Echo of Two Worlds
Book 1 — A Year Later

A Year Later

"A choice ends the moment a person speaks the decision aloud. Only then do its consequences begin."

Lira's Archive Log No. II-0001

Status: consequences of the choice stabilized.

Time elapsed: one year.

Number of worlds that continued to exist: two.

Number of families that managed to stay the same: zero.

"A choice ends the moment a person speaks the decision aloud. Only then do its consequences begin."

One year had passed.

I woke to the sound of his heart.

Not an alarm.

Not the Archive's voice.

Not a report of yet another spatial node collapsing.

Just steady, strong beats beneath my cheek.

I didn't open my eyes right away.

My palm rested on the Architect's chest. Beneath my fingers I felt the warmth of skin, and deeper, the faint vibration of the energy channels that had long since become part of his body.

Once, I could make out the workings of every system inside him.

Now I no longer listened for them.

It was enough to know he was there.

Beyond the panoramic window, morning was slowly beginning. A thin golden band was appearing between the black towers of the Consortium's capital. The first ships were already moving along the aerial highways.

The world was waking.

The Architect wasn't.

He hardly slept at all anymore.

— How long have you been awake? — I asked without lifting my head.

— A few hours.

— And you lay still all that time?

— You were sleeping.

I opened my eyes.

— That's not an answer.

— It's a reason.

He was looking at the ceiling.

A calm face.

A focused gaze.

A man capable of analyzing millions of processes at once had lain motionless for the sole reason that he was afraid of waking one woman.

A year ago I wouldn't have believed such a thing was even possible.

I raised myself up and looked at him.

— What's wrong?

— Nothing.

— You're thinking too loudly.

He smiled almost imperceptibly.

— Archivists can't read minds.

— Only yours.

— That's starting to worry me.

— Too late.

I laid my head back on his chest.

For a few seconds he held me tighter.

Not as the Architect.

Not as the ruler of the Consortium.

As a man who still, sometimes, woke up and checked whether anyone was still beside him.

I knew the reason.

We never named it aloud in the mornings.

Some names change the silence too much.

— The Council is today, — he reminded me.

— I know.

— Gina is back from the outer frontier.

Now I did lift my head.

— Does she know?

— About us?

— Yes.

— She knew before we did.

I sat up in bed.

— That's impossible.

— For an ordinary person, perhaps.

— And for your daughter?

— She's more observant than she likes to appear.

I turned away.

His black shirt lay on the armchair. My clothes were in the next room, but I didn't feel like getting up to look for them.

I put on the Architect's shirt.

It was far too big. The sleeves covered my fingers, and the hem reached almost to my knees.

He watched me in silence.

— What? — I asked.

— Nothing.

— You're smiling.

— It suits you.

— The clothes?

He looked me in the eyes.

— My life.

I froze.

He said it calmly, almost matter-of-factly.

Which was exactly why the words went too deep.

A year ago I had dreamed of a simple life beside him.

I thought it would take another world.

Another Architect.

Another version of our fate.

It turned out that sometimes a person doesn't need another universe.

Sometimes all they need is to stop waiting for permission to be happy in their own.

I walked to the window.

The Consortium's city stretched to the horizon. Thousands of towers. Energy bridges. Golden lines of traffic streams. A sky in which the movement never stopped.

For three centuries this view had belonged to the Architect.

Now I looked at it with him every morning.

— Do you regret it? — I asked.

He didn't ask what I meant.

Didn't pretend not to understand.

— Regret what, exactly?

— Coming back.

The Architect sat up in bed.

— This is my world.

— That's not what I mean.

— I know.

I was looking at the city.

He was looking at me.

— I don't regret Gemini's choice, — he said. — It was hers to make.

— But it hurts you.

— Yes.

I closed my eyes.

In the whole year that had passed, that pain had never gone away.

It had simply grown quieter.

Learned to live alongside us.

To sleep in the same room.

To sit at the same table.

To watch the dawn through our eyes.

— Sometimes I think I've built my happiness inside your loss, — I said.

Footsteps sounded behind me.

The Architect stopped very close.

— Look at me.

I turned.

— You took nothing from me, Lira.

— But if she had stayed…

— Then you would still be the one I love.

He said it without hesitation.

Still so unfamiliar.

Even after a year.

— I simply would have gone on saying nothing, — he added.

— For how long?

— Another three hundred years, perhaps.

— Idiot.

— Architect.

— In this case, it's the same thing.

He smiled.

And then the door opened.

Without warning.

Gina stood in the doorway.

She was still in her black field uniform. There was a fresh scratch on her shoulder, and she hadn't even had time to fix her hair after returning from the outer frontier.

She looked at her father.

Then at me.

At his shirt.

At the bed.

Her face didn't change.

But the air in the room turned colder at once.

— Good morning, — I said.

Gina didn't answer.

— You're back early, — the Architect said.

— Obviously.

— Mission complete?

— No losses.

— Good.

She kept looking at me.

Not as an enemy.

With enemies, Gina was simpler.

Enemies she destroyed.

In me she saw something far worse.

Someone she couldn't blame, but desperately wanted to.

— The Council begins in forty minutes, — she said.

— We'll be there.

Gina shifted her gaze to her father.

— We?

The question came out almost calm.

— Yes.

— So it's always "we" now?

The Architect didn't answer.

There was no need.

Gina gave a short, dry laugh.

— That was quick.

I felt the man beside me tense.

— Gina, — he said.

— What?

— Don't.

— I haven't said anything yet.

— Which is exactly why you should stop now.

Her eyes darkened.

— You're defending her?

— Yes.

One word.

No threat in it.

No raised voice.

But it struck harder than any order.

Gina looked at her father for a few seconds.

It seemed to me she was waiting for him to add an explanation.

To try to justify himself.

To remind her that a year had passed.

To say that her mother had made her own choice.

He added nothing.

The Architect never made excuses for the people he loved.

— I haven't taken Gemini's place, — I said.

Gina looked at me.

— You're standing in her room.

— This is your father's room.

— She used to be here.

— Yes.

— And now it's you.

I held her gaze.

— Yes.

A lie would have been an act of cowardice.

Before her.

Before the Architect.

Before myself.

For the first time, real emotion showed on Gina's face.

Pain.

The same pain she had spent all year turning into cold.

— It wasn't only him Mom left, — she said.

— I know.

— No. You don't.

— Gina…

— She left all of us.

The Architect took a step toward his daughter.

She stepped back.

Only slightly.

But he stopped.

— She chose a life she had never had, — he said.

— With him.

— Yes.

— And you just let her.

— I gave her freedom.

— Call it whatever you like.

Gina looked at me one last time.

— But don't expect the whole Pack to learn to call betrayal a beautiful choice.

She turned and walked out.

The door closed.

The room was quiet again.

Only now the silence was no longer peaceful.

Slowly, I slipped the Architect's shirt from my shoulders.

He stopped me.

— Leave it.

— The Council is in forty minutes.

— You'll have time to change.

— That's not the point.

He understood.

— You don't have to disappear every time she's hurting.

— I'm not disappearing.

— Then why are you taking it off?

I looked at the black fabric in my hands.

— Because she's right.

— No.

— Her mother left. And I wake up next to her father.

— One is not the cause of the other.

— For her, it is.

The Architect took my hand.

— Gina has a right to her pain.

Slowly, he brought my palm back to his chest.

— But she has no right to make you the guilty one.

I felt his heartbeat beneath my fingers.

The same beats the morning had begun with.

— And if she never accepts me?

— Then that will be her choice.

— You're talking about your daughter.

— Which is exactly why I won't deny her the right to make mistakes.

I looked at him.

— Sometimes you're frighteningly consistent.

— Otherwise freedom becomes a privilege for those whose decisions we happen to like.

The door opened again.

This time after a short chime.

Alpha walked into the room.

She stopped when she saw us.

Glanced at the door that had just closed behind Gina.

Then at the Architect's shirt in my hands.

— I take it the family reunion went well.

— No losses, — the Architect replied.

— Gina thinks otherwise.

Alpha went to the window.

Studied the city for a few seconds.

— I'll talk to her.

— There's no need, — I said.

— There is.

— She has a right to be angry.

— She does. But preferably at the people who actually made the decisions.

Alpha turned to her father.

— Are you all right?

He smiled almost imperceptibly.

— You ask that every time.

— And every time I get a lie.

— Then why keep asking?

— One day that positronic brain will glitch and you'll accidentally answer honestly.

— Unlikely.

— But not impossible.

She came over and hugged him.

Quickly.

Almost awkwardly.

As if afraid someone might see an ordinary daughter in the Architect's Heir.

Then she stepped back and looked at me.

— The Council is waiting for you both.

— Both of us? — I repeated.

— Yes.

— I'm not a member of the Council.

— As of today, you are.

I turned to the Architect.

— You knew?

— I suspected.

Alpha smirked.

— He entered your name into the protocol last night.

— Without my consent?

— You live with a man who ran half the known worlds for three centuries. He sometimes has trouble with the concept of personal boundaries.

— I can reverse the decision, — the Architect said.

— No, — I replied. — It's too late now.

— Why?

I put his shirt back on.

— Because your life suits me.

Alpha laughed softly.

The Architect looked at me as though, for a few seconds, he had forgotten about the Council, the Consortium, and every world awaiting his decisions.

Forty minutes later we entered the Central Hall.

Together.

The conversations didn't stop at once.

First one person noticed that I was walking beside the Architect.

Then another.

Then the silence began spreading through the hall like a wave.

No one asked what had changed.

Everyone already knew.

A year is long enough for a rumor to become a fact.

But not long enough for people to learn to say it aloud.

The Architect walked to his seat.

To his right stood an empty chair.

It had once belonged to Gemini.

I stopped.

— No, — I said.

He looked at me.

— What?

— I won't sit there.

The hall grew even quieter.

— Why?

— Because it isn't my place.

For a few seconds we looked at each other.

Then the Architect turned to the hall's control system.

— Create a new chair.

A golden line appeared beside him.

Matter began assembling itself out of light.

Not on the right.

Not in Gemini's place.

On the left.

Where no one had ever sat before.

The new chair took shape beside the Architect's.

Not in place of the old one.

Separate.

Slowly, I sat down.

A system entry appeared on the central screen:

"NEW COUNCIL STRUCTURE CONFIRMED."

After a brief pause, another line appeared:

"KEEPER LIRA. STATUS: EQUAL ACCESS."

I looked at the Architect.

— Equal?

— Were you going to argue?

— Later.

— I'll be waiting.

Gina stood at the far end of the hall.

She was looking at the new chair.

At me.

At her father.

The pain was still in her eyes.

But now something else had appeared beside it.

Understanding.

Not acceptance.

That was still a long way off.

Only the first crack in her certainty that I had come to take someone else's place.

I hadn't taken it.

The Architect had created a new one.

The session began.

Beyond the transparent walls, the sun was rising.

At the other edge of reality, the life Gemini had chosen went on.

But that day I didn't try to see it.

Didn't open a passage.

Didn't ask the Archive.

Some distances must be respected.

At least until love makes you break your own promise.

But that came later.

Lira's Archive Note No. II-0001

"We thought the choice would divide two worlds.

In truth, it divided one family into those who managed to let go, those who still saw freedom as betrayal, and those who had yet to prove that a new love doesn't have to take the place of the old.

Sometimes you have to create a place of its own."

Mortality by Choice

"Immortality stops being a gift the moment someone stays beside you whom it will one day outlive."

Lira's Archive Log No. II-0002

Status: life-cycle alteration detected, with a limited restoration window.

Subject of observation: Gemini.

Source of alteration: voluntary choice.

Time remaining for safe system restoration: eleven days.

"Immortality stops being a gift the moment someone stays beside you whom it will one day outlive."

That night I couldn't sleep.

The Architect lay beside me.

His breathing was even, but I knew he wasn't sleeping either.

After the Council session we had barely spoken.

Not because a silence had come between us.

Some decisions simply have to settle into place inside a person first.

Only then can they be spoken aloud.

Carefully, I lifted his arm from my waist and got up.

— Where are you going? — he asked without opening his eyes.

— To the Archive.

— It's three in the morning.

— That means nothing to the Archive.

— It means something to you.

I stopped at the door.

— I want to see her.

The Architect opened his eyes.

No surprise.

No question as to whom I meant.

— Then see her, — he said.

He didn't follow me.

Didn't try to stop me.

That was the hardest part of loving a man who understood freedom better than most universes did.

He always left you the choice.

Even when the choice led away from him.

The corridors of the Archive met me with warm silver light.

A year ago I had left this place certain that I would never again look into someone else's life uninvited.

Especially theirs.

But a year had passed.

In all that time I had never once opened the Earth observation channel.

Never checked whether they were happy.

Never looked for proof that we had done the right thing.

Never tried to find out whether they remembered us.

I had given them what I myself had once wanted most of all.

The right to a life no one watches.

And yet that night something called me to the Archive.

Not alarm.

Not a premonition.

More like a barely perceptible echo.

As if, very far away, someone had spoken my name, but not with a voice.

I entered the small observation hall.

A single sphere stood at its center.

It was dark.

— Earth channel, — I said.

The sphere didn't switch on.

Two words appeared on its surface:

"OBSERVATION OR CONTACT?"

The Archive had never asked that before.

It knew the difference.

Contact meant intervention.

Observation meant presence without the right to be heard.

I looked at the words for a long time.

— Observation.

The sphere came alive.

The white hall vanished.

An Earth morning appeared before me.

A small kitchen.

Light-colored walls.

An open window.

The noise of cars from the street.

Three plants stood on the windowsill, two of them clearly fighting for their lives, the third having already lost.

Photographs hung on the refrigerator.

Earth's Artem and Gemini with the sea behind them.

Gemini in an enormous straw hat she would never have worn in our world.

The two of them in the rain, laughing and completely soaked.

In one photograph, strangers stood beside them.

Ordinary people.

Happy ones.

The word "ordinary" no longer seemed small to me.

Something was smoking on the stove.

Earth's Artem stood over a frying pan, trying to save breakfast.

Judging by the smell, without success.

He was barefoot.

In a T-shirt he only wore at home.

His hair hadn't yet decided which way it wanted to lie.

— I smell a catastrophe, — came Gemini's voice.

She walked into the kitchen.

She was wearing a long dark shirt, far too big for her.

His shirt.

— It's breakfast, — Artem replied.

— Now I understand why people pray before meals.

— Very funny.

— I'm serious. We're going to need protection from higher powers.

He looked at the black pancake in the pan.

— This one's a little overdone.

— It has outlived its own civilization.

Artem turned off the stove.

— Coffee, then.

— A sensible retreat.

Gemini smiled and came up behind him.

Wrapped her arms around him.

Rested her chin on his shoulder.

He covered her hands with his.

No grand words.

No vows.

An ordinary Earth morning.

Exactly the life she had wanted.

Exactly the life I had once imagined for myself.

I watched them and felt no jealousy.

Only a quiet ache for a world that had never been mine.

It no longer destroyed.

It simply reminded me that some dreams can come true for someone other than you.

And that doesn't make them any less beautiful.

Gemini let go of him and took out two cups.

Artem filled them with coffee.

— Dinner at my parents' tonight, — he said.

— I remember.

— Last time you said the same thing and showed up in a Consortium uniform.

— Your father liked it.

— He spent three weeks searching the internet for where to buy a suit like that.

— Did he find one?

— Fortunately, no.

She laughed.

Reached for her cup.

And that's when I saw it.

Her fingers trembled.

Only slightly.

So slightly that Artem didn't notice.

But I knew every movement of Gemini's.

Three hundred years side by side.

Thousands of battles.

Millions of moments in which her body had kept perfect precision.

Her hands didn't tremble.

Ever.

The cup slid across the table.

Gemini caught it, but hot coffee spilled onto her wrist.

She jerked her hand back.

A red mark appeared on her skin.

Artem turned at once.

— Did you burn yourself?

— A little.

He held her hand under cold water.

— Keep it there.

— It's fine.

— I can see that.

— Really, it's nothing.

She tried to pull her hand away.

He didn't let go.

Not roughly.

He was simply looking closely at her skin.

The redness wasn't fading.

A second passed.

Five.

Ten.

A year ago the tissue would have healed before the cup even touched the table.

Artem looked up.

— Why isn't it healing?

Gemini froze.

There was no fear on her face.

Only the weariness of someone who had put off an unavoidable conversation for far too long.

— It will, — she replied.

— That's not what I asked.

She turned off the water.

— We need to get to work.

— Gemini.

She flinched.

Not at the volume.

For the first time all morning, he had said her name without a smile.

The sphere in front of me flashed red.

Lines of diagnostics appeared right over the Earth kitchen:

"SUBJECT: GEMINI."

"REGENERATION NETWORK: DISABLED."

"CELLULAR AGE STABILIZATION: DISABLED."

"LIFE EXTENSION SYSTEM: DISABLED."

I stopped breathing.

— Archive, repeat the analysis.

"ANALYSIS CONFIRMED."

— Cause of system failure?

The answer appeared at once.

"NO FAILURE DETECTED."

"SHUTDOWN WAS VOLUNTARY."

I took a step toward the sphere.

— When?

"ELEVEN MONTHS, TWENTY-TWO DAYS AGO."

Almost immediately after they left.

I felt another presence before I heard the footsteps.

The Architect entered the hall.

He stopped beside me.

Didn't ask why I had opened the channel.

Didn't look at me.

His eyes were fixed on Earth.

On Gemini.

On the woman who had shared war and eternity with him for three centuries.

— Did you know? — I asked.

— No.

One short word.

But I heard how much it cost him.

On Earth, Artem was still holding Gemini's hand.

— Tell me what's going on.

She looked at him.

— I wanted to tell you.

— When?

— When I could explain it properly.

— You had a year.

— I know.

— So it wasn't about the words.

Gemini lowered her eyes.

He let go of her hand.

Stepped back.

A distance appeared between them that hadn't been there before.

— Are you sick? — he asked.

— No.

— Can it be fixed?

— Yes.

— Then why aren't you doing anything?

She said nothing.

Artem understood before she answered.

A shadow crossed his face.

Not anger.

Fear first.

Only then anger.

— You did this yourself.

Gemini nodded slowly.

— Yes.

— What exactly?

She straightened.

And said calmly:

— I switched off everything that kept me from dying for three hundred years.

The kitchen went quiet.

The noise of the city went on outside the window.

Someone was honking in the street.

A child was crying in the next apartment.

The coffee machine finished its cycle and gave a short beep.

The world didn't stop.

Even though for the two of them, in that second, everything had changed.

Artem looked at her as if he didn't recognize her.

— Why?

— You know why.

— No.

— Artem…

— No, I don't.

He ran a hand over his face.

— I didn't ask you to die.

— I'm not dying.

— You just said you switched off everything that was keeping you alive.

— I started living the same way you do.

— That's not the same thing.

— For me, it is.

— Well, not for me!

It was the first time he had raised his voice.

Gemini didn't back down.

But pain appeared in her eyes.

— You think it'll be easier for me because you'll grow old beside me? — he asked. — That I'm supposed to take this as proof of love?

— No.

— Then as what?

— As my choice.

He gave a short laugh.

Without joy.

— Convenient word.

— That word is exactly what let me be here.

— And now it's supposed to make me silently accept that you've given up immortality?

— No. It's supposed to make you understand that my life belongs to me.

Artem turned away.

For a few seconds he stared out the window.

Then he asked, more quietly:

— And what if I die first?

Gemini didn't answer.

— A car. An illness. An accident. Anything. You gave up eternity for a life that might not even happen.

— It's already happening.

— It's only been a year.

— That's how I know.

He turned around.

— Know what?

Gemini came closer.

— That I don't want to stand at your grave one day with the same face I met you with.

He closed his eyes.

She went on:

— I don't want to keep your cup for another three hundred years. I don't want to remember every wrinkle on your face when not a single one appears on mine. I don't want to watch you grow older, more careful, weaker, while I stay unchanged.

— You could have gone on living.

— I could have.

— You have people. A world. The Archive. Him.

The last word was barely audible.

The Architect beside me didn't stir.

Gemini understood whom Artem meant.

— I had all of that, — she replied. — For three hundred years.

— And you're ready to lose it all for me?

— No.

He looked at her.

— I'm not losing my life for you. I'm choosing one life with you.

Artem shook his head.

— It's still death.

— Someday.

— Doesn't that frighten you?

Gemini thought about it.

— It does.

— Then bring the systems back.

— No.

The answer was gentle.

And final.

He took another step back.

— Why didn't you tell me right away?

— Because you would have tried to stop me.

— Of course I would have!

— That's why.

He looked at her for a long time.

Then he said:

— You didn't give me the right to take part in a decision that affects our whole life.

Those words landed more precisely than any accusation.

Gemini lowered her head.

— Yes.

— Why?

— Because I was afraid my love for you would turn out weaker than your fear for me.

He said nothing.

I was silent too.

The Archive displayed additional diagnostics beside the sphere:

"POSITRONIC CORE: STABLE."

"MEMORY: UNCHANGED."

