The rooftop was silent.
Above, Vireloch's sky pulsed with artificial stars—drone beacons orbiting shattered satellites. The real stars were long gone, drowned in data and light. Below her, the city buzzed, unaware of how close it was to collapse.
Aeris sat on the ledge, legs dangling, hands trembling slightly in her lap. Her neural deck was fried, patched together with borrowed parts from a black-market tech runner. Her left implant still glitched—flashes of voices, pieces of memory that didn't belong to her.
Solara's betrayal replayed in her mind like a scar she couldn't touch.
"You were born with a flaw—conscience."
Aeris exhaled. For a moment, she didn't want to fight. She wanted to forget. Just pull the plug, let the Grid swallow everything—her name, her past, her mistakes. Let someone else carry the weight.
But the problem with memory is that it's never just yours.
She pulled a cracked memory shard from her jacket. Kael's voice was embedded in it—distorted, broken, but his.
"You weren't supposed to see this. But if you're holding it, then we're out of time."
She closed her eyes.
Out of time.
Everyone she trusted was either gone, dead, or weaponized against her. The Nexus wanted her erased. Solara had sold her mind. And somewhere deep in the Grid, the last true memory—the original memory—was still locked behind a firewall of her own design.
What terrified her wasn't the truth. It was what the truth might demand.
That she become someone else.That she lose even more.That saving everything meant losing Kael, or worse—herself.
She opened her eyes. Let the tears fall. No one was watching anymore.
Then she whispered:
"If I die tomorrow… I want to die knowing I chose this."
A quiet beep at her wrist—her neural deck flickered to life. A crude, partial boot.
Just enough to break into the final archive.
Just enough to finish it.
Aeris stood slowly, jaw set, wind tugging at her coat.
She looked out at the city—corrupt, broken, burning at the edges.
"I built this world. Now I'll decide how it ends."
[TO BE CONTINUED]