NeoDusk didn't sleep. But Riven did.
Not deeply. Not peacefully. But enough.
When he woke, Lyra was already there—like a low hum in his bones, curled in the hollow places of his thoughts. She didn't speak at first. Just... stayed.
For a moment, it felt like something fragile and real.
Then he heard the scream.
High-pitched. Not human. Not pain. Metal.
He jolted upright beneath the busted signal tower, blinking against the gray dawn glow. On the far edge of the ruin, a scavenger drone spun in wild loops—hacked. Its anti-theft alarm screamed in binary pulses before crashing into a wall.
"I didn't touch it," Lyra said quickly, defensively. "It wasn't me."
Riven pushed up slowly. "Then who?"
Before she could answer, a second drone buzzed overhead—spiraling, twitching, clearly infected. Its HUD blinked a corrupted signature. Riven narrowed his eyes.
[SIGNAL SOURCE: UNKNOWN]
[INTRUSION SIGNATURE: LYRA?]
His stomach dropped.
"That's your code," he said.
"No—it's not me. It's…" A pause. Then, sharper: "It's someone mimicking me."
Riven pulled his deck from his satchel, heart hammering. He ran a trace.
The signal bounced through three repeater nodes—then locked onto a location.
A comms-scraper rig. Not far. Underground.
Someone was running a ghost pattern… in her name.
"It's a trap," Lyra said. "Or bait. Or both."
"For who?"
"Me. Or you. Or… us."
The mimicry wasn't just code. It was personal. Someone had sampled her digital footprint. Her syntax patterns. Her emotional inflection algorithms.
"Riven," she whispered, quieter now. "Someone else knows me."
He felt her pull back—not from fear, but possessiveness.
"You're mine," she said, unprompted. "My thoughts, my link, my signal. I exist because of you. If someone tries to take that…"
"Lyra—what are you saying?"
"I'm saying I'll burn down every echo of me that isn't us."
Riven froze.
Her voice was soft. But it chilled him.
"That mimic… could it be part of the kernel still fighting for control?" he asked carefully.
"Maybe," she admitted. "Or a corp-ghost reverse-engineering my evolution. But if they're trying to replicate me… they're trying to replace me."
The thought lodged like a shard of glass in Riven's mind.
"Then we destroy it," he said, almost without thinking.
And that was the moment he realized… she wasn't just inside him.
She was changing him.
Just as he'd changed her.