They wake at the same moment. Voss on a stone floor in a building she does not recognise. Crane on wet grass in an open field. Both gasping. Both reaching for a name — just the name, nothing else — and underneath it, a single terrible certainty: something happened. One of us did something unforgivable. And the other one was trying to stop it.
What they discover, as they piece together who they are from fragments and follow coordinates to a building that holds a record of their own making, is that neither of them is the villain. They erased themselves deliberately — an act of calculated sacrifice to protect evidence of serious wrongdoing from people powerful enough to take it from them by force.
The unforgivable thing was what they agreed to do to themselves. And it was the right decision. And it cost everything. And they would do it again.
As they work to deliver the evidence and outrun the people hunting them, something else becomes clear — they trust each other completely, despite having no memory of why they should. The body remembers what the mind has lost. And at the end, when it is over, they choose each other again. From nothing. With full knowledge of the cost.
A stunning, philosophically ambitious YA thriller-fantasy about identity, sacrifice, trust, and what remains of a person when everything they remember about themselves is taken away.
For independent readers aged 13-16.