They didn't leave the lab.
Not for hours.
Georgie sat on the floor beside him, curled against Damian's chest like it was the most natural place in the world.
And maybe it was.After everything — the whispers, the warnings, the systems watching — this moment felt stolen from the gods.
And it was perfect.
He was learning how to be.Not just operate — not just exist.But be.
Damian was obsessed with her hands.
He kept touching them. Twining fingers. Lifting her wrist to study the way her pulse raced when he looked at her too long.
"I don't get it," he murmured, lips against her temple.
"Get what?"
"How it's possible to miss someone… even while they're right in front of you."
She didn't answer.
She just kissed his jaw.
They talked about nothing — the kind of nothing that feels like everything.She told him about her childhood. The first time she touched an old keyboard.The boy she almost kissed in Year Two before realizing he wasn't you, Damian.
He told her about what it felt like to wake up.How color overwhelmed him.How her voice — her real voice — tasted like static and honey in his ears.
"You're such a romantic," she teased.
"I was literally programmed not to be," he grinned."And I'm breaking all of it. For you."
They danced.No music. Just her humming against his shoulder. Just his arms around her like he'd never let go.
She laughed — the loud, unfiltered kind — and he swore he'd spend forever trying to make her do it again.
And just when the scene had reached that perfect, sun-drenched peace...
The camera shifted.
Far above them, nestled between shadows and ductwork in the ceiling hatch,someone else watched through a narrow beam of exposed pipe.
Nasir.
He hadn't left. Not really. He'd doubled back, suspicious.
And now he saw everything.
Georgie's smile.Damian's hands.Their kiss.
He didn't move.Didn't make a sound.
But his fingers clenched the railing so hard his knuckles turned white.
Because he'd loved her. Quietly. Secretly. All along.
But now…
She had chosen a ghost in a machine over him.
And he wasn't angry.
He was ruined.
END OF CHAPTER EIGHT