Kelvin's workshop still smelled faintly of solder and ozone even on a day this important, and Webb looked entirely out of place in it, immaculate suit against scorch-marked workbenches, though he didn't seem to mind.
"You kept a lab here," Webb said, glancing around. "Even for the wedding."
"I always keep a lab somewhere," Kelvin said, still turning the drive over in his hands. "Helps me think."
"Plug it in," Webb said. "Please."
Kelvin crossed to the nearest terminal, connected the drive, and a soft chime confirmed the link. His own ability reached for it automatically, data threading up through his fingertips before the screen even finished loading, and what he found there stopped him cold before a single line of code had rendered visually.
A full neural mapping. Voice patterns, speech cadence, decision trees built off years of recorded interaction. Something enormous, encoded with a level of care that took real time, real devotion, to construct.
