The apartment smelled of things left behind: dust, paper, and a trace of rain brought in on their shoes.
Clara closed the door softly, as if sealing a secret. The echo of the lock sounded gentler than she remembered any silence.
Adrian stood in the middle of the room, listening.
The dim light caught the curve of his jaw, the stillness of someone who had learned not to move too quickly.
"You should take the bed," he murmured. "I'll sleep on the floor."
Clara shook her head.
"No. You'll stay with me."
She didn't plead. She simply stated a truth that had no room for negotiation.
He hesitated, eyes flicking from her to the bed, to his own hands, as though he needed permission from something older than them both.
"It's dangerous," he said.
"Not if we turn the lights off," she replied.
A pause.
"And if you stay."
He nodded once. She cracked the window open a few centimeters. The air that entered was thin, metallic. Outside, the city slept; only a distant traffic light changed color with no one to watch.
"Can I use the bathroom?" she asked.
"Go ahead. The light won't show from outside."
The door closed, a soft cut in the quiet. Adrian stood in the hallway, staring at the dark as if it might reveal instructions. Every cell in his body told him not to move, not to reach out, not to ruin the fragile perfection of what was happening.
When Clara came back, she was wearing only one of his shirts.
It hung loose on her body, brushing her thighs. Her hair was damp, her neck bare, her breath steady. She stopped halfway into the room, no posing, no intention. Just her.
Adrian froze. Not out of discomfort, but out of recognition.
He looked at her the way a man looks at the first image he remembers after forgetting everything: with gratitude, and with terror.
"You're beautiful," he said, the words escaping before he could stop them.
Clara lowered her eyes for a moment, then crossed the space between them.
The mattress sank under their weight, slow, deliberate.
She turned off the lamp.
Darkness filled the room, soft and protective.
They lay facing each other, their breaths blending on the pillow.
In the silence, even their hearts seemed to hesitate, unsure who was leading.
"Talk," she whispered. "If I stop hearing your voice, my thoughts get too loud."
Adrian smiled faintly.
"They won't hurt you," he said, low and certain. "I won't let them. I don't know how to explain it, but I've been protecting you forever, even before I remembered your name."
Clara closed her eyes. The scent of him clung to the fabric of his shirt; it felt like a place she had once lived.
"I feel it too," she murmured.
His hand rested open on the pillow between them, a silent invitation, not a demand.
Clara hesitated, watching that open palm, tracing the invisible lines she couldn't see in the dark.
Then she reached out, her fingers barely brushing his.
The bed seemed to draw in closer. Adrian's breath caught.
"Remember what I told you," he whispered, his voice trembling with restraint.
"I won't touch you unless you ask me to."
For a moment there was no sound at all.
Even the city outside seemed to listen.
"I want you," she said finally, her voice breaking, full of truth.
"Like I've never wanted anyone."
Nothing happened fast.
Instead, everything that had been waiting finally happened.
Fingers finding fingers. Warmth answering warmth.
Words giving way to breath, breath giving way to silence.
It wasn't an act, it was a resonance.
A memory rekindled through the body, a homecoming written in skin and light.
Every movement was both discovery and remembrance.
When he touched her face, it wasn't possession, it was recognition.
When she stopped his wrist, it wasn't to restrain him, it was to hold on to something already hers.
They didn't name it. They simply let it be, the inevitable perfection of what had always been theirs.
Time thinned.
For a heartbeat, they ceased to be two.
Clara understood what "together" truly meant: not addition, but the end of absence.
Adrian felt his pulse change, fall in line with hers, find its mirror and its answer.
A single breath, a single rhythm, suspended between them.
When the world returned, it returned quieter.
They lay forehead to forehead, sweat cooling, stillness heavy as peace.
Then came a beep. One soft, clinical sound. Clara lifted her head.
"Did you hear that?"
"Yes."
Adrian's eyes moved toward the corner of the room. The computer, the one they hadn't touched, glowed faintly.
No icons, no cursor. Just a single line of text on a black screen.
Session 19 – Synchronization complete.
The sentence hovered there, cold and final.
Adrian went still.
Clara felt his chest tighten, his heartbeat skip and for one impossible instant, she felt it inside her own, as if their hearts had become the same.
"Adrian…?"
He opened his eyes.
Something in them had changed: not gone, not foreign, but woken.
A clarity too sharp to belong to him alone.
"They're watching us," he said quietly.
Not fear, fact.
Another beep. A second line appeared: Remote reconnection: active.
The monitor flickered, trembling like an unblinking eye.
Clara gripped his hand; it was still warm. Still real.
"They're not taking us back," she whispered, more to herself than to him.
He squeezed her fingers once, firmly. But the screen blinked again.
Protocol MNEMOS // Override RINALDI // Please wait.
The air in the room thickened. Something unseen settled on their lungs, heavy and familiar.
Adrian took a slow breath, but when he spoke, his voice was layered, his own, and another beneath it, colder, mechanical, remembering.
"If they separate us now," he said, "we lose everything."
The screen flashed one last time.
Then darkness. Deeper than before.