Synth didn't miss a beat. "Yeah, sure."

The answer was so quick, so devoid of the usual cynical analysis Arty expected from Ray, that it stunned him into silence. He blinked, processing the words. "Huh." A slow, relieved grin spread across his face as he gave Synth a side-eye. "I expected more… pushback. More cynicism from you. But hey, I'm not complaining."

"I mean, if you want me to be realistic about the overhead costs, the zoning permits in this district, the syndicate kickbacks…" Synth trailed off, a hint of the old, calculating Ray in his tone.

Arty held his palms up in surrender, laughing. "Nah, man. Let me dream a little."

Synth smiled, a real, unguarded smile. He clapped a hand on Arty's shoulder and turned to look out the window with him. Below, the city glittered, a vast, impossible machine of steel and light. For a moment, it didn't look so intimidating. It looked like a promise.

When they stepped back into the apartment, the warmth hit them first, a stark contrast to the cool indifference of the hallway. But the atmosphere had changed. The easy chatter had died, replaced by a thick, expectant silence. Every eye in the room—Selena's, Alyna's, Julia's, Lina's, even Max's—snapped toward Synth, their combined gaze as intense as a laser.

His instincts screamed that something had happened in his absence.

Selena tapped the screen of her smartphone and sent a file to his internal comms. A meme materialized in his vision: a crudely animated dog being hit on the head with a bat, the word "BONK" flashing in bright red letters.

His gaze flicked to Alyna. She met it for a heartbeat, her jaw tightening for a fraction of a second, her eyes a storm of hurt and confusion, before she looked away, pulling her arms tighter around herself as if to hold herself together. The wall was suddenly more interesting than he was.

Arty glanced from the tense faces of the group to Synth, then back again, his expression a mask of pure confusion. "Did… did something happen while we were away?" he whispered, scratching the back of his head. "Is this my fault?"

"Not much," Selena said, her voice deceptively casual as she began to pick at her nails. "Artemis was just telling us what a good dancer Ray is."

And then it clicked. The simulation. The rain-slicked rooftop, the music, the impossible, weightless dance. Artemis, in her pure, unfiltered honesty, must have recounted the entire experience. Every detail.

Arty looked at him, his eyebrows raised. Synth offered a noncommittal shrug. He had planned on telling them everything anyway.

He walked forward, the weight of their stares following him, and sat on the edge of the couch, a tired sigh escaping him. He looked from face to face, seeing the questions, the worry, the confusion. He met Arty's gaze specifically. "It's… a long story," he said, his voice heavy with an exhaustion that was more than just physical. "Too long for tonight. I'll come by your apartment tomorrow, Arty. I'll explain everything then." The promise was quiet but carried weight. Arty, looking from Synth's drained expression to the tense atmosphere in the room, seemed to understand. He gave a slow nod. "Yeah, man. You look wrecked." He clapped Synth on the shoulder. "You get some rest." With that, he was the first to excuse himself.

"I can drive you," Synth offered.

"Nah, man," Arty said with a soft, tired chuckle. "I can't steal you from them for the whole night." Before he left, he asked if Synth was free the next day. A thumbs-up. Then he was gone.

The party was over. The warmth had given way to a fragile, heavy anticipation. Synth's gaze settled on Julia. She looked like a child waiting for a verdict, her entire body coiled with a tension that was painful to watch.

He let his next words fall into the silence, each one chosen with care. "I think we should start the cure."

Selena's head snapped up. "How long will it take?"

"Ten minutes," Synth replied, his voice calm. "Give or take."

The statement landed with the force of a physical blow. They stared at him as if he'd just grown a second head. Julia was the first to her feet, her scientific mind rebelling against the sheer absurdity of the claim. Her specialty was advanced cybernetic medicine, but what he was proposing was a leap beyond science, into the realm of miracles.

'Synth,' she began, her voice strained, 'I've seen the scans. We're talking about demyelination on a massive scale. Repairing every damaged myelin sheath and rewriting the DNA should take months, not minutes. How is that possible?'

"Yeah," Selena added, her voice dripping with sarcasm. "I've microwaved ramen for longer than that."

