Liskra is the culprit. Her past self intentionally engineered the blackout, the encounter, and the memory wipes - including her own - to use the terrifying commander as a living incubator for a plague cure. As Vochak's interrogations close in, and a black-market data broker decrypts an analog backup of the hotel footage, Liskra must piece together the horrifying conspiracy her past self orchestrated. Will she survive the revelation of her own masterpiece?