A pause. The sound of a lighter flicking.

Raeley sat on the floor of her studio apartment. The walls were still smeared with their inside jokes written in charcoal. “You + Me = infinite undo,” he had scrawled above the radiator. She traced the letters until her fingertips were black. Three months later, a notification.

When he left—ghosting not just her, but the city, the continent—he took the root server. Balthazar went silent. The baby was forsaken.