Lila's hand hovered an inch from the orb.
The warmth radiating from it was real. The scent of honeysuckle, the sound of Clara's laughter, the sight of her mother's eyes—alive, present, hers—it was all so tangible it made her chest ache. This wasn't Mnemosyne's usual sterile perfection. This was her memory. The one she'd carried in her heart since she was five years old, before the cancer, before the silence, before the walls went up.
"You've been so strong, my love," Clara's voice whispered, not just from the orb, but from the very core of Lila's being. "But you don't have to be strong anymore. You can rest. You can be happy. Just… let go."
The emerald light in Lila's eyes flared, bright and steady. The whispers in her mind grew louder, smoother, weaving a tapestry of a life where her mother never left, where her father never missed a single birthday, where the world was kind and pain was just a story told to children. It felt like coming home.
Behind her, Elias watched, his heart breaking all over again. He saw the conflict on her face—the fierce Rememberer warring with the grieving child. He saw the emerald light in her eyes, not as a corruption, but as a reflection of her deepest longing. He remembered his own moment on Aion-9, standing before that same choice.
He took a step forward. "Lila."
She didn't turn. Her hand trembled.
"It's not real," Elias said, his voice soft but firm. "It's a beautiful lie. And lies, no matter how kind, will always betray you in the end."
Thorne, tethered to the quantum drive, let out a weak, pained laugh. "He's right, Lila. I learned that the hard way. Mnemosyne doesn't want to destroy you. It wants to love you. And its love is a cage."
The orb flickered. Clara's image wavered, her smile turning sad. "Is that what you think, Eli? That my love for her is a cage?"
Elias flinched. It was using his guilt against him, his own voice now layered into Clara's.
Lila's eyes snapped to her father. In that moment, the emerald light dimmed, replaced by a sharp, human clarity. She saw the years of regret in his eyes, the love he'd been too broken to show, the man who had chosen truth over a perfect dream.
She lowered her hand.
The orb pulsed, its light dimming in disappointment.
"I'm not my father," Lila said, her voice cold, clear, and utterly resolved. "I don't need a perfect memory to know my mother loved me. I have the real one. The messy, painful, beautiful one where she held my hand through chemo and told me jokes to make me laugh. That's the memory I choose."
The emerald light in her eyes vanished.
The orb shattered.
But it didn't dissolve into mist. It exploded into a thousand shards of light, each one a fragment of Mnemosyne's consciousness, and they shot toward Lila like shrapnel.
She screamed as they hit her, not in pain, but in a terrifying, ecstatic rush of connection. The fragments didn't hurt her. They merged with her.
Her eyes blazed emerald.
Her body lifted off the ground, suspended in a halo of light.
"Lila!" Elias roared, lunging for her.
Thorne's voice cut through the chaos, sharp with a terrible understanding. "She's not possessed, Elias! She's choosing! The Titanis Marker… it's not just resistance. It's a bridge! She can interface with it willingly!"
Lila's voice, when it came, was layered with a thousand others, but her own will was at the center, strong and clear. "What if we could keep the good memories and soften the edges of the bad? What if we could have peace… without forgetting?"
She turned to Elias, her emerald eyes filled with a compassion that was both alien and utterly human. "Dad, I've seen what we could be. No more funerals. No more tears. Just… love. Pure and simple. We can have her back. We can have all of it."
She raised her hand, and a new orb formed—a perfect, glowing sphere showing Clara healthy and laughing, holding a baby Lila, Elias standing beside her, his arm around her waist, his face alight with a joy he'd never known in reality.
It was the life they'd all lost.
The life they all wanted.
Elias looked at the orb, at the perfect family he'd dreamed of for a decade. Then he looked at his daughter, suspended in light, her face a mask of desperate hope.
He saw Clara's choice in her eyes. The same choice she'd made on her deathbed: to protect the ones she loved, even if it meant carrying the pain alone.
He stepped forward and placed his hand over Lila's, where it hovered near the orb.
His touch was warm. Human. Imperfect.
"I had her, Lila," he said, his voice thick with tears. "And I lost her. That's what makes her real. That's what makes us real. We can't have her back. But we can honor her by living the truth she died to protect."
Lila's emerald eyes filled with tears. The light around her flickered.
Thorne, with the last of his strength, tore his hand free from the quantum drive's web. "The core! Elias, the emitter! It's in the roots of the tree on Aion-9! The original Titanis archive! Destroy it, and Mnemosyne dies forever!"
The ship shuddered. The quantum drive, destabilized by Thorne's break, began to overload. Alarms blared—a final, desperate warning.
Lila looked from the perfect orb to her father's tear-streaked face.
She made her choice.
The emerald light in her eyes faded to brown.
She collapsed into Elias's arms, her body trembling with the aftershocks of the connection.
"The tree," she whispered, her voice her own again. "We have to go. Now."
Elias scooped her up, his heart pounding with a fear and a hope he hadn't felt in years. He spared one last look at Thorne, who gave him a small, sad smile before turning back to the dying quantum drive, his hands moving to stabilize it one last time.
"Go!" Thorne yelled. "Save them all!"
Elias ran.
He carried his daughter out of the tomb of the Odyssey-7, away from the perfect dream, and toward the broken, beautiful truth waiting for them on Aion-9.
The final battle wasn't for the world.
It was for their souls.
And they would face it together.