The quiet of Emily's suite was punctuated only by the soft hum of her computer. The private messaging window glowed on the screen, Apollo's name blinking impatiently. She reread her own words "Yes, I'm still alive." Even typing it had felt strange, surreal, like acknowledging a truth she herself hadn't fully grasped yet.
The reply came almost instantly.
"How… how is this possible? I attended your funeral. I saw your body!"
Emily leaned back in her chair, her fingers hovering over the keyboard. She had rehearsed no answers, yet every instinct told her to remain cautious.
"I don't know," she typed slowly, carefully. "I'm still trying to figure it out myself."
Apollo's next message arrived before she could blink. "Still… alive? This is impossible. Who else knows? Are you in danger? You have to tell me everything."
She paused, her gaze drifting to the window. The city lights shimmered faintly in the distance. Every shadow in her room seemed to whisper threats she couldn't yet name. She had no way of knowing who to trust.
"Keep the news about me being alive to yourself for now," she typed. "I don't know who my enemies are, and I can't risk exposure."
Her thoughts flickered back to the betrayal that had ended her life once before. Someone close, someone she had trusted, had orchestrated everything. She would find out who. But not tonight. Not yet.
She leaned closer to the screen, her fingers resuming motion. "I was betrayed. I died .But I survived. That's all you need to know for now."
A pause. Then, Apollo's reply came, urgent and incredulous: "This… this changes everything. But Emily… if you're alive, why? Why now? How?"
She didn't answer the "how." She had no answers herself, only fragments of a memory that made no sense yet. Images of the attack, the fall, the betrayal, flickered in her mind like broken glass, each shard sharp and half-formed. She felt a chill crawling up her spine, and yet there was a strange clarity in it, a purpose that had been dormant in her veins for far too long.
"I can't answer all your questions yet," she typed finally, "but I'll need your help. Quietly. Discreetly. I need to understand everything that happened to me before and immediately after my death ."
Apollo's cursor blinked for a long moment. Then came his message: "Whoever did this… they won't get away. If you survived, we can undo it all."
Emily exhaled slowly. Undo it all… Perhaps one day. But tonight, secrecy was her only weapon.