It is quite difficult to subdue the light of hope, of optimism. But it’s not impossible. Nora remembers that first day at school. She was young then, yet the memory is still vivid. After all, how could she forget the great plans she had made: to wear the same school uniform as everyone else, to take the same bus, to make friends, and be free of that feeling. That feeling as if something was wrong with her, as if she was different and alone. She hoped that, finally, she just might be like a normal kid. They crushed that hope.

The words whisper faintly in her thoughts as the memory surfaces.

I’m here for you, Teacup, and I always will be.

There had been an accident at school. They ruined that perfect day. They ruined everything.

She awoke to the sight of a hospital room, rank with the stench of ammonia. There was a ringing, then a beeping as pale lights shone down. Despite the bright stripes of paint across the walls and homely pictures of flowers and cats, the room felt small, empty, and grey. It was as if tragedy were masked behind the veil of color and comfort. She lay in a bed and saw that her parents filled the room. Her mother sat in a chair, trembling, sobbing, and her father stood motionless, staring blankly out a window. They could not hide the truth. Attempting to sit up, Nora felt a surge of pain.

“I would not attempt to stand if I were you,” her father said, tugging anxiously at the hem of his coat.

“Why not?” she asked.

Her mother jolted upward. She cupped her hands around Nora’s, gazing at her with tired eyes. It was like she was looking beyond her daughter, at something that was not there. Her father turned to her. His blood-shot eyes gave a very similar and very strange look, as if Nora was no more, as if he was staring at a ghost, a shadow, a sad reflection of what once was.

Nora knew without knowing.

Cain cleared his throat with a raspy cough. “You’re…” He spoke in a hoarse whisper, inhaled weakly. “You’re getting worse. The sickness–it’s passed the threshold. First, your legs will go, then your nerves will stab at every inch of your body, then your veins will turn black, and your stomach will feel that turning, that shredding, then...” He bit his lip and tried to blink away the wave of sorrow, gripping the trim of his white coat with deathly pale hands. He couldn’t let her see. He had to be strong, he had to keep trying, he had to help her, but he was powerless to stop the inevitable. “There is nothing left that I can do.” The coat ripped.

Nora’s eyes widened in disbelief. She shook her head profusely. “No. There’s nothing wrong with me! I’m just a little under the weather, just like all the other kids. That’s all! I have to get back to school! There can’t be something wrong with me!” Her whole body was shaking now. “I need to be with the other kids, I need to be normal. I need to…” The words left her, and Nora broke down in tears.

Her mother put a hand on her shoulder.

“The sickness has spread too far. There’s…” she tried to choke back the tears. “There’s nothing we can do.”

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“No. No, no, no!” Nora wailed in broken exasperation. “I was walking and talking… making friends. My hair had finally grown back. I was getting better! Dad, you told me that! You told me I was getting better. You lied to me! You…”

“Stop!” her father cried in shrill, miserable silence. His face was beat red and shaking, while his hands frayed, grasping at nothing. “You’re not getting better. You will never get better, nor go to school, nor see your friends, and soon enough…” Shoulders tensing, he blinked, his eyes focusing greyly. “It’s all gone now. Nora, you’re dying.”

No child should have to breathe each breath as if it were their last. No new life should have to say goodbye so soon. No young, innocent, gleeful little girl should have to plan her funeral. But on that day, and in the last days that followed, Nora did. She was able to do all she had dreamed of, yet it was all painted in that dim, hopeless light. She was living on borrowed time, and soon enough, that time was up.

A distraught girl drives a swiftly hovering car down allies, through subways, and near the sullied clouds. Beside her, a metallic dog sticks his head out the window of the car, flopping a glinting tongue in glee. A single tear streams down the girl’s face as she glances out a window, looking upon the grim without seeing. The world below, once a shadowed despondent wreck, is lifeless, tidy, mended, and unceasingly dark, just as it has been through day and night, for the countless hours they have driven. It healed itself; it hid the brokenness but not the shadow. The only illumination filling the gloom comes from grey boxes, spheres, and humanoid figures, all searching for one thing: her. She might have worried about them finding her, questioned how the city had repaired itself, or pondered the unending sheet of darkness, but while her form is driving, the wheel is out of her hands. Besides, her mind is on other things.

How hard it must have been, she thinks, to watch me slowly die, how utterly impossible to have the one thing you care about most ripped from your hands. She recalls her father’s pain and how hard he fought to save her. Cain did not want to change the world, be famous, or hurt anyone. He had only wanted to help her, to bring her back from...

Something, someone, somewhere that was glorious and wonderful and beyond comprehension. The thought of it feels distant and out of place. It is as if the vague memory is meant for another world. She quickly loses her grip on it, and her mind returns to her father.

He was not so evil or flawed. He just wanted her to be safe. He just wanted her to come home.

But the world below tells another story. A story of a man who killed the innocent, sacrificed the disobedient, and lost his mind reaching for the unreachable. Nora’s thoughts snap back.

“He killed my mother, Miller, everyone! Of course, he’s flawed!” she insists. “He’s terrible, he’s awful, he’s a monster, a murderer! What was I thinking?!”

Do you always associate yourself with others? questions the voice within.

“With others?” A chill runs down Nora’s spine. “Were those not my thoughts?”

Oh, but they were.

“What are you talking about? What did you do? What are you?”

You ask, yet the answer is within your grasp.

The voice is right. The voice is thinking for her, acting for her. It is the one that hotwired this vehicle, it is even the one driving the car. It is no figment, no product of insanity. It is real. But who is it? What is it? Nora searches deep within her mind until something within blocks the path to truth. She struggles against it. It overcomes her and she feels as though she is sinking, drowning in inky black. In a wink, the strange feeling is gone, and inexplicably, she receives her answer.

I am the A.I. inserted in your mind upon your awakening. I am a machine that knows this city, but I am a machine that knows you. I bring to light the shadow inside you. I pull my character from the part of you that you do not accept: your subconscious. You and I are one, for I am you.