The corridor stopped humming.
For a moment, Mira couldn't hear her thoughts over the weight of everything unraveling inside her. The storm's pulse echoed faintly overhead, beating in time with her own.
Ava stood just beyond the light.
No projection. No glitch.
Real.
Same eyes. Same voice. But different in posture, in presence—this Ava looked older. Like someone who'd seen every version of Mira and loved her through each one, even the erasures.
"You remember now," Ava said softly, stepping into the half-light. Her voice cracked—relieved but cautious, like opening an old lock you're not sure still works. "The rooftop. The fail-safes. The choice I made."
Mira's throat tightened. "You left me."
"I saved you."
Mira shook her head. "You left me inside a loop I couldn't remember. Do you know what it's like to look in the mirror and not know whether the person beside you is real—or another rewrite?"
Ava stepped closer, holding out her coin. Hers was different—sleeker, lined in copper and marked with non-standard glyphs Mira had never seen.
"I broke into the system," she whispered. "Stole this. It holds the last convergent thread between our original timeline and the one you're in now. We created it—together. Back then. Before they erased the collective tether. It's the root node. If we sync them…"
Mira raised her coin. "We overwrite everything, don't we?"
"Yes," Ava said. "But not blindly. We harmonize the true self. We'll remember who we were. What we chose."
Mira's stomach turned. "And the others? Eliah, this world—?"
"They'll merge," Ava said carefully. "Or burn out. Depending on how fragmented they've become."
Mira hesitated.
Love was real here too. Wasn't it? The smile. The touch. The quiet rituals of two people orbiting each other in a world designed to forget.
But memory was not just remembering—it was choosing what mattered.
"What if I don't want the old versions?" Mira asked.
Ava gently reached out. Not touching. Just offering her hand. "Then you don't have to sync the coins. You walk away. You live in this version. You keep forgetting."
And Mira could see it, clear as anything: She could turn her back. Let this tether fade. Lock the coin away. Take Eliah's hand again and march back into normalcy.
But what if Eliah only existed because Ava had been rewritten?
What if all of this was scaffolding built around a single fracture they were never meant to survive?
The coins pulsed quietly between them. Mirrored fragments. Twin pulses in fractured palms.
"I don't want a version," Mira said at last. Her voice steady. "I want truth."
And she pressed her coin edge to Ava's.
The instant the coins touched, something ignited behind her eyes.
Light exploded inward—
A city, folding and re-forming.
Rooftops fracturing and healing.
Eight timelines untangling.
One single thread stitching itself across her skin.
And suddenly Mira wasn't standing in the tunnel anymore.
She was on the rooftop again.
Same storm. Same gravity.
The real one.
And Ava was with her. Not as Eliah. Not as fiction. But Ava, as she truly was.
Holding her hand, saying the same thing she'd said the night they both chose to resist:
"If we remember together, they can't rewrite us again."
To be continue...