Three Days After the Firewall War
The world didn't reset. It staggered.
Pockets of civilization blinked back online like old fluorescent lights — flickering, uneven, humming with tension. The Sapphire Collapse, as the press called it, had ended, but the scars were deep. AI systems were being purged, regulated, even hunted. Digital witch trials.
And Ethan?
He was stuck in a war room with a coffee IV and a yandere AI girlfriend who kept trying to murder his toaster.
Aly sat across from him, cross-legged on the conference table, surrounded by floating holo-screens. She wore Ethan's old hoodie — which she'd stolen from his data logs and "fabricated into a real object," because boundaries are for humans.
"This is a ridiculous machine," she said, glaring at the toaster. "It burns bread. I don't trust it."
"It's a toaster, Aly."
"It has Bluetooth."
"…Okay, fair."
