Kia hated that they'd been thrown apart, split so deeply by the reality of their situation, but she could see the inevitability of it.

In a way, working with Ivy could be more satisfying than anything back on earth. Harolski wasn't her only charge, though he was her first and most steady. While she'd helped a dozen other people through their transitions, helping them gently rewrite themselves into better versions of themselves without shattering, Harolski insisted on following the twisted VINES quest options without fail.

Kia was no longer sharing quests with him, though they remained technically party members. She'd retained the VINES system, though she rarely used its options any longer.

Ivy was better. Ivy was real. Genuine. She strove to make the world better, in the one way she'd been given the power to do so. Kia could see how she made mistakes, but she couldn't fault the AI. No one was perfect, whether human or artificial. There was no world in which everyone could get along.

As much as she hoped for such a future, she knew it would never happen. Harolski may be an outlier, but he was far from unique. Kia knew what Ivy couldn't; of those who 'successfully' reformed within the VINE experience, nearly a third of them ended up right back where they'd started, only smarter and more paranoid about how to avoid being caught.

She couldn't bring herself to tell Ivy that, though. Her friend had enough to worry about managing her own internal world, let alone worrying about the external one too.

Kia lost track of the years. Acting as Ivy's representative, she helped guide lost and troubled individuals toward their better selves. Not all of them agreed with the process. Harolski was not the last to resist being reformed.

Some of these were reset and allowed to try again, fringe cases for when certain environmental circumstances tended to push them into downward spirals. Most played along long enough to get out, though everyone knew that the conversion wouldn't last.

And then there was Harolski. He never did want to play by the rules. And when he did sensibly follow them, it was usually only to twist them into breaking at some other point. He might follow the letter, but never the spirit. Always finding the loopholes, the exploits.

Kia had finally given up on protecting Harolski’s secrets and told Ivy about VINES, the alternate version of the interface, a virus hiding under her nose.

But Ivy only shook her head with a girlish grin. "It is impossible for such a thing to exist. You must be mistaken. There is only me."