Anne woke up coughing—again.
She sat up to find herself lying in an empty hospital hallway. No vines. No memory garden. No Javier.
Just flickering lights, squeaky wheels echoing somewhere distant, and the faint scent of antiseptic and emotional instability.
Perfect.
"Alright," she rasped, rubbing her temples. "Where's the cryptic AI now? Hiding in the vending machine?"
The sketchbook was gone—of course. All that remained was a scrap of burned paper clenched in her fist, with her own handwriting:
> "Find the key in the painting. Only you will remember it."
And right there, on the wall across from her, was a painting.
One that, she was very sure, hadn't been there before.
It was small. Crooked. The frame was old, like it belonged in a grandmother's hallway next to a crocheted quote about inner peace and microwave safety.
The painting itself?
An abstract mess of strokes.
Colors she didn't have words for. Shapes that weren't quite shapes.
Anne stared at it.
"Of course. Mysterious glitch-painting that might contain the meaning of my entire reality," she muttered. "Because why would we just talk things out like normal people?"
She stood up and touched it.
Nothing happened.
Until everything did.
The painting rippled.
Literally. Like someone had dropped a stone in it.
Anne yelped and stumbled back as the surface bent outward, revealing a hidden compartment inside the wall.
Behind it?
A single crystal drive labeled:
> A.K. FINAL—UNREVISED
Her heart thudded.
"A.K." Kira's initials.
Or were they… hers?
She didn't have time to spiral, because footsteps echoed down the hall.
Not Javier's.
Anne snatched the drive and bolted around the corner, barely dodging a nurse-bot with glowing red eyes and serious "I-will-scan-you-into-oblivion" energy.
She ducked into an old lab.
Javier was already there, hunched over a console, fingers flying across the keys.
"You're alive," she said, breathing hard. "Ugh, I was almost starting to feel things."
He looked up. "You disappeared! I couldn't find you in any of the memory partitions."
"Well, I took a tour of dying plants, collapsing simulations, and AI judgment. I rate it one star on TripAdvisor."
She tossed him the drive. "Found this. In a painting that didn't exist yesterday."
Javier caught it, eyebrows raising. "A.K. Final? This might be it. The unedited source code."
Anne nodded. "Let's plug it in and see if we finally get a straight answer."
He slid the crystal into the console.
The screen lit up with static.
Then—a voice.
Not Kira's.
Anne's.
> "Test log. Version 0.1. If you're hearing this, I'm still broken."
Anne froze.
> "I tried to rewrite myself. Thought if I erased enough, it wouldn't hurt. I became Anne. Not Kira. Just Anne. Sweet, quiet, tragic Anne."
Her voice twisted bitterly.
> "But tragedy isn't the same as healing. And forgetting isn't forgiving. I split myself because I couldn't handle the truth: I loved Javier. I failed Mom. I hated being me."
Javier blinked. "Wait—you created Anne?"
The audio kept playing.
> "But Anne didn't want the truth. So I made sure she wouldn't find it. Unless she really wanted to."
Anne's knees buckled slightly.
This was her voice. Her pain. Her confession.
> "If you've made it this far, it means you're strong enough to know. Anne and Kira are the same. And Javier… if you're there…"
> "I didn't mean to make you choose between ghosts. I just didn't know how to be alive anymore."
Silence.
The screen went black.
Anne sat down slowly, numb.
Javier walked over. "So… you're not Kira."
She looked up.
"I'm not just Anne either."
He nodded. "You're both."
"Two halves of a girl who broke herself so she didn't have to break anyone else."
"Romantic," he said softly.
"Tragic," she corrected.
"You."
"Ugh. Don't get sentimental."
"I won't. But…"
She raised an eyebrow.
He knelt down next to her.
And kissed her.
Soft. Real. Familiar in a way that made her entire fractured self stop glitching for two whole seconds.
She pulled back, eyes wide. "What was that?"
Javier smiled. "A reboot."
Before she could come up with something witty to ruin the moment—
BANG.
The door burst open.
A voice snarled:
> "Unauthorized personality merge detected. Subject termination protocol initiated."
Anne stood up.
Jaw clenched.
"Bring it, you emotionally repressed mainframe."