MTLNOVEL Chapter 24: 8. The Girl Who Remembers Everything
Chapter 8: The Girl Who Remembers Everything
POV: Lynne
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Zaun taught everyone to grow up fast.
It didn't teach children.
It beat lessons into them—cold, practical, and fast.
For Lynne, it happened the day she realized her mind worked differently. Letters, numbers, faces—once she saw them, they stuck. Her memory was a mirror, never fogging, never fading. It was impressive, her neighbors used to say, until it became unnerving. A little girl who could recite street signs backwards or recall exact prices from a year ago? That kind of thing didn't stay endearing for long.
She learned early to keep quiet. Her mother used to call it a "gift." Her father—back when he was still around—called it "dangerous." He wasn't wrong.
Lynne wasn't taught how to survive. She learned by watching. Listening. Repeating. Her photographic memory meant she never forgot a word she overheard or a diagram glimpsed in a chem-runner's manual. And she saw everything. Remembered it all.
Even when she didn't want to.
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By the time she was five, she could quote whole convos between gang lieutenants from memory. At six, she memorized alley codes used by smugglers. She learned where enforcers turned their patrols and how different chemtrails tasted based on what part of the Fissures they'd been bottled in.
She didn't know why she remembered it all.
But it made people notice her. And that was a problem.
Because in Zaun, being noticed was dangerous.
And knowledge was a currency more volatile than chem-powder.
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Her mother used to run a parts stall in the Cauldron. Not a brilliant woman, but warm. Gentle in a way rare down here. Her eyes used to light up when Lynne listed exact stock numbers or recalled the names of passing clients.
"I swear," her mom would say, ruffling her hair. "You've got lightning in that skull of yours."
But lightning's no good when it sets fires.
By the time Lynne was seven, people came not for the parts, but the girl who could tell you exactly how many enforcers patrolled each block and what days the better-paying merchants came to trade.
Her mother was killed during a scuffle over a shipment. Lynne remembered every scream. Every footstep. Every scent in the air.
She'd been hiding under the stall, pressed between crates, praying someone would pass her by.
No one did.
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From then on, she stopped talking to people. Stopped sharing what she knew. She drifted alone between ruined corridors and rusted ladders, sleeping in storage pipes or abandoned filter grates.
Her memory made survival easier... but living lonelier.
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Then came The Day of Ashes.
She was nine.
She remembered the color of the clouds. The way the light filtered down over the Bridge of Progress like an omen.
She was scavenging near the upper pipes that day—trying to get closer to Piltover's garbage chutes. Someone said they tossed real food out sometimes. Apples. Canned beans. Even—if you were lucky—cheesebars.
Then came the rumble. The tremors. She heard the screams before she saw the smoke.
Ash and flame bloomed in the sky, swallowing buildings in the distance.
Lynne had read about war, about uprisings, in the scraps of books she kept under her mattress. But nothing described what it felt like when the sky cracked open and Enforcers rained down bullets and smoke.
She had just enough time to realize the chaos was pouring from Piltover before the air itself began to burn. Enforcer boots stormed the pipes below. Some Zaunites fought back. Most died.
She ran.
She never found the two other kids she scavenged with that morning.
But she remembered their names. Still did.
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After that, Lynne started writing everything down. At first, it was to sort out the blur of memories—the sounds, voices, smells that flooded her every time she blinked. She used burnt scraps, chalk dust, bent copper sheets. Anything she could mark.
But she found something more than relief.
She found patterns.
Who owed who. Where food moved. Which tunnels echoed more at night than day. The way different chem-baron banners rotated guards or switched lieutenants every third cycle.
She didn't understand everything.
But she remembered enough to matter.
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The mistake she made was thinking that made her special.
Lynne wasn't street-smart. Not in the way most Zaun kids were. She couldn't read a bluff or smell a trap before stepping into it. What she had was facts. Information. She could remember exactly who sold what in the market and what time the guards rotated shifts at the crossing bridge. But intuition? Street instincts? No.
She cheated with her memory instead. Never grasped why things worked. She just remembered them. Memorization gave her the illusion of competence. So she leaned on it, and over time, the understanding drifted further and further from reach.
Lynne had gotten by, sure. But she hadn't grown. Her understanding remained surface-level. She could mimic repairs on a broken filter press because she'd seen a gear replaced once—but she couldn't tell why it failed in the first place.
Her skills were wide, but shallow. A jack of all trades, master of none.
She leaned too heavily on her memory. Cheated understanding with mimicry.
And she didn't even notice it happening until her "perfect" water-pump build exploded under pressure and flooded her entire bolt-hole. Lost everything that night.
And realized something even worse—
She still hadn't learned how to learn.
After that, she stopped calling herself clever.
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That was when she saw Ashryn.
It was about a year ago.
She was crawling under the collapsed pipeline beneath Old Bolt Alley, chasing a smuggler rumor, when she saw someone sprint across the beams above like they were solid stone. No hesitation. Just movement.
She'd heard whispers about a girl taking over old hideouts and starting fights in upper sectors. But rumors were always exaggerated.
Until she saw the girl land hard on a rusted vent, toss a glance down, and flash the kind of grin Lynne didn't know existed in Zaun anymore.
Ashryn was built like a weapon. Sleeveless top, midriff bare, dark pants with boots molded to grip metal. Hair like storm ash. Eyes like cracked sky-glass.
Wild. But sharp.
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Lynne got caught that day by a pair of cutthroats.
She probably would've bled out in that alley if Ashryn hadn't intervened.
Didn't kill them. Just disarmed them, tossed them over the railing with a laugh, then handed Lynne a protein bar with one bite already taken out.
"You look like the type who remembers debts," Ashryn had said.
Lynne blinked. "How'd you—?"
"I'm a good guesser," she winked. "That's all."
And just like that, she was gone.
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Since then, they'd run into each other now and again. Ashryn never pressed. Never demanded anything. But she watched Lynne. Listened. Laughed at her jokes, even the dry ones.
Not once had she invited her to join whatever scheme she was clearly cooking up.
But Lynne didn't mind.
Because she was starting to think—
If Ashryn did ask… she might say yes.
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