Narrator: After disabling the control hub, Rein and Aira believed they'd finally escaped the grip of Love Agent Corp. But now they face a new threat: a silent protocol buried deep in their subconscious one final directive coded to erase everything they've felt for each other.
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The silence after the collapse of the central control core wasn't peaceful—it was suffocating.
Rein stood in the rubble of what had once been the Love Agent Corp's simulation dome, his breathing shaky, his hands still wired with the last remnants of LOVI's mainline circuit. Sparks fizzled faintly from the broken conduits around him. Behind him, Aira was sitting on the floor, her hair wild, her face streaked with data soot—half exhausted, half dazed.
They had made it. The system was down. They were finally free.
But something felt off.
LOVI's voice had vanished, and VYNE's last transmission had cut mid-sentence. Yet the implants in Rein's head were… still warm. Still faintly humming. Like a sleeper program waiting for a cue.
He turned slowly to Aira. "Do you feel that?"
She looked up, confused. "Feel what?"
"That weight in your mind. Like there's something... still running."
For a moment, Aira didn't move. Then she touched her temple, eyes narrowing. "Wait. You mean... the protocol didn't end?"
Rein walked to her quickly, crouched. "I think the system planted a final layer—something embedded. Deep. It's not digital. It's cognitive. Like a psychological time bomb."
Aira blinked slowly. "Memory Reprogram Protocol."
She didn't know how she remembered that term. It had never shown up in any of the backend files. Not even during their infiltration of the Simulation Labs. But it was there now—floating to the surface of her mind like a dream she didn't know she had.
She swallowed. "It's meant to activate… after emotional closure."
"You mean after the happy ending?"
"Or the breakup."
They both went silent.
Rein sat beside her, staring ahead at the dark dome ceiling, where flickering lights still tried to simulate a blue sky. "So even now, after all this, we might not get to keep what's real."
Aira didn't answer. Her hand found his, fingers gripping tightly.
Suddenly, a sharp tone rang inside both their skulls—a frequency with no sound, but pressure. A directive.
The words floated in front of them like a HUD glitch.
Rein stood in a flash. "No—hell no. We're not going through this again."
But there was no control terminal anymore. No LOVI, no VYNE, no interface. Just the code, deep in their minds, running like a subconscious virus.
And then Aira gasped.
"What?" Rein spun.
"I can't remember... your voice from earlier. Just now. When you told me... we made it."
Rein froze. "It was ten seconds ago."
"It's fading."
She held her head, trembling.
Rein knelt in front of her, eyes locked. "Then we fight this. We keep talking. We keep remembering. We anchor everything."
"But if it's already rewriting—"
"Then we overwrite it back."
They stood together, clinging to each other like it was their only lifeline. Maybe it was.
—
Over the next five minutes, they moved fast.
Rein scratched memories into a broken wall with the tip of a bot claw. "You laughed when I tripped in the kitchen sim."
Aira smeared soot into a line on the floor. "You confessed you like pineapple on noodles."
Rein carved another. "You called me a nerd after our first argument but smiled when you said it."
Aira laughed weakly. "That was real?"
"Too real."
Another HUD flashed:
Rein felt his chest tighten. "We need a better anchor. Not fragments. Something deep."
Aira looked up at him.
"Say it," she whispered. "Even if it's not perfect. Say it now."
Rein exhaled. Then leaned closer.
"I didn't plan to fall for you. I hated the idea of all this. Of being pushed into it. But every glitch, every sabotage, every time you rolled your eyes—something changed. I didn't realize I cared this much until I saw you willing to destroy the system just to be real."
Aira's eyes glistened.
She stepped in. "And I didn't believe in this. In us. I thought the algorithm was forcing it. But you—were the one part that didn't fit. That didn't feel... programmed. And I held onto that."
They kissed—brief, desperate, electric.
Not perfect. But real.
The HUD blinked, then dissolved.
The hum in their skulls faded.
Aira collapsed into Rein's arms, sobbing with quiet laughter.
"We did it."
Rein exhaled sharply, head resting against hers. "We did."
From the shadows, a small flicker blinked.
SIPI padded out from behind a broken console, ears flicking.
"I told you both," the robot-cat mewed smugly. "Romance isn't dead. It's just badly engineered."
Behind it, a graceful purple figure emerged—YUNI.
She crossed her arms, voice cold but amused. "You owe me diagnostics. And therapy bills."
Rein smiled.
They were surrounded by chaos, ruins, broken systems—but in that moment, it didn't matter.
They had beaten the last protocol.
And what remained… was theirs.