Detective Mara Osei hated the smell of the Archive. Ozone and static, like a storm that never broke. Fifty years ago, when the Continuity Act passed, they’d promised the dead would finally be safe — no more grieving families selling memory-rights to tabloids, no more corporations mining a dead man’s last thoughts for ad data. Every citizen’s memories, uploaded at the moment of death, sealed in the State Archive, accessible only to Cold Case Division, and only with a judge’s writ.