When the Program told me I could return, I felt no joy.Only emptiness.The next time I opened my eyes, I was staring at a white hospital ceiling. Machines beeped beside me, and my throat burned as if I had been asleep for years.A nurse saw me wake and rushed over.“You’re safe,” she said. “You were caught in a dockside explosion. Sophia Lane didn’t survive.”My fingers tightened against the sheet.Sophia was dead.Before I could speak, the nurse added, “There was another survivor. A young man named Luca. He woke up this morning.”The door opened then.Luca stood there with a cane, pale and thinner than before, but alive. When our eyes met, he smiled faintly.“This time,” he said, “maybe we really are the leads.”I stared at him for one second, then reached for him with trembling hands.He came to me at once.I held him tightly, and the tears I had not been able to shed in that world finally fell.Later, Luca told me everything.In the real world, he had been my university classmate.
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