Sifa Bahari had stopped the music before Amina reached the door of the small home studio.
The room behind their Kilimani house had a wooden floor, one wide mirror, and two tired speakers. Sifa used it for dance rehearsals and auditions. Today she sat against the mirror with her phone in her hand as if the device itself had betrayed her.
“Don't tell me you requested access to my sessions,” she said instead of greeting Amina.
“I didn't. I declared a conflict.”
“Then why did Marwa call me?”
Amina felt anger rise. “She called you?”
“An hour ago. Asked if I 'remembered the beta clearly.' Is that the polite corporate way of asking whether my head works?”
Amina sat on the shoe bench across the room. “I found your cohort code attached to an anchor with broken provenance. I did not open your content.”
Sifa watched her. “And now I'm a sample?”
“No. I came to tell you before anyone else turns you into one.”
Amina showed her the old beta terms. The document separated the experience from thirty-day storage, but a long sentence allowed data to be used for “experience improvement.” Training had never been offered as a separate choice.
“I understood that as improving my own session,” Sifa said.
“So would most people.”
“Not giving strangers my scents.”
“We still don't know K-17 is yours.”
“But it came through my cohort.”
“Yes. That's all we can say.”
Sifa stood and started a rehearsal track. She danced three steps cleanly, turned, shifted her weight—and stopped with her right arm suspended in the air.
“My song continues here,” she said.
“The beat is still playing.”
“Not this beat. The song Mum used to sing.”
Their mother had been dead seven years. The melody was not on an official recording. It belonged to kitchens, dishes, and ordinary mornings. Sifa had remembered it better than anyone.
“I used the beta to rehearse to that melody,” she said. “I knew the whole chorus.”
“When was the last time you sang it?” Amina asked.
“Maybe two weeks after beta. I don't know.”
“This could be stress. Fatigue. We have no evidence the system removed a memory.”
“I know. Don't diagnose me for the company.”
Amina went quiet.
Sifa tried the sequence again and failed at the same place. She switched off the speakers. “I remember Mum's blue pot. I remember the smell of pilau. But the melody won't come. Then you tell me some unidentified scent is showing up in another person's dream.”
Amina wanted to hold her hand. She did not move without asking.
“What do you want me to do?”
“Don't use this.”
“Use what?”
“Me. The missing song. Don't take it into a board room and call it proof.”
The request cut directly across Amina's instinct as an investigator. Sifa's old consent screen mattered. Her memory gap was far less certain.
“I won't use the gap as proof of K-17,” Amina said. “And I won't open your beta content without your permission.”
“What if the regulator wants it?”
“They ask you. I don't decide.”
Amina showed her the conflict declaration. Ruth Mwende from the Digital Wellness office would lead the independent review. Amina could still perform system containment, but anything involving Sifa would require outside oversight.
“You can declare a real conflict?” Sifa asked. “Not just fill a form?”
“I'm not the lead on your data.”
Sifa looked away. “Since Mum died, you keep thinking if you control enough details nobody else can disappear.”
Amina had heard versions of that sentence before. Today it landed inside her work.
“I'll let you choose your level of participation,” she said.
Sifa reread the old terms. “Before anyone asks me for anything else, write down the real problem: experience, storage, and training were not separate.”
Amina wrote it.
“And I do not want a restoration session now. If somebody tells me they can magically bring the song back, I will walk out.”
“No one should promise a cure.”
Joel sent a cohort map while they spoke. K-17 touched twelve sessions through a shared cache. That made it even less honest to claim one source.
Amina showed Sifa only the metadata.
“So you cannot say it was mine,” Sifa said.
“No.”
“But you can say the company does not know whose it was.”
Amina nodded. “Yes.”
That was stronger than a dramatic accusation because it was true.
Sifa stood again. “Turn the beat on.”
Amina did. This time Sifa reached the blank place and changed the choreography instead of forcing the missing melody.
When she finished, she was breathing hard.
“This is my consent for today,” she said. “You may say I signed beta terms I did not understand as training permission. You may not use my dream content. You may not use the missing song as proof. If you need anything else, ask again.”
Amina wrote the boundaries almost word for word.
At the door, Sifa stopped her.
“Don't try to force my song back so you can feel like you saved something.”
Amina did not make a heroic promise. “I'll try to remember it isn't mine to restore.”
Minutes later Ruth accepted the conflict declaration. Beneath it was a message Sifa had sent directly to the regulator:
`I am not Amina's evidence. I will speak for myself.`