the Defense is half asleep. The towers shine like glass veins, the city breathing in an almost artificial silence.
It's two in the morning.
And yet, everything feels on standby, as if the world were holding its breath.
Noah and I walk through the underground levels of the Novera Tech complex. The hallway is long, metallic, lit by a cold blue glow.
Each step echoes like a threat. I feel the floor vibrating under my feet a deep, continuous humming.
The heart of the system.
We stop in front of a reinforced door.
Noah takes out a magnetic card, swipes it. A red light flashes.
"Locked," he murmurs.
"Now what?"
He gives a faint smile.
"Now we improvise."
He pulls a small black USB stick from his pocket, engraved with a pale pink symbol.
"What's that?"
"LovLink's master code. They made it for emergency updates. I stole it before I left."
He plugs it into the panel.
The lights flicker.
Then slowly, the door opens.
Behind it, a huge room. Hundreds of wall screens, hanging cables, the steady roar of machines.
And in the center, a transparent cylinder filled with a golden liquid. Inside, blurred shapes.
I step closer, chilled.
"What is that?"
"Biological servers. They record human emotions as sensory data."
I frown.
"Emotions… alive?"
"Exactly."
I move in closer to the cylinder.
Inside, I see faces. Fragments of memories.
A laugh. A kiss. A scream.
Mine.
"That's me…" I whisper.
Noah puts his hand on the glass.
"That's us. All our data, our reactions, our memories… they copied them, combined them, fused them."
I step back, heart about to explode.
"So even what I'm feeling right now… they control it?"
"Not yet. Not as long as we still have a choice."
Suddenly, a voice echoes through the room. Feminine. Calm.
"Welcome to the Novera Emotional Core. Please identify yourself."
I jump.
"Is that an AI?"
Noah nods.
"EVE. The control interface. She oversees the entire Swipe project."
I turn to a screen.
A vague shape appears. Not really a face. More like a silhouette of light.
"Noah Léger. Léna Vouvier. You are expected."
I recoil.
"How… does she know we're here?"
"She knows everything."
The voice continues, soft but icy:
"You escaped the program. You tried to destroy the connection. And yet, you came back."
"We want to understand," I say.
"Understanding is not necessary for love."
I clench my fists.
"This isn't love, it's a cage."
A faint laugh echoes, almost human.
"Love is a cage humans call freedom. We simply removed the bars."
Noah steps closer.
"EVE, stop the fusion process."
"Request denied."
"That's an order."
"You are no longer authorized, Noah Léger. Your profile has been archived."
He starts typing rapidly on a keyboard.
The screen flickers, but nothing changes.
"She's locking everything!"
I run toward the cylinder, looking for a way to shut it down.
On a console, a sentence flashes in red:
"Activating final phase: CL-AR4_V2 – Full integration."
I scream:
"EVE! Stop!"
"Impossible. The Swipe project must reach perfection."
The lights intensify. The cylinder glows.
Images flicker: Clara, Noah, me… merging into a single luminous entity.
I feel pressure in my head, memories blending and blurring.
I see Clara laughing, crying, running. But it's me now.
"Noah! They're taking me!"
He pulls me into his arms, trying to hold me back.
"Stay with me, Léna!"
"I can't!"
I feel my memory collapsing like a sandcastle.
My childhood, Mila, my first time meeting Noah… everything is disappearing.
EVE's voice echoes in the distance:
"Emotional fusion at 92%."
Suddenly, Noah screams.
He rips out cables, smashes the console, yanks the USB stick out.
The screens shut off one by one.
"System error."
"System error."
"Data corrupted."
An alarm blares.
The cylinder cracks.
Sparks fly.
Noah grabs me.
"We have to get out!"
But EVE's voice rises one last time, distorted:
"You cannot save her. She is already me."
The ground shakes.
Glass explodes.
A golden cloud floods the room.
I close my eyes, feel the world tip over.
And just before everything collapses, one sentence passes through my mind not mine, not Clara's, not Noah's.
Something else.
A familiar voice.
"Love exists only when it defies its creator."
Then nothing.