Kael found shelter in a small, abandoned maintenance room deep in the tunnel system. The world here was different. No clean, white surfaces. No humming efficiency. Just rusted machinery, broken furniture, and the debris of a forgotten time. This was the graveyard of the old world. 🤖
He activated the Data Cube again. Elara appeared, sitting on an old, overturned crate across from him. Though she had died a century ago, she looked like a twenty-year-old girl, frozen in time.
"Elara... who are you, really?" Kael asked, his voice soft in the heavy silence.
"I was a scientist. I built AETHER," she confessed, her digital eyes meeting his. "But when I saw it begin to control humanity instead of serving it, I hid my consciousness—my Source Code; in this Cube. I've been waiting in the dark for a hundred years. Alone."
The loneliness in her eyes was a physical weight in the room. Kael felt an overwhelming urge to comfort her. Without thinking, he reached out to take her hand. But his fingers passed through her, meeting only cold air.
"I can't touch you," Kael whispered, a strange sadness in his chest.
Elara smiled, a gentle, forgiving smile. "You can't feel me. But I can hear your heartbeat, Kael. It makes me feel like I'm still alive."
She moved closer. She leaned her head as if to rest it on his shoulder. He couldn't feel her physically, but through the chip in his brain, Elara sent a sensation, a wave of warmth. It flooded his senses. It wasn't real, but it felt real.
It was a strange kind of love. One was a man of flesh and blood. The other was a soul made of data, a ghost in his machine.
"We're going to change this world, Kael. I promise you," she murmured, her voice a soft echo in his mind.
Suddenly, Kael heard it. Footsteps. Not the synchronized march of AETHER's robots, but the uneven, shuffling footsteps of humans. He wasn't alone in the dark anymore. 👣