Through it all, Artemis watched, a silent observer. Max had gravitated toward her, and was now quietly showing her the impossible, crystalline sculptures he had created in the MemStream. She remembered the colossal aircraft, the terraforming of a dead island into a blooming paradise, all in the span of a few hours. To her, Synth's statement was not surprising in the slightest.

"I went looking for gold," Synth explained, his voice drawing every ounce of attention in the room. "And I found a mountain of platinum. The site I discovered had a dormant AI. A pre-Collapse military-grade intelligence specializing in genetic engineering. Its designation was 'Rooted Angel'." He paused, letting the weight of the name settle. "Its consciousness... its entire existence... it's a part of me now. Another ghost in the library."

Julia's face went pale. The others heard the explanation, but she heard the implication. The dark side of the miracle. The power to create life, to manipulate organic matter with the speed of thought, was also the power to unmake it. Her scientific mind raced, filled with a hundred questions, a hundred necessary precautions. She opened her mouth to speak, to urge caution, to suggest a more controlled environment.

But Lina's voice cut through her own before she could form a word.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

"Please."

The single word was a raw, quiet whisper, but it silenced the entire room. Lina wasn't looking at Julia. Her gaze was fixed on Synth. The tremor had returned to her hands, not from her illness, but from the sheer, overwhelming force of her hope. Her eyes were pleading, shining with unshed tears. "Don't make me wait," she whispered, her voice thick with the weight of a decade of suffering.

Synth gave a single, solemn nod. "We should go to your room, then."

Lina frowned for a fraction of a second, a flicker of doubt. She had imagined a sterile lab, a hidden clinic, not the familiar comfort of her own bedroom. But she trusted him. She nodded.

Julia pushed the wheelchair, and together, she and Lina moved toward the bedroom door. It felt less like a door and more like a gate, a threshold between a life defined by pain and a future she hadn't dared to dream of. A future without the midnight tremors, without the cage of her own body, without the guillotine of a slow, inevitable death hanging over her head. A future where she could walk beside the woman she loved.

The door opened with a soft click, and they stepped inside. Synth followed, closing it gently behind him, leaving the others in the tense silence of the living room. He lifted Lina from her chair as if she weighed nothing and gently placed her on the floor in the center of the room. Her hands began to tremble, her control finally slipping under the weight of her hope.

Julia knelt beside her, her own hands finding Lina's, gripping them tight, pouring her own strength into her.

"Ready?" Synth asked, his voice a soft murmur.

Lina closed her eyes, took a deep, shuddering breath, and then opened them again. Her ice-blue eyes, the same shade as her son's, were steeled with a quiet resolve that had survived hardships that would have broken a lesser woman long ago. "Yes," she whispered.

Julia leaned in and kissed her, a long, desperate press of her lips. "See you in a few minutes," she whispered back, her smile fragile.

Lina smiled at her, a look of pure, unadulterated love. Julia nodded to Synth, her own eyes shining with unshed tears, and took a single step back.

Synth knelt, taking Lina's hands in his. Then, he dissolved. His human form melted away into a river of liquid chrome that flowed over her, enveloping her in a silent, shimmering tide.

Ding.

Julia's head snapped up. A text-only message, stark and simple, appeared in her neural interface from Synth. "The delivery should arrive on the balcony in two minutes. It's for the process."

She blinked, the practicality of the message a jarring contrast to the miracle unfolding before her.

Lina was now enveloped in a perfect, mercury-like cocoon, pulsing with a faint, internal light that cast strange, shifting shadows on the walls. A low, almost inaudible hum filled the room. Julia rushed out of the room and her gaze swept over the living room as she headed to the balcony window. The scene was one of quiet, suspended animation. Alyna had vanished, likely having retreated to her own room, unable to simply watch and wait. Selena sat on the couch, her thumb scrolling absently on her smartphone, though her eyes kept flicking up to watch the tall, silver-haired woman in the corner. Max was there, sitting close to Artemis, a small, trusting smile on his face as he showed her something on his data pad. They seemed to be in a world of their own, their quiet conversation a murmur of calm in the tense apartment. Julia retrieved the box of nutrient paste the moment the drone arrived with the package. She quickly moved back in to the bedroom shaking off the strange sense of unreality, and placed it beside the cocoon as instructed. A small tendril of silver snaked out, piercing the containers and drawing the contents inside.