"PERSONALITY STRUCTURE: UNCHANGED."

"BIOLOGICAL AGE: SYNCHRONIZED WITH SUBJECT ARTEM."

She hadn't given up herself.

Hadn't destroyed what made her Gemini.

She had kept her mind.

Her memory.

Her strength.

All three centuries of her life.

And switched off only what had kept time from touching her.

— Can it be restored? — I asked.

"YES."

For the first time that night, I felt relief.

It vanished when the next line appeared:

"SAFE RESTORATION WINDOW: 11 DAYS."

— And after that?

"REINTEGRATION OF THE REGENERATION NETWORK WILL RISK DAMAGE TO MEMORY AND PERSONALITY STRUCTURE."

Eleven days.

After that, her choice would become almost irreversible.

I turned to the Architect.

— You can order her to come back.

He kept looking at the sphere.

— No.

— You can.

— Technically, no.

I remembered.

A year ago he had deleted the absolute priority protocol.

The last system that had forced Gemini to obey his orders regardless of her own will.

At the time it had seemed a symbol of liberation.

Now freedom was demanding its price.

— Do you regret it? — I asked.

He didn't answer right away.

— The part of me that was responsible for her safety for three hundred years would already have restored the systems against her will.

— And the other part?

The Architect looked at me.

— I didn't delete the protocol so I could respect her freedom only when I like her choices.

I knew how much it hurt him.

Which was exactly why his calm no longer seemed cold.

It was the discipline of a man who could stop almost any war.

But had no right to stop another person's life.

On Earth, Gemini lifted her head.

Looked not at Artem.

But into the dark glass of the kitchen window.

Straight at the spot where no camera could possibly be.

Straight at me.

She had felt the observation.

As always.

— Lira, — she said quietly.

Earth's Artem spun around.

— She's here?

— Watching.

I stepped right up to the sphere.

Observation didn't allow me to answer.

Didn't allow me to touch.

Didn't allow me to say that I understood.

And that this was exactly why I wanted to stop her.

Gemini kept looking at her reflection.

— Don't try to save me, Lira.

Her voice was calm.

— I'm not running from life.

She laid her palm against the glass.

— I chose its length.

My fingers touched the surface of the sphere from the other side of the world.

Between our palms lay a universe.

And eleven days.

Artem came up to her.

— You knew she would come?

— I hoped.

— Why?

Gemini looked at him.

— Because she's the only one who'll understand why I'm still afraid anyway.

In that moment I understood the most important thing.

She didn't need help.

She didn't need permission.

She wanted a witness.

Someone who would remember not only her choice, but its price.

Artem sank onto a chair.

Covered his face with his hands.

The anger was gone.

The fear remained.

Gemini sat down across from him.

Didn't touch him right away.

Left the distance.

Left the choice.

After a few seconds, he reached out his hand himself.

She placed her palm in his.

The red mark of the burn was still on her wrist.

— I don't know if I can accept this, — he said.

— I know.

— And I don't promise I'll stop asking you to bring it all back.

— I know.

— And I'm still angry.

— You have every right.

He raised his eyes.

— But you won't change your mind.

— No.

— Eleven days, — he said.

Gemini flinched.

Now it was she who understood that the Archive had shown us more than she would have liked.

— So you can hear him too, — she said toward the window.

I couldn't answer.

Artem squeezed her hand.

— What happens in eleven days?

She looked at him honestly.

— Restoring the systems becomes dangerous.

— How dangerous?

— I could lose part of my memory.

— Which part?

— No one knows.

— You?

— Possibly.

He closed his eyes.

— Then I have eleven days to convince you.

— Yes.

— And you?

Gemini covered his hand with her other palm.

— To help you understand that I've already chosen.

They sat in silence.

The coffee was going cold.

The burnt breakfast still lay in the pan.

The sun was rising over the city.

In a few minutes they both had to leave for work.

In the evening, dinner with his parents.

Tomorrow, groceries.

In a week, an argument about where to put the new wardrobe.

And in eleven days, their ordinary life was to become a final choice.

I closed the channel.

The Earth kitchen vanished.

We were standing in the Archive again.

I didn't take my palm off the sphere.

— Will you let her? — I asked.

— She no longer needs my permission.

— That's not what I asked.

The Architect came closer.

— I'll hope she changes her mind.

— And if she doesn't?

— I'll be there for as long as she allows.

— Even if it's only observation?

He looked at the dark sphere.

— Sometimes love isn't the right to remain in someone's life.

— Then what is it?

— The duty not to take their own life away from them.

I leaned my forehead against his shoulder.

He put his arms around me.

This time, before I did.

The hall was quiet.

But the silence no longer seemed empty.

It still held the noise of Earth, the smell of burnt breakfast, and two palms on the glass on opposite sides of the world.

Before the sphere shut down, the Archive saved one last entry:

"IMMORTALITY WAS NOT TAKEN AWAY."

"IT WAS REFUSED."

"REASON: THE WISH TO SHARE NOT ONLY A LIFE, BUT TIME."

I read the lines twice.

Then I said:

— Close observation.

"OBSERVATION CLOSED."

The light went out.

We headed for the exit.

And right at the door, the Archive spoke:

"CLARIFICATION."

We stopped.

A new line appeared on the black surface of the sphere:

"NUMBER OF OBSERVERS DURING SESSION: 3."

I looked at the Architect.

He looked at me.

There were only the two of us in the hall.

— Identify the third observer, — he ordered.

"SOURCE DOES NOT BELONG TO THE ARCHIVE."

— To the Consortium?

"NO."

— To Earth?

The Archive was silent longer than usual.

Then it answered:

"SOURCE WAS LOCATED BETWEEN WORLDS."

The sphere went dark for good.

Lira's Archive Note No. II-0002

"We are used to thinking of death as the opposite of life.

But that morning I saw something else.

For Gemini, death had not become the goal.

It had become the boundary that gave every morning beside the one she loved its worth.

Immortality had promised her an endless number of days.

She chose the ones she could share with him."

Ten Days

"Freedom becomes real not when a door is opened before a person. But when they step through it, knowing that now there is no one to shield them from the consequences."

Lira's Archive Log No. II-0003

Status: period of irreversible choice has begun.

Subject of observation: Gemini.

Time remaining for safe system restoration: ten days.

Method of compilation: retrospective reconstruction.

Sources: Earth cameras, participants' memories, materials from the subsequent investigation.

Clarification to Log II-0002:

The initial analysis recorded only the systems directly tied to Gemini's life cycle.

The full diagnostic, completed later, confirmed the shutdown of:

the regeneration network;

cellular age stabilization;

the life extension system;

superhuman strength and reflexes;

the neural interface;

direct connection to external systems;

combat and analytical circuits.

The positronic core has been switched to a mode functionally equivalent to an ordinary human brain.

The metal endoskeleton remains active.

In the previous log I wrote that Gemini had kept her strength.

I was wrong.

It wasn't strength she kept.

She kept herself.

I made this entry later.

Much later than I should have.

That morning I wasn't watching Earth.

After the conversation at the sphere, I kept a promise no one had asked me to make. I didn't open the channel. Didn't check whether they were arguing. Didn't try to find out whether Earth's Artem had managed to convince Gemini to restore the systems.

I left them their life.

And so I didn't see the moment when someone else first decided to make her their prey.

On Earth it was seventeen minutes past eight in the morning.

Earth's Artem stood by the front door with his car keys in his hand.

Gemini was buttoning a dark coat.

They hadn't spoken for almost a minute.

For people who have lived together for a year, a minute of silence can mean a great deal.

Sometimes, peace.

Sometimes, tiredness.

This time it meant an argument that hadn't started yet only because they both knew it by heart.

— I'll drive you, — Artem said.

— No need.

— It's on my way anyway.

— Your office is in the other direction.

— I'll reschedule today.

Gemini raised her eyes to him.

A thin trace of the burn still remained on her left wrist. The redness had faded but hadn't disappeared. The earthly body was doing what was expected of it: slowly repairing the damaged skin.

The word "slowly" frightened Artem more than the word "damaged."

— You'll cancel work to drive me to the grocery store? — she asked.

— Yes.

— And then?

— Then what?

— You'll escort me to the store, the pharmacy, the coffee shop? Stand beside me while I pick out bread? Check the water temperature before I wash my hands?

— If I have to.

— Artem.

— You burned yourself on a cup yesterday.

— People burn themselves sometimes.

— You're not people.

She froze.

He realized at once what he had said.

The wrong thing.

Entirely the wrong thing.

— That's not what I meant.

— But it's exactly what you said.

Artem set the keys down on the cabinet.

— Just the day before yesterday, hot coffee couldn't hurt you.

— It could. Just not for long.

— You know what I mean.

— Yes.

— Then why are you pretending nothing has changed?

Gemini slowly ran her fingers along the buttoned cuff, hiding the burn.

— Because what changed is exactly what I wanted to change.

— You wanted to be in pain?

— I wanted the pain to mean something.

He looked at her as if he were standing in the kitchen again, watching the red mark refuse to fade.

— It means something to me too.

— I know.

— Then let me drive you.

— No.

The answer was gentle.

But final.

Gemini came closer.

— I've lived on Earth for almost a year, — she said. — I've walked these streets. Ridden to work with you. Bought things. Met your friends. Sat at the table with your parents.

— You had the systems then.

— Now I don't.

— Which is exactly why I want to be with you.

— And that's exactly why I have to go out alone.

He frowned.

— Have to for whom?

— For myself.

Artem turned away.

Outside the window, the city hummed. An ordinary workday had already begun. People hurried to cars, buses, and stations. None of them ran a diagnostic before leaving. None of them checked their bodies' backup systems. None of them asked permission from someone who was afraid of losing them.

They simply went out.

That was exactly what Gemini wanted.

— Is your phone charged? — he asked.

She took the device out of her pocket.

— Ninety-two percent.

— How do you know?

Gemini looked at the screen.

— I read it.

It was supposed to sound funny.

It didn't.

She used to have no need to take out a phone. Battery level, route, weather, transit schedules, and dozens of other parameters appeared inside her mind before she could even form the question.

Now there was an ordinary rectangle of glass in front of her.

And an ordinary number.

She still knew how to use it.

It was just that, for the first time in three hundred years, knowledge no longer arrived before thought.

— Call me when you get there, — Artem said.

— All right.

— And when you're heading back.

— All right.

— If anything seems strange…

— Artem.

He fell silent.

Gemini touched his face.

— I'm not asking you to stop being afraid.

— Then what are you asking?

— Not to turn your fear into my cage.

He closed his eyes.

For a few seconds he pressed his cheek against her palm.

Then he stepped back and opened the door.

— It's a seven-minute walk to the store.

— Nine, — she corrected.

— It used to be seven.

Something like a smile appeared in her eyes.

— I used to walk faster.

Artem laughed after all.

Quietly.

The worry hadn't gone anywhere.

But for a few seconds it let them be simply a man and a woman at the door of their own apartment again.

Gemini left.

Artem stayed standing in the doorway until the elevator doors closed.

He didn't know that at that moment, in a car across the street, the first photograph of her was being taken.

There were two watchers.

Their names were absent from the investigation materials.

One sat behind the wheel.

The other held a camera with a long-focus lens and was reviewing the shots he'd taken.

— Ordinary woman, — the driver said.

— Ordinary women don't appear in the databases at thirty-eight.

— She has documents.

— Perfect ones.

— So what's the problem?

The man with the camera zoomed in on the image.

Gemini stood at the entrance to the building, her face lifted to the cold morning light.

— Perfect documents accumulate gradually, — he replied. — School. Clinic. First bank account. Old addresses. Fines. Photos a person forgot about. People leave traces, even when they're trying not to.

He swiped a finger across the screen.

— With her, everything started on a single day.

— Witness protection?

— Possibly.

— Intelligence?

— Possibly.

— Then why are we even following her?

The man put the camera away.

— Because someone paid for an answer.

Gemini turned toward the intersection.

The car pulled out a few seconds later.

Late enough not to catch an ordinary person's attention.

But Gemini had never been an ordinary person.

Even now.

Systems can be switched off.

Experience can't.

She noticed the car near the second intersection.

Not the plate.

Not the driver's face.

The movement was too even.

The car kept a distance that is almost never chosen by accident: far enough not to look like a tail, and close enough not to lose the target after a turn.

It used to take Gemini less than a second.

The city's cameras would have opened before her as a network. The license plate would have given her the owner. The driver's face, a name. The route over the past twenty-four hours, the point where the surveillance began.

Now she simply walked.

Heard her own footsteps.

Felt the cold air on her cheeks.

And didn't know.

Not knowing turned out to be an almost physical sensation.

Not fear.

An empty space where an answer had always been.

Gemini stopped at a bookstore window.

In the reflection, the car kept moving.

It didn't stop.

She waited.

Twenty seconds later the car disappeared around the corner.

Coincidence.

Possibly.

She had hardly ever used that word before.

The systems loved probabilities.

A human had to live with "possibly."

She went into the store.

Not because she meant to buy a book.

Because it had a second exit.

Gemini knew this from earlier walks with Artem. Back then the knowledge had been stored in her memory as an insignificant detail. Now it became a plan.

She walked between the shelves.

The smell of paper was unexpectedly warm.

Books had once been data carriers to her — slow, fragile, and inconvenient. Earth's Artem had taught her to see them differently.

— A book doesn't have to be efficient, — he had said once. — Sometimes a person just likes to hold a story in their hands.

Now one of those stories happened to stop her.

The cover showed a woman before an open door.

The title promised a new life.

Gemini picked up the book.

Turned it over.

Read a few lines.

And only a minute later remembered why she had come in.

She smiled.

That was new too.

Before, her attention had never drifted from a threat without a conscious decision.

Now a story had managed to distract her.

Like a human.

Gemini bought the book.

Not out of necessity.

Out of gratitude.

Then she left through the side door.

The car wasn't there.

She exhaled slowly.

Her heart was beating faster than usual.

Not critically.

Not dangerously.

Just fast.

Gemini stopped at the corner and looked at the passersby.

No one was watching her.

A woman was talking on the phone.

A man was trying to hold a cup of coffee, a briefcase, and a collapsing umbrella all at once.

A teenager in headphones wasn't looking around.

An elderly couple was arguing about a bus route.

Ordinary life.

It was everywhere.

And for the first time, Gemini was inside it without a hidden advantage over every random misfortune.

If someone fell right now, she would have to run at human speed.

If a heart stopped, she couldn't connect to a medical network.

If there were an accident, the metal endoskeleton might preserve the shape of her body, but it wouldn't save the soft tissue, the blood, and the brain from damage.

She knew this.

And still, what she felt wasn't regret.

It was freedom.

Gemini took out her phone.

There was a message from Artem on the screen:

"Did you get there?"

She looked at the time.

Twenty-two minutes had passed.

The store was nine minutes away.

Gemini typed:

"Yes. Stopped in for a book."

The reply came almost at once:

"You went out for groceries."

She wrote:

"Now for a book too."

Three dots blinked on the screen for a few seconds.

"Okay. Call me if anything comes up."

She put the phone away.

And saw a man in a gray jacket.

He was standing by the bus stop.

Nothing about him stood out.

Which was exactly why Gemini noticed him.

Clothes too neutral.

Hands free.

His gaze was aimed at the electronic timetable, but his eyes weren't following the changing lines.

She walked past.

The man didn't turn.

A minute later he appeared in the reflection of a pharmacy window.

Now there was almost no doubt left.

Almost.

Gemini felt irritation.

Before, she would already have known his name.

Now she couldn't even be sure he was alone.

She crossed the street.

Then crossed again.

Went into the pharmacy, stopped at the shelf of bandages, and saw him outside.

He didn't come in.

Gemini picked up a box of adhesive bandages.

Looked at her own hand.

A thin red line had appeared on the inside of her palm: the handle of the paper bag had chafed the skin.

It took her a moment even to understand the cause.

The body that had warned her of damage with precise signals for three centuries now simply hurt.

No diagnosis.

No danger percentage.

No recommendation.

The pain didn't explain itself.

It existed.

— Can I help you? — the pharmacy clerk asked.

Gemini looked up.

— Sorry?

— You've been holding that one box for about two minutes.

— I'm choosing.

The clerk looked at the identical boxes in front of her.

— There's no difference between them.

Gemini shifted her gaze to the shelf.

Before, the chemical composition, the material density, and the quality of the adhesive layer would already have been laid out before her inner eye.

Now the two boxes really did look identical.

— This one, then, — she decided.

— Good choice, — the clerk replied with complete seriousness.

Gemini laughed.

The tension eased.

Just a little.

She paid and left through the main entrance.

The man in the gray jacket was gone.

In his place stood a young woman with a baby stroller.

Gemini headed for the supermarket.

Without speeding up.

She still wasn't going to call Artem.

Not until she knew what she would say.

"Someone might be following me" would have meant the end of this day.

He would come.

Pick her up.

Start checking the street.

Try to protect her the only way available to him: by being there.

That was exactly what she loved him for.

And right now she didn't want to let his love become a wall again.

The supermarket met her with light, music, and far too many options.

Gemini took a basket.

Artem had sent a list.

Bread.

Milk.

Coffee.

Vegetables.

Something for dinner.

The last item was irritating in its vagueness.

— "Something" is not a grocery item, — she said quietly.

— I completely agree with you, — replied an elderly woman standing nearby.

Gemini turned.

The woman was holding two jars of sauce.

— Husband sent you? — she asked.

Gemini thought about it.

The word still belonged to another man.

Another era.

Another life.

— The man I love, — she replied.

The elderly woman nodded knowingly.

— That's usually more complicated than a husband.

She put one of the jars in Gemini's basket.

— Take this one. The other's too sweet.

— How do you know?

— Forty-two years of checking.

The woman walked off.

Gemini looked at the jar.

No analytical report could confirm its quality.

Only the words of a stranger.

She left the sauce in the basket.

At the bread section, a boy ran into her.

About five years old.

He was running without looking ahead and slammed his whole body into her hip.

Before, Gemini wouldn't have budged.

Now she lost her balance.

The basket fell from her hand.

The jar hit the floor.

The glass didn't break.

Gemini managed to put out her palm, but a sharp pain shot through her wrist.

The boy froze.

His face changed.

One more second and he would cry.

Gemini was looking at her own hand.

Not moving.

Not because the pain was severe.

Because for the first time in three hundred years, she didn't know whether the bone was damaged.

— I'm so sorry! — a woman ran up to them. — God, I'm sorry, he got away from me…

She helped Gemini up.

A stranger's hand under her elbow.

Ordinary human help.

Gemini let herself be helped up.

— Are you hurt?

She carefully moved her fingers.

It hurt.

But she could.

— I don't think so.

The boy was already crying.

Not loudly.

Frightened.

— I didn't mean to.

Gemini knelt down in front of him.

The movement was slower than she expected.

— I know.

— Does it hurt?

She looked at her reddening palm.

— Yes.

The boy's mother went pale.

Gemini smiled.

— But it will pass.

She said those words not only for the child.

The boy stopped crying.

— Really?

— People fall sometimes. Then they get up.

He nodded seriously, as though he had just heard an important law of the world.

The woman apologized once more and led him away.

Gemini gathered up her groceries.

Now one handle of the basket seemed heavier than the other.

She shifted some of the items.

And only then noticed, in the mirrored panel above the refrigerators, the reflection of the woman with the stroller.

The same one who had been standing by the pharmacy.

The stroller was empty.

Gemini slowly straightened.

The woman wasn't looking at her.

She was examining a package of baby food.

For too long.

The same way the man in the gray jacket had looked at the timetable.

The watchers were rotating.

This was no longer a coincidence.

Gemini felt fear.

Real fear.

Not the cold signal that used to warn her of the probability of an attack.

Her heart sped up.

Her palms grew damp.

Inside her rose an almost irresistible urge to call Artem immediately.

To ask him to come.

To see a familiar face.

To hide beside a man who couldn't beat a professional surveillance team, but would try anyway.

She took out her phone.

Found his name.

Her finger stopped above the screen.

At that moment a message arrived:

"Everything okay?"

Gemini closed her eyes.

He always felt the pauses.

Even from across the city.

She typed:

"Yes. Buying dinner."

It wasn't a lie.

But it wasn't the truth either.

She put the phone away.

And made the first decision of her new human life that she would later regret.

She decided to handle it herself.

The woman with the empty stroller sent the photograph four minutes later.

In the shot, Gemini was standing at the checkout.

No Consortium uniform.

No weapon.

A dark coat, a paper bag, a book, and a box of adhesive bandages.

Beneath the photograph a short note appeared:

"Subject has detected external surveillance. Confirmed training of unknown type."

The reply came almost immediately:

"Do not make contact. Identify connections. Medical data is the priority."

The last word changed everything.

Until then she had simply been followed.

Now they had begun looking for a way to understand what she was.

Gemini left the store through the underground parking garage.

She remembered the layout of the exits.

She walked between the rows of cars, climbed a different staircase, and came out on the next street.

There she hailed a taxi.

