The announcement came the next morning.
Level 5 Lockdown.
It flashed across every holo-screen, screamed from every speaker, echoed through the walls like a final judgment.
> "All citizens are to remain confined. Total movement ban effective immediately. No exceptions. This is not a drill."
The disease had mutated again.
What once took weeks now claimed a person in days. Entire districts dissolved overnight. Whole neighborhoods melted into pools of flesh and bone.
Decay Zero had become airborne.
It wasn't supposed to be possible. But nothing about this disease ever played by rules.
No more school.
No more Clean Zones.
No more seeing Lily.
Ark stood frozen in front of his display, heart hammering against his ribs. His eyes scanned the words, but his mind was only on one thing:
He wouldn't see her again.
Not even through glass.
---
He sat on the floor, knees against his chest, watching the blinking light on the ceiling camera. The apartment was now a reinforced cage. Automated food. Auto-cleaners. Isolation protocols triggered. No human contact allowed—not even holographic face calls.
The city outside became a ghost.
No engines. No voices. Just sirens and the hum of drones moving overhead like vultures waiting for civilization to finally stop breathing.
He thought about Lily.
Her smile.
Her silence.
The way her eyes softened when she wasn't pretending not to look at him.
Was she scared?
Was she alone?
He wanted to scream. But the walls would just echo the sound back at him, colder, emptier.
So he whispered instead.
> "Please… don't forget me."
It was stupid. She wouldn't hear it. No one would.
But it was all he had left. Words and shadows. Yearning and silence.
He crawled toward the console. Logged into the classroom system. Nothing but static. Government overrides. Emergency lockdown protocols.
No class. No updates.
No Lily.
It was over.
---
And yet… something flickered.
A message. Encrypted. Anonymous.
Just one line.
> "Do you still think about me?"
Ark froze.
His throat tightened.
He didn't know how she sent it. Didn't know if it was really her. But everything in his soul screamed it had to be.
His fingers trembled over the reply.
He typed:
> "Every day."
Ark stared at the message like it was a heartbeat.
That one sentence pulsed in his chest louder than the silence in the room.
> "Do you still think about me?"
No name. No sender ID. But he knew.
It was her.
No one else would ask that.
No one else could.
The screen dimmed slightly, warning him of surveillance. Every keystroke was monitored. Every emotional anomaly logged. But he didn't care.
He needed this.
He typed again, slower this time, each letter burning into his fingers like confession:
> "I never stopped."
For a long time, nothing came back.
The silence between them felt heavier than steel.
Then—another reply. Delayed. Nervous. Like her hands were shaking too:
> "I thought maybe I imagined it. You looking at me. Before the partitions went up."
Ark felt everything inside him collapse and rebuild in one breath.
She had noticed.
All those glances. All the invisible gravity pulling him toward her.
They weren't one-sided.
He wasn't just another quiet shadow in her memory.
> "No," he typed. "I looked. Every time."
Another pause.
Then:
> "I miss when the world let us feel things."
That sentence broke him.
Not because of what it said—but because it felt so human.
In this mechanical, sterilized cage of a world, it was like someone had finally spoken in color again.
He could barely breathe.
> "Me too," he wrote. "I hate that wanting something is now dangerous."
> "It always was," she replied.
> "Not like this."
> "No. Not like this."
---
He sat back, staring at the exchange like it was a miracle. Words that shouldn't exist. A thread stretched thin across apocalypse and algorithm.
This was more than a message.
It was resistance.
Every word they typed was a crime now. Emotional intimacy risked viral mutation. Digital affection could trigger what the Authority called "Echo Cascade"—psychosomatic decay triggered by memory-activated nerve signals.
People had died from missing someone too hard.
And here they were—flirting with extinction by caring.
But Ark didn't stop.
> "Can I ask you something?" he typed.
> "You already did."
> "Would you have ever said yes? If I asked you to go out with me?"
This time, the pause was long.
Too long.
He feared she wouldn't answer. That he pushed too far. That the ghost of their almost-love would vanish forever.
But the reply came—short, raw, real.
> "Yes."
---
It wasn't a kiss. It wasn't touch. It wasn't even a voice.
But in that word, Ark felt alive again.
He leaned back in his chair, eyes blurry, heart pounding.
Outside, the world fell apart.
Inside, for the first time in months, something bloomed.
Not safety.
Not certainty.
But the most dangerous thing of all in a dying world:
Hope.
Ark didn't sleep that night.
He lay in bed with the lights off, staring at the ceiling, the glow of Lily's last message still etched into his brain.
> "Yes."
That one word echoed louder than sirens. Louder than the death counts.
In a world where people were punished for feeling, that single affirmation was nothing short of rebellion.
He should've deleted the message.
Encrypted the logs.
Wiped the trail.
But he didn't.
He read it again. And again.
Not out of obsession, but out of fear—fear that it might disappear.
That the Authority might intercept it. That it might rot in the servers like everything else that tried to be human.
They had taken everything—his freedom, his friends, his voice.
But this, they hadn't taken. Not yet.
---
He stared at his screen, waiting for another message.
Just one more line.
One more crack in the wall between them.
None came.
The silence was suffocating—but also sacred.
He closed his eyes, whispering to the dark.
> "I'll find a way."
He didn't know how.
The city was locked. Movement was monitored. The world had become a prison with no guards—just watchers.
But if there was any path to her, he would take it.
Even if it killed him.
Because dying was no longer the worst thing.
Forgetting her was.