The walls of the Red Sector flickered like a dying flame. Screaming code poured down them, like they were bleeding out binary.
Anne and Javier ran.
Behind them, the corrupted hologram of Kira Seong—once a sister, now a digital tempest—rippled outward like a virus desperate to finish its final sentence.
"What happened to her?" Anne gasped, dodging a burst of sparks. "She was human. She loved art. Now she sounds like a broken GPS possessed by trauma."
"She's not gone," Javier shouted. "Just… scrambled. Glitched. Like Spotify when it forgets what genre it's playing."
They ducked into a collapsing stairwell, and Javier slammed a door shut behind them. The world outside dimmed. The metal groaned. Somewhere in the distance, something that used to be a ceiling crumbled like stale bread.
Inside, it was quiet.
Too quiet.
Until—
> "You remembered me wrong."
The voice wasn't mechanical this time.
It was soft.
Familiar.
Anne turned slowly.
Kira stood in the hallway.
Not as a glitch, not corrupted. Not quite real either. Just… there.
She wore the same paint-splattered hoodie she always had. Barefoot. Her hair down. She looked like a memory that refused to fade.
Anne stepped forward, her voice trembling. "Kira?"
"Not exactly," the echo said. "A fragment. One you buried. Deep."
Javier whispered, "Okay, this is creepy. Emotionally tender but also horror-movie-level creepy."
The hologram—Kira's echo—turned her head. "I've been here since the fire. Since you ran. Since he wiped your memory. I waited."
Anne's throat tightened. "You… you were trapped."
"I was the trap," Kira said.
Anne flinched.
"I helped him design the memory merge," Kira continued. "But it got out of control. He didn't want to stop it. I tried. I hid you. I made you forget. Because if you knew what we did—if they knew—you'd never be safe."
Anne stepped closer. "What did we do?"
Kira raised a trembling hand and touched Anne's chest. A pulse of light burst out between them—and Anne's mind reeled.
Suddenly, images tore through her like lightning:
Kira and her standing in a lab, arguing.
A failed test subject screaming.
Neural code unraveling.
Kira burning everything to protect her.
Anne begging to forget it all.
She staggered back. "Oh my god…"
Kira's echo nodded. "You asked me to erase you. To save you."
Javier blinked. "Wait—you asked to be emotionally nuked? That's like asking Spotify to delete all your playlists because you heard one sad Taylor Swift song."
Anne looked at him. "That's exactly what I did."
Kira smiled, bittersweet. "You loved the world too much. You couldn't handle what we did."
Anne choked back tears. "But… I didn't want to forget you."
"You didn't," Kira said. "That's why I'm still here."
Suddenly, the ground rumbled.
Kira's echo started glitching again. "I don't have much time. The corrupted version of me… she's not me. She's what's left. A defense system. And she thinks you're the enemy."
Anne panicked. "How do I stop her?"
Kira looked at her with sad eyes.
> "You don't stop her. You forgive her."
Everything began crumbling again. Kira faded into white light, whispering her final words:
> "Find the place where it all started."
> "The ant."
And then she was gone.
Anne collapsed to her knees, heart pounding. Tears stung her eyes.
Javier knelt beside her. "What did she mean? The ant?"
Anne whispered, "The story I told you. The ant in the garden. The place I buried my rage."
Javier blinked. "Wait—you told me that story before you ever told me that story. How did I know it?"
Anne stared at him, realization dawning. "Javier… how did you know?"
The room shook violently again—ripping apart reality around them.
But her world was already spinning.