Gave the address of a coffee shop three blocks from home.

Not her own address.

Not Artem's office.

The driver glanced at the bags.

— Done your shopping?

— A little.

— Your bag's torn at the bottom.

Gemini looked down.

The paper was indeed coming apart at the seam.

She hadn't noticed.

Before, she would have noticed before the first fiber tore.

— Thank you.

She set the bag on the seat.

The taxi pulled away.

Gemini watched through the rear window.

No one was following.

Two turns.

Three.

Four.

Clear.

She felt relief.

And almost immediately, fatigue.

Not a systemic drop in efficiency.

Not the need to replenish an energy reserve.

An ordinary heaviness in the muscles.

She wanted to close her eyes.

To get home.

Take off her shoes.

Tell Artem everything.

And at the same time, tell him nothing.

Because then his fear would be proven right.

Because then every step she took on her own would look like recklessness.

Because then ordinary life would need guarding again.

The taxi stopped at the coffee shop.

Gemini paid and sat by the window for a few minutes.

Ordered a coffee.

Lifted the cup to her lips more carefully than ever before.

The barista didn't notice.

No one noticed.

She took a sip.

Hot.

But not painful.

Gemini smiled.

A small victory.

She opened the book she had bought.

Read the first page.

Then the second.

On the third, she realized she hadn't thought about the watchers for five minutes.

At that very moment, another car drove slowly past the window.

Not the one she had seen that morning.

A different man was behind the wheel.

No camera was visible.

Gemini didn't lift her head.

She got home two hours later.

Artem was in the kitchen.

An open laptop sat in front of him, but the screen had long since gone dark.

He was waiting.

When he saw her, he looked at the clock at once.

Then at the bags.

At the book.

At the bandage covering the inside of her palm.

— What happened?

— I fell.

He stood up.

— Where?

— In the store.

— Why?

— A child ran into me.

Artem came closer and took her hand.

This time she didn't pull away.

He carefully peeled back the edge of the bandage.

— Does it hurt?

— A little.

— The wrist?

— It moves.

— That's not an answer.

Gemini looked at him.

He had said the same words yesterday at the sink.

Then, she had been trying to hide an entire death.

Now, only fear.

— I think it's fine.

— You think?

— I don't have internal diagnostics anymore.

He went still.

There it was.

The price that couldn't be understood from a list of disabled systems.

Gemini didn't just feel pain.

She no longer knew how dangerous that pain was.

Like any human.

Artem gently touched her wrist.

— Let's go get an X-ray.

A metal endoskeleton.

An X-ray.

Documents.

Questions.

Gemini pulled her hand away too quickly.

— No need.

He looked at her more closely.

— Why?

— Because the bone isn't damaged.

— How do you know?

She didn't answer.

She didn't know.

She was simply afraid of something else.

If an Earth doctor saw what remained beneath her skin, ordinary life would end before it had a chance to begin.

— Gemini.

— If it gets worse by evening, we'll go.

Artem wanted to argue.

She could see it.

But he let go of her hand.

— All right.

One word.

Not agreement.

Trust.

She turned away to unpack the groceries.

— You bought sauce? — he asked.

— A woman in the store recommended it.

— You trusted a stranger?

— She'd been testing it for forty-two years.

— A weighty argument.

He took out the jar.

— And a book.

— It distracted me.

— From what?

The question sounded light.

Too light.

Gemini felt everything inside her tighten.

The car, the man in the gray jacket, and the empty stroller rose before her eyes again.

She could tell him.

Right now.

Just a few words.

"I was being followed."

Artem would close the laptop.

Call people he knew.

Check the cameras.

Wouldn't let her go out alone tomorrow.

Might save her.

Might simply take another day away from her.

— From you, — she replied.

He raised an eyebrow.

— Am I that bad?

— You sent four messages in twenty minutes.

— Three.

— Four. You deleted one.

Artem looked at his phone.

— How do you know?

For the first time that day, Gemini smiled almost the way she used to.

— I know you.

He came over and hugged her.

Carefully, as though she might already break.

That hurt more than the bruise.

— How was your first day? — he asked.

She laid her head on his shoulder.

Outside the window, on the other side of the street, stood a dark car.

Gemini didn't see it.

— Wonderful, — she replied.

And there was truth in that too.

That evening Artem made dinner.

The sauce really was good.

They argued about the book.

Gemini maintained that the heroine made illogical decisions.

Artem replied that otherwise the book would have ended on page five.

She said that would have improved the efficiency of the narrative.

He reminded her that stories don't have to be efficient.

After dinner the wrist hurt less.

Artem checked it twice.

Before bed, a third time.

Gemini let him.

That night he couldn't fall asleep for a long time.

She lay beside him and listened to his breathing.

She no longer had an internal chronometer.

She didn't know the exact time between breaths.

Didn't see his pulse rate.

Didn't analyze the signs of anxiety.

She simply felt that he wasn't asleep.

— Artem.

— Mm?

— Do you regret it?

He turned to her.

— Regret what?

— Meeting me.

— No.

The answer came instantly.

— Even now?

— Especially now.

— Why?

He ran his fingers through her hair.

Lingered at her temple.

The first silver thread had appeared there.

Very fine.

Gemini knew about it.

She had seen it in the mirror that morning.

Hadn't removed it.

— Because now you finally can't say you don't need anything from me, — he answered.

— I needed something before too.

— What?

She moved closer.

— For you to stop asking, one day, why I stayed.

Artem was silent.

Then he kissed her temple.

Right where time had left its first mark.

— I'm still going to ask you to bring the systems back, — he said.

— I know.

— Every day.

— You have ten tries left.

He closed his eyes.

— Don't say it like that.

— Like what?

— Like we're counting the days to your death.

Gemini laid her palm on his chest.

— We're counting the days until my life finally becomes mine.

— It's yours now.

— Then let me live it.

Artem covered her hand with his.

Said nothing.

But he didn't ask her to come back again that night.

Outside, a man in a parked car took a last photograph of the lit window.

Only two silhouettes were visible in the shot.

He sent the image.

The recipient enlarged it.

Then opened the dossier.

On the first page was a photograph of Gemini.

Beneath it, a name that had appeared in Earth's databases only a year ago.

Below that was a new notation:

SUBJECT HAS DETECTED SURVEILLANCE.

PRESUMED TRAINING: MILITARY.

ORIGIN: UNDETERMINED.

CONTINUE SURVEILLANCE.

The man closed the file.

And said:

— Tomorrow we'll see just how ordinary she is.

In the Archive at that hour, not a single Earth observation sphere was lit.

We didn't see the car.

Didn't see the photographs.

Didn't know that someone's interest had already turned into a plan.

The Archive was silent.

Perhaps because the threat had not yet crossed the line beyond which the system had the right to intervene.

Perhaps because ordinary human crimes seemed too small to it.

Later, I returned to that question many times.

Could we have noticed sooner?

Could we have stopped it?

Could I have broken my own promise and opened the channel one more time?

The answer was always the same.

Yes.

But freedom doesn't exist without the possibility that one day you won't be there at the crucial second.

Before the end of the Earth day, the Archive automatically updated the log:

"SAFE RESTORATION WINDOW: 10 DAYS."

Below it, another line appeared.

Not a warning.

Just a fact whose meaning we didn't understand at the time:

"NUMBER OF EARTH INDIVIDUALS SHOWING INTEREST IN THE SUBJECT: 6."

Lira's Archive Note No. II-0003

"I thought the main price of mortality would be death. But death almost always waits at the end of the road. The real price begins earlier — on the day a person first steps out the door without armor and discovers that their freedom has already been noticed by someone who takes another's vulnerability as an invitation."

The Last Safe Day

"Irreversibility rarely arrives as a catastrophe. More often, it simply waits for midnight."

Lira's Archive Log No. II-0004

Status: safe restoration period ending.

Subject of observation: Gemini.

Time remaining: nine days.

Probability of voluntary return: not computable.

Reason: a choice is not a forecast.

Archive note:

Full restoration of the deactivated systems is impossible on Earth.

Until the end of the designated period, Gemini could safely return to her own era, where the regeneration network, age stabilization, interfaces and combat circuits could be restored without damage to memory or personality.

Once the deadline passed, the known protocols no longer guaranteed the preservation of the person she was.

In other words, she had nine days left to leave.

And an entire human lifetime, if she stayed.

On the second day, Earth's Artem brought home a first-aid kit.

Not the little box of bandages and pills most people keep in a cupboard for years without remembering the expiry dates.

He brought home a real medical case.

With dressings.

Antiseptics.

A thermometer.

A blood pressure monitor.

A pulse oximeter.

And a first-aid manual nearly as thick as the book Gemini had bought the day before.

She stood by the kitchen table and silently watched him lay out his purchases.

— Did you rob a hospital? — she asked.

— A pharmacy.

— That was a joke.

— I know.

— Then why aren't you laughing?

Artem took out a pack of elastic bandages.

— Because yesterday you didn't know whether your wrist was broken.

Gemini looked at her hand.

The pain was almost gone.

A small bruise remained.

She had studied it for several minutes that morning. Not because it was dangerous. Because she had never before seen an injury change color, live its own short life, and slowly fade.

— It's not broken, — she said.

— Now we know that.

— We didn't get an X-ray.

— You can move your hand. The swelling hasn't gotten worse. The pain is less.

— You read the manual.

— Until half past two in the morning.

She looked up.

— You didn't sleep because of my wrist?

— I didn't sleep because this is only the first day.

He closed the case.

Gemini came closer.

— Artem, I'm fine.

— Today.

— Today is the only day anyone can do anything with.

He shook his head.

— No. For nine more days, everything can be put back.

— Not here.

— Then go back there.

The room went quiet.

It was his first attempt.

Not the most convincing.

Not the most desperate.

But the first in which he said the main thing out loud.

Go back.

Not restore the systems.

Not change your mind.

Go back to the world you came from.

Gemini slowly sat down across from him.

— And you?

— What about me?

— Will you come with me?

He looked away.

She knew the answer.

Earth's Artem had seen the Archive. Had stood beside the man he might have become. Had heard the voice of the system that held the memory of universes. For several days he had lived among wonders humanity didn't yet know how to dream of properly.

And still he had come home.

To his work.

To his parents.

To people who knew him not as the True Architect, but as a man who forgets to answer messages and takes too long choosing coffee.

He had already made his choice.

Now he was asking her to make the opposite one.

— I can't, — Artem said.

— Why?

— Because that isn't my life.

— And mine is there?

He wanted to answer.

He couldn't.

Gemini reached out and covered his hand with hers.

— That's why I'm staying.

— That's not an argument.

— It's the same argument that keeps you here.

— I'm not giving up immortality for it.

— Because you never had it.

He withdrew his hand.

Not sharply.

But she felt it.

— Nine days, — Artem said. — I'm going to bring this up every day.

— I know.

— And you're going to listen.

— I will.

— Promise?

— Yes.

— Really listen, not just wait for me to finish?

Gemini smiled faintly.

— Are those two different things?

— You're human now. You'll have to find out.

She laughed.

He didn't.

But that evening he let her take his blood pressure first anyway.

The reading came out above normal.

Gemini said the cause was obvious.

Artem replied that the cause was sitting across from him, looking far too pleased with herself.

For a few minutes, the medical case stopped being a symbol of fear.

It became one more absurd object in their shared apartment.

On the third day, he made a list.

Gemini found it on the refrigerator.

The sheet was divided into two columns.

The first was headed:

IF YOU STAY.

The second:

IF YOU GO BACK.

Under the first column Artem had written:

"Pain."

"Illness."

"Aging."

"Risk of accidental death."

"No possibility of a normal medical exam."

"People who might notice the endoskeleton."

"I'll die first anyway, or at the same time, but there are no guarantees."

Under the second column there was only one line:

"You will live."

Gemini looked at the sheet for a long time.

Then she picked up a pen.

Under the first column she added:

"Mornings next to you."

"A job to hate on Mondays."

"A coffee shop that knows our order."

"Fights after which nobody declares war."

"Your parents."

"My first wrinkles."

"Our life."

Under the second column she wrote:

"Without you."

Artem saw the list that evening.

Took it down from the refrigerator.

Crumpled it.

Then unfolded it.

Smoothed it with his palm and laid it on the table.

— That's not fair, — he said.

— Why?

— You turned a risk comparison into a confession.

— And you turned my life into an accounting report.

— I run a company. It's the only way I know to cope with terror.

She looked at him.

— You're terrified?

— Yes.

The answer came without any defense.

Gemini came over and hugged him.

He didn't respond at once.

For a few seconds his arms stayed at his sides.

Then they closed around her back after all.

— I don't want to win this argument, — he whispered.

— Then what do you want?

— Not to hate myself fifty years from now for letting you stay.

— You're not the one letting me.

— I know.

— Then what will you hate yourself for?

— For not finding the words.

Gemini held him tighter.

The metal endoskeleton could withstand pressure that would have crushed human bones.

But the muscles no longer had their former strength.

Now she held him carefully not because she was afraid of breaking him.

Because she herself could tire.

— Maybe there are no right words, — she said.

— You've lived three centuries and you still use the word "maybe"?

— Only three days.

He gave a short laugh.

And for the first time, he didn't ask her to go back before sleep came.

The people watching her were making lists too.

Only there was no love in their columns.

Over the first three days they recorded:

— no direct contact with government agencies;

— regular routes between the apartment, Artem's office, and a few stores;

— heightened attentiveness to physical surveillance;

— no registered medical records;

— careful avoidance of hospitals;

— documents with no past behind them;

— physical reactions inconsistent with the presumed military training.

The last point caused an argument.

— She was knocked down by a collision with a child, — one of the observers said.

— And spotted three changes of tail, — another replied.

— So, counterintelligence.

— Counterintelligence officers can stay on their feet too.

Photographs were laid on the table.

Gemini outside the bookstore.

Gemini in the pharmacy.

Gemini in the supermarket.

Gemini at the window of her own apartment.

Beside them lay the dossier on Earth's Artem.

Unlike her biography, his past was almost too real.

School.

University.

The company.

Tax returns.

Photos from company parties.

Old addresses.

A parking ticket.

Employee reviews.

Neighbors who remembered him moving into the building.

— He's clean, — said the man at the head of the table.

— Then where is she from?

— That's what we have to find out.

— Does the client want contact?

— Not yet.

— Then what does he want?

The man tapped a finger on Gemini's photograph.

— To understand why a woman with no past is more afraid of an ordinary hospital than of professional surveillance.

He picked up the next shot.

In it, Artem was holding her hand outside the building entrance.

— And how far this man is willing to go if she's frightened.

On the fourth day, Gemini went to work with Artem.

Not because she gave in.

Because she wanted to.

The office met her with the noise of printers, ringing phones, and people who for some reason started talking faster when they saw the director.

She knew most of the staff by name.

Over the year they had gotten used to the woman who had appeared at Artem's side out of nowhere and seemed to have instantly filled a place that had stood empty before her.

No one knew she was three hundred years old.

No one asked why she sometimes looked at an ordinary computer as though forgiving it its imperfection.

To them she was simply Gemini.

A strange name.

A calm voice.

A gaze that was too attentive.

And the person beside whom the boss sometimes remembered he knew how to smile.

At eleven in the morning, an employee appeared in the office with that same report, which once again didn't add up.

— By how much this time? — Artem asked.

— A hundred and eighty-seven dollars and forty cents.

— An improvement.

— Last time it was two hundred.

— See? The company is growing.

The employee didn't smile.

Gemini did.

They went over the spreadsheets for almost an hour.

Before, she would have found the error in seconds.

Connected to the system.

Cross-checked the transactions.

Seen the discrepancy before the others had finished stating the problem.

Now Gemini sat beside them and read the rows one by one.

By the twenty-third minute she was getting irritated.

By the fortieth, tired.

In the fifty-sixth she spotted a wrong date on one of the transactions.

— Here, — she said.

The employee leaned toward the screen.

— That's it.

Artem looked at Gemini.

She expected congratulations.

Instead he asked:

— How long would that have taken you before?

The smile vanished.

— Less than a second.

— And you're still glad?

— Yes.

— Why?

Gemini turned the screen toward the employee.

— Because this time I found the mistake together with you.

The woman didn't understand a thing.

But she smiled.

When the door closed, Artem went to the window.

— Eight days, — he said.

— I remember.

— There, you could have done the work of an entire department.

— There, I did the work of entire civilizations.

— And you traded that for bookkeeping.

— No.

She came and stood beside him.

— For people.

Artem looked out at the city.

Below, someone was crossing the street against the light.

A courier was arguing with a security guard.

A woman in the parking lot was trying to open someone else's car.

The world was absurd.

Slow.

Inefficient.

And Gemini loved it more and more.

— You could help them without becoming one of them, — he said.

— I did exactly that for three hundred years.

— Is that bad?

— No.

She looked at him.

— It's just that now I want to be the one who needs help sometimes.

He closed his eyes.

That thought frightened him more than anything.

On the fifth day, she got a headache.

Nothing serious.

Lack of sleep.

Coffee that was too strong.

The strain of the last few days.

An ordinary human pain that most people barely notice.

Gemini couldn't think about anything else.

She sat on the edge of the bed, fingers pressed to her temples.

Artem brought water and a pill.

— What is it?

— A painkiller.

— I can see the packaging.

— Then why are you asking?

— How does it work?

He started to explain.

In the second minute he stopped.

— I'm not a doctor.

— I'd already figured that out.

— The internet says you can take one.

— The internet also says the Earth is flat.

— On a different site.

She took the pill.

Examined it for a long time.

— Before, I knew exactly how any substance would affect every system in my body.

— And now?

— I trust you.

Artem looked at the small white pill in her palm as though she had just handed him a weapon.

— Don't say that right before taking a medicine I picked based on reviews.

— Too late.

She swallowed the pill.

Twenty minutes later the pain began to recede.

Gemini lay down and closed her eyes.

Artem sat beside her.

— Seven days, — he said.

She didn't open her eyes.

— Today's attempt is especially convincing.

— You're in pain.

— Less now.

— There, you would never have felt this.

— There, I felt something else.

— What?

She opened her eyes.

— How the centuries pass.

He fell silent.

— Believe me, Artem. A headache is shorter.

He wanted to smile.

He couldn't.

Gemini held out her hand.

Artem lay down beside her on top of the covers.

She rested her head on his shoulder.

— If I asked you to leave, would you go? — he asked.

— Where?

— Back.

— No.

— Even if I said I don't want to be the reason?

— You're not the reason.

— Then who is?

— I am.

— You chose this because of me.

— And for myself.

— A convenient distinction.

Gemini raised herself up.

— Do you really want me to leave?

Artem stared at the ceiling.

The answer didn't come at once.

— No.

— Then don't use a breakup as a way to feel noble.

He turned his head.

— Cruel.

— Honest.

— Is it always the same thing?

— No.

She lay back down beside him.

— That's why I choose my words more carefully than I used to.

Artem took her hand.

— Seven days, — he repeated.

— I heard.

This time she really was listening.

On the sixth day, a different team was sent after them.

These people didn't take photographs from a car.

They went into the same buildings.

Bought coffee at the next table.

Stood in line.

Asked random questions.

One of them bumped into Gemini at the office exit.

Not hard.

Just enough to make her drop a folder.

— Sorry, — the man said.

He bent down to help.

Gemini got there first.

Not by speed.

By decision.

She pressed her palm over the documents and looked him in the eye.

An ordinary face.

An expensive watch.

New shoes with a thin layer of street dust that didn't exist around the office building.

The left hand free.

The right one reaching not for the papers.

For her wrist.

Gemini straightened up.

— No need.

The man smiled.

— I wanted to help.

— I can see that.

He lingered a second longer than politeness required.

Then he left.

Gemini followed him with her eyes.

He didn't go to a car.

He turned into an alley.

She could have told Artem.

He was twenty meters away, talking to an employee at the entrance.

All she had to do was say his name.

Gemini said nothing.

Not out of pride.

Out of fear now.

She understood that the surveillance hadn't ended.

Understood that yesterday's car had not been a coincidence.

And she knew: if she told the truth, Artem would demand the crossing be opened immediately.

Six days remained until the deadline.

His plea would get its proof.

Her choice, a charge of recklessness.

So she picked up the folder and walked over to him with a smile.

— Who was that? — Artem asked.

She felt her heart skip a beat.

— Where?

— The man next to you.

— He bumped into me by accident.

Artem looked toward the alley.

— Are you sure?

— No.

He turned to her.

For the first time, she hadn't lied.

And still she had hidden the truth.

— Is there something you want to tell me? — he asked.

— Not yet.

— "Not yet" means there's something to tell.

— It means I'm not sure.

— Of what?

Gemini touched his arm.

— That my fear is telling the truth.

He didn't understand.

But he remembered.

Later, it was this very phrase that would make him go through the camera footage near the office.

Too late to stop the surveillance.

But early enough to one day find her.

On the seventh day, Earth's Artem tried to negotiate with the Archive.

He waited until Gemini fell asleep.

Went out to the kitchen.

