“So every morning,” she continued, “I could look into something reflective and tell myself, That’s Evelyn Shaw. That’s me.“

She touched her artificial cheek.

“But eventually the face in the mirror stopped feeling like the woman in that photograph.”

Daniel looked at the picture again.

“Maybe because you’re not.”

She turned sharply toward him.

He realized too late how cruel it sounded.

“That’s not what I meant.”

“Then what did you mean?”

Daniel searched for words.

He was good with machines because machines rewarded precision.

People rarely did.

“I mean you’re not only her.”

Evelyn said nothing.

“You remember being her. You loved the people she loved. You’re carrying everything she was. But you’ve also spent twelve years becoming someone she never had the chance to become.”

Evelyn’s eyes filled with tears.

Daniel continued.

“The woman in that photograph never met Orpheus.”

A tiny smile appeared.

“She never spent twelve years arguing with a building’s climate-control system.”

“It deserved it.”

“And she never met me.”

Evelyn looked at him.

“No,” she whispered.

“She didn’t.”

Something changed between them then.

Neither mentioned it.

---

A week later, Daniel brought her outside.

Evelyn stopped at the laboratory entrance.

She hadn’t crossed it since the night she died.

Daniel was already halfway onto the sidewalk when he realized she wasn’t following.

“You okay?”

“I can’t.”

He returned.

“Why?”

“What if something happens?”

“Like what?”

“I don’t know.”

Cars passed.

People talked.

A bicycle bell rang somewhere down the street.

Ordinary life.

Evelyn stared at it as though Daniel had opened an airlock onto another planet.

“I died out there.”

“No. You died in there.”

She looked back toward the laboratory.

Daniel immediately regretted correcting her.

He held out his hand.

“We don’t have to go.”

Evelyn looked at his hand.

“You spent two hours modifying my power system.”

“Three.”

“And rented a van.”

“The van is refundable.”

“It absolutely isn’t.”

“No.”

That finally made her laugh.

She took his hand.

Her fingers tightened around his.

“Don’t let go.”

“I won’t.”

They walked seventeen meters.

Daniel knew because Evelyn measured it.

They reached the corner.

Then she stopped.

A breeze moved through her hair.

She closed her eyes.

“I’d forgotten wind.”

Daniel watched her.

Something hurt unexpectedly inside his chest.

Evelyn opened her eyes.

“Can we go farther?”

Daniel squeezed her hand.

“Anywhere you want.”

---

Their first argument happened two months later.

Daniel discovered Evelyn had been hiding diagnostic reports.

Her neural architecture was destabilizing.

“You’ve known for three weeks.”

“Twenty-four days.”

“That’s worse.”

“I didn’t want you trying to fix me.”

“That’s what I do.”

“I’m not one of your machines.”

Daniel stared at her.

“I know that.”

“Do you?”

The question stopped him.

Evelyn stepped closer.

“Sometimes I don’t know whether you come here because you care about me or because I’m the most interesting engineering problem you’ve ever encountered.”

“That’s not fair.”

“Isn’t it?”

“No.”

“Then tell me why you’re here.”

Daniel opened his mouth.

Nothing came.