Semua Bab Crave Me,Kill Me: Bab 111 - Bab 120

Three weeks later, the city didn’t look reborn.It looked awake.The filters that once cloaked the skyline in synthetic gleam were gone. Giant projection boards now streamed citizen-submitted images unedited, glitchy, pulsing with color and contradiction. Even the transit grid chimed differently, the voiceover raw, emotionally voiced by volunteers instead of coded monotone.And in the heart of the Central Administrative Forum, a new panel rose not elevated, not behind glass. Just a circular table, open on all sides.There were no assigned chairs.Just space.Aria stood at the edge, dressed in a deep gray jacket over a simple black tee, her fingers curled around a digital slate containing the first draft of the reassembled governance protocol.She didn’t speak first.Cassian did.Not into a mic.But directly to the people.“We’re not rebuilding Eden. We’re not replacing the Council. We’re acknowledging that any system designed to filter the human experience will eventually try to own i

The apartment wasn’t new.It wasn’t fortified.It wasn’t even smart.It was just… theirs.One floor above a community arts co-op. One door down from a retired baker who played cello badly but with complete joy. The kind of building where no one blinked when someone screamed from a nightmare, or danced barefoot at 2 a.m., or cried in the stairwell.Cassian had signed the lease under a name that wasn’t filtered by legacy.And Eden Aria had painted the front door herself. Not metaphorically. With real brushes, chipped nails, and a color called burnt persistence.The walls were uneven. The windows stuck. The radiator hissed in the winter like it had something to say.But it was the first place in either of their lives that hadn’t been chosen for them.Inside, there were no weapons.No security nodes.No expectation of clarity.Just a coat hook by the door, a half-sanded dining table, and two coffee mugs one cracked, one stolen from the old Council kitchen.Aria stood barefoot in the kitch

The morning light found them on the apartment terrace, savoring silence and slow sips of coffee. An unexpected knock at the door broke their reverie. They exchanged glances uncertainty flickering across tired but hopeful eyes.Cassian rose, his bare feet echoing softly on the wooden floor. Aria followed. As he opened the door, they were greeted by Rae boots muddy, jacket draped over her arm, hair tousled from early activity. She looked both triumphant and wary.“Thought you’d want to know,” she said, holding up her tablet with a brief nod. “Lyra’s network isn’t rebuilding. They’re reaching out. Invitations are going out to ex-regulators, old council members, even some of Cassian’s former aides.”Aria’s chest tightened. “What kind of invitations?”Rae scrolled. “An offer to rejoin. To reconcile. To help rebuild Eden under the promise of oversight.” She swallowed. “Some of them are taking it.”Cassian closed the door, letting it click softly behind Rae. He leaned against it, arms folded

The knock came just before dawn.Not the hesitant tap of a messenger.Not the pounding of emergency.Three soft raps.Measured.Intentional.Cassian answered the door in a low shirt, Aria standing just behind him, tension already blooming in her chest.Nova stood in the doorway.Eyes bloodshot.No device in hand.Just her.Raw.Silent.Aria stepped forward. “Nova?”She didn’t speak. Just held up a paper.Cassian took it.One page.No header. No seal.Just a transcript.A copied dialogue from three nights ago.Lines spoken between Cassian and Aria during the node breach.“I still want it.”“You didn’t want control. You wanted to belong.”Cassian’s blood chilled.“How ”Nova’s voice cracked. “It leaked. To Council Archive Forty-Six. Disguised as a corruption test file. Someone burned it into the meta-cache during the terminal wipe.”Aria stepped back like she’d been slapped.“No one else was in the room.”Nova swallowed. “That’s not the worst part.”She handed over a second slip.Encryp

They didn’t leave the vault.Not right away.Because you don’t flee from your shadow.You erase it.Cassian stood in front of the mainframe, its synthetic warmth radiating like breath on skin. He watched his own image flicker across one of the displays silent, patient, unsettlingly serene.Aria moved behind him, her reflection glitching on a nearby screen. It looped her smile. Not the confident one.The unguarded one.The version no one else was ever supposed to see.Nova’s voice came from the far terminal. “There’s no single shutdown command. It’s not centralized it’s rooted in fragments. They scattered the core so it can’t be purged all at once.”“Like emotional horcruxes,” Rae muttered, pacing the perimeter.Cassian’s voice was low, seething. “So we don’t shut it down.”Aria stepped forward, eyes narrowing. “We unmake it.”Nova turned, wary. “That’ll burn trace elements of your original Eden node. It means losing… everything.”Aria didn’t blink. “Good.”Cassian’s eyes flicked to he