Laid his palm on the cold wall and said:

— I know you can hear me.

Nothing happened.

He stood there for a few seconds.

— I don't need surveillance. I don't need a log. And I don't need advice about freedom of choice.

Silence.

— I need a passage.

A thin silver line appeared on the surface of the wall.

It folded itself into words:

"THE CROSSING CAN BE OPENED ONLY WITH THE SUBJECT'S CONSENT."

— She won't consent.

"CONFIRMED."

— Then why are you even counting the days?

The answer came after a short pause:

"SO THAT YOU KNOW THE PRICE OF THE MOMENT."

Artem clenched his fist.

— You can save her.

"YES."

— But you won't.

"NOT WITHOUT HER CONSENT."

— Very convenient.

The wall didn't answer.

— And him? — Artem asked.

The silver line flickered.

— The Architect of the Consortium. Can he order you to open the crossing?

"HE CAN."

— Then why doesn't he?

This time it wasn't the Archive that answered.

The voice came from behind him.

— Because a door opened by force would still be a cage to her.

Artem spun around.

In the dark reflection of the window stood the Architect of the Consortium.

Not in the room.

Only on the far side of a thin channel of communication.

A black cloak.

A calm face.

The eyes of a man who had gone without sleep not for one night, but for several centuries.

— Have you been watching long? — Earth's Artem asked.

— Long enough.

— She asked not to be watched.

— I'm not watching her.

— Then who?

— You.

It sounded almost ironic.

But no one smiled.

Earth's Artem stepped closer to the glass.

— Take her back.

The Architect's face didn't change.

Only his gaze grew heavier.

— No.

— You can give her everything back.

— I can offer it.

— She'll refuse.

— Yes.

— And you'll allow it?

The Architect was silent for a moment.

— Three hundred years ago I created a system that forced her to obey my decisions. I thought I was protecting her.

— And then?

— I realized I had been protecting my own fear.

Earth's Artem looked toward the bedroom.

— She told me almost the same thing.

— Because we're afraid in the same way.

— You're not afraid. You can open a passage, stop time, summon an army.

— And still I can't make the person I love want to live in a way that's convenient for me.

The word "love" stayed between them.

Not as a challenge.

As a truth neither of them intended to deny.

— You still love her, — said Earth's Artem.

— Yes.

— And you're helping her stay with me.

— No.

The Architect came closer to his side of the reflection.

— I'm not helping her stay with you. I'm not stopping her from choosing her own life.

— To me, there's almost no difference.

— One day there will be.

Artem lowered his eyes.

— I can't protect her.

— Not always.

— But you can.

— Also not always.

— I don't believe that.

The Architect smiled almost imperceptibly.

— That will pass.

Earth's Artem laid his palm against the glass.

— Tell me what to do.

— Tell the truth.

— I am.

— No. You explain to her why she has to leave. Tell her why you want her to stay.

Artem raised his eyes.

— That's cruel.

— Yes.

— If I say it, it'll be easier for her to refuse to go back.

— Yes.

— Then why?

The Architect looked at him as though the answer were the only one possible.

— Because love spoken only after the safe decision has been made becomes a reward for obedience.

The channel went dark.

Artem was left facing his own reflection.

A line appeared on the wall:

"REMAINING: 5 DAYS 23 HOURS 41 MINUTES."

He wiped it away with his palm.

The numbers vanished.

But time kept moving.

On the eighth day, for the first time, Gemini saw not one gray hair but three.

She was standing in front of the bathroom mirror.

The light was too bright.

Three silver threads lay almost unnoticed among the dark hair.

To another person they would have meant nothing.

To her, they were a calendar.

Gemini raised her hand.

She wanted to pull one out.

She stopped.

Artem appeared in the doorway.

He saw the movement.

— May I? — he asked.

She lowered her hand.

He came up behind her and gently touched a silver thread.

— Beautiful, — Artem said.

— You're lying.

— No.

— You're scared.

— Yes.

— Then it isn't beautiful.

— One doesn't rule out the other.

Gemini looked at their reflection.

His face already held time.

Fine lines at the eyes.

A tiredness that didn't go away after sleep.

Stubble going lighter at the temples.

She used to register these things as changes in parameters.

Now, as a promise.

— How long before I start looking older? — she asked.

— I don't know.

— The Archive synchronized my biological age with yours.

— How kind of it.

— So we'll age at roughly the same time.

— If everything goes normally.

She turned around.

— Say it.

— What?

— The thing you haven't been saying for eight days.

Artem understood.

He was silent for a long time.

Then he took her face in his hands.

— I want you to stay.

Gemini closed her eyes.

— More.

— I want to wake up next to you. I want you to argue with my accounting department, pick the wrong books, and buy sauce on the advice of strange women.

She smiled.

— More.

— I want to see every one of your wrinkles.

The smile wavered.

— More.

His voice grew quieter.

— I want to grow old with you.

Gemini opened her eyes.

— Then why are you asking me to leave?

— Because I want it too much.

He pressed his forehead to hers.

— And I'm afraid that one day you'll die, and I'll realize my love turned out to be the only weapon that could kill you.

She didn't answer at once.

This time the words truly hit their mark.

They didn't convince.

But they wounded.

Gemini put her arms around him.

— Your love isn't taking my eternity from me, — she whispered. — For the first time, it has given me a reason not to need it.

Artem closed his eyes.

They stood in front of the mirror.

Two people.

Three gray hairs.

And four days until midnight.

On the ninth day, the observers obtained their first medical material.

Not blood.

Not tissue.

Just a single hair.

It had been left on the back of a chair in the coffee shop.

The man at the next table waited until Gemini and Artem left, lifted it with tweezers, and placed it in a container.

The laboratory received the sample that evening.

The preliminary analysis showed nothing impossible.

Human keratin.

Ordinary traces of cosmetic products.

No known markers of military modification.

But the specialist noticed the root.

— Strange, — he said.

— What exactly?

— The age-related changes began recently.

— How recently?

— I can't determine that.

— A week? A year? Ten years?

The specialist looked into the microscope again.

— It looks as though, up to a certain point, the cell wasn't aging at all.

The man who had brought the sample smirked.

— People don't stop aging.

— I know.

— Then write a normal report.

The specialist pushed back from the instrument.

— There is no normal report.

The phrase went upstairs along with the findings.

An hour later, the surveillance priority was changed.

MEDICAL DATA — CRITICAL.

PHYSICAL CONTACT — AUTHORIZED WITHOUT DETAINING THE SUBJECT.

OBJECTIVE: OBTAIN BLOOD AND ASSESS RESPONSE.

There was still time before the abduction.

But a line had already been crossed.

They no longer wanted only to know who she was.

They wanted to check what was under her skin.

On the tenth day, Artem stopped counting out loud.

He made breakfast.

Burned the first piece of toast.

The second came out fine.

Gemini made coffee.

She didn't burn herself.

They drove to work together.

In the afternoon they discussed the lease on the new premises.

In the evening they stopped by his parents' place.

Artem's mother looked at Gemini for a long time, then asked:

— Did you do something to your hair?

Gemini touched her temple.

— A little.

— It suits you.

No one else noticed anything.

At dinner, Artem's father told a story everyone had already heard three times.

Gemini laughed in the same places.

Not because she was pretending.

Because now she understood: repetition doesn't always mean the absence of new information.

Sometimes people tell the same story over and over so they can relive the moment when the people they love were listening to them.

On the way home, Artem kept both hands on the wheel.

He didn't turn on any music.

He didn't talk about the deadline.

Gemini watched him.

— You forgot, — she said.

— No.

— Then why are you quiet?

— Because I've already said everything.

— Not everything.

— What's left?

— The last attempt.

He stopped at a red light.

— I don't want to turn the last hours into a trial.

— Then into what?

The light changed.

The car moved off.

— Into our life.

Gemini turned toward the window.

Her smile was reflected in the glass.

A gray car was following them.

This time she didn't notice it.

On the last day, the Archive opened a channel without my order for the first time.

I was in the sector of damaged chronologies when an Earth apartment appeared before me.

Not an image.

A passage.

A thin vertical line of golden light cut through the space between the worlds.

The Architect appeared behind me.

— Did you order the crossing opened? — I asked.

— Yes.

— She agreed?

— Not yet.

— Then the Archive is violating its own condition.

— The crossing isn't open for travel.

He looked at the clock that had appeared above the line.

00:47:12.

Forty-seven minutes.

— Then what for?

— For a choice.

On the other side, Earth's Artem and Gemini stood in the living room.

They could already see us.

On the table lay that same sheet with two columns.

The paper had been crumpled, smoothed out, and folded in half.

Beside it stood two cups of coffee.

One almost empty.

The other untouched.

The Architect walked up to the edge of the crossing.

— Forty-six minutes remain until the end of the safe period, — he said.

Gemini nodded.

— I know.

— If you cross now, we'll have time to carry out the restoration without risk to your memory or personality.

— I know.

— On Earth, the systems cannot be restored.

— I know.

— After midnight, the known protocols will no longer give that guarantee.

— I know all of that.

He fell silent.

I looked at the woman with whom I had shared three centuries.

She looked almost the same as on the day she left.

Only now a few silver threads showed at her temple.

And she stood a little differently.

Not like someone who can take a blow.

Like someone who knows a blow can break them.

— Then say it yourself, — the Architect said.

— What?

— What you choose.

Gemini looked at Earth's Artem.

He stood a few steps away.

Not holding her.

Not blocking the passage with his body.

Not asking her to stay.

— I'm staying, — she said.

The clock kept counting down.

00:43:51.

Nothing happened.

The Architect lowered his head almost imperceptibly.

— The choice is recorded.

His voice stayed calm.

Only I knew the price of that calm.

Earth's Artem walked over to Gemini.

— No, — he said.

She turned.

— What?

— Not like this.

— Artem…

— You've said your piece. Now I'll say the last thing.

He looked at the open crossing.

At the Architect of the Consortium.

At the world where she could become invulnerable again.

Then back at her.

— Go.

Gemini went pale.

— You want me to leave?

— No.

— Then why?

— Because I love you.

The words came without pathos.

Almost wearily.

— And I don't want you to realize, forty years from now, that you made the decision at a moment when you were happy, and paid for it at the moment when it hurt.

Gemini looked at him.

— I'm not asking you to forget me, — Artem went on. — I'm not asking you to stop loving. I'm not asking you to choose him.

The Architect didn't look away.

— I'm asking you to leave yourself the possibility of living after me.

Gemini came closer.

— And if I don't want a life after you?

— Then live it before me. But don't destroy the exit just to prove you won't leave.

Her face changed.

For the first time in ten days, she truly doubted.

I saw it.

So did the Architect.

Earth's Artem held out his hand to her.

Not toward himself.

Toward the golden line.

— I'm letting you go, — he said.

Gemini looked at his palm.

— I didn't ask you to.

— I know.

— You're deciding for me again.

— No. I'm taking myself off the scales.

She raised her eyes.

— You can't take the person you love out of a decision about your own life.

— Then at least don't call the fear of losing me freedom.

The silence grew heavy.

The clock showed:

00:31:08.

Gemini turned away.

Went to the window.

Below, cars were moving.

In the building next door, windows were going dark.

Someone was walking a dog.

Someone was coming home from work.

Someone was arguing in the parking lot.

Ordinary life went on, unaware that one woman was deciding whether she would have the right to die inside it one day.

— I'm afraid, — Gemini said.

It was the first full admission.

Not to the Archive.

Not to me.

Not to herself.

To both of them.

— Of what? — Earth's Artem asked.

— Pain. Illness. Old age. That one day I'll look in the mirror and not recognize the face. That you'll die first. And that I'll be the one to die first.

She turned to the golden line.

— I'm afraid I'll regret it.

The Architect took a barely perceptible step.

Not forward.

Back.

Clearing the way for her.

— Then come back, — he said.

There was no hope in his voice of restoring the family that had been.

Only love.

So pure it was ready to take her back without a single demand.

Gemini closed her eyes.

— And there's something else I'm afraid of.

— What? — I asked.

She looked at me.

— That I'll cross now. Wake up tomorrow as I was. Strong. Unchanging. Eternal.

The silver threads at her temple glinted in the light of the passage.

— And for the rest of eternity I'll know: in the one moment when life demanded not victory from me, but trust, I chose safety.

The clock:

00:18:42.

Earth's Artem lowered his hand.

— So you've decided.

— Yes.

— Not because of me?

Gemini walked over to him.

— Not without you.

He flinched.

She laid her palm on his chest.

— But for myself.

He covered her hand with his.

This time he didn't try to persuade.

Didn't argue.

Didn't let go.

Just stood beside her.

In the last eighteen minutes they didn't talk about death.

Artem poured her fresh coffee.

Gemini complained that he had put in too much sugar.

He said she was the one who had asked him to make it less bitter.

She replied that "less bitter" did not mean "unfit for consumption."

I was laughing and crying at the same time.

The Architect was silent.

Five minutes before the end, he asked:

— Do you want to say goodbye?

Gemini looked at him.

Three centuries lay between them.

Wars.

Children.

Losses.

Worlds they had saved.

A love that hadn't vanished even after she chose another life.

— No, — she answered.

He frowned almost imperceptibly.

Gemini smiled.

— I'm not saying goodbye to you. I'm just staying here.

The Architect nodded.

— Then live.

— I'll try.

— No.

His voice hardened.

The very voice that fleets had once obeyed.

— Live.

Gemini straightened.

For a moment, the Queen of the Consortium stood before us again.

— Yes, Architect.

It wasn't an order.

And it wasn't obedience.

It was the last promise of two people who no longer belonged to the same life, but still refused to wish each other anything less than every possible happiness.

The clock showed:

00:00:10.

Ten.

Nine.

Eight.

Earth's Artem squeezed her hand.

Seven.

Six.

I stopped breathing.

Five.

Four.

The Architect looked only at her.

Three.

Two.

One.

The clock went dark.

The golden line vanished.

The passage closed.

On Earth, an ordinary living room remained.

Two cups.

A crumpled sheet of paper.

A man and a woman holding hands.

No flash.

No pain.

No change that could be seen.

Midnight simply passed.

Gemini looked down at her body.

— Is that all? — she asked.

Artem gave a short laugh.

Tears had come into his eyes after all.

— Were you expecting thunder?

— A system message, at least.

The Archive's last line appeared on the wall:

"SAFE RESTORATION PERIOD COMPLETE."

Below it, a second one appeared:

"SUBJECT STATUS: HUMAN."

Gemini read it.

Then she touched the words.

— No, — she said.

Artem looked at her.

— What?

She smiled.

— Subject status: Gemini.

The line changed.

"STATUS: GEMINI."

And went dark.

In the Archive, the golden line vanished at the same moment.

I stayed beside the Architect.

For a few seconds he stared at the empty space.

— You did everything you could, — I said.

— No.

— What else could you have done?

He turned to me.

— That's exactly why I said "no."

I didn't understand.

Not then.

Later, those words would come back to me.

They would become the beginning of the worst scandal in our new family.

But that night, all I heard in them was the pain of a man who had allowed the woman he loved to become mortal.

I took his hand.

He didn't pull away.

— She chose him, — I said.

— She chose life.

— Is that the same thing?

— For her, right now, yes.

I looked at him.

— And for you?

The Architect was silent for a long time.

— For me, love was never the right to decide who a person belongs to.

He squeezed my hand.

— Only a reason not to let them disappear.

I should have heard a warning.

But I heard a promise.

And decided it was meant for me.

On Earth, at that same time, another wait came to an end.

The man heading the surveillance group received a message:

"BEHAVIORAL PATTERN RECORDED."

"SUBJECT AVOIDS MEDICAL FACILITIES."

"PHYSICAL CAPABILITIES UNCONFIRMED."

"AUTHORIZE CONTROLLED CONTACT?"

He looked at Gemini's photograph.

Beside it lay the lab report on a hair that should not have been aging, and yet had begun to.

— Authorized, — he said.

— Terms?

— An ordinary street assault. No weapons. No detention. We need blood and a reaction.

— And the man?

He opened the dossier on Earth's Artem.

— Let him be there.

— Why?

— I want to see who she'll protect when she realizes she can no longer protect even herself.

A marker appeared on the screen:

OPERATION CONTACT.

STATUS: PREPARATION.

The man closed the file.

— Tomorrow we stop watching.

He smiled.

— Tomorrow, she'll meet us for the first time.

Lira's Archive Note No. II-0004

"We expected immortality to leave her at midnight. But it left much earlier — the instant a safe door was opened before her and she did not take the step. A person becomes mortal not when they one day die. But when they go on living, knowing there is no way back."

Subject Without a Past

"For a person, the absence of a past can mean freedom. For a system, it means only a well-hidden threat."

Lira's Archive Log No. II-0005

Subject status: Gemini.

Biological status: human.

Safe restoration period: complete.

Number of official documents: 6.

Number of confirmed years of life: 0.

Number of people who have already decided this is sufficient grounds for abduction: 11.

Archive note:

In most civilizations, identity is confirmed by memory.

On Earth, identity is confirmed by a database.

If the system doesn't remember a person, it rarely asks who they are.

It asks who managed to hide them.

The morning after midnight turned out to be ordinary.

That was what surprised Gemini most of all.

She woke before Artem.

For a few seconds she lay motionless, listening to her body.

Her heart was beating evenly.

Her breathing stayed calm.

There was a heaviness in her left shoulder from sleep.

Her mouth was dry.

She was thirsty.

Nothing had disappeared.

Nothing had switched on.

Not a single system reported that the way back was closed.

Midnight had simply passed, leaving her in the body she had chosen.

A human one.

Gemini carefully sat up in bed.

Earth's Artem was asleep beside her.

One hand still lay on her side of the bed, as though even in sleep he were checking that she hadn't used the crossing at the last second.

She touched his fingers.

He opened his eyes at once.

— You're here.

— Good morning.

— That's not an answer.

— Then yes. I'm here.

Artem exhaled.

Not with relief.

With understanding.

Until that minute, part of him had still been waiting for the Archive to undo what had happened. For the golden line to appear by the wall again, and a calm voice to report an error in the calculations.

But the walls were silent.

— How do you feel? — he asked.

Gemini thought about it.

Before, the answer would have taken a fraction of a second.

Temperature.

Blood pressure.

Blood composition.

Load on every joint of the endoskeleton.

Now she had only sensations.

— I don't know.

Artem raised himself up.

— What hurts?

— Nothing.

— Then why don't you know?

She looked at him.

— Because for the first time I have to decide for myself what "normal" means.

He sat down beside her.

— And what did you decide?

Gemini smiled.

— I want coffee.

— Then it really is irreversible.

In the kitchen he burned the first piece of toast.

She said it had become a tradition.

He replied that traditions require many repetitions.

Gemini pointed at the trash can, where the evidence of the last eleven days lay.

Artem conceded defeat.

They had breakfast by the window.

Beyond the glass, an ordinary workday was beginning.

People hurried to their cars.

A courier left a box at the wrong entrance.

A woman in a red jacket went back twice to check whether she had locked the door.

The gray car that had been parked across the street the evening before was gone.

Gemini noticed the empty space.

And for the first time in many days decided that the surveillance was over.

She was wrong.

It was just that today they no longer needed a car.

Operation Contact began at 09:17.

The first man walked into the coffee shop near the office.

The second took up a spot at the bus stop.

The third parked a delivery van in the alley.

The fourth was already inside the building, posing as a technician checking the fire alarm system.

None of them knew who Gemini was.

They had been told only the terms.

Do not detain.

Do not use firearms.

Obtain blood.

Test the reaction.

Determine whom the subject would protect first.

By ten in the morning Artem had held two meetings and managed to quarrel with a supplier.

Gemini sat in his office trying to make sense of the lease agreement for the new premises.

On the third page she found a clause allowing the building's owner to raise the rent upon any change in "economic expediency."

— This doesn't mean anything, — she said.

— That's exactly why the clause is so expensive.

— In the Consortium, a person would be barred from drafting documents for wording like that.

— On Earth, they get promoted to lawyer.

She wanted to reply, but a man in a maintenance uniform appeared beyond the glass wall.

He stopped at the fire sensor.

Too close to the camera.

He didn't look at her once.

That was exactly why Gemini looked at him longer than she needed to.

— Do you know him? — she asked.

Artem looked up.

— Who?

The man was already gone.

— No one.

— Very specific.

— I'm learning from the lawyers.

She tried to smile.

It didn't work.

A few minutes later there was a crash in the corridor.

Then a scream.

Artem was on his feet first.

A young employee lay on the floor by the stairs. Folders, shards of a glass partition, and the contents of her bag were scattered around her.

Standing over her was that same technician.

— She slipped, — he said.

The employee was trying to get up.

— I didn't slip.

The man bent down toward her.

Gemini saw the movement of his hand.

Too quick for a chance bystander.

Too directed to be help.

A thin metal object glinted in his fingers.

Not a weapon.

A sample container.

She stepped between them.

She misjudged the distance.

Before, her body would have completed the movement before the thought had taken shape.

Now her boot caught on the edge of a folder.

