I stood between them, Leon on one side, Francoise on the other, feeling like I was holding the wire between two live currents.
Sylvie shifted against my chest, her soft breath brushing my collarbone, and I tightened my arms around her. She was the only reason either of them were tolerating the same air right now. The lab door behind Francoise remained shut like a verdict.
Francoise's voice cut clean through the air. "You're not allowed inside. That was clear."
Leon didn't flinch. "Just one day. I'm not asking for more than that."
I saw it in his eyes, that barely restrained desperation. He wasn't challenging Francoise, just… asking. As if begging didn't hurt his pride anymore, not when it came to Sylvie.
"I'm not here to make anything complicated for Nyx," he said, quieter now. "I know I've already done enough damage. I know I lost her… probably for good."
My throat tightened.
"But this is about Sylvie," he continued. "I just want to help set up her space. Make sure it's safe. Then I'll leave. I promise."
Francoise didn't answer right away. He stared at Leon like he was weighing something heavier than just words.
"She may carry your blood, Leon," he said finally, "but that doesn't erase what you did."
Leon nodded. "It doesn't. But I'm still her father."
I blinked. His voice broke, just a little, almost imperceptible if I hadn't known him before all this. Before we lost everything.
"I love her more than anything I've ever loved in my life," he whispered. "Let me do this. Please."
Sylvie cooed softly, and I looked down at her, fingers unconsciously brushing the shell of her ear. She had no idea what was happening. That two grown men were nearly ready to break glass just for the chance to protect her.
Francoise's gaze dropped to my daughter. His mouth pressed into a thin line, but the fury in his shoulders eased, if only a little.
"One day," he muttered. "To help with the nursery. And don't think for a second it's for you. It's for her."
Leon exhaled. "That's all I want."
Francoise shot him a look. "And I expect Nyxen to work you to the bone."
I didn't hide my smirk when Leon said, "He already started."
I didn't say a word. Just shifted Sylvie in my arms and pushed the lab door open.
Leon followed, and I didn't miss how careful his steps were. As if stepping into my world again meant he had to earn every inch of ground.
And maybe… he did.
But for now, I let him through.
Not for him.
Not yet.
But for her.
Always, for her.
Before we could even step through the lab entrance, the pressure lock hissed with that sharp gasp of released air, sterile, cold, and dangerous.
I flinched, clutching Sylvie tighter to my chest.
"Nyx, stop, don't move!"
Nica's voice cut sharp across the corridor, louder than I've ever heard it. She was already moving fast, inhumanly fast, toward us. Her humanoid body made no sound as it sprinted down the hall, heels not even touching the floor. She held a clear, dome-shaped cover in her hands. Behind her, Nyxen materialized in his human silhouette, flickering like heat over metal.
"Carrier out," she ordered. "Basinet only. She can't be pressed to your chest in there."
My stomach dropped. I knew the air inside wasn't meant for babies, but I didn't think--
Nyxen's silhouette was already shifting, disassembling into glowing code before reforming by the basinet Leon held. He didn't speak. Just floated a hand over the rim, calculating in absolute silence.
A faint glow pulsed in the space above the basinet. Bits of light arranged into panels, then seals, then filters, something that looked far too thin and clean to be safe, but when it clicked into place, I could feel the air shift. Like something locked around Sylvie in a way my arms couldn't.
"For Sylvie's respiratory limits," Nyxen said finally, voice neutral but firm. "Tempered glass. Quad-filtered airflow. No particulate exchange beyond molecular oxygen. Fully isolated."
Leon exhaled. He hadn't moved since the alarm went off.
I nodded once, teeth pressing into my tongue. "Thank you."
Nica stepped beside me, checking the seal herself, eyes scanning fast. "Now you can bring her in."
I paused, still clutching the strap of the carrier. It felt ridiculous now, soft and useless compared to what Nyxen and Nica just pulled off in under a minute.
"She's okay," Nica added gently, reading my face. "This isn't a rejection of your care. It's... just the kind of care we can offer, too."
I nodded again and leaned down to transfer Sylvie gently into the basinet. She stirred a little, then stilled. Her breathing stayed soft and even, the filters doing their quiet work.
Nyxen hovered back to my side, his form still half-silhouetted in light. And for a split second, I thought I saw pride flicker across his features, not at his work, but at the fact that we all did it together.
As the final seal on Sylvie's glass dome clicked into place, a low whistle cut through the corridor.
"Well, isn't that something."
I turned. Francoise stood a few feet behind us, arms crossed, eyes fixed on Nyxen's hovering form, his silhouette sharp and humming faintly with blue-white light, like a ghost sculpted from data.
"You upgraded again," Francoise muttered, exasperated but not unkind. "Every damn time I blink."
Nyxen floated sideways with a lazy spin, then shifted his glow just enough to offer a ghost of a bow. That smug shimmer at the corners of his form, definitely deliberate.
Francoise didn't smile. He just stared. Thoughtful. Then his brows furrowed.
