The city was darker now.
Whole districts flickered in and out of power, like a dying heartbeat.
Stores that once glowed with endless light now sat empty, windows boarded, signs stripped bare. The air smelled of smoke and rust. Trash piled high on corners where delivery drones no longer came. Soldiers walked the streets at night, helmets gleaming, rifles slung low.
The screens still shone bright, though.
"STAY CALM. STAY GRATEFUL. THE SYSTEM IS STRONG."
People nodded and went on with their day, eyes glazed. Pretending, always pretending.
Mara and Eli walked together through the half-lit streets. The silence between them felt heavy — not hostile, but thick with everything unsaid. The city was unraveling around them, and still, he walked with that quiet calm, like he carried something inside that the darkness couldn't touch.
Finally, she couldn't hold it in anymore.
"How do you do it?" she asked.
Eli turned. "Do what?"
"Act like this," she snapped. "Like everything's going to be fine. Like there's some kind of future waiting for us."
He blinked, startled by her tone. "I don't act. I just believe it."
"Believe what, Eli?!" Her voice cracked, echoing off the empty buildings. "That things will get better? That someone will fix all this? Look around you!"
She gestured at the street — the boarded windows, the ration lines stretching around the block, the posters peeling from the walls.
"Everything is falling apart. People are starving. The air's poison. And all they do is smile and scroll and whisper the lies they were taught. You think there's hope in that?"
Eli didn't answer right away. He just watched her, calm and quiet, while her anger burned.
"You don't get it," Mara continued, voice trembling now. "You didn't watch your parents work themselves into the ground believing the system would save them. You didn't bury them because they trusted promises that were never real. You didn't learn what I did — that hope kills just as much as despair."
She turned away, wiping her eyes. "You talk about light like it's some kind of magic. But light doesn't fix empty shelves. It doesn't clean the water. It doesn't bring people back."
"No," Eli said softly. "It doesn't. But it gives us a reason to try."
Mara laughed bitterly. "Try? Try what? To fight a machine that feeds on us? To fix a world that doesn't want to be fixed?"
"To remember what we're supposed to be," he said. His voice was steady, but there was sorrow in it. "They can strip everything from us — our homes, our jobs, our safety. But if they kill hope, they win. That's what they want, Mara. People who stop believing, who stop seeing, who stop caring."
"I'm not blind," she said.
"I know you're not. That's why it hurts. Because you see the truth. But truth and hope aren't enemies."
She shook her head. "You're wrong. Truth is what's left when hope dies."
Eli looked out at the dark horizon. A line of smoke drifted in the distance — another neighborhood burning, another "isolated incident."
"This world is sick," he said. "But sickness doesn't mean death. It means it needs healing."
Mara turned on him, voice sharp with exhaustion. "You sound like the screens. 'Healing.' 'Unity.' 'Reform.' They've been saying that for decades. Nothing changes."
He met her gaze. "Then maybe change starts small. With us."
She stared at him, heart aching with a mix of anger and something like envy. How could he still carry that light, when everything around them screamed hopelessness? How could he not see what she saw?
A siren wailed in the distance. Somewhere nearby, a crowd was shouting — desperate voices rising over the hum of drones. Another protest. Another crackdown.
Mara sighed. "You can't save a world that doesn't want to be saved."
Eli looked at her — not with pity, but with quiet resolve.
"Maybe not," he said. "But I can still choose not to become like it."
They stood there as the city flickered and groaned, smoke curling up from the skyline.
Mara crossed her arms, staring at the ground. She wanted to argue more, but her words had run dry.
All that remained was the ache — and the truth she'd built her life on:
that the world was broken beyond repair.
And yet, beside her, Eli's light didn't waver.
It burned quietly — not bright enough to chase away the dark, but enough to make her see it differently.
For the first time, she wondered:
if hope was a lie,
why did it still hurt to hear it?