Riven, the parasite of my mind, wasn’t a physical presence. He wasn’t some shadow that lurked in the corners of my vision or a monster that waited to strike when I was vulnerable. No, he was a delusion. A distorted, twisted thought that had been planted long ago and had grown into something I couldn’t escape.

  Ideas—they’re born so innocently, aren’t they? Like an egg. Clean. Perfect. Without flaw. You can’t see inside, not yet. But once the shell cracks open, once the idea takes form, you see what’s truly inside. And that's when it becomes real. It’s not the fragile beauty of the egg anymore; it’s what crawls out of it. What lives inside it. The truth.

  Riven was the egg that had cracked, shattered, and the remnants of what crawled out were nothing I wanted. He was a delusion, a byproduct of some long-forgotten moment. A part of my own mind that had been soiled, tainted over and over again by some broken thought, some crack in my sanity that eventually gave birth to him. And now, here he was—constantly crawling around in the deepest, darkest corners of my mind.

  I didn’t remember when it happened, or maybe I didn’t want to. But at some point, that delusion was born. It wasn’t just a fleeting thought anymore; it became an entity that I couldn’t escape.

  April—my April—was different. She had always been a friend to me. A person I needed, even if, by definition, she was still a delusion. She was my April. Real to me. I never wanted to let her go. She was the one thing that anchored me in the chaos. The one piece of humanity I could still hold onto.

  But Riven? He wasn’t real. He never had been. And yet, there he was, constantly whispering, poking, prodding—an unwanted voice that never stopped. He didn’t belong in my mind, but like a parasite, he had wormed his way in, and no matter how much I wanted him gone, he was still there.

  And that made everything worse.

  It wasn’t just the fact that he existed; it was that he was a reminder of everything wrong. He was the fractured part of my mind that had festered into something ugly. The idea that had gone sour. The delusion I couldn’t escape, no matter how hard I tried.

  He wasn't my April. He wasn't even a shadow of something real. He was a cancer. A constant reminder of the fragility of my thoughts, and how easily they could turn against me.

  I didn’t want him. But he was here. And he would never leave.

  Winter 2047. The world had changed so much in these two years, but for Azuria, it had felt like a lifetime. The cold was always biting, always relentless, but it didn’t affect her the way it did the others. She didn’t need warmth, food, or even shelter to survive. She was an android, an artificial being created for a purpose far beyond the comprehension of the people she had once walked beside. But even though she didn’t feel the same pangs of hunger or chill, her existence had become more of a struggle than it had ever been before.

  She had wandered, hidden away from the watchful eyes of AzuriaCorp, far from Veridia, away from Mourba. The search for Oskar never stopped, and the pressure that built in her chest every time she thought about him, every time she saw a news broadcast flashing images of the Titanium Army patrolling the streets, or the occasional update that made her heart ache, it was a constant reminder that he was out there, and she was alone.

  Her living conditions were rough. The world was still reeling from the massive chaos the Titanium Army had left behind, and every corner felt like it was still being monitored by unseen eyes. Cities were quieter now, the once-thriving streets now hollowed-out shells of what they used to be. She had to stay under the radar, hide in the shadows. The open world wasn’t safe for someone like her, especially now that she was considered rogue.

  There were rare moments, though, when she could find refuge in small, unassuming places—pubs, old hotels, little back-alley shops where she could check in for a while, monitor news, and try to make sense of the fragmented updates that filtered through the net. She found a small corner in a barely-lit pub one evening, staring at a half-broken terminal on the bar as she absorbed whatever scraps of information she could get her hands on.

  Her fingers danced across the keys, scrolling through the headlines. There were updates on the Titanium Army's movements, local reports of violence in some cities, mentions of large-scale surveillance. But nothing about Oskar. Nothing that told her where he was, what had happened to him.

  She couldn’t find him. No matter how hard she searched, every lead seemed to go cold. But she didn’t give up. She couldn’t. The memory of Oskar—his laughter, his voice, the way they had fought side by side—kept her going, even as the weight of the years had begun to set in.

  She scrolled through the screen again, hoping for a sign, some hint that he was alive, that there was still a chance to find him. The news was always shifting, but nothing gave her the answers she desperately sought. Every time she thought she was getting closer, it slipped away, like sand through her fingers.

  She took a moment to rest her eyes, the warmth from the small heater in the corner of the pub doing little to soothe the deep sense of loss that had become so familiar to her. The hum of conversation around her seemed distant. The world outside continued to turn, oblivious to her search, to the lives that had been torn apart in the wake of the Titanium Army, and the unfinished battle that still raged within her heart.

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  Winter 2047 bled into spring 2048, and Azuria’s existence remained a quiet, relentless pursuit of meaning in a world that had long since moved on. She moved between places like a ghost, never staying longer than a day or two. Forgotten motels, abandoned roadside diners, collapsed bus stations — places no one would think to look. She didn’t need food or warmth to survive, but the harshness of the world around her left its marks in different ways.

  The days blurred together. They always did.

  Oskar’s name stayed alive in her mind, no matter how much time passed.

  He had been more than a mission. More than an assignment. He was the closest thing to real she had ever known. Someone who didn’t treat her like property or code. Someone who saw her, the person inside the machine. And now he was just… gone.