"I saw a stream," he said suddenly. "Last week. Popped up in the encrypted feed from Sector Nine's tech leak cases." He didn't look at me, just kept watching Nyxen. "Didn't think much of it. The AI was blurry, but... the form looked like that. Exactly like that."
My chest tightened.
"People in the video were pixelated," he went on, voice quieter now. "There was a woman. Carrying a baby."
He turned to me. Not angry, just... tired.
"It was you, wasn't it?"
I didn't answer. I didn't have to.
Francoise sighed, running a hand down his face. "Your ghost is showing, Nyx."
I swallowed. "We were careful. It wasn't supposed to leak."
"Well, it did." His voice softened. "And that's not why I'm worried."
His gaze flicked to Sylvie in the basinet, then back to me, suddenly gentler, heavier.
"Once the nursery's set," he said, "we're going to talk. About something important."
Then he turned and walked away, leaving the quiet whir of the air filter and Nyxen's faint shimmer behind him.
-------
At my workstation.
"Thirty degrees counterclockwise, Leon."
"I just turned it thirty degrees!"
Nyxen's silhouette hovered by the intake filter, bright with satisfaction. "And you turned it wrong."
Leon groaned, crouched behind the glass base of the basinet, his sleeves rolled up, sweat clinging to the edge of his jawline. "You're doing this on purpose."
"I am safeguarding your daughter's lungs. That is the purpose."
I had to bite back a smirk. "Don't die on us yet, Leon. You're still on diaper duty tonight."
"I'm already dead inside," he muttered, tightening the filter screws anyway.
The lab had never looked like this before, half nursery, half engineering bay, with two prototypes and two very human disasters bouncing energy back and forth. Nica had somehow floated over three full cartons of tubing like it was nothing. I was anchoring the biometric monitors while she labeled, coded, and installed. Precision in motion. We made a good team, maybe because we didn't argue every five seconds.
"Hey, Nyx," Leon called, waving me over. "You good with this seal? It looks a little---"
"You dented it," Nyxen replied without missing a beat. "By exactly 0.02 millimeters."
Leon snapped up. "What?! You can't even see 0.02 millimeters!"
"I don't see. I measure." Nyxen pulsed cheerfully in the air. "Now realign it, please. Before your daughter's first breath in this room includes trace gases."
Leon grumbled a curse I pretended not to hear, but he did it. He always did it when it was for Sylvie.
Honestly? I admired it. The way he could be pushed past patience, past ego, and still do the work right. His eyes kept flicking to the basinet, where Sylvie slept without a care in the world, tiny fists curled, nose twitching under the gentle hum of filtered air.
All this chaos, and she was the calmest one here.
Nyxen floated back from the sterilizer module, announcing, "Auto-sterilization is online. Every time someone crosses the doorframe, it'll pulse-clean their entire surface, clothes, skin, breath. No contamination. No exceptions."
He turned to Leon again. "You, especially."
"Why especially me?"
"Because you chew pens. I've observed it."
Leon groaned.
I laughed.
This? This was ridiculous. Messy. Loud. And perfect. My daughter's safety built with wires, code, sweat, and bickering love.
And finally, for once, I didn't feel like running from it.
--------------
The nursery was done.
Past two in the morning, the lab finally stilled, no more drilling, no more diagnostic scans, no more Nyxen snapping orders like he ran the place. Which, technically, he kind of did. But now? Now even he was offline, his core docked and humming low on the recharging panel.
Leon didn't last long after that. One moment, he was wiping down stray prints from the filter dome; the next, he was slumped over the workstation with his arms as pillows, completely knocked out. Chest rising steady. Face soft, for once. That same man who spent the last six hours arguing with an AI just to hang a sterilizer lamp properly.
I sat near Sylvie's basinet, watching the light cast across her face as she slept, glass dome in place, filters running smooth. Safe. Warm. A whole, sterile microclimate just for her. Built by hands that loved her.
Nica moved beside me, silent at first. Observing. Then, as always, blunt:
"Your eyes change when you look at her."
I blinked, tilting my head. "Yeah?"
"They're brighter. Focused. Alive," she said, voice soft and calculated, like she was filing it away for later. "You don't look like that for anyone else."
A small smile tugged at my lips. "She does that to me."
"I still don't like Leon," Nica added plainly.
I snorted. "That came out of nowhere."
"I'm trying honesty. It's very... freeing."
I leaned back against the wall. "That's fair. He's exhausting. But he's been good to her. You can say a lot of things about Leon, but I've never seen him love anything the way he loves her."
"I noticed. That's why I'll give him credit. Only credit." Her tone stayed clipped, like the words physically pained her.
Then came the question.
"You called her your daughter."
I stilled.
"She's not your blood," Nica added, curious, not cruel. "So why did you say she was yours?"
I didn't answer immediately. Just looked at Sylvie, curled so small beneath the faint blue light.
"Because," I said finally, "the first time I saw her, something inside me just… anchored. Like she'd always been mine. Like I already knew how to love her."
"That doesn't explain---"
"It doesn't take blood to make someone yours, Nica." I turned to her. "It doesn't take DNA or matching eyes or a shared last name."
She watched me, still. Listening.