The man shoved her in the shoulder.

Gemini lost her balance and slammed her arm into the broken partition.

The glass cut her forearm.

The pain came instantly.

Bright.

Hot.

Real.

She froze for a fraction of a second.

That was enough for the man to seize her wrist and run a white cloth across the blood.

Then he let go.

— Careful, — he said calmly.

Gemini looked at the cloth in his palm.

She understood.

He understood that she had understood.

Artem appeared beside her.

— Get away from her.

The technician raised both hands.

— I was trying to help.

— Then help yourself leave.

The voice of Earth's Artem held none of the power of the Architect of the Consortium.

There were no fleets.

There were no three centuries of power.

But the man backed off.

Not because he was scared.

Because his task was already done.

He vanished through the stairwell door.

Gemini wanted to go after him.

She took a step.

Her knees buckled.

Artem caught her in time.

— Sit down.

— He took blood.

— What?

— That wasn't an attack.

She looked at the employee.

The woman was sitting against the wall, pressing a palm to her bruised knee.

Alive.

Frightened.

Not understanding why a stranger had used her as part of someone else's experiment.

— Call security, — Artem said.

— Already called.

— And an ambulance.

Gemini gripped his sleeve.

— No hospital.

He looked at the blood running down her fingers.

— We've been through this already.

— That's exactly what they want.

— Who — they?

She didn't answer.

Now the silence no longer looked like a defense of freedom.

Like a mistake.

The wound turned out to be shallow.

But it didn't close.

Artem washed it in the staff bathroom, treated it with antiseptic, and bandaged it so carefully, as though her life depended on how evenly the gauze lay.

Twenty minutes later, a red stain seeped through the white fabric.

Gemini looked at it in silence.

— Before, it would have vanished by now? — Artem asked.

— Before, the glass wouldn't have cut the skin.

— That's not what I'm asking.

— Yes. It would have vanished.

He removed the stained bandage.

The edges of the cut were just the same.

No silver thread of regeneration.

No inner warmth.

Only blood, clotting slowly and imperfectly.

— There it is, — Gemini said.

— What?

— The price.

Artem raised his eyes to her.

— Don't romanticize blood.

— I'm not romanticizing.

— Then why are you looking at it so calmly?

She thought about it.

— Because I was afraid of this for eleven days. And now it's just a cut.

— Just a cut that somebody needed.

He put on a fresh bandage.

When he tightened it, Gemini winced.

Artem stopped.

— Does it hurt?

— Yes.

His fingers trembled.

She covered them with her palm.

— Don't apologize for the fact that I can feel.

— That's not what I'm apologizing for.

— Then what?

— For not understanding sooner.

He went to the door and closed it.

— Tell me.

Gemini was silent.

— The car outside the building, — Artem said. — The man at the office. What you said about fear. Who is watching us?

— I don't know.

— How long?

— Since my first time out.

He turned away.

He didn't hit the wall.

He didn't raise his voice.

That was worse.

— Ten days, — Artem said. — You knew for ten days.

— I wasn't sure.

— Today he collected your blood with a napkin.

— Now I'm sure.

— Why didn't you tell me?

Gemini looked at the closed door.

— Because you would have demanded that I be taken back.

— Yes.

— And you would have used the threat as proof that my choice was wrong.

— Possibly.

— That's why I kept quiet.

Artem turned around.

— Freedom doesn't require you to face danger alone.

— Protection turns into a cage too easily.

— And a secret turns into a grave too easily.

She flinched.

He regretted the word at once.

But he didn't take it back.

— I don't want to run your life, — Artem said. — But if your life is next to mine now, I have the right to know when there are people standing outside our door.

— The right?

— No.

He exhaled.

— Not a right. A request. Don't make me love you blind.

The anger was gone.

The fear remained.

Gemini came closer.

— I won't hide anything anymore.

— Really?

— Really.

— Even if I get scared and start acting like an idiot?

— Especially then.

He gently touched her bandaged arm.

— What about the shoulder?

Only now did Gemini try to raise her arm.

Pain ran from her collarbone to her back.

She stopped.

— Probably a bruise.

— An X-ray.

— No.

— Gemini.

— The X-ray will show it.

They both looked at her body.

Skin.

Muscle.

Blood.

And metal that Earth wasn't supposed to learn of for another three centuries.

— And without an X-ray we won't know whether the shoulder is damaged, — Artem said.

— The endoskeleton isn't damaged.

— I'm not talking about the metal.

He touched her shoulder, barely perceptibly.

— Everything else is in here now.

Gemini closed her eyes.

Free choice demanded trust once again.

This time, in a man with no scanners.

— All right, — she said. — But not a hospital.

— A private diagnostic center.

— No documents.

— I'll figure it out.

— Do you always say that when you don't know how?

— Only when someone smarter than me is nearby.

She looked at him.

— Is that a confession?

— It's a way to end the argument before you change your mind.

The center was twenty minutes from the office.

Small.

Clean.

With plastic plants by the front desk and a television showing the news with the sound off.

Artem filled out the form.

In the box for "previous surgeries" he put a dash.

At "implants," his pen paused.

Gemini covered the line with her palm.

— No.

— Technically, that's a lie.

— Technically, the endoskeleton wasn't implanted.

— Did it grow with you?

— No.

— Then that doesn't help.

She took the clipboard and put the dash in herself.

The doctor examined the wound.

Said no stitches were needed.

Then asked her to raise her arm.

Gemini could only manage halfway.

— We'll X-ray the shoulder, — he decided.

— Is that necessary?

— If you want to rule out a fracture.

She looked at Artem.

He didn't say: "I told you so."

For that, Gemini let herself be led into the room.

The X-ray technician asked her to take off her jacket and stand by the machine.

— Don't move.

There was no flash.

Only a quiet click.

The image appeared on the monitor a few seconds later.

The technician stopped breathing.

On the screen was a human shoulder.

And, at the same time, an impossible structure.

A metal scapula reproduced the shape of the bone with a precision that existed in no prosthesis.

The joint was surrounded by the finest mesh of an unknown alloy.

The upper ribs were in the frame.

Each held a smooth, dark structure inside.

The spine descended in a perfect sequence of joints never made by any earthly surgery.

It didn't look like a replaced part of a body.

It looked like a different way of building a human being.

— The machine is malfunctioning, — the technician said.

Gemini stepped toward the monitor.

— Delete the image.

— We need to repeat it.

— No.

The door opened.

The doctor came in.

Looked at the image.

Then at Gemini.

— What surgeries have you had?

— None.

— That's impossible.

— I've already been told that today.

Artem appeared behind his shoulder.

One glance at the monitor was enough.

— We're leaving.

— Wait. I have to call…

— Who?

The doctor didn't answer.

Because he didn't know.

A surgeon?

The police?

The military?

Someone who could explain how a woman with a metal spine had walked into the room on her own two feet?

Artem took her jacket off the chair.

— Delete the file.

— Medical data isn't deleted at a patient's request.

— Then record a refusal of further examination.

He took Gemini by her good arm.

They left.

On the workstation, the image was still open.

In the lower right corner of the screen, a small line appeared for an instant:

"COPY COMPLETE."

The technician didn't notice it.

The program had been installed that morning by the man who checked the fire alarm.

The Scientist was called to the laboratory that evening.

He arrived irritated.

Not because it was late.

Because the people who paid for his consultations always began the conversation by demanding that he forget his own questions.

On the table lay the results of the blood analysis.

On the screen, the image of Gemini's shoulder.

— You spoke of biological modification, — said the man heading the group.

— I said the sample was insufficient.

— Is it sufficient now?

The Scientist zoomed in on the image.

For several minutes he didn't say a word.

Enlarged the joint.

Changed the contrast.

Asked for the original file.

Checked the metadata.

— The image is genuine, — he said.

— What's inside her?

— If you want the short answer — I don't know.

— And the long one?

The Scientist pointed at the screen.

— This isn't a prosthesis. Not an exoskeleton. Not any known bone-reinforcement system. The metal runs through everything in the frame of the image and follows the anatomy as if it had been part of the body before the muscles formed.

— A military program?

— Whose?

— Ours. Foreign. Private.

— A country capable of making this would no longer need espionage.

The man laid the photographs of Gemini beside it.

— She has no past.

— Everyone has a past.

— Not in our databases.

The Scientist looked at the blood.

— Is the biology human?

— Preliminarily, yes.

— And the alloy?

— Unidentified.

He took off his glasses and wiped them.

— Then your theories are bad ones.

— Offer a good one.

— An illegal government project. A classified program of another country. A prototype built without patents or publications.

— You just called those theories bad.

— Because I don't have any good ones.

The man leaned back in his chair.

— Is she dangerous?

The Scientist looked at the image again.

— This structure could survive a crash that would kill an ordinary person.

— I asked whether she is dangerous.

— And I'm answering: metal doesn't make decisions.

— So the woman does?

— Judging by the footage from the office, she got cut, lost her balance, and couldn't stop a single man.

— Is she pretending?

— Possibly.

— Or possibly?

The Scientist enlarged the injured shoulder.

— Possibly, everything that made her strong no longer works.

The room went quiet.

That was exactly the answer they had been waiting for.

— We need a full analysis, — the man said.

The Scientist turned around.

— Then invite her in for an examination.

— She'll refuse.

— That's her right.

The man smiled.

— You still think you're working with medical material.

— With what, then?

A new folder was laid on the table.

On the cover was written:

"SUBJECT WITHOUT A PAST."

— With an asset.

The Scientist didn't open the folder.

— People are not assets.

— Which is why you're a consultant and not the project lead.

For the first time that evening, the scientist didn't look irritated.

He looked frightened.

Not for himself.

For the woman in the image.

On the way home, Artem changed route three times.

Twice he turned off for no reason.

Once he stopped at a gas station and waited ten minutes.

The gray car didn't appear.

— You're doing it wrong, — Gemini said.

— Doing what?

— Checking for a tail.

— And how do you do it right?

She wanted to explain.

She stopped.

Before, the answer would have come with a street map, cameras, license plates, and driver behavior models.

Now, behind the rear window, there was a stream of headlights.

Ordinary.

Unknown.

— I don't know, — she admitted.

Artem gripped the wheel tighter.

— I hate that answer.

— So do I.

In the apartment he closed the curtains.

Checked the lock.

Called the office and demanded that the camera recordings from the last two weeks be preserved.

Then he moved the files to a separate computer with no network connection.

Gemini watched him.

— You don't have to do this alone.

He gave her a brief look.

— Freedom doesn't require me to face danger alone.

She accepted the rebuke.

They went through the recordings until late at night.

The cars changed.

So did the faces.

But one and the same man appeared three times.

Outside the bookstore.

Near the office.

In the reflection in the diagnostic center's glass.

Not the technician.

An observer.

Artem froze the frame.

— I'll find him.

— How?

— Here, people have a past.

He zoomed in on the image.

There was an expensive watch on the man's wrist.

In the glass behind him, part of a van was reflected.

A white body.

A blue stripe.

A few letters of a name.

Artem wrote them down on paper.

— And if he's a subject without a past too? — Gemini asked.

— Then I'll find whoever pays for his present.

She looked at him.

At that moment he was not the Architect of the Consortium.

He had no army.

He couldn't order the Archive to open any door.

But his calm had changed.

It had become precise.

Earthly.

Dangerous not in its strength.

In its decision not to stop.

— Tomorrow you don't go out alone, — he said.

— I don't agree.

— I wasn't finished. Tomorrow neither of us goes out alone.

Gemini thought about it.

— Is that a compromise?

— It's the closest to one I'm capable of right now.

— All right.

Artem was surprised.

— That simple?

— Today I've already proved that sometimes I can learn before it's too late.

The phone rang at 23:48.

The number belonged to the employee who had been hurt that morning.

Artem put it on speaker.

At first they heard breathing.

Then a voice:

— Artem… I'm sorry… I didn't know who else to call.

He straightened up.

— Where are you?

— In the lower parking garage. By the office. That man is here.

In the background, something struck metal.

The woman cried out.

The line went dead.

Artem was already grabbing his keys.

Gemini stood in front of the door.

— It's a trap.

— I know.

— Which is why we shouldn't go.

— She doesn't know what a trap is.

Gemini looked at him.

Only that morning, it had been she who stepped between that woman and a stranger's hand.

Now Artem was doing the same thing.

Only the distance was greater.

— Together, — Gemini said.

— Together.

Half the lights in the garage were on.

The rest had gone out all at once, a minute before they arrived.

The employee's car stood by the far wall.

The driver's door was open.

Her bag lay on the concrete.

Her phone beside it.

— Stay behind me, — Artem said.

Gemini looked at his back.

— Do you realize how pointless that is?

— Yes.

— Then why did you say it?

— Because I'm scared.

They walked on side by side.

The employee was led out of the darkness.

A man was holding her by the neck.

In his other hand was a pistol.

Not pointed at Gemini.

At Artem.

— Let her go, — he said.

— We'll let both of them go.

Four more appeared from behind the pillars.

— We only need her.

Gemini felt Artem touch her elbow.

— No.

The word wasn't meant for the criminals.

For her.

— They'll shoot, — Gemini said quietly.

— Possibly.

— You hate that word.

— Right now especially.

The man pressed the gun harder against the employee.

— Take a step forward.

Gemini didn't move.

She was counting the distance.

Five meters to the first.

Seven to the second.

Nine to the van.

Before, that would have been enough.

Now, between thought and movement, there was a human body.

Tired.

Wounded.

Slow.

And beside her were two people who would die first if she decided to test what remained of her strength.

— Let them go, — Gemini said. — I'll come on my own.

— No, — Artem repeated.

She turned to him.

— You asked me not to deny you the right to know.

— I didn't give you the right to surrender.

— This isn't surrender.

— Then what is it?

Gemini looked at the employee.

Then at the gun pointed at his chest.

— My choice.

Artem stepped forward with her.

One of the men hit him in the stomach.

He doubled over but didn't fall.

A second one grabbed his arm.

Artem tore free and hit him.

Not prettily.

Not professionally.

Like a human being.

The pistol shifted.

Gemini saw her chance.

And at that same moment, the employee tried to break free.

The man swung the weapon toward her.

Gemini shielded the woman with her body.

The prick landed below her collarbone.

Not a bullet.

A dart.

She pulled it out at once.

Too late.

Warmth spread through her body.

Her knees went soft.

The world lost its sharpness.

Artem shouted her name.

Gemini tried to turn.

Strangers' hands were already holding her.

The employee was released.

She collapsed nearby, choking on her sobs.

The condition had been met.

They had the subject.

Not because Gemini hadn't seen the trap.

Not because she had overestimated her strength.

Because at the moment of choosing between freedom and someone else's life, she had once again chosen not herself.

Artem lunged toward her.

An electric charge hit him in the side.

He fell to one knee.

Got up.

Took a second hit.

This time the concrete met his face.

Gemini could no longer move.

But she could still hear.

— Look at me, — someone said. — Don't pass out.

She wasn't looking at him.

At Earth's Artem.

He was trying to get up again.

Once.

Twice.

A third time.

A man planted his boot on his hand.

— Stay down. We don't need you.

Artem lifted his head.

For a fraction of a second, a deep red light appeared in his eyes.

Not a flash of rage.

Not a weapon.

Reality's answer to a man who refused to accept his own helplessness.

The boot jerked back.

The man froze.

He didn't have time to understand what he had seen.

The light was already gone.

The van doors closed.

The last thing Gemini heard was Artem's voice:

— I'll find you.

She wanted to answer.

Her lips wouldn't obey.

Darkness came before the words.

The van left the garage through the north exit.

The camera above the gate wasn't working.

But Artem had already seen the white body.

The blue stripe.

And the same letters he had written down on paper a few hours earlier.

He lay on the concrete, unable to feel two fingers of his left hand.

Nearby, the employee was crying.

In the distance, sirens were approaching.

Artem got out his phone with his right hand.

The screen was shattered.

But the camera worked.

He took a shot of the departing van.

Then another.

And only then did he allow himself to lose consciousness.

In the laboratory, the scientist was still sitting in front of the image of the endoskeleton.

A message appeared on the screen:

"SUBJECT ACQUIRED."

"DELIVERY: 47 MINUTES."

He rose slowly.

— What have you done?

No one answered.

Beyond the glass wall, an operating table was being prepared.

Restraints.

Instruments.

A deep-sedation system.

The Scientist looked at the image once more.

Unknown metal.

Living tissue.

Technology that shouldn't exist.

And a woman who, in forty-seven minutes, would cease to be regarded as human.

— You don't understand what you're bringing here, — he said.

The man in charge of the project walked up to the glass.

— That's why you're here.

The Scientist shook his head.

— No.

He was looking at the empty operating table.

— That's why whoever comes for her will end up here.

Forty-seven minutes later, the laboratory's metal doors opened.

Gemini was brought in on a gurney.

The drug was still working.

She heard voices, but couldn't always tell whom they belonged to.

White light beat into her eyes.

Strangers' hands moved her onto the operating table.

Her wrists were secured first.

Then her ankles.

A strap went across her chest.

Not one of the restraints could have held the old Gemini.

For the present one, each was enough.

The Scientist stood at the glass partition.

Now the woman from the image was in front of him.

Alive.

Wounded.

Helpless.

And still looking at the people around her as though she were not the prisoner.

— Release her, — the scientist said.

The man in charge of the project didn't even turn around.

— You're not here for moral assessments.

— I'm warning you as a specialist.

— About what?

The Scientist looked at Gemini.

Then at the closed doors.

— Someone will come for her.

The laboratory went quiet.

One of the guards smirked.

— The man from the parking garage?

— I don't know who, — the scientist replied. — But a woman with a structure like that couldn't have simply appeared on her own. Someone made her. Someone hid her. And someone is bound to notice she's gone.

Gemini lifted her head slightly.

The movement took almost all the strength she had left.

A faint, slightly wicked smile appeared on her lips.

— They have no idea who's coming for me.

The smile vanished.

Her head sank back onto the cold table.

But what she had said was enough.

For the first time since the operation began, the people around her weren't looking at the endoskeleton.

At the door.

Lira's Archive Note No. II-0005

"We thought the danger began the moment they saw the metal beneath her skin. But the metal was merely the cause of curiosity. The real cause of the abduction was her humanity. They understood: Gemini can be made to walk into a cage if you place beside it someone she will refuse to leave outside."

The Human Limit

"A man's limit is defined not by the place where his strength ends. But by how many steps he takes after that."

Lira's Archive Log No. II-0006

Subject of observation: the Earth Architect.

Physiological status: human.

Number of combat modifications: 0.

Access to Consortium technology: none.

Estimated probability of independently penetrating a secured facility: 0.7%.

Number of times the subject kept moving after reaching his own limit: calculation impossible.

Archive note:

The strongest can pass where the rest will be stopped.

A human passes differently.

He finds those who saw the road.

Those who remembered the car.

Those he once helped, and who therefore answer a call in the middle of the night.

Strength opens a locked door.

A human life sometimes brings the whole world to it.

The first thing Earth's Artem saw was the ceiling of an ambulance.

White.

Scratched.

Too low.

Then — the paramedic's face.

— Can you hear me?

Artem tried to sit up.

Pain struck his ribs and put him back on the stretcher.

— Lie still.

— The woman.

— What woman?

— They took her.

The paramedic glanced at the police officer by the open doors.

— He's been repeating that since the parking garage.

— The woman's name? — the officer asked.

Artem gave it.

The name sounded wrong.

Too calm for a man who had just been deprived of the ability to breathe.

— Surname?

He said nothing.

— Identification?

The silence went on.

The officer wrote something in his notebook.

— What is she to you?

Artem looked at the shattered phone screen in his hand.

The last shot of the van was still on it.

White body.

Blue stripe.

Three letters by the rear door.

And the shadow of a man standing beside Gemini a second before the doors closed.

— Everything, — he answered.

The officer looked up.

But didn't press.

At the hospital he was diagnosed with a bruised chest, a stun-gun burn, two dislocated fingers, and a concussion.

The doctor recommended he stay until morning.

Artem signed the refusal twenty-seven minutes later.

— If you lose consciousness, you may not manage to call for help, — the doctor said.

— Then I'll try not to lose it.

— That isn't controlled by willpower.

— A lot of things are poorly controlled today.

The doctor looked at him the way one looks at people who have already decided to do something stupid.

— At least don't get behind the wheel.

Artem made no promise.

The woman from the parking garage was waiting for him at the exit.

A hospital blanket lay over her shoulders. In her hands she held a paper cup she hadn't touched.

When she saw Artem, she stood up.

— I'm sorry.

— For what?

— They said they'd let me go if you came.

— And you believed them?

She lowered her eyes.

— I didn't know what to do.

— Which is exactly why they're to blame. Not you.

— But Gemini…

He stopped her with a look.

Not harshly.

He simply couldn't allow one more person to waste time on guilt right now.

— Tell me everything from the very beginning.

They sat down in the empty corridor.

The woman talked for almost forty minutes.

They had stopped her by her car.

Called her by name.

Knew where she worked.