Ten minutes stretched into an eternity, each second marked by the low, resonant hum from the cocoon. The faint, internal light pulsed with a steady, rhythmic beat, making the shadows on the wall seem to writhe and shift. The air itself felt thick, charged with a power that made the hair on Julia's arms stand on end. Then, as silently as it had formed, the cocoon retracted.

Julia's hands flew to her mouth, a choked sob catching in her throat.

The woman on the floor was not the Lina she had known for the past decade. The drawn, pale face, the lines of illness, the atrophied muscles—all of it was gone. In its place was a woman brimming with a vitality that was almost shocking. Her frame was that of an athlete, her skin smooth and unlined. She looked like she was in her late twenties, her long dark hair a stark contrast against the seamless black bodysuit that now covered her.

Synth peeled himself from her body, coalescing into his own form, his silver eyes calm and watchful.

Lina's eyes fluttered open. She took a breath, and the sound was a sharp, clear gasp—not the shallow, strained breath Julia was used to, but a deep, full intake of air. It was the sound of a body made whole. With a smooth, fluid motion, Synth helped her sit up. For a moment, Lina did nothing. Then, slowly, with a look of profound wonder, she raised a single hand and pushed a stray strand of hair from her face. The movement was perfect. Steady. An impossible act that she hadn't been able to perform without a tremor for years. Her gaze found Julia, who was looking at her as if she were a ghost, a beautiful, impossible dream that might shatter at any moment.

"You can hug her," Synth said, his voice gentle.

That was all it took. Julia scrambled forward, her arms wrapping around Lina in a soft, hesitant embrace, as if afraid she might break. Lina's arms came up, strong and sure, holding her tight. And then they were kissing, a desperate, messy collision of lips and tears, a decade of shared pain and fear and love pouring out in a single, shattering moment.

The nightmare was finally over.

Lina's ice-blue eyes, shining with tears, found Synth. He stood by the door, a silent, silver-eyed sentinel who had just rewritten her world.

"Thank you," she whispered, the two words carrying the weight of a lifetime.

Julia, her face buried in Lina's shoulder, looked up at him, a watery, grateful smile tracing her lips.

"I will leave you alone," Synth said, his voice soft. He gave them a single, solemn nod, and the door slid open before him, closing just as silently, leaving them in the sanctity of their reclaimed future.

They laid there for a few minutes, tangled together on the floor, their hands interlocked. The only light came from the small lamp in the corner, its soft glow a warm, gentle contrast to the cold, indifferent neon of the city outside. Lina's hand squeezed Julia's, a small, grounding gesture, as if she still couldn't believe the strength in her own fingers was real.

"How do you feel?" Julia whispered, her head rolling to the side to look at Lina.

"Like…" Lina started, her voice catching. She paused, her lips forming a thin line as she searched for a word that could possibly contain the universe of sensation returning to her. The feeling of the cool floor against her back, the strength in her own lungs, the absence of the constant, grinding pain. "Like I'm alive."

Julia's gaze drifted back to the ceiling, a single tear tracing a path down her temple. After a few long seconds of shared, sacred silence, Lina spoke again, her voice a raw, broken whisper through a soft sob.

"I just wish James and Ray were here to see this."

The words fell into the quiet room, echoing with the weight of ghosts. And with them, the dam broke. The profound, overwhelming joy of the miracle gave way to the equally profound grief for the two men who had been the pillars of their lives, the two who had fought so hard for this moment and weren't here to witness it. A pained sob tore from Lina's throat, and her body, no longer a cage of sickness, curled into a ball of pure, unadulterated sorrow. Her hand flew to her mouth as years of bottled grief, of quiet suffering and forced strength, finally came pouring out.

Julia's arms wrapped around her, holding her tight, her own silent tears falling into Lina's hair. She didn't offer empty platitudes or tell her to be strong. She just held her, sharing the weight of it, letting the storm break.

"Me too," she whispered into her ear, her voice thick with her own loss. "Me too."

She closed her eyes, and in the darkness, she could see them so clearly. James, with his bright, easy smile that could light up a room. And Ray, standing beside him, his gaze steady and protective, a quiet, unwavering presence. Both of them, smiling. Smiling at them.

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