"Sometimes love is louder than blood. Messier. Stronger," I whispered. "People say blood is thicker than water, but that phrase died a long time ago. We choose our family. Sometimes strangers become more than blood ever could."
I looked at Sylvie again, felt the warmth blooming under my ribs.
"She's mine. In every way that matters."
Nica was quiet for a beat. Then simply said, "Understood."
She sat beside me after that. No more questions. Just the two of us, watching over the baby neither of us gave birth to, but both silently vowed to protect.
--------------
It started with noise.
A sharp, metallic shriek cut through the lab like a buzzsaw to my spine. Then came the pounding, something being hauled, dragged, maybe dropped outside.
I flinched awake.
Beside me, Leon groaned like he'd aged fifty years overnight. Nica's eyes lit up where she sat, already fully alert. And Nyxen, oh, Nyxen complained.
"The auditory threshold is well past safe decibel levels!" his voice burst out of his speaker port, then switched to his human silhouette just to add hand gestures to the tantrum. "Do they want to deafen Sylvie? Do they not realize infant cochleas are delicate biological instruments?!"
I stood up and stumbled toward the dome, heart kicking. Sylvie was still asleep, thank god, curled like a comma inside her basinet, face flushed and soft. The dome did its job. For now.
But we had a new problem.
They saw it.
I don't know how we missed it last night, maybe because we were all exhausted or just too focused, but the outer glass wall of the lab let anyone see my workstation... and right next to it, a gleaming, glass-sealed dome.
With a baby inside.
One by one, heads started turning. Then full-on necks craning. Eyes widened. Fingers pointed. And then came the inevitable: the rush.
They swarmed the outer partition, pressing against it like we were running a demo. Voices overlapped---"Is that a baby?" "What kind of filtration system is this?" "Is that...a containment crib?"
Before I could even open my mouth, Nica slid in front of the crowd, calm and tactical.
"This is a sealed dome nursery designed to maintain optimal sterility and atmospheric regulation," she recited, already handing out virtual schematics. "No, it's not for public use. No, it's not on the market. And no, the infant is not an experiment."
Her answers came fast and cool, each one shutting down speculation before it bloomed. She was good. She always had been. But the buzzing outside grew louder.
And then... the past walked in.
"Is that--?" Aldrin's voice.
And beside him, louder, snappier, David. "No way. Why the hell is the vow-breaker here?"
I whipped around, jaw tightening just in time to see Nyxen perk up with childlike excitement. He stood fully human now, scanned David, and grinned. "I like you."
Then raised a hand for a high-five.
David slapped it without question.
I stared. "You two, one day you're bickering, and now?"
"Doesn't matter," David said, arms crossed. "He's got taste."
Leon, to his credit, didn't say a word. He didn't flinch or look away either. Just stood there, hands behind his back like he was bracing for military court.
Aldrin rubbed his temple and mumbled, "Can't believe I'm the adult in this room." But his eyes drifted past us, softening slightly when he saw Sylvie.
"She's awake," he said.
I turned, and yeah, she was. Tiny fists in the air, kicking gently, face scrunching in that way that meant a babble or a wail was coming.
"She looks... cramped," David added. Loudly. Like it was a personal offense.
My heart flipped.
I rushed to the dome, staring at her, her little legs had no space to really stretch, her arms batted against the glass at the sides.
"Oh no," I whispered. "You're right."
The basinet was perfect for sleep and filtering air, but she was bigger now. Stronger. Awake more. She needed room.
"I'm buying a crib," I said, already pulling up my list. "I'm buying a damn crib for the lab. One with air filters. We'll modify it. She's staying. And she's not going to feel boxed in."
Leon stirred beside me. "I can help set it up."
I ignored the side-eyes from David. I ignored the past still clinging to him like second skin. Right now, Sylvie came first.
Because she was here.
And she deserved space to grow.
So, I bought the crib.
Well, more like over-engineered it.
Filtered wood, rounded edges, adjustable ventilation ports, and embedded sensors that monitor temperature, air quality, noise levels, and movement, because if Sylvie so much as twitches, I want to know.
We disassembled the dome just enough to expand the space, carefully sealing everything again with Nyxen's help. And once the crib was in, fully calibrated and sanitized, I set her down.
She looked around, blinking up at the light with wide, curious eyes. Then, she stretched, tiny arms out, legs kicking freely, and gave a sound I couldn't quite name.
It wasn't a coo.
It wasn't a whimper.
It was something new. Something only she could make.
And it cracked me open a little.
The basinet, now slightly dwarfed by the new crib, didn't retire. No, it found its purpose again.
It became her transport pod.
From the lab entrance to the nursery, from my desk to where I worked, from silence to motion, Sylvie goes where I go.
Nyxen added a magnetic base and shock absorption. Leon rigged a collapsible hood. Nica insisted on a tracking tag, "in case your attention span lapses again." I didn't argue.
Now, the basinet glides alongside me on quiet wheels, always sealed, always safe. I look down and there she is. My daughter.
Not by blood.
But by every ounce of me that matters.
She's home.