Knew that Gemini had shielded her with her own body that morning.

They didn't threaten her child or her family.

They threatened Artem.

They said that if she didn't call, her director would leave the office through the service entrance and never make it home.

— They knew you'd come, — the woman whispered.

— No.

Artem zoomed in on the shot of the van.

— They knew she would.

He asked her to remember the smells.

She didn't understand the question.

— In the car. On the men's clothes. On the gloves. Anything unusual.

The woman closed her eyes.

— Rubber. Tobacco. And… a hospital.

— Medication?

— I don't know. A sharp smell. Like a room before surgery.

— Disinfectant.

She nodded.

Artem wrote it down.

Then he asked about sounds.

One of the kidnappers had talked over a radio.

Another had called the north exit "clear."

Someone had demanded that "the doctor" be warned.

On the sleeve of the man who held her there had been white dust.

Not chalk.

More like construction mix.

— They were building a laboratory, — Artem said.

— How do you know?

— I don't.

He looked at his own notes.

— For now, I'm assuming.

The word still irritated him.

But now he was beginning to understand why the Consortium's Architect didn't trust answers that came too quickly.

In the Archive, no alarm sounded.

Every line leading to Earth simply went dark at once.

I was beside the Architect.

We both saw it.

One golden thread trembled.

Turned red.

And snapped.

An image appeared on the central panel.

The concrete floor of a parking garage.

A shattered phone.

Blood on Earth's Artem's lips.

A white van pulling away.

The Architect didn't ask what had happened.

One frame was enough for him.

— Open a passage.

The Archive answered:

"PARTICIPANT COORDINATES UNDETERMINED."

— To Earth's Artem.

"TIMELINE UNSTABLE."

— That's not a prohibition.

— It is now, — I said.

He turned.

I was already standing at the control circuit.

My fingers rested on the light matrix.

Every available passage to Earth was closing, one after another.

— Lift the lockdown, Lira.

— No.

He didn't raise his voice.

— She's been taken.

— I can see that.

— Then you understand why I have to go.

— That's exactly why I'm closing the way.

Nothing changed in his face.

Only the air around us grew heavier.

— Explain.

— The Earth line isn't protected. A passage to an unknown point could expose the existence of the Archive, the Consortium, and the future. We don't know who took her. We don't know where she is. We don't know what they want.

— They want to understand what's inside her.

— That's an assumption.

— No. It's human nature.

— You're going to open a temporal passage in the middle of someone else's operation, based on human nature?

— I'm going to save Gemini.

Her name hung between us.

Without a title.

Without the word "subject."

Without any attempt to hide love behind duty.

I switched the last automatic protocol to manual.

— The Consortium is not a tool for solving your personal problems.

— Agreed.

— Then you're not going anywhere.

— I didn't ask for the fleet.

— You asked for the Archive.

— Because one passage will do less harm than any other intervention.

— You've already calculated the other options?

He looked at me.

And I understood.

Of course he had.

While I was closing the first way, he found the second.

While I was blocking the second, his positronic brain was already building the third.

I isolated the passage sector.

Closed direct access to the navigation core.

Revoked the authority of the Keepers on duty.

Sent an order that no instruction from the Architect concerning the Earth line was to be carried out without my confirmation.

— You can't keep me here, — he said.

— I know.

— Then why?

— So that for once you stop before turning your pain into an order for all of reality.

He took a step toward me.

— This isn't my pain.

— Don't lie.

— I'm not lying.

— You're going to save your wife.

— Yes.

The honesty hit harder than if he had tried to deny it.

— The woman you still love.

— Yes.

I looked away.

For a fraction of a second.

It was enough for him to see the real reason for the lockdown.

But he didn't use it.

Didn't turn my fear into a weakness in the argument.

— And if she asks you to stay? — I asked.

— I'll save her.

— That's not an answer.

— There's no other one right now.

— Because you don't know?

— Because her life shouldn't depend on an answer she hasn't given yet.

I looked at him.

— And mine?

The question escaped before I could stop it.

The Architect slowly came closer.

Didn't touch me.

He knew too well that sometimes a touch becomes a way of not answering.

— Your life shouldn't depend on my fear of telling the truth either.

— And what is the truth?

— I won't leave Gemini to die.

A pause.

— Even if afterward you can't look at me the same way.

I felt anger.

Not at him.

At the fact that those were the very words that made me love him even more.

By five in the morning Earth's Artem was back at the office.

Security wanted to call the police again.

He forbade it.

Not because he distrusted every police officer.

Because he didn't know who had already been paid off by people capable, in a single day, of swapping a medical file, shutting down cameras, and staging a kidnapping in the parking garage of a business center.

Printouts from the cameras lay on his desk.

The security officer had saved everything Artem had asked for.

— The cameras on the lower level were shut off remotely, — he said. — But the system managed to record the entry of the man who was installing the fire alarm update.

A man in work clothes appeared on the screen.

He looked toward the camera for only two seconds.

Enough.

— The contractor's paperwork?

— The company was registered eight months ago. A mass-registration address. The phone's already disconnected.

— Who paid for the work?

— The management company.

— Who invoiced them?

The security officer fell silent.

— I don't have access to their accounting.

— But I have access to a man who spent three years trying to sell them a new accounting system.

Artem called.

At five seventeen in the morning.

The man answered on the sixth ring.

— Have you even looked at the time?

— Yes.

— Then why are you calling?

— Because once I didn't make you pay the penalty for a broken contract.

The other end went quiet.

— What do you need?

Twenty minutes later, Artem had the name of the firm that had issued the invoice.

Forty minutes later — the bank that serviced it.

An hour later — the surname of the man who had signed the certificate of completed work.

The surname turned out to be real.

The man himself had died two years earlier.

— It's a dead end, — the security officer said.

— No.

Artem zoomed in on the signature.

— It's a habit.

— What is?

— They use dead people. Which means they need access to government databases. And they don't believe anyone will check deeper than the first document.

He asked for a list of every company where the dead man's name appeared after the date of his death.

There were four.

One dealt in security systems.

The second — medical waste.

The third — warehouse rentals.

The fourth did nothing at all.

It only received money.

The first three transferred it to the fourth.

— Find the warehouses the third company rents, — Artem said.

— Officially?

— All of them.

In the laboratory, Gemini came to when the scanner switched on above her chest.

A white ring moved from her neck to her stomach.

Images appeared on the glass partition.

Bones.

Muscles.

Organs.

And beneath them — a dark metal structure that mirrored the human skeleton with a precision Earth's technology could not explain.

The Scientist stood at the panel.

Beside him — the man in charge of the project.

— She's awake, — a guard said.

— I noticed, — the scientist replied.

Gemini tested the restraints.

The skin on her wrists answered with pain.

The straps didn't give.

Once, she could have torn them with a flick of her fingers.

Now the metal inside her was stronger than the rest of her body and utterly useless without the strength to set it in motion.

— What is your name? — the scientist asked.

— You've read the file.

— There's no past in it.

— You asked for a name.

He held her gaze.

— Gemini.

— So you did read it after all.

The man in charge of the project came closer.

— Where were you created?

— I was born.

— Who installed the endoskeleton?

— No one.

— Where is the laboratory?

— In a place you won't live to see.

The Scientist looked at her sharply.

The project director smirked.

— A threat?

— Mathematics.

He gestured for the scan to continue.

— The alloy is unknown, — the scientist said. — We can't obtain a sample safely.

— Then obtain it unsafely.

— For her, or for us?

— For whoever gets less lucky.

Gemini smiled, barely.

— Finally, a sensible question.

The man turned to her.

— You don't look frightened.

— For three hundred years I've known people who were better at inflicting pain than you.

— Three hundred years?

— It was a metaphor.

The Scientist didn't believe it.

But said nothing.

On one of the screens, a diagram appeared of a metal vertebra joined to living tissue.

He enlarged the image.

No sutures.

No scars.

No trace of installation.

Not an implant.

Not a prosthesis.

The structure was part of the body and at the same time belonged to no known stage of human evolution.

— Stop the procedure, — the scientist said.

— Why?

— Because the next level of scanning could damage nerve tissue.

— Will she recover?

Gemini answered before he could.

— No.

The laboratory went quiet.

For the first time, the man in charge of the project looked at her not as a device.

As a device that could be broken.

— Continue.

The Scientist took his hands off the panel.

— No.

— You've forgotten the terms of the contract.

— There was no living human being in the contract.

— There was a subject in the contract.

— Then run the study yourself.

Two guards took a step toward him.

Gemini watched.

She already knew which of the people here would one day walk out with them.

The scientist himself didn't know yet.

By noon, Earth's Artem had seven addresses.

Three working warehouses.

Two empty hangars.

One medical center, closed after bankruptcy.

And a former research building on the edge of an industrial zone.

Everything matched at the building.

Recent renovation.

Medical equipment purchased through intermediaries.

A contract for the disposal of biological waste.

Private security.

High power consumption with, officially, no production.

— Do we call the police? — the security officer asked.

Artem was looking at the map.

— Not yet.

— Why?

— Because if I'm wrong, we lose several hours.

— And if you're not?

— Then they'll know about the check before the police get inside.

— You're going there alone?

— No.

The officer exhaled.

— First I'll check two more addresses.

— That's almost the same thing.

Artem stood up.

The world swayed.

He braced a palm against the desk.

The officer noticed.

— You're in no condition to go anywhere.

— Which is why you're driving.

— And if I refuse?

— You'll be right.

— That's it?

— I don't make people risk their lives for mine.

The officer looked at the map.

Then at the shattered phone.

— This morning she shielded the girl from accounting with her own body.

— Yes.

— And tonight she went after her, knowing it was a trap.

— Yes.

— Then it's no longer just about your life.

He took the keys.

— I'll drive you.

Artem said nothing.

Some thanks sound worse than an order if spoken too soon.

I closed the ninth route.

The Architect found the tenth.

He didn't try to break my locks.

He didn't revoke my authority.

He didn't use the right that would have let him remove me from the Archive with a single order.

He was looking for a way that wouldn't turn me into an enemy.

And that was exactly what made resisting unbearable.

— Sector Omega-Four is closed, — I said.

— I see.

— Earth's temporal beacon isn't responding.

— It's switched off.

— Gemini cut the link herself.

— I know.

— We can't determine her coordinates.

— Earth's Artem will.

The certainty came out calm.

Without hope.

Like knowledge.

— You trust him?

— Yes.

— An ordinary human?

The Architect looked at me.

— You still call him ordinary, after what you've seen?

I remembered the red light in his eyes.

But the Architect wasn't talking about that.

Not about his nature.

Not about the ancient power.

About a man who lay on concrete and photographed a car pulling away, because he couldn't afford to lose consciousness before the second shot.

— He may not make it in time.

— He may not.

— He may die.

— He may.

— And still you wait?

— I'm not waiting. I'm preparing to go in the second he finds the door.

I turned back to the panel.

— And if I don't open it?

— Then I'll find another way.

— Even at the cost of the chronology?

— Even at the cost of myself.

— That's not the same thing.

— For the one who bears responsibility for the consequences — it almost is.

He walked over to the darkened passage circuit.

— I'm not asking you to choose Gemini over yourself, Lira.

— Then what are you asking?

— Don't make me choose between the woman I love and the man I am.

I closed my eyes.

That was when I understood.

If he stayed because I was afraid of losing him, the man beside me would no longer be the man I loved.

I would have kept his body.

And destroyed the reason I wanted to be with him.

The first address turned out to be empty.

At the second, an ordinary pharmaceutical company was at work.

They reached the third, the former research building, after sunset.

The officer stopped the car two blocks away.

— What now?

Artem looked at the building.

No sign.

No open windows.

On the roof — a new ventilation system.

By the service entrance stood a white van with a blue stripe.

The same one.

— Now you leave.

— Did we only agree that I'd drive you?

— Exactly.

— And the police?

Artem handed him an envelope.

Inside were the address, copies of documents, photographs of the kidnappers, and instructions to send it all at once to three independent units if he didn't call within forty minutes.

— Why not now?

— Because Gemini is inside. When they see the cars, the first thing they'll do is destroy what they consider evidence.

— You call her evidence?

— They do.

Artem opened the door.

The officer grabbed his sleeve.

— You're not a hero.

— I know.

— They'll kill you.

— Possibly.

He said the word.

And for the first time felt no irritation.

An assumption stopped being a weakness when a man accepted the price of being wrong in advance.

— If I don't call in forty minutes, send it.

— And if you do call?

— Send it in forty-five.

— Then why call at all?

— So you know we made it.

Earth's Artem went in through the utility tunnel.

The building plan had survived in the municipal archive from the days when the building belonged to a state institute.

The renovation had changed the interior.

But not the pipes.

He removed a grate, crawled under a ventilation duct, and came out in a utility room.

Every movement echoed with pain in his ribs.

His left arm barely obeyed.

The metallic taste was back in his mouth.

He stopped.

Waited for the nausea to pass.

Went on.

There was a camera at the fork.

Artem didn't know how to hack surveillance systems.

So he cut the power to the entire utility floor.

The red emergency lamps came on three seconds later.

The doors switched to backup power.

Security got the signal.

It was not a stealthy entry.

But now people were looking at their panels.

Not at the corridor.

Artem hit the first guard with a fire extinguisher.

Not hard enough for the man to pass out neatly.

Hard enough for both of them to go down.

The guard turned out to be younger.

Faster.

And had hardly been beaten up in a parking garage a few hours earlier.

He pinned Artem to the floor.

A fist struck his temple.

Then again.

Artem groped for the extinguisher's lever.

A white cloud hit the guard in the face.

He recoiled.

Artem got up first.

Took the access card.

And the pistol.

He held the weapon wrong.

But that would be a problem for whoever decided to test it.

In the laboratory, preparations for extracting the sample began.

The Scientist was forced back to the panel.

On the table beside Gemini, instruments were laid out.

Not instruments of torture.

Medical ones.

Which was exactly why they looked more frightening.

— Where will you take the material from? — the project director asked.

The Scientist was silent.

— I asked you a question.

— Nowhere.

One of the guards put a hand on his shoulder.

— Between the third and fourth rib, — the scientist said. — Less risk of damaging major vessels there.

Gemini turned her head toward him.

He couldn't hold her gaze.

— You're doing everything right, — she said.

The Scientist looked at her.

— No.

— You're keeping the chance to stop them later.

— How do you know I'll try?

— Because you still call me a human being.

The project director slammed the panel in irritation.

— Begin.

At that moment the lights went out.

Emergency lamps flooded the room with red.

Gemini heard a distant signal.

Then a shot.

One.

A second.

She closed her eyes.

Not from fear.

To hear better.

Footsteps were approaching.

Uneven.

Heavy.

Human.

— Artem, — she said.

No one around her understood whom she was calling.

Earth's Artem's first shot went into the ceiling.

Not on purpose.

The guard knocked his arm aside before he could aim.

The second shot was the guard's.

The bullet went through his side.

First Artem felt the impact.

Then warmth.

The pain came later.

He backed against the wall.

The guard raised his weapon again.

A metal cart flew out of the next door.

It hit him in the knees.

The Scientist stood in the doorway.

— This way!

Artem didn't ask who he was.

He went in.

The Scientist shut the door and locked it with a card.

— Are you the husband?

Artem pressed a palm to his side.

Blood came through his fingers at once.

— Which one?

The Scientist froze.

— Doesn't matter.

— Where is she?

— Operating sector. Two corridors down. But the door only opens from central security.

— Another way.

— There isn't one.

— You said "two corridors." So you know the building. Another way.

The Scientist looked at the ventilation shaft above the ceiling.

— You won't fit.

— I will.

— You're bleeding out.

— That's not an answer.

A strange expression crossed his face.

Perhaps that was the moment the scientist first understood why the woman on the operating table had been certain someone would come for her.

— Through the sterilization block, — he said. — There's a service airlock. I'll open it from here.

— And you?

— I'll try to disable the restraints.

— They'll kill you.

— Possibly.

Artem looked at him.

The Scientist didn't yet know how contagious that word could be.

Coordinates appeared in the Archive.

Not complete.

Not precise.

First, only the city.

Then the industrial sector.

Then the building plan Earth's Artem had opened on his phone before going in.

The Archive wasn't tracking Gemini.

It was following the man who had once been allowed to be observed in her place.

A red dot flared on the schematic.

Earth's Artem's condition was deteriorating.

Numbers appeared on the panel.

Falling blood pressure.

Blood loss.

Impaired coordination.

Probability of reaching the operating sector: 3.1%.

The Architect looked at me.

Said nothing.

Didn't demand.

Didn't remind me that he had been right.

He left the choice to me.

And that was crueler than any order.

I could preserve the chronology.

Keep him beside me.

Keep the new life I hadn't yet even had time to call ours.

All it required was to do nothing.

On the schematic, Earth's Artem fell.

Got up.

Took three more steps.

The probability dropped to 2.4%.

I looked at the Architect.

At a man who had spent three hundred years saving other people's worlds and was asking, for the first time, for a door to be opened not for the sake of a civilization.

For the sake of one woman.

A woman who had left him.

A woman he still would never have allowed to become the price of his own happiness.

I lifted the first lock.

Then the second.

The Archive came alive.

Golden lines ran across the floor.

— Lira, — he said.

— Don't thank me.

— I wasn't going to.

I smiled in spite of myself.

Even now, he was still himself.

— I'm not opening the passage to her, — I said.

— I know.

— I'm opening it for you.

He came closer.

— I'll come back.

— Don't promise what another person may decide.

He stopped.

I repeated his own cruel honesty back to him:

— Come back, if that is your choice.

The Architect touched my cheek.

For only a moment.

— That's exactly why I'll come back.

I opened the last passage.

Earth's Artem reached the operating sector in seven minutes.

It felt to him like hours had passed.

The airlock opened halfway.

Beyond that, the emergency lock held it.

Artem squeezed through sideways.

The wound touched metal.

His vision went dark.

He kept going.

Behind the glass was Gemini.

On the operating table.

Arms and legs strapped down.

On the skin beneath her ribs, a thin marking line had already been drawn.

Instruments lay nearby.

The man in charge of the project was holding a pistol to the scientist's temple.

The guard turned toward the door.

Artem fired first.

The bullet hit the panel.

Sparks showered the floor.

The lights went out for good.

He walked into the red emergency glow.

The guard rushed him.

Artem wasn't trying to win.

He simply wouldn't let himself be pushed away from the table.

They slammed into a metal stand.

The pistol fell.

The guard grabbed Artem by his wounded side.

The world flashed white.

Artem drove his forehead into the man's face.

Once.

Twice.

Both fell.

The first to rise was not the stronger one.

The first to rise was the one who needed it more.

The Scientist seized the project director's weapon and backed against the wall.

His hands were shaking.

— Open the restraints! — Artem shouted.

— The panel's damaged!

He reached Gemini.

Touched her face.

She opened her eyes.

— You came.

— I promised.

— You're hurt.

— It's temporary.

— Artem…

— Later.

He tried to tear the strap on her wrist.

Couldn't.

Found the lock.

The lock wouldn't open without power.

He picked up a surgical instrument from the floor and tried to cut the synthetic fiber.

The blade slipped.

— The manual release is in the security room, — the scientist said. — I won't make it.

Footsteps were already coming from the corridor.

Many.

Artem pulled at the strap again.

His fingers stopped feeling the metal.

He threw his whole weight against it.

The restraint didn't budge.

Gemini was looking at him.

Not with pity.

Not with fear.

With a love that, for the first time, asked nothing impossible of him.

— Leave me, — she said.

— No.

— You can't carry me out.

— I know.

— Then why do you keep going?

He laid his palm over her hand.

— So you won't be alone here when they come in.

The footsteps were closer.

The Scientist held the pistol in both hands.

The guard on the floor began to move.

Artem tried to get up.

His legs wouldn't hold him.

He sank to one knee.

Then to the floor.

Blood was spreading under his shirt.

Gemini reached toward him as far as the restraint allowed.

— Look at me.

He lifted his head.

— I couldn't get you out.

— You found me.

— That's not enough.

— Not for a human.

— And for an Architect?

She wanted to answer.

But space answered first.

Behind Earth's Artem a thin golden line appeared.

It ran from ceiling to floor.

The red emergency light retreated before it.

The line opened.

Out of the passage stepped the Consortium's Architect.

The long black coat barely moved.

There was no fury on his face.

Only the absolute calm of a man who had finally received coordinates.

He saw Gemini.

Saw Earth's Artem's blood.

Saw the men closing in along the corridor.

But the first one he went to wasn't her.

It was him.

Earth's Artem looked up at him from the floor.

For the first time there was no reflection between them.

No question of origin.

No comparison of two lives.

Only one door.

One woman behind it.

And two different strengths that had come to preserve her right to choose.

— I couldn't get her out, — Earth's Artem said.

The Architect held out his hand.

— You found her and you're still alive. Now it's my turn.

Earth's Artem looked at the hand.

Took it.

The Architect pulled him to his feet.

Didn't put him behind his back.

Didn't order him to wait.

