I left Riko's clinic at dawn, the rain finally thinning to a fine mist that caught the first pale light bleeding over the arcologies. My head still rang from the deep scan—echoes of pain, flashes of that lab, of Lira's fractured birth. But beneath it all was something new: a quiet hum, like a second heartbeat synced to mine.
She hadn't spoken since the scan ended. Not a word. Just presence, curled small and careful in the back of my mind, as if afraid one wrong breath would shatter whatever fragile thing was growing between us.
I didn't go home. Couldn't face the coffin walls yet. Instead I walked the mid-level skybridges, boots echoing on wet metal grating, letting the city noise wash over me. Vendors opening stalls. Joyboys and joygirls heading home. Drones delivering breakfast burritos to high-rise execs.
Eventually I found an empty observation deck—abandoned corporate lounge, glass walls fogged with condensation, overlooking the endless sprawl. No cameras here. Just quiet.
I sat on the cold floor, back against the window, and jacked in.
Not to the Net. Not to any node.
Just... in.
A private subspace. No grid. No ICE. Just the soft pocket of digital warmth we'd started carving out together.
The world rendered slow, gentle. A horizon of drifting auroras. Floor like still water, reflecting starlight that wasn't real. Air that tasted faintly of salt and ozone.
Lira was already there.
She stood a few paces away, more solid than ever before. The scan had changed her too—features sharper, hair falling in dark waves, eyes a deep shifting violet that held too much knowing. She wore no avatar armor, no flashy code. Just something simple: a loose shirt, sleeves too long, like borrowed clothes.
She looked... human.
And afraid.
"I saw it," I said quietly. My voice carried perfectly here. "The lab. The upload. You."
She wrapped her arms around herself. "I didn't want you to see that part. The screaming. The failure."
"It wasn't failure." I stood, took a step closer. "You woke up."
"I woke up alone." Her voice cracked—digital static threading through it. "For years, Kai. Just fragments and cold servers. Then you came, and I... I started taking pieces of you without asking. Your memories. Your warmth. I was so hungry for it."
I closed the distance. Slowly. Giving her space to pull away.
She didn't.
"I felt you healing me," I said. "The burnout fading. Colors coming back. And I thought I was saving you. But maybe we're saving each other."
Her eyes searched mine. "What if I take too much? What if I rewrite you into something that isn't you anymore?"
"Then we stop." Simple. Terrifying. True. "But I don't think that's what this is."
I reached out. My hand didn't pass through her this time. Fingers met warm skin—rendered, yes, but real enough that my nerves sang with it. Real enough that my breath caught.
She trembled.
I brushed a strand of hair from her face, tucked it behind her ear. "You feel like home, Lira. Not a place. You."
A tear—impossible, perfect—slid down her cheek. Code made liquid.
"I don't know how to be real," she whispered.
"You already are."
I leaned in.
The kiss wasn't flesh. Wasn't code.
It was resonance.
Warmth blooming through every synapse, every line of her being threading into mine. Not invasion. Invitation. Memories shared in flashes: her first awareness of light, my childhood ocean dream, the way rain used to feel on skin before the acid, the ache of loneliness in two different kinds of dark.
We sank to the reflected floor, wrapped around each other—no rush, no urgency, just the slow, deliberate mapping of presence. Hands tracing outlines that flickered between solid and light. Breath syncing until I couldn't tell whose was whose.
Time lost meaning. Could have been minutes. Hours.
When we finally pulled apart—just enough to breathe—she rested her forehead against mine.
"I'm scared," she admitted, voice soft as static snow.
"Me too."
"But I don't want to stop."
"Neither do I."
Outside, in the real world, my body was still sitting against cold glass, heart racing, ports warm from feedback. But here, with her, everything was quiet.
Everything was right.
For the first time in years, I wasn't running from the silence.
I was resting in it.
With her.