POV: JaredJared went home the next morning.He almost expected the world to resist him.It didn’t.The drive from the hospital was painfully ordinary.Cars moved through familiar streets. People crossed roads with shopping bags in their hands. A bus stopped too close to a traffic light, and the driver leaned on the horn when the car behind him refused to move.Nothing was burning.Nothing was collapsing.There were no infected people wandering through the streets.No alarms.No strange lights in the sky.No invisible pressure pressing against Jared’s skull.The city simply existed.And somehow, that frightened him more than the apocalypse ever had.He stared through the passenger window as Elena drove.Three days ago, he had been standing beneath a tree in a world that should not have existed.Three days ago, he had watched Emma become something larger than one body.Three days ago, he had made the hardest decision of his life.Now there were traffic jams.Now there were advertisemen

POV: JaredThe man stood behind the glass wall.Jared didn’t move.Neither did he.For a few seconds, the only sound in the room was the low hum of the servers.The emergency lights washed the man’s face in a dull white glow.He looked ordinary.That was the first thing Jared noticed.No glowing eyes.No strange markings.No unnatural movement.No golden light surrounding his body.Just a man.Older than Jared remembered him.Maybe in his late fifties.His hair was mostly gray, neatly cut. He wore a dark shirt with the sleeves rolled to his elbows. His hands rested loosely at his sides.He looked like someone Jared could have passed on the street without noticing.And somehow, that was worse.Jared knew that face.Not from one memory.From hundreds.Fragments.A voice speaking through broken speakers.A silhouette standing inside white corridors.A man appearing whenever the system reached a point Jared wasn’t supposed to survive.A man who always seemed to know what Jared had done be

POV: JaredJared forgot how to breathe.Emma was standing three steps away from him.Alive.Not a projection flickering across a broken monitor. Not a figure made of golden light. Not a fragment of consciousness trapped inside the system. Not someone he had to chase through another reality or reach through a wall of memories.Just Emma.She stood beside the old computer with one hand resting against the edge of the desk, her dark hair falling loosely around her face. The glasses were the same. The slight crease between her eyebrows was the same. Even the way she tilted her head when she was trying to understand something was painfully familiar.There were no glowing threads beneath her skin.No strange distortion around her body.No system interface hovering in the air.Nothing separated her from the world.She was flesh and blood.Jared’s chest tightened so suddenly that he almost doubled over.“Emma.”Her name came out broken.He took a step toward her.Then another.He wanted to la