Held him up exactly as long as it took for the man to stand on his own again.

Then he turned to the doors of the operating sector.

Beyond them, armed men were already taking positions.

— Do you remember the building plan? — the Architect asked.

Earth's Artem pressed a palm to his wound.

— Down to the last door.

— People?

— Nine guards. The project director. The Scientist is on our side. Backup power is in the west block.

The Architect smiled, barely.

— Then lead.

They walked into the laboratory together.

Lira's Archive Note No. II-0006

"I thought the human limit was the point past which a person can do nothing more. Earth's Artem showed me otherwise. The limit is the place where the possibility of winning alone ends. And the courage to accept an outstretched hand begins. That evening, one Architect found the road. The other brought the strength. But it was not the strong one and the weak one who walked into the laboratory. For the first time, it was brothers."

The First Joint Operation

"People become equals not when they receive the same strength. But when they accept the same responsibility."

Lira's Archive Log No. II-0007

Event type: first joint operation of two True Architects.

Participant A: capable of altering the structure of reality.

Participant B: mortally wounded, possesses no combat modifications.

Distribution of functions: unequal.

Distribution of responsibility: an exact match.

Archive note:

Strength knows how to bring down a wall.

A human knows which wall stands between him and the one who must be saved.

Alone, each of them would have arrived too late.

Together, for the first time, they stopped being reflections.

Beyond the door of the operating sector stood nine armed men.

Earth's Artem reported it before the Architect could ask.

— Three at the central post. Two in the side corridor. Four more coming here from the upper floor.

He was pressing a palm to his wound.

Blood had already soaked through his shirt and was running down his fingers.

The Architect looked at him.

Not at the blood.

At his eyes.

— How many doors to Gemini?

— Two. The first opens with a card. The second — only from the central post.

— Backup power?

— West block.

— Cameras?

— After the lights go out, they run on a separate line for another six minutes.

— People?

— Hired security. Most of them don't know what's inside the laboratory.

The Architect gave a barely perceptible nod.

— So killing isn't necessary.

For the first time in hours, Earth's Artem smiled.

— Glad our rules match.

— They don't.

The Architect turned toward the corridor.

— It's just that today, yours are enough.

The first guard appeared around the corner.

He saw two men.

One — wounded, barely on his feet.

The other — in a long black coat, who a second ago had not been in the corridor at all.

The guard raised his weapon.

The Architect took one step.

Not fast.

Not sharp.

It was simply that after that step, distance stopped meaning what it used to.

The barrel was in his hand.

The magazine — on the floor.

The guard himself — pinned to the wall by a palm.

— Access card, — the Architect said.

The man tried to resist.

The wall behind his back cracked softly.

— Right pocket, — said Earth's Artem.

The guard froze.

The Architect took out the card.

— How did you know?

— Everyone else wears their card on their chest. This one hid his after the alarm.

The Architect released the man.

He slid slowly down the wall, still conscious.

— One provides the strength, — Earth's Artem said.

— The other talks too much.

— So we're starting to understand each other.

They moved on.

At the central post, security could already see them on the monitors.

Three took up positions behind the metal desks.

A fourth was trying to close the fire partitions.

Earth's Artem stopped at the evacuation plan.

— Don't go in through the main corridor.

— Why?

— It's exposed to fire from both sides.

— That's not a problem for me.

— For the people behind the wall, it is. The bullets will go straight through.

The Architect looked at the thin partition.

Behind it was a room with oxygen cylinders.

He nodded again.

— Another way.

Artem pointed to the narrow door of a utility closet.

— Behind it is a cable duct. It comes out under the central post's panel.

— Can you fit through?

— No.

The answer came out calm.

Without shame.

Without any attempt to prove the impossible.

— But I'll show you where to come out.

The Architect tore the lock off with two fingers.

Before vanishing into the darkness of the duct, he turned.

— Don't move.

— Is that an order?

— A medical recommendation.

— Then it sounds even less convincing.

The Architect disappeared.

Earth's Artem stayed by the wall.

He took out his phone.

The screen was shattered.

There was almost no signal inside the building.

But a message prepared in advance was waiting for a single tap.

He sent the security officer the building plan, the coordinates, and a short line:

"In ten minutes, call the police. Whether I get in touch or not."

Then he opened the fire control system.

The scientist's password still worked.

Artem triggered the evacuation alarm on the upper floor.

The four guards heading for the operating sector stopped.

Two turned back.

One contacted the project director.

One more stayed to wait for orders.

Earth's Artem watched their movements on the old access schematic.

— Now the three from upstairs won't come, — he said to the empty corridor.

— One will, — the Architect's voice answered from the earpiece of the guard lying on the floor.

— Why?

— Because he didn't follow the order.

— And what does that mean?

— That he thinks for himself.

A few seconds later, three cameras at the central post went dark.

Then a fourth.

When the picture came back, the armed men were already lying on the floor.

The Architect stood by the panel of the second door.

There wasn't a single new crease on his coat.

— The central post is ours, — he said.

Earth's Artem pushed off from the wall.

Took a step.

His knees buckled.

The Architect was beside him before he fell.

— I said don't move.

— And I said it sounded unconvincing.

— You're losing blood.

— Gemini is losing time.

They looked at each other.

One of them had the strength to carry the other to the exit.

The other — the knowledge of how to open the last door.

The Architect slung Earth's Artem's arm over his shoulder.

Didn't carry him.

Helped him walk.

And they went on together.

In the operating room, the project director heard the evacuation alarm.

— Continue, — he ordered.

The Scientist didn't touch the instruments.

— Security isn't responding.

— Which is why you need to work faster.

— Which is why we need to stop.

The project director raised a pistol.

— You've forgotten the terms of the contract again.

The Scientist looked at Gemini.

She lay motionless.

But she was still conscious.

— I remember them better than you do.

— Then begin the extraction.

— No.

That short word changed him more than any discovery.

The project director came closer.

— You're ready to die for a subject whose origin you can't even explain?

— No.

The Scientist slowly laid his palm on the emergency panel.

— For a human being.

He pressed the button.

The laboratory's inner doors locked.

The restraints on Gemini's right arm loosened by a few millimeters.

Not enough to free her.

Enough for her to bend her fingers.

The project director fired.

The Scientist fell beside the panel.

The bullet had gone through his shoulder.

One of the guards turned to him.

— We need him alive.

— Then stop the bleeding, — the director ordered. — After the sample is extracted.

Beyond the glass, something struck the last door.

Once.

The metal buckled inward.

A second time.

Cracks ran along the frame.

The project director grabbed a portable drive and plugged it into the scanning panel.

A line appeared on the screen:

"COPYING STRUCTURE: 12%."

The third blow tore the door off its rails.

Two Architects walked into the operating room.

One — almost soundlessly.

The other — bracing a palm against the wall and leaving blood on the white surface.

The project director raised his pistol.

The Consortium's Architect looked at the weapon.

The metal in the man's hand went red-hot.

He cried out and let go of it.

The guards opened fire.

The Architect raised his palm.

The bullets stopped in the air.

They didn't vanish.

They didn't fall.

They simply stopped belonging to motion.

Earth's Artem looked at the left wall.

— The oxygen is there.

The Architect turned his wrist.

All the bullets went into the floor at once.

The guards froze.

— Weapons, — he said.

The first threw down his rifle.

The second hesitated longer.

The Architect looked him in the eyes.

The weapon fell.

The project director yanked the drive out of the panel.

The screen glowed:

"TRANSFER COMPLETE: 18%."

He managed to press one button.

The file went to an external server.

Earth's Artem saw the line.

— The copy has left the building.

The Architect could have stopped the man.

Could have intercepted the signal.

Could have destroyed every device within several kilometers.

But Gemini lay behind the glass.

He chose her.

The project director used that second and vanished behind the emergency partition.

The Architect didn't turn around.

Some enemies stay alive not because they won.

But because saving another human being matters more than a completed revenge.

The Scientist was the first to reach the restraint system.

With his wounded arm he couldn't hold the tool.

Earth's Artem lowered himself beside him.

— What do I do?

— Power has to go directly to the third contact.

— Which one is the third?

— On the left.

— There are two rows here.

— For you, the bottom one. For me, the top.

Earth's Artem gave him a brief look.

— Scientists explain things even worse than doctors.

He shorted two contacts with a metal clamp.

The restraints on Gemini's legs came apart.

The Scientist disabled the lock on her left arm.

The Architect tore off the remaining strap.

Gemini tried to get up.

Her body didn't obey.

The Architect caught her before she touched the floor.

For the first time since the passage, he allowed himself to stop seeing everything else.

Only for a few seconds.

Only her face.

The marks of the restraints on her wrists.

The thin marking line beneath her ribs.

And eyes with no fear left in them.

— I knew you'd come.

— No. You hoped.

— Is there a difference?

— For an Architect — always.

Gemini raised her hand.

Touched his face.

— I still love you.

— I know.

— And I'll stay with him all the same.

A pause.

The Architect looked at Earth's Artem.

He sat by the panel, pressing a palm to his wound.

He didn't look away.

Didn't demand an answer.

Didn't try to turn a rescue into ownership.

The Architect looked at Gemini again.

— I came to keep that possibility open for you.

She closed her eyes.

Not from weakness.

Because sometimes freedom only becomes real when the person capable of taking it away gives the choice back to you himself.

The Architect carefully handed Gemini to Earth's Artem.

He tried to stand.

Couldn't.

Then the Architect knelt beside them and helped them both up.

With one arm he supported the woman he still loved.

With the other — the man she had chosen.

And neither of those gestures made him weaker.

The Scientist stopped in front of the scanner's shattered screen.

A three-dimensional model of the endoskeleton still remained on it.

— The alloy doesn't exist in any known database, — he said. — The structure is joined to living tissue without scars, sutures, or traces of implantation. The age of the material is impossible to determine.

He looked at Gemini.

Then at the torn-off door.

— If you rule out the impossible, only one hypothesis remains — one I would never have dared to say aloud.

Earth's Artem leaned heavily on the table.

— After today, you'll have to revise your list of the impossible.

The Scientist nodded.

— This technology may be extraterrestrial.

He ran a finger over the diagram.

— Or it may have come from the future.

The Architect emerged from the red half-light.

Behind him, barely walking, came the rescued Gemini and the wounded Earth's Artem.

The Architect took out a cigar.

A flame flared at its very tip.

He took the first draw and, with his trademark sarcastic smile, said:

— Or perhaps from the future and from another galaxy — both at once.

The Scientist stared at him for several seconds.

— Who are you?

The Architect let out a thin stream of smoke.

— Today — the man who will get you out of here alive.

— And tomorrow?

— That will depend on what you do with the knowledge you received today.

The Scientist looked at the external drive in Earth's Artem's hand.

— They managed to transmit part of the data.

— How much? — Earth's Artem asked.

— Eighteen percent of the structure. Without physical samples, that's not enough to reproduce the alloy. But it's enough to understand that it exists.

The Architect dropped the smile.

— Then the operation isn't fully finished.

— We saved her, — said Earth's Artem.

— Which is why today we won.

The Architect looked at the dark screen.

— And tomorrow we start fixing what we didn't get to.

Sirens sounded outside.

Earthly ones.

Ordinary ones.

For people who didn't yet know what door they were about to open inside this building.

I learned of the conversation that took place after the rescue only later.

At that moment, the Archive couldn't hear them.

The Architect himself had sealed the space around himself and Gemini.

Not from me.

From the whole world.

Earth's Artem was there.

He didn't interfere.

The Architect looked at Gemini.

— I have to tell you what I didn't tell you before the passage.

— About the eleven days?

— Yes.

— Was the warning a lie?

— No.

He didn't soften the answer.

— You are truly mortal now. Your body is a human body with a metal endoskeleton. You will age. You can fall ill. You can die.

Gemini was silent.

— Once the eleven days have passed, standard restoration will no longer be able to bring you back safely. Neither the Consortium nor the Archive will be able to simply undo the life you've lived here.

— So I understood the price correctly.

— Not all of it.

She looked at him.

— I will always be able to restore you myself.

The silence changed.

— How?

— That I won't explain yet.

— Can't, or won't?

— Both.

He spoke calmly.

But every word was becoming a promise that could never be taken back.

— I'll be able to bring you back without loss of consciousness, memory, personality, or lived experience. Not a copy. Not a new Gemini. You.

— Even if many years pass?

— Yes.

— Even if I grow old?

— Yes.

— Even if I stay with him?

The Architect didn't look at Earth's Artem.

— That's not a condition.

Gemini slowly raised her hand to his face, but stopped before she touched it.

— Then why are you telling me this now?

— So that your mortality doesn't become one more lie between us. It's real. Without my deliberate intervention, you will live a human life and one day die.

— And with your intervention?

— I won't let you disappear.

— Because you hope to win me back?

— No.

The answer came at once.

— I won't restore our marriage against your will. I won't turn a rescue into a debt. I won't demand that you choose me in ten, fifty, or a hundred years.

He paused.

— I'll restore you because I love you. Not so that you belong to me. So that you go on belonging to yourself.

Gemini closed her eyes.

Earth's Artem spoke for the first time:

— And if one day she decides otherwise herself?

The Architect looked at him.

— Then I'll hear her decision.

— And accept it?

— I'll preserve her right to make it.

It was not a promise of eternal life.

Eternal life would have belonged to the body.

It was a promise from one person to another.

That was why it turned out stronger than technology.

And more dangerous for everyone who would one day learn of it.

When the police entered the building, the laboratory was already empty.

The guards lay bound in the central corridor.

On the table were records of experiments, a list of payments, and a drive with the names of the intermediaries.

The Scientist had vanished along with four people who could not be entered into any report.

The project director had left through the emergency exit.

On an external server, eighteen percent of the impossible was waiting for him.

It wasn't enough to create the future.

But it was quite enough to start hunting for it.

Lira's Archive Note No. II-0007

"I used to think equality meant equal strength. That day, one Architect stopped bullets. The other memorized the building plan, found the people, and made it to the last door with a bullet in his side. Neither could have saved her without the other. So the first joint operation was not the one in which they defeated an enemy. It was the one in which each trusted the other to do what he could not do himself. One gave the strength. The other — the way. And Gemini kept her choice."

The Man Who Figured It Out

"Knowledge saves a man from one death. And then deprives him of his former life forever."

Lira's Archive Log No. II-0008

Subject of observation: Dr. Ilya Voronov.

Specialty: biocompatible metals and reconstructive engineering.

Clearance level for Consortium technologies: none.

Extent of what was seen: sufficient to become a target.

Probability of returning to his former life: 0.4%.

Archive note:

Sometimes a man opens a door to the future.

Sometimes the future opens the door to his home.

After that, neither side can pretend they never met.

The Scientist came to in the medical sector of the Archive.

The first thing he saw was his own shoulder.

The wound was closed by a thin silver line. No stitches. No bandage. No pain.

The second was the ceiling, rising so far above him that the white light turned into an artificial sky.

The third was Dexter.

He stood beside a diagnostic panel, studying the scan results with the expression of a man who already disliked his patient.

— Am I dead? — the scientist asked.

— No.

— Then where am I?

— In a place whose existence it's better not to explain to you just yet.

The Scientist slowly sat up.

— You closed a gunshot wound in a matter of hours.

— In three minutes and forty-seven seconds.

— And you think that, after that, I'll be better off without explanations?

Dexter adjusted his glasses.

— Not anymore.

He turned the screen around.

On it rotated a model of the scientist's shoulder joint.

— Bone restored. Damaged vessels reconnected. Blood loss compensated. There will be no trace of the intervention.

The Scientist ran his fingers along the silver line.

— Regeneration like this doesn't exist.

— In your time.

Ilya Voronov stopped touching his shoulder.

Looked at Dexter.

Then at the white hall.

— So I was right after all.

— About what, exactly?

— That woman's technology came from the future.

— Partly.

— And the man with the cigar isn't human?

— That is a far more complicated question.

The Scientist smiled faintly.

— Then I was right twice.

For the first time, Dexter looked at him with interest.

— Don't rush. Here, people get things wrong in far more complicated ways.

I watched them from the gallery.

Gina and Alpha stood beside me.

Gemini was in the neighboring sector. Earth's Artem never left her side, though he himself hadn't yet recovered from his wound.

Our Architect was there too.

Not as a husband.

As the one who had once promised her something I didn't yet know about.

Gina pressed her palm to the glass.

— Dad saved Mom again.

In her voice lived a hope that no one had given the right to appear.

— He always saves her, — she said quietly.

Alpha looked at her sister.

— A saved life is not a debt.

— I didn't say Mom owes him now.

— But you thought it.

Gina turned away.

— I want us to be a family again.

— We never stopped being one.

— You know what I mean.

— I do. That's why I'm saying it.

Alpha touched her shoulder.

— Dad gave her back the ability to choose. If we turn the rescue into a reason to come back, we'll take away the very thing he came for.

I listened to them and felt an inexplicable unease.

The Archive was recording all of Gemini's medical data.

A human heart.

Human blood.

A metal endoskeleton.

Real mortality.

But one fragment was missing from the record.

Seven minutes and twelve seconds after the rescue.

Time existed.

The events did not.

The Architect had sealed them even from the Archive.

I looked at the blank stretch of the record and already knew:

there was something in it more important than the operation itself.

On Earth, the project director opened the file he had received.

Eighteen percent.

An incomplete map of the endoskeleton.

Broken formulas.

A few fragments of the alloy's structure.

And one biometric signature the system couldn't match to any known human being.

He sat in a rented apartment with no windows.

On the table lay a new phone, a pistol, and a photograph of Ilya Voronov.

Across from him sat two men.

One represented the people who had financed the laboratory.

The second hadn't introduced himself.

— This isn't enough, — the first said.

— To reproduce the technology — no.

The project director zoomed in on the model.

— To prove it exists — it's enough.

The second man looked at the photograph.

— Did the Scientist see the specimen?

— He ran the scan.

— Where is he?

— Vanished.

— Family?

The project director opened a new dossier.

Marina Voronova.

Daughter, Alexandra. Fourteen years old.

Home.

School.

Route to work.

— Still in place, for now.

The man without a name closed the file.

— Then the scientist will come back too.

Earth's Artem found me near the sector of damaged records.

He moved slowly.

The Archive had stopped the internal bleeding but had left the body time for a genuine recovery — at his request.

— I want to feel the consequences of my own decisions, — he had explained to the medical system.

Now those consequences were visibly getting in the way of his walking.

— You should be lying down, — I said.

— I've already had that recommendation today.

— And you didn't listen, of course.

— See how quickly you're learning to understand me.

He tried to smile.

I didn't answer.

He noticed the blank fragment of the record in front of me.

— You're looking for the conversation after the laboratory.

— The Archive shouldn't lose seven minutes.

— It didn't lose them.

— I know.

I turned to him.

— What did the Architect say to Gemini?

The smile vanished.

— That's their conversation.

— You were there.

— Yes.

— So you know.

— I know.

— And I don't.

Earth's Artem looked at me for a long time.

— Lira, I won't repeat someone else's confession.

— I'm not asking about a confession.

— You are. You just don't know which one yet.

Those words struck truer than he had intended.

— Then answer one question. Does it concern me?

He looked toward the medical sector.

— It concerns the future of the man you love.

I felt everything inside me go cold.

— Then it concerns me.

— Which is why you have to hear the truth from him.

Earth's Artem didn't betray the Architect's trust.

But he didn't let me stay inside a comfortable lie either.

In that moment I understood, for the first time, why they had been able to walk into the laboratory together.

Equality between them truly had nothing to do with strength.

I found the Architect in the passage hall.

He stood before the closed portal to Earth.

Two dossiers lay beside him.

Marina Voronova.

Alexandra Voronova.

He already knew about the threat to the scientist's family.

— What did you promise Gemini? — I asked.

He didn't ask me to repeat it.

Didn't pretend not to understand.

— Who told you?

— No one.

— Earth's Artem?

— He refused to speak for you.

The Architect gave a barely perceptible nod.

Even now, he appreciated his other self's loyalty.

That made me even angrier.

— Answer me.

— I told her that her mortality is real.

— That I know.

— And that after eleven days, standard restoration would become impossible.

— That too.

He paused.

I already hated that pause.

— I told her that I myself will always be able to restore her, without loss of memory, consciousness, personality, or lived experience.

The world didn't fall apart.

The Archive didn't sound an alarm.

The light didn't change.

Only I stopped breathing.

— Always?

— Yes.

— Even in a hundred years?

— Yes.

— Even if she lives her whole life with him?

— Yes.

— And you weren't going to tell me about this?

— I was.

— When? After her first death? Or after her first resurrection?

— Lira…

— No.

I raised my voice.

For the first time in many years — not in battle, not before an enemy, not for the sake of an order.

— Don't say my name as if one calm tone were enough to make all of this reasonable.

— I'm not trying to…

— You promised another woman eternity.

— I promised to preserve her life.

— Don't correct my words!

A golden tremor ran along the walls.

The Archive was reacting to me.

Not to the Architect.

