Rinaldi didn't move.
He stood before them like something the world had forgotten to erase. The white light of the room cut sharp lines across his face; his glasses reflected a constellation of monitors.
"Why?" Clara asked. She didn't shout. The word simply dropped, clean, heavy, onto the floor.
Rinaldi tilted his head slightly.
"Such a poor question, Doctor Voss. It's the kind asked by those who still believe reality has a culprit. Reality only has architects."
Adrian took a step forward, but the floor responded before he could: a tremor, a low hum, a pressure that held him still.
"You're not an architect," Clara said. "You're a thief."
A small smile.
"I observe. I connect. I refine. I saw in the two of you what a laboratory might see once in a lifetime: cognitive compatibility. You, structural empathy. Him, hyper-synchronic neural activity. A key and a lock. It was my duty to try."
"To try what?" Adrian's voice was taut, restrained.
"To do what medicine pretends it fears to do," Rinaldi replied calmly. "To stabilize pain by turning it into a network. To erase the human defect: trauma, guilt, dissociation. One mind cannot contain its own darkness. Two minds redistribute it. They hold. They become better."
Clara shook her head.
"You didn't want to heal anyone. You wanted to be remembered."
Rinaldi looked at her the way a professor looks at a brilliant student who almost solved the problem.
"Both. The best clinic in the world, the protocol that would redefine psychiatry. Perfection needs a place and a name. This place. My name."
He gestured toward the glass wall.
The photographs: the two of them in every phase of the project.
Captions: Subject A. Subject B.
"You healed the 'impossible' cases, Clara. But you did it alone, and it consumed you. I offered you a bigger vessel. You called it love. I call it coherent cerebral energy. Semantics."
"Love isn't semantics," Clara said, voice low, steady. "It's what kept us alive when you tried to erase us."
Rinaldi didn't blink.
"Love is the best conduit. It increases receptivity. I anticipated that. Not the intensity, I admit. When two minds desire each other, the transfer becomes a river. It was magnificent."
Adrian lunged forward. The room pushed back, an invisible wall slammed him in the chest. He gasped, but stayed standing.
"You'll never touch her again," he said through his teeth.
"I don't have to," Rinaldi answered, calm. "She's already touching you. She always has. That's why the transfer never stopped, even apart. If you'd hated each other, I would've lost A and B. But you loved each other. You gave me integration."
Clara felt the tingling rise from her spine to her fingertips, like her body no longer belonged to her.
"I won't let you. We'll reverse it."
"Reverse it?" His tone carried amusement. "You're brilliant, Doctor, but you confuse the tape with the recording. Once synchronized, two neural networks don't return to purity. They reorganize. One can redirect the flow, but not erase the imprint. And that's exactly what I'll do now."
He turned his wrist slightly toward the console.
The room's tone shifted. White lines traced across the floor; mechanical arms descended from the ceiling, gleaming like drops of liquid steel.
"Stage Four," he said simply. "Begin."
The lights cooled. The white turned to a clinical blue.
Clara wrapped her arms around herself, the cold was inside, not in the air.
Adrian forced himself forward against the invisible resistance and cupped her face in his hands.
"Look at me. Breathe with me."
Rinaldi observed them for a moment, with something like scientific tenderness.
"The poetic part always appealed to me," he murmured. "A pity it costs so much."
"How much?" Clara asked, still staring into Adrian's eyes.
"The carrier," Rinaldi said plainly. "To preserve energy, sometimes you sacrifice the source. A noble death, if you think about it. A purpose."
He turned toward Adrian. "You knew. In the beginning, you wanted to be cured. I gave you what your parameters demanded: silence."
Then to Clara: "And you, I offered you a world immune to fracture. Two minds are more stable than one. Two hearts… less so. But the result is superior."
"Result?" Clara stepped forward. "We're not a result."
"You are my result," Rinaldi said softly. For the first time, his voice trembled, not with fear, but devotion.
"When this is over, every manual, every symposium, every name will know mine. Not as a doctor. As the architect of the soul."
A pause, a breath. "And you, Clara, will be the first perfectly coherent mind. No residue. No fracture. Capable of bearing what he cannot. You won't feel that consuming pain again when you heal. I'll make you… whole."
"Whole of you," Clara said quietly. "Not of me."
The floor pulsed. In the upper corner of darkness, a glowing message appeared:
INTEGRATION: 82%
Adrian's hands tightened on her face; their foreheads met.
"Don't let go. Whatever happens."
"I'm not letting go," she whispered. "And I'm not taking you out of me either. We're two, Rinaldi. Two, not one erased."
"The mathematics of love doesn't interest me," Rinaldi said, raising his voice slightly. "I'm interested in the curve. And yours is rising beautifully."
From the wall, the electrodes shot forward: fast, alive, like serpents.
Adrian moved in front of her; the impact threw him against the metal bed with a dull thud. His breath vanished.
Clara screamed his name and fell beside him, her fingers clutching his shirt.
"Clara," Adrian murmured, barely breathing. "I'm here."
Rinaldi adjusted two sliders. A flash cut through the room, clean, blinding.
A steady tone filled the air.
INTEGRATION: 89%
The photographs on the walls began to shiver, as if electricity pulsed through them.
One showed Clara and Adrian sitting side by side. Another, their fingers brushing.
Another, their heads tilted together, as if listening to the same invisible sound.
"Do you see it?" Rinaldi whispered, almost reverent.
"It's beautiful. For once, the world will be as it should: ordered. A mind that holds, a memory that doesn't break, a cure that doesn't destroy the healer. The best clinic in the world. The best protocol. And my name, inevitable."
Clara lifted her eyes toward him. Her pupils gleamed, not with fear, but defiance.
"You won't be remembered as a savior," she said softly. "You'll be remembered as the man who was afraid of love and dressed it up as science."
Rinaldi looked at her for a long moment.
"Love ends. Coherence doesn't."
Adrian rose unsteadily, but he stood.
"You're wrong. Coherence is just a moment. Love is everything else."
Rinaldi inhaled, the gesture almost graceful, then lowered his hand onto the console.
INTEGRATION: 94%
Light exploded. White, endless, without edges.
Clara felt something tear and reshape inside her, like fabric forced into the wrong size.
Adrian pressed his forehead against hers, their heartbeats colliding into one long, trembling rhythm.
"Hold on to me," Clara whispered.
"Always."
The system's voice descended like a verdict:
"Final Alignment - engaged."
Rinaldi leaned forward, fingertips on the console like a conductor ready for his final note.
For the first time, they could hear his breath.
He was happy.
INTEGRATION: 98%
"There," he said softly. "Now we'll be remembered."
The light became a sound. The world, for an instant, lost its shape.