Evelyn laughed bitterly.

“Exactly.”

She walked away.

Daniel left soon afterward.

He didn’t return the next evening.

Or the evening after that.

On the third night, someone knocked on Daniel’s apartment door.

He opened it.

Evelyn stood there.

Orpheus sat beside her.

Daniel stared.

“You came here?”

“I walked.”

“You’re six miles from the laboratory.”

“6.3.”

“In the rain?”

“It started halfway.”

Daniel looked at Orpheus.

“You let her do this?”

The hellhound sneezed.

Evelyn’s expression remained serious.

“I thought you weren’t coming back.”

Daniel stepped aside.

She entered.

It was the first time she’d seen his home.

She looked around.

Bare walls.

Engineering manuals.

A half-dead plant.

One chair at the kitchen table.

One coffee mug drying beside the sink.

“You live like this?”

Daniel frowned.

“Like what?”

“Like you’re expecting to leave.”

“I’m not.”

“Then why is there nothing here?”

Daniel had no answer.

Evelyn finally understood something about him.

“You were lonely.”

“I’m fine.”

“Daniel.”

“I said I’m fine.”

“You found a dead woman trapped inside a robot beneath an abandoned building, and somehow you’re still the loneliest person I’ve met.”

Despite himself, Daniel laughed.

Evelyn did too.

Then neither was laughing.

Daniel looked at her.

“I didn’t come back because you were right.”

Her expression changed.

“I don’t know where the engineer ends anymore.”

“And where what begins?”

He struggled with the word.

Evelyn waited.

Finally:

“Me.”

She stepped closer.

Daniel continued.

“I think about you at work. I see something stupid and wonder whether you’d find it funny. I buy two coffees without thinking. When something happens, you’re the person I want to tell.”

Evelyn’s eyes glistened.

“And that scares you?”

“Terrifies me.”

“Why?”

“Because you’re dying again.”

Silence.

That was the truth he hadn’t been able to say.

Daniel’s voice broke.

“I found you, Evelyn. And now I’m going to lose you.”

She touched his face.

“I’m scared too.”

Daniel leaned into her hand.

For several seconds neither moved.

Then Evelyn kissed him.

It was tentative.

Almost questioning.

Daniel answered.

And for the first time since her death, Evelyn felt someone’s arms around her who wasn’t holding her because she was frightened, damaged, or something that needed saving.

He simply wanted her there.

Across the room, Orpheus sighed dramatically and put his head beneath his paws.

---

Afterward, Daniel stopped treating the integration problem as something he alone had to solve.

They solved it together.

They filled whiteboards with equations.

Argued over neural mapping.

Stayed awake until sunrise.

Evelyn caught mistakes Daniel missed.

Daniel discovered structures inside ARI’s architecture Evelyn had never understood.

Their relationship became embedded in the work itself.

Engineer and engineer.

Human and machine.

Living man and dead woman.

Partners.

Eventually they found the answer.

And Daniel hated it.

Integration.

Not preservation.

Not transfer.

Evelyn’s human consciousness and ARI’s artificial intelligence would have to merge completely.

There would no longer be a ghost inside a machine.