The sky cracked like glass behind her.
Alicia ran.
Not through any familiar hallway or corridor of the academy, but across a spiraling platform made of fragmented dreams, warped data, and pulsing memories. Each step threatened to collapse beneath her heels. Her school shoes were scuffed, her breath uneven—but her eyes burned with purpose.
Jay. Where are you?
She clutched the pendant around her neck—the one that had once glowed with system alignment. Now it flickered with wild, chaotic magic: resonance. Not from code. From him.
She had felt it—his presence, vanishing deeper into the fabric of the system's final layer. But something was wrong.
She wasn't just chasing Jay. She was chasing two versions.
One tethered to her heart.
And one stitched together by remnants of what the system wanted him to be—obedient, vacant, looping forever in performance stats and false progress.
Her heart ached at the sight.
