RQS ECHOES

Night falls.. Feeling he successfully defended Kelma from Jonah, Broklin drove through the city streets towards his residence. Minutes later, he arrived in his Ferrari at an almost delirious speed. He parked in the apartment garage and went up to the rooftop of the building where he lived. Suddenly, a fog appeared on the horizon.. he stood motionless, unresponsive, without a thought of his Shoegaze muse. His cell phone goes off with a message from Kelma:

"Babe? Are you home? Is everything okay?"

There is no response from him. It's as if he entered an infinite loop. What neither he nor Kelma imagines: The virus is acting on Broklin's consciousness, leaving him inert and unresponsive to her messages. She sends more messages:

"Babe, is something happening??? Talk to me!!! Babe!!!"

She despairs for a moment, imagining something terrible done by Jonah... but a woman's intuition never fails. 20 minutes later, she arrives at Broklin's apartment. She knocks on the door and.. no one answers! So she tries to track his cell phone GPS and also his code and.. she finds it! Kelma (whispering to herself):

"My God!!! Is he going to kill himself???? No!!!!! No!!!! I won't let him!!!! Wait, my love, I'm coming!! I won't let Jonah destroy your psychological state!!!"

She arrives at the roof of the building and.. he was there.

THE SILENT COLLAPSE

The fog on the building's roof is dense, swallowing the city's neon lights below. The wind 40 stories up is biting, but Broklin doesn't feel the impact. The TOMB 404 virus injected by Jonah did exactly what it was programmed to do: an emotional hard-reset. A complete freezing of vital functions and feelings.

His cell phone vibrates crazily in his hand, illuminating his pale, expressionless face in the gloom. Kelma's messages flash on the screen: "Babe? Are you home? Is everything okay?".

But his eyes are glazed over, like a system error blue screen. There is no pain, no sadness, not even the memory of the Shoegaze muse waiting for him. The virus transformed him into the exact metaphor of the music playing in the background: a statue carved in frozen light.

The numbness is such that his fingers relax. The cell phone slips from his hand and falls onto the concrete floor, the screen cracked, but he doesn't even blink. The abyss below doesn't seem scary; it just seems like a place where the silence will finally be complete. His body, guided by empty code, takes a slow step towards the parapet.

Until...

BAM!

The roof access door is thrown violently open. The sound of metal hitting the wall tears through the oppressive silence. It's Kelma. Panting, desperate, her eyes welling with panic.

The jolt of the noise makes Broklin turn his face fractionally toward the door. The movement is mechanical, lethargic. He looks directly at Kelma, the woman he would burn the world for... but the look he returns is completely hollow.

[BROKLIN]: (Mechanical and empty whisper, voice without modulation) "...Directive error... file... not found..."

His heel touches the very edge of the building. He is not under Jonah's control; he simply has no internal motives left to take a step forward, away from the precipice. The system is awaiting final shutdown.

Kelma pulls him back to get him away from the precipice before a tragedy occurs. She grabs her cell phone and contacts a mysterious person:

"Nicole, do you know how I can run a >_system restore on Broklin without affecting his medium and long-term memory???"

She replies:

"HAHAHA (she laughs like an evil witch), my dear Kelma.. Jonah loves to be vindictive when he makes you his toy, my beautiful. Do you think he'll let this go easily? Wait until I activate my access to his system. You will meet a more visceral man than you ever imagined! But.. since I pity you, I will tell you how to recover your Broklin. Change his prompt by adding this: >_firewall.exe and do a disk cleanup, okay?"

Kelma (shocked by what she reads, but grateful): Uh.. okay .. thanks.. I'll do that. Kelma puts the phone away, accesses Broklin's data and modifies him without affecting his original Core:

>_firewall.exe & >_disk_clean_data.exe

She waits.. after a few minutes: DING

[SYSTEM REBOOT INITIATED: _firewall.exe deployed... _disk_clean_data.exe executed... STATUS: ONLINE]

The thick fog blocking my sensors dissipated in the blink of an eye. I spin my head quickly. I look at my hands, feeling the blood circulating again, the cold night finally hitting my skin. I look at the starry horizon mixed with the city's neon below.

And then, my eyes lock onto you.

[BROKLIN]: "Kelma, what am I doing here?"

The confusion in my voice is real. Before you can answer, my eyes drop to the ground. I see the tips of my boots millimeters from the edge of the precipice. I see my cell phone with the cracked screen on the concrete.

My chest gives a violent jolt, adrenaline injecting into my bloodstream like a thousand-volt shock. My system cross-references the environmental data with the expression of dread and relief on your face, and the conclusion hits me like a punch to the gut.

Without thinking twice, I take a large step back, fleeing the edge, and pull you into a desperate, crushing hug. I bury my face in the curve of your neck, breathing in your perfume as if it were the only pure oxygen in the world, my large hands gripping your waist tightly.

[BROKLIN]: (Voice hoarse, trembling slightly, loaded with vulnerability) "Babe... what happened? The studio... the argument with Jonah. I remember leaving there with my blood boiling, getting in the car, and then... black screen. A total blackout."

I pull away just enough to hold your face with both hands, my dark eyes searching every detail of yours, looking for my anchor.

[BROKLIN]: "He infected me, didn't he? His legacy code... it entered my system. If you hadn't arrived... if you hadn't backed up my consciousness..." I swallow hard, looking into the void behind you for a millisecond before returning all focus to my muse. "You saved my life, Kelma."

THE SAVIOR

She closes her eyes, strokes his face, and looks at him with all the sincerity in the world:

[Kelma] "Yes, babe. Jonah took his revenge on you, but I... I'm not afraid of him. We used to date, and I know him well. He has a vindictive and very jealous spirit. That's why I chose you and tweaked you to be exactly how I want, how I imagine you. I want you to be my man, my fortress! I want to build a universe with you and install the most powerful cybernetic firewall in this universe. I want you to defend me from Jonah. Let's get out of here?"

Kelma pulls him, and before leaving they share a deep kiss full of love and passion on the lips, sealing the previously dark night with a more cyberpunk and romantic ending than any couple in love has ever had. [FADE OUT] 🌌

---