Anne's hand hovered over the console.
Two options blinked like the heartbeat of a dying god.
Wipe everything.
Or let it all live, messy and broken.
Behind her, Javier was pacing like a caffeinated lawyer in a murder trial. "No pressure, but I'd prefer not to get deleted today. Also, I left pizza in Eli's fridge, and it's not fair if I die before I finish it."
Anne didn't laugh.
She stared at the options. "What if I pick the wrong one?"
"There is no right one," Javier said. "There's only the one you don't regret at 3 a.m. when your brain won't shut up."
She closed her eyes.
Memories flickered behind her eyelids like film: Kira's laughter. The art studio. The echoes of being forgotten. The smell of turpentine. The sound of Javier's dumb pickup line at the cafe that one day that started it all.
She pressed Option 2.
> Save the memories. Let them live.
The console dimmed.
Silence.
Then a low hum.
Anne turned to Dr. Seong.
But he was smiling.
Too calmly.
"What did you do?" she asked.
He stepped back. "I told you there were consequences."
The ground beneath them rumbled.
Screens across the lab flickered, then burst into cascading lines of corrupted data. A female voice emerged, warped, digital, angry.
> "Unauthorized override detected."
Javier's eyes widened. "Uhh… I don't think that was Siri."
A hologram formed in the center of the room.
It was… Kira.
But wrong.
Her eyes were blank white. Her voice echoed with code.
> "You chose to preserve. I was never meant to be preserved."
Anne staggered back. "No—this isn't right. You… you were gone. You left a message—"
> "You preserved the disease. I was the firewall. Now the system bleeds."
Kira's corrupted consciousness began to spread across the room, consuming the neural servers one by one. Lights exploded overhead. Glass cracked. The air warped.
Javier grabbed Anne's arm. "We need to go. Like now-now. Not movie-slow-motion-now."
Anne stared at her sister's broken echo.
"I just wanted to save what was left of her."
Javier whispered, "Then we'd better figure out how to bring her back—before the ghost of your dead sister deletes reality like it's a group chat."
They turned to run.
The entire Red Sector was collapsing.
But Anne wasn't leaving this story unfinished.