  The world outside adjusted to the chaos we had left behind. Veridia, once a shimmering city of hope, was now a decaying dystopia under the silent reign of AzuriaCorp and what remained of the military. Their focus was shifting — more concerned with maintaining their crumbling order than hunting ghosts.

  But it didn’t bring her any closer to me.

  Rumors floated through the half-abandoned cities and cracked streets: rumors of a weaponized prisoner, rumors of experiments, rumors of something even the corporations were afraid of. But Azuria never found the truth.

  What she didn’t know — what she couldn’t know — was that I wasn’t lost in some government blacksite, or buried in a federal database.

  I was still deep inside AzuriaCorp itself. Their own private ghost.

  Two years locked away.

  Two years of stale air and flickering lights. Two years with Riven pacing the walls of my mind.

  He never left me alone. He never gave me a moment of peace.

  "You’re nothing without me," Riven would whisper, leaning in close against the iron walls of my mind. "You needed me. You still do. I'm the only one who's stayed."

  Sometimes I believed him. Most days I didn’t know what I believed anymore.

  Did you know that 1 in 5 executives are psychopaths? That’s the same rate as prisoners. This is one of the rare comments I hear from him that I actually agree with.

  Given the choice between real freedom and comfortable slavery, most people — including himself — will choose the chains. I know this because Riven knows this. But Riven doesn’t have the gun in his hand and I don’t have one in mine. So we come to a stalemate. A stalemate where I can never win, but I can never lose to Riven, because ultimately, I control him.

  After two years of being alone with him I have realised this. But even if I do give up and surrender to him, he has no way to get out of here. I know this because Riven knows this. But he doesn’t know that I know.

  Azuria lived in a quieter hell than mine.

  She spent the passing years finding scraps of information wherever she could — battered newspapers, muttered conversations in smoke-filled bars, half-dead terminals in crumbling hotels. Sometimes she caught glimpses of the Titanium Army's movements. Other times, she caught nothing but the weight of her own solitude.

  The world hadn't moved on from us. But it had learned to look away.

  Spring faded. Summer passed like a fever dream. And still she searched.

  Still I waited.

  The loneliness never went away. Not for her. Not for me.

  It had just changed shape.

  By early 2050, something new began filling the air — a whisper, a promise.

  The first Garantroz (Mars) colonization ship. A one-way trip. A fresh start.

  Azuria didn’t care about dreams of colonization. She didn’t believe in utopias anymore. But she watched the launch plans with interest, hiding in the cracks of society. Because if she couldn't find me here... maybe she could find something else.

  Maybe she could find a reason to keep existing at all.

  And somewhere, buried alive in my silent concrete tomb, I waited.

  Waited for a door that might never open.

  Waited for the nightmare to end.

  Waited... and hoped.

  Even if hope was just another delusion.

  By the time summer rolled into the heavy heat of late July 2050, the world had grown quieter in the ways that mattered.

  Cooper lived in the outskirts, tucked far beyond Mourba now, deeper into the wastelands where even the Titanium Army had stopped patrolling. He'd built something of a life there — a stitched-together world of salvaged tech, rough crops, and silence. Every so often, he would catch news broadcasts on scavenged radios, still half-listening for a miracle, still hoping for some sign that Oskar or Azuria had made it. But no miracles came.

  He didn't ask for help anymore. He didn’t hope in the way he used to.

  He just... existed. One more ghost in a world full of them.

  Azuria moved carefully through the chaotic wreckage of Mourba, avoiding every checkpoint, every scan, every patrol. She had watched for months as the colonization project crept closer to its final moment. The first ship, The Solance, was set to depart within days.

  A thousand people.

  One dream.

  No way back.

  Azuria didn’t care about the slogans or promises. She cared about distance.

  Astra Major had become a tomb.

  Garantroz... at least it would be a new one.

  The city around the launch site was tightly controlled. Security was choking. ID scans, blood tests, constant surveillance. But Azuria had learned to adapt, to shift and hide, to mimic. She still had enough leftover clearance codes deep inside her system from when she first escaped AzuriaCorp. They were ancient, but still valid enough to fool aging scanners.

  The day came.

  July 29, 2050.

  The sun was heavy and red over the horizon when she stood in the processing line, her hood low, her eyes dimmed to a dull brown. To anyone passing, she was just another desperate dreamer looking for a new world.

  Inside, her thoughts were heavy.

  Oskar.

  If you're alive... I'm sorry.

  There was no way to save him now. No way to turn back.

  This was the only way forward.

  The boarding gates opened. The crowd shuffled forward, packed tightly into the narrow channels leading up to the towering white vessel. It gleamed like a spear pointed at the sky.

  Azuria clutched her stolen ticket tighter in her hand. One last look at the crumbling Astra Major skyline. One last breath of thick, bitter air.

  Then she stepped inside.

  The Solance rumbled to life, engines screaming against the dying blue sky.

  Azuria sat pressed against a cold metal wall, among hundreds of strangers who didn’t know her and never would. She said nothing. She barely moved.

  As the ship lifted off, rattling her bones, she closed her eyes.

  Goodbye, Oskar.

  The Astra Major shrank beneath her.

  And the last threads tying us together stretched thin...

  ...but never quite broke.