Untamed Truth

Elira had taught history once.

Real history—not the sterilized timelines and heroic myths the Directorate approved, but the raw, untamed truth. She taught from memory, from smuggled pages, from half-burned books salvaged in the early years of the collapse. It was dangerous work. But now, with the city in flames and the sirens screaming like banshees, that danger had become fatal.

They were hunting her.

Not the street gangs or looters—she could have reasoned with them, even helped them. No, this was different. The men after her wore suits, not armor. Quiet voices. Polished shoes. Precision in every movement. They didn’t need to shout or threaten. Their silence was the threat. The Ministry called them “Compliance Officers.” The people called them “shadows.”

She had spotted them earlier, cutting through the smoke-filled streets near the old university district, where she'd hidden microfilm copies of banned texts. They didn’t chase. They simply followed—calm, patient, clinical. Like wolves stalking an injured deer.

Elira kept moving.

Around her, the city was an inferno. Concrete split under the heat. Holographic billboards sparked and died. Citizens tore down government drones with ropes and pipes, cheered as they crashed into the pavement. It should have felt like a kind of justice.

It didn’t.

She ducked into the skeletal remains of a library annex—her old haunt, now nothing but scorched shelves and dust. Somewhere beneath the ash, she had stashed a relic, wrapped in cloth: a first-edition copy of The Federalist Papers. Worthless to most, priceless to her. She clutched it tight and whispered: “They burned this once before. Not again.”

Behind her, footsteps—soft, deliberate.

They were close.

She slipped through a maintenance corridor and into the back alley, weaving through the chaos. A wall of fire rose two blocks away as a fuel truck exploded, sending a mushroom cloud of flame into the night. The city screamed. Not in words, but in collapsing metal and the roar of betrayal.

She could still feel the presence of the shadows. Always just a corner behind.

Why now? she wondered. Why come for me when the world is already falling?

And then the answer came, cold and clear.

Because stories survive. Because memory endures. Because truth is the last thing they haven’t extinguished.

If people knew what came before—if they understood how the fall had happened—then maybe they’d stop begging for chains and start demanding freedom. Maybe they’d rise up for real. Not just burn buildings, but rebuild minds.

And so Elira ran, not to escape, but to preserve.

Because in a world ruled by lies, memory was rebellion.

And she would not be silenced.