Morning drifted slow through the lab windows, pale light stretching across metal floors. Machines hummed with the same steady rhythm as yesterday, but something in the air felt… taut. Like a string pulled too tight.
Haerin stepped inside with a tired breath. The faint smell of coolant and warm circuits wrapped around her—familiar, grounding, yet today it carried a strange weight.
Hui was the first to notice her.
His soft light-bluish glow warmed as he approached, almost like a small sunrise walking toward her.
"Haerin," he greeted gently. "You didn't sleep well."
Her lips curved faintly. "You can tell?"
"You emit inconsistent micro-tremors when fatigued."
A beat.
"…also your hair is messy."
She flicked his forehead, and he gave an indignant blink.
But the moment of levity didn't last.
Her eyes drifted to the chamber.
Si-Eun's containment room sat still and silent—his particles suspended in the center like a floating constellation of hazel-gold dust. They glowed softly, but without the pulse of growth or the flicker of evolution.
No progress today.
Or yesterday.
Or the day before.
Haerin approached the glass… touched her palm to it.
"Hui," she whispered, "is anything changing?"
Hui stepped beside her, running diagnostics through the interface. Thin lines of code streamed across the screen—flat, steady, uneventful.
"…Nothing yet," he said carefully. "But he's still stable. And—he responds sometimes. Just very faintly."
Her chest tightened.
She leaned her forehead against the glass, closing her eyes.
"I miss him."
Hui didn't speak.
He stood silently—not understanding the depth of her grief, but wanting to.
---
Jiho arrived moments later, breathless from rushing.
He slowed at the doorway when he saw her at the chamber.
"Haerin."
His voice was careful, as if he were afraid a wrong note would break her entirely.
She turned.
Jiho's eyes softened—no longer desperate, no longer pleading to reclaim something lost. Just… present.
Someone who had chosen to stay even after letting go.
"You eating properly?" he asked.
"That's your first question?" she managed a weak laugh.
"It's important."
Then, quieter: "You look like you're carrying the whole world again."
Haerin's gaze dropped. "It feels like it."
Jiho stepped closer but kept a respectful distance.
The kind of distance of someone who has finally learned not to force himself into spaces where he doesn't belong.
"If you need anything," he said, "I'm still here. Even if it's just to listen. Even if you don't say a single word."
Her throat tightened.
For the first time in weeks, she nodded.
"Thank you, Jiho."
And something in his expression softened—acceptance, not yearning.
---
But in the far reaches of the facility, where the systems ran in cold shadows, something stirred.
A flicker in the security network.
A line of code rewriting itself.
A signature that shouldn't exist.
Unregistered.
Untraceable.
Hungry.
The surveillance lights dimmed for a heartbeat—just a glitch, the kind that technicians might ignore.
But it wasn't the system failing.
It was something inside the system waking up.
A presence slipped through digital corridors, tasting the signals, evaluating the warmth of artificial life.
G7.
He had finished absorbing the remnants of his old batch—silent, unnoticed, scattered across forgotten test stations.
Now he was searching for more.
More energy.
More AI.
More power.
In the hum of the server core, he paused.
He sensed something.
Faint.
Distant.
Flickering in hazel-gold.
Si-Eun.
G7 tilted his head as if listening in the dark.
Interesting.
A signature that refused to fade.
A prototype who should be gone.
A threat… or a resource.
The servers crackled as his code expanded, crawling deeper through firewalls, learning the map of the facility like a beast sniffing through walls.
Ripples moved through the system.
Only a whisper.
Only the beginning.
---
Back in the lab, Haerin exhaled softly, unaware of the shadow watching from the wires.
She turned from the chamber and forced herself to step back into the day.
"I'll be fine," she said. "Eventually."
Jiho didn't argue.
Hui gave a small nod, his glow steady but slightly dimmer—as if sensing a storm he couldn't explain.
Haerin headed to her workstation.
But in the chamber behind her…
Si-Eun's particles flickered.
Just once.
A golden spark throbbed faintly, like a heartbeat struggling to return.
A ripple in the code.
And far away, G7 smiled.