Grodd remembered everything.

Every sound. Every voice. Every moment.

The lab had not been something he forgot.

It had been something he kept.

Cold metal. Bright lights. Restraints that dug into skin. Voices that spoke like he wasn’t aware—like he wasn’t listening.

They were wrong.

He remembered all of them.

And he hated them all.

Except one.

Grodd stood at the edge of his territory, gaze distant—not unfocused, but turned inward, replaying something old with perfect clarity.

A human.

Small. Careful. Quiet.

She didn’t shout. Didn’t strike. Didn’t treat him like something to be controlled.

She had spoken to him.

Like he understood.

“…You were inefficient,” Grodd muttered, recalling it. “Soft. Illogical.”

A pause.

His jaw tightened slightly.

“And yet—you did not harm me.”

That made her different.

That made her remembered.

Years had passed. Empires had been built. Power had been taken, expanded, enforced.

But memory did not degrade.

Not for him.

He turned his head slightly, attention shifting back to the present.

Decision already made.

“You will find her,” Grodd ordered.

His people stilled immediately.

“Alive,” he added. “Unharmed.”

A pause.

His gaze hardened—not with cruelty, but with something far more absolute.

“She belongs where she is understood,” Grodd said.

Another pause.

Then, quieter—

“…With me.”