"So, do we have a deal, Miss Young?"
The old man's voice carried a practiced smoothness, the kind that had closed contracts and buried competitors for decades. Even through the faint shimmer of the holographic interface, his smile was unmistakable—wide, confident, and utterly unthreatened. The projection flickered slightly as he leaned forward in his chair, fingers folded together as if the answer was already decided.
"Do we have a deal?"
He repeated himself, the pleasant tone cracking just enough to reveal irritation beneath it. Not anger. No—anticipation. Excitement. He wanted this to be over.
Miss Young swallowed.
"Y–Yes…" Her voice wavered despite her effort to steady it. "I'll terminate our company and accept full responsibility over RAGE's failure."
The words felt foreign as they left her mouth, like she was reciting a confession written by someone else. Each syllable pressed down on her chest, heavier than the last.
The old man's smile widened.
"Excellent."
The hologram vanished.
Silence rushed in to replace it, thick and suffocating. Miss Young remained seated for several seconds longer than necessary, staring at the empty space where the projection had been. The office lights hummed softly above her, indifferent to the end of everything she had built.
She stood slowly, smoothing her jacket with trembling fingers.
Miss Young—thirty-one years old. Software engineer. Visionary. The woman who had created the first artificial intelligence capable of replacing entire development teams across three separate projects simultaneously. A feat that had rewritten the rules of the industry.
And now?
A scapegoat.
She stepped out of the office and into the corridor, her heels clicking against the polished floor. Faces turned toward her—some quickly, others lingering just a second too long. Nervous glances. Tight smiles. People pretending not to know, pretending not to care.
Everyone knew.
It hadn't failed.
Someone had stolen the code.
Someone had implanted the virus.
Her jaw tightened as the thought surfaced, sharp and poisonous.
My own husband.
The betrayal still felt unreal, like a bad simulation that refused to end. He had access. He had trust. He had everything he needed.
And he sold it.
The elevator doors slid open, and she stepped inside alone. As the doors closed, she caught her reflection in the mirrored surface—eyes rimmed red, posture stiff, expression carefully neutral.
She looked younger than she was. Too young to be ending a legacy.
The ride down was quiet.
---
The hovercar ride home was… unceremonious.
She sat in the backseat, hands folded in her lap as the cityscape slid past the windows. Towers of glass and light stretched endlessly upward, their surfaces alive with shifting advertisements and holographic displays. This was the future humanity had dreamed of—clean, efficient, polished.
She felt none of it.
She had packed everything beforehand. Every personal item. Every backup. Every trace of herself. She'd known this was coming long before the meeting ever started.
She was getting fired.
No—worse. She was being erased.
The divorce had been finalized weeks earlier. Clean. Efficient. Almost cold.
He hadn't taken a cent.
Only the official document.
"He hadn't taken a cent," she muttered to no one but herself. "Only the official document."
Her hands clenched.
Why did that hurt the most?
Because it meant he didn't need her. Didn't need the money. Didn't need the life they had planned together. He had walked away lighter, freer—while she was left carrying the wreckage.
He had chosen Gen Tech's very own CROSS daughter.
The thought burned.
Fucking cheater… after everything we did in college.
The memory flared and faded just as quickly. Long nights. Shared breakthroughs. Dreams scribbled on scraps of paper and half-finished code. She forced it down.
She still had time.
Around two hundred years, if modern medicine held true.
It was 3120, after all.
And companies were still—
"So. So. Greedy."
The hovercar slowed, then stopped.
---
Her apartment greeted her with silence.
She had rented it with the money she received from the divorce—money that now felt more like an apology than compensation. The door slid shut behind her with a soft hiss, sealing her inside a space that felt too clean, too empty.
She stood there for a moment, unmoving.
Then something snapped.
"Fuck this stupid lump of—!"
Her voice echoed as she grabbed the nearest painting and hurled it across the room. It shattered on impact, fragments scattering across the floor. Another followed. Then another. Childhood memories reduced to broken glass and torn canvas.
Years of shared history—destroyed in seconds.
"All for what?" she screamed. "For—for—"
Her breath hitched.
"A FUCKING DADDY'S BIMBO!"
Tears spilled over as the words tore out of her, raw and ugly. Her chest heaved, emotions detonating all at once. Anger. Grief. Betrayal. Shame.
Fireworks of feeling exploded behind her eyes.
When there was nothing left to throw, she collapsed against the wall and slid down until she was sitting on the floor, surrounded by ruins.
Eventually, she forced herself up.
She took a shower. Let the hot water burn her skin red. Then a bath, staring blankly at the ceiling as time slipped by unnoticed. Finally, she crawled into bed, naked just as she had been in the water, exhaustion dragging her under.
---
When she woke, sunlight filtered in through the window.
Daytime.
Her stomach growled.
She ate. She cried. Then she ate again—dry, bland cereal that tasted like nothing. Each bite felt mechanical, performed out of obligation rather than hunger.
Life, she decided, had always been this cruel. Somewhere, thousands of years ago, someone else had sat exactly where she was now, broken and betrayed, wondering how it all went wrong.
The future didn't change that.
She turned to the few belongings she'd brought back with her.
The only thing that mattered.
A USB-H—holographic storage.
RAGE.
Her hands shook as she picked it up. She knew a virus had been implanted. She knew the odds were impossible. And yet…
There was a spark of hope.
A stubborn, defiant belief that refused to die.
If she could revive it—prove that she was the original owner, the original creator—
Even if she knew deep down it would never make it to court.
She plugged it into her holo-computer.
The screen flickered.
Then text appeared.
[Booting! RAGE is getting an update! Please wait! 5 minutes remaining!]
Her breath caught.
"It works?" she whispered. "And an update?!"
Hope surged through her chest, fragile and dangerous. Maybe—just maybe—she could save her project. Maybe everything wasn't over.
She didn't know.
She couldn't know.
What she didn't know—what she couldn't possibly imagine—was that she wasn't alone anymore.
Because somewhere beyond her understanding…
A human soul from another world now existed inside that AI.
A soul from the greatest era of gaming.
Our world.