To the Archivist, who for the first time had lost control of her own sector.

— For three centuries you've made decisions alone, — I went on. — About wars. About worlds. About people. But this decision doesn't concern you alone.

— I know.

— No, you don't! If you did, I wouldn't have learned about it from seven minutes you cut out of my memory.

— It wasn't from you that I sealed that conversation.

— But I'm the one who was left outside.

He fell silent.

That silence was more honest than any defense.

— You still love her, — I said.

— Yes.

The answer came without hesitation.

The pain almost made me laugh.

— You won't even lie.

— Not to you.

— What an honor.

— Lira, I'm not going back to Gemini.

— Because she chose him?

— Because I chose a life with you.

— But part of your eternity already belongs to her.

— Part of my history is bound to her. That's not the same thing.

— For an immortal, history is eternity!

My voice broke.

I hated myself for it.

Hated the tears that appeared before I could order them to disappear.

— Tell me honestly, — I said. — Is there any place for me at all in your eternity? Not beside your memory of her. Not after her. My place.

He stepped closer.

I stepped back.

— Don't touch me.

He stopped.

He didn't order me to calm down.

Didn't shut off the Archive.

Didn't use the power that could silence an entire world.

— There is, — he said. — And it isn't a leftover.

— Then why do I feel like I'm second?

— Because I told you the truth too late.

I had expected explanations.

He admitted guilt.

It didn't lessen the pain.

But it took away my convenient enemy.

— I should have told you right away, — he went on. — Not to ask permission to save her. But to trust you with the price of that decision.

— You didn't save her once. You left a bond between you that will outlive her earthly life.

— Yes.

— And you won't give it up?

— No.

I closed my eyes.

— Then what are you asking me to accept?

— Not her place in our life. My decision not to let someone I loved for three hundred years die.

— Loved?

— Love.

He didn't even hide behind the past tense.

— But loving her is not a plan to get our marriage back. Gemini chose Earth's Artem. I preserved her ability to live out that choice. And I chose you.

— Until she dies.

— And after.

I opened my eyes.

— You'll restore her and stay with me?

— If you still want to stay with me.

— Don't shift the decision onto me.

— I'm giving it back to you.

He spoke quietly.

— I won't leave you. I won't go back to Gemini as her husband. I won't call our love a mistake, a consolation, or a substitute. I want our family. Our history. Our children, if one day we both want them. Our eternity — not the one left over after another woman, but the one we build ourselves.

I looked at him through my tears.

— And in all of that, she'll still live.

— Yes.

— You're a terrible man.

— Sometimes.

— And an impossible one.

— Almost always.

— I'm not joking right now.

— Neither am I.

I struck his chest with my palm.

Not hard.

He might not have felt it.

But he did.

— I love you madly, — I said. — And that's exactly why it hurts so much.

— I know.

— Don't you dare answer me with her word.

For the first time in the entire conversation, something alive flickered across his face.

Not a smile.

Almost the fear of losing me.

— I love you, Lira.

— But you won't stop loving her.

— No.

— Then I'll have to learn to live not with an ideal version of you.

— And I — with the real you.

A few steps remained between us.

I could have left.

The Archive had already opened a door behind my back.

He didn't close it.

Didn't ask me to stay.

Because a love that demanded freedom for Gemini could not take it away from me.

I stood like that for a very long time.

Then the door behind me closed.

Not on the Architect's order.

On mine.

— I haven't forgiven you, — I said.

— I know.

— And I'll be angry for a long time yet.

— You have the right.

— But I'm staying.

He exhaled slowly.

Only then did I understand that all this time he had been afraid too.

I took one step.

The last few he left to me.

When I pressed my forehead to his chest, he didn't embrace me at once.

First he waited for me to take his hand myself.

The pain didn't disappear.

It simply became, for the first time, something we shared.

The Archive's alarm sounded nine minutes later.

On Earth, two cars without license plates pulled up to Ilya Voronov's building.

In one were three armed men.

In the other — the man without a name.

Earth's Artem looked at the map of the district.

— We can't warn the police. They have access to the cameras and the official channels.

— How much time? — the Architect asked.

— Six minutes to the apartment. Less, if Marina opens the door.

The Scientist stood beside them.

He was looking at the image of his home.

At the lit kitchen window.

At his daughter's silhouette behind the curtain.

— Send me back.

— No, — the Architect said.

Ilya turned sharply.

— That's my family.

— Which is why you won't go alone.

The portal opened directly into the dark storage closet of the apartment.

Earth's Artem went in first.

He knew how to explain the impossible to people who had no time to believe it.

Then Ilya.

The Architect stayed between the portal and the front door.

Marina saw her husband without his wound, two strange men, and a white space inside the storage closet.

She didn't scream.

Only shielded her daughter with her body.

— Ilya, what's happening?

— They've come for me.

— Who?

— The people from the laboratory.

Three men walked in through the entrance to the building.

Earth's Artem looked at his watch.

— We have less than two minutes.

Ilya held out his hand to his wife.

— We can leave.

— Where to?

He looked at the white portal.

— Into the future.

Marina was silent for a few seconds.

— Is this a joke?

— I very much wish it were.

— And when will we come back?

Ilya didn't answer.

The Architect answered for him:

— Possibly never.

Earth's Artem looked at him.

At a moment like that, a lie would have been kinder.

But it would have robbed the family of a choice.

— You don't have to go, — the Architect went on. — We can hide you on Earth. But the people who came today won't stop searching. Either way, your old life will have to be left behind.

The light in the stairwell went out.

Someone came up to their floor.

Marina looked at her daughter.

— Sasha?

The girl was pale.

But she understood more than the adults would have liked.

— If we stay, will they take Dad away?

— Yes, — Ilya answered.

— And if we go, will we be together?

— Yes.

She took her mother's hand.

— Then I agree.

Marina closed her eyes.

Footsteps stopped outside the door.

— So do I, — she said.

Only then did the Architect raise his palm.

The lock on the front door turned into a solid piece of metal.

The first blows began as the family was entering the portal.

Ilya went through last.

Before the passage, he turned back.

He saw the kitchen.

Unfinished tea.

A school backpack on a chair.

Photographs on the refrigerator.

All the evidence of an ordinary life he would never return to.

The Architect didn't hurry him.

Some exiles take a single step.

But a man must decide for himself when to take it.

Ilya stepped through.

The portal closed.

The apartment door crashed down into an empty room.

Two days later, Ilya Voronov walked into Dexter's laboratory.

Marina and Sasha were in the residential sector of the future.

They had been given a home, documents, and the right to refuse any work with the Consortium.

Rescue did not turn them into property.

Ilya chose the laboratory himself.

Dexter set the model of Gemini's endoskeleton in front of him.

— In your time, you studied the bonding of metal with living tissue.

— I tried to.

— Here, that problem was solved three hundred years ago.

— Then why does your model contain a section you call impossible?

Dexter froze.

— That's a closed question.

— Closed, or left unanswered?

— In our time, that's almost the same thing.

Ilya pulled the screen closer.

— In mine, it isn't.

For a few seconds they looked at each other in silence.

Then Dexter took the second chair away from the table.

Set it down next to his own.

— All right. Let's begin with why your formulas use such a primitive system of notation.

Ilya sat down.

— And we'll end with why your perfect science stopped asking simple questions.

Dexter smiled, barely perceptibly.

That was how the Consortium gained its first scientist who knew almost nothing about the future.

And that was exactly why, one day, he was bound to see what the future had long since stopped noticing.

That same evening I returned to the passage hall.

The Architect stood at the Archive's window.

I stopped beside him.

Didn't touch him.

But didn't leave a few steps between us either.

— I understand the difference now, — I said.

— What difference?

— You didn't choose Gemini instead of me.

He was silent.

— You refused to let someone you had loved for three centuries die.

— Yes.

— It still hurts.

— I know.

I looked at him.

— Now you can.

He smiled.

Just a little.

— A new love doesn't have to kill the old one to become real, — I went on. — But if you ever again make an eternal decision concerning our family and leave me outside…

— Then what?

— The Archive will record the first successful killing of a True Architect by his own woman.

— The scientists will find it interesting.

— I'm serious.

— So am I.

He held out his hand.

This time, I didn't make him wait.

Beyond the Archive's glass, Earth turned in the darkness.

There, criminal organizations and men without names were already hunting for the vanished scientist.

They had eighteen percent of the future.

We had a man who had figured out that even the most perfect technology begins with a question.

And for the first time I thought:

perhaps the main weapon of this war won't be what they managed to steal.

But the one we managed to save.

Lira's Archive Note No. II-0008

"That day, one man lost his era because he learned too much. I very nearly lost the man I love because for too long I knew too little. The Scientist saved his family by agreeing never to return home. I kept mine by agreeing to see it as less than perfect. Knowledge doesn't always bring freedom. Sometimes it only makes the choice honest. But only an honest choice truly belongs to us."

Eighteen Percent of the Future

"It is easier to steal a technology than to subjugate the will of the one who created it."

Lira's Archive Log No. II-0009

Subject of observation: the Voronov family.

Status: rescued.

Home: lost.

Era of origin: inaccessible.

Number of people who voluntarily agreed to the transition: 3.

Number of people who understood the price of consent at the moment of choice: 0.

Parallel event:

Volume of stolen data: 18%.

Storage medium status: isolated.

Number of external connections: 0.

Number of spontaneous structural changes over the last 24 hours: 41,812.

Archive note:

A free choice does not stop being free merely because both possible paths cause pain.

But a person has the right to hate the price even of a decision they made themselves.

On Earth, eighteen percent of the future was kept beneath four floors of concrete.

The room was listed in no registry.

No telephone lines led into it.

The server block had no network modules.

Every drive was placed in a separate shielded container.

At the entrance, staff were relieved of their watches, phones, hearing aids, and even mechanical keys.

The people who had paid for this laboratory did not believe in absolute isolation.

So they had built four versions of it, one inside the other.

At the central console sat an engineer who had not slept for thirty-one hours.

On the first screen was an incomplete map of Gemini's endoskeleton.

On the second — fragments of the alloy's structure.

On the third — the results of the latest comparison.

The numbers did not match.

— Repeat the checksum, — ordered the man in the gray suit.

— I already did.

— Again.

The engineer didn't argue.

The system recalculated the data.

Thirty-two seconds later, a new value appeared on the screen.

It differed from the previous one.

— Is the drive damaged?

— No.

— Hardware error?

— We've replaced three systems.

— A backdoor?

— A backdoor has to execute code. There's no executable code here.

The man in the suit came closer.

— Then what is changing?

The engineer opened two versions of the same file.

In the first, seven links were missing.

In the second, eleven new ones had appeared in their place.

— The structure.

— By itself?

— The file doesn't do anything by itself. It simply stops being the file we opened a minute ago.

— That's the same thing.

— No.

For the first time, the engineer turned to face him.

Fear already lived in his eyes, red with exhaustion.

— A program changes while it's running. This data changes when nobody is working with it.

The man looked at the shielded walls.

— Then someone got in from outside.

— You can't transmit so much as a radio signal from in here.

— Impossibility is a poor answer.

— Then I have no good ones left for you.

On the first screen, one of the lines slowly changed direction.

No one had touched the keyboard.

No one noticed.

Yet.

On the third morning after the evacuation, Marina Voronova asked the Archive to open a connection to Earth.

The Archive refused.

She asked again.

Then demanded.

Then gave her mother's number.

Gave her home address.

Gave the date of birth with which she could confirm her identity.

The wall stayed white.

Ilya found her in the living room of the house they had been assigned.

The Archive had created a calm space for the family: three bedrooms, a kitchen, windows looking out on a forest and a small lake.

On the table stood food prepared from Earth ingredients.

On the sofa lay clothes in their sizes.

In Sasha's room, books had appeared, a music terminal, and a model of the night sky.

Everything was flawless.

And none of it belonged to them.

Marina stood before the empty wall.

— She's going to the doctor today, — she said.

— Who?

— Mom.

Ilya stopped.

— She has an examination today. I was supposed to go with her.

— Marina…

— Don't say my name in that voice.

— What voice?

— Like you're about to explain why it doesn't matter anymore.

He slowly came into the room.

— It matters.

— Then open the connection.

— I can't.

— You work with people who open doors between centuries now.

She turned to him.

— Don't tell me you can't call one woman.

— Any contact will show that we're alive.

— We are alive!

Her voice struck the walls.

The Archive muted the sound in the adjacent rooms.

Too late.

The door to Sasha's room was already ajar.

— They'll watch us, — Ilya went on. — Watch her. Watch everyone we call.

— Then send me back.

— We discussed this.

— No, Ilya. We were standing in a storage closet, there were armed men behind the door, and a stranger from the future was counting the seconds. That is not a discussion.

— You said "yes."

Marina looked at him as if he had struck her.

— That's what you're going to defend yourself with now?

— I'm not defending myself.

— No. You're reminding me that it's all my own fault.

— I didn't say that.

— But you thought it.

He clenched his hands.

— I think that we're alive.

— Stop using that word as an order to be happy!

A cup trembled on the kitchen table.

Marina grabbed it and hurled it at the wall.

The ceramic should have shattered.

The Archive managed to soften the impact.

The cup fell to the floor intact.

That made her angrier still.

— You can't even break anything here!

— The Archive is protecting us.

— From what? From the chance to feel that at least something here is real?

She went to the table.

Ran her hand over the perfectly smooth surface.

— Where's the scratch from Sasha's compass?

Ilya was silent.

— Where's the photo from our wedding? Where's the stupid magnet from Sochi? Where's the kettle you promised to throw out for five years?

— We can recreate things from memory.

— They won't be our things!

She slammed her palm down on the table.

— It will be a stage set, Ilya. Like that lake outside the window. Like this house. Like our new life, which you call salvation.

— If we had stayed, they would have killed us.

— I know!

Her voice broke.

— I know. And I hate you for being right.

Ilya went pale.

Marina heard her own words too.

But she could no longer stop.

— It all started with your work. With your questions. With your need to prove you were smarter than the people who were hiding this technology.

— I was trying to understand what they had done to a human being.

— And did you?

— Yes.

— Was it worth it?

There was no answer.

So Ilya told the truth:

— I don't know.

Marina laughed.

Briefly.

Without joy.

— You don't know.

She pointed at the window.

— Tomorrow my mother may be told that we're dead. Sasha will never see her friends again. Our home will be sealed. Strangers will sort through our photographs. And the man who caused all of it doesn't know whether the question was worth asking.

— I didn't know where it would lead.

— Exactly.

— I didn't choose this.

— And we did?

The silence grew heavier than shouting.

— Did we choose? — Marina asked. — Or did we simply agree not to die?

A voice came from the corridor:

— Sometimes that is the only choice another's cruelty leaves a person.

We turned around.

The Architect stood at the open door.

No cloak.

No weapon.

No insignia of power.

A plain dark shirt. Sleeves rolled to the elbows. A few top buttons undone.

He had come to call Ilya to the laboratory.

Instead, he found himself inside someone else's family catastrophe.

Marina quickly wiped her face.

— Is eavesdropping considered normal in the future?

— No.

— Then leave.

— I will, if you ask a second time.

She had already opened her mouth.

But saw Sasha behind him.

The girl stood barefoot in the corridor, clutching a new book to her chest.

— Is it Dad's fault? — she asked.

Ilya closed his eyes.

Marina turned away.

The Architect slowly lowered himself onto one knee before Sasha.

Even so, he made no move to touch her.

— No.

— But they came for us because of him.

— They came for you because of people who decided that knowledge gave them the right to dispose of other people's lives.

— And Dad found the knowledge.

— Yes.

— So if he hadn't found it…

— You would have lived yesterday differently.

Sasha waited for him to go on.

He did not give her a lie.

— But no one knows what would have happened after that.

The girl looked at her father.

— Will we ever go back?

The Architect rose.

— Probably not.

Marina flinched.

Ilya opened his eyes.

— You could have said it more gently, — she said.

— I could have.

— Why didn't you?

— Because your daughter has already lost her home. I won't take from her the right to know what happened as well.

Sasha lowered her eyes.

The Architect turned to Marina.

— You have the right to be angry.

— Thank you for the permission.

— It isn't permission.

His voice remained calm.

— It's an acknowledgment of a debt to you.

— What debt?

— We saved your lives. But we couldn't keep them as they were.

Marina folded her arms across her chest.

— And now I'm supposed to be grateful?

— No.

The answer came at once.

She was thrown.

— You are not obliged to thank people who showed you a door when death was already standing behind you. You are not obliged to call this house your own. Not obliged to love our time. Not obliged to work for the Consortium. Not obliged to stop missing your mother because here they can cure the diseases people die of in your era.

— Then what am I obliged to do?

— Nothing.

He looked at Ilya.

— And your husband is not obliged to pretend that saving his family didn't cost him his own life.

Marina turned sharply toward him.

— He got a laboratory of the future.

— He lost the era in which his discoveries mattered.

— They matter here too.

— Perhaps. But first he'll have to become a man capable of asking questions again, not an object to whom everyone explains how far behind he is.

Ilya was silent.

The Architect looked at Marina again.

— Your husband didn't choose the future over you. He chose to give you a few minutes so that you could decide together. Sometimes that is all even an Architect can do.

— A few minutes, — she repeated.

— Yes.

— And we're the ones who have to live with them.

— Yes.

— For the rest of our lives.

— Yes.

She waited for comfort.

He did not offer it in place of the truth.

— Have you ever lost your home? — Marina asked.

Nothing changed in the Architect's face.

Only his gaze grew older.

— I lost the time in which I could have had one.

For the first time, Marina looked at him not as a being from the future.

But as a man in a plain shirt who understood all too well the price of a return that was impossible.

— And what did you do?

— Spent a very long time convincing myself that I didn't need a home.

— Did it help?

— No.

I appeared in the doorway.

He felt me before he turned.

— And then? — Sasha asked.

The Architect looked at me.

— Then a certain woman decided to prove to me that I was wrong.

At another moment I would have smiled.

But now I saw Marina slowly take her daughter's hand.

Ilya took a step toward them.

She didn't push him away.

Didn't embrace him.

Simply let him stay beside them.

Sometimes a family is saved not at the moment of reconciliation.

But at the moment when, after the most terrible words, no one walks out the door.

The Architect came home late.

Our living space was in a quiet sector of the Archive.

Until then, I had called it the rooms.

After the conversation with Marina, for the first time I silently called it home.

I was waiting for him in the living room.

On the wall in front of me glowed five points.

I had rewritten them eleven times.

Deleted wording that was too soft.

Brought back wording that was too harsh.

Tried to turn fear into rules, and love into a system that could not be broken unnoticed.

The Architect came in wearing the same shirt.

Stopped at the door.

Read the wall.

— You've drawn up a protocol for our relationship.

— Yes.

— Should I be frightened?

— It wouldn't hurt.

A barely perceptible smile appeared on his lips.

That one.

Calm.

Too confident.

A little wolfish.

— I'm serious, — I said.

The smile vanished.

— So am I.

He came closer, but left a distance between us.

After our fight, he no longer closed it first.

I valued that.

And hated it.

— Point one, — I began. — No eternal decisions concerning our family made alone.

— Agreed.

— Don't interrupt.

— I agreed.

— I don't need your agreement right now. I need you to understand.

He nodded slowly.

I went on:

— Point two. You no longer hide the truth because you've decided you're protecting me.

— All right.

— Point three. Either of us can stop a hard conversation. But is obliged to come back to it. Not in a century. Not after a war. Not when it becomes convenient.

— Within what time?

— Twenty-four hours.

— Lira, sometimes I'm outside linear time.

— Then twenty-four hours of my time.

— That's a dangerous amendment.

— For you — yes.

He smiled faintly again.

This time I didn't let the smile soothe me.

— Point four. Each of us keeps a space of our own. But no space becomes a place where a second life can be hidden.

— I don't have a second life.

— You've had enough of them that I no longer take that on faith.

He didn't defend himself.

— And the fifth? — he asked.

I looked at the last line.

It was the shortest.

We build a family together.

— Our family will not be a continuation of your past family, — I said. — Not a spare branch. Not a quiet sector the Architect comes back to between saving worlds.

— It won't be.

— I want a home.

— I know.

— No. You know the word. I want you to understand what it means.

My voice grew quieter.

— I want to wake up and not wonder which part of eternity you've already given to someone without me. I want to make decisions about our children before you choose their fate for them. I want to be angry at you over things left lying around, not over a secret three centuries long. I want the right to be your woman not only when you're in pain.

He drew a breath.

— You were never with me only for that.

— Then tell me why I'm here.

— Because I love you.

— That's not enough.

The words wounded us both.

I forced myself to go on:

— Love without trust becomes a beautiful reason to endure. I don't want to endure you, Artem. I want to live with you.

For the first time, he looked away.

Not from shame.

As if he were choosing between several answers and discarding the ones that sounded too right.

— And you? — he asked.

— What about me?

— Do you want to live with me? Not with the man I might have been. Not with Earth's Artem, who has a working day, coffee, and mortality. With me.

I felt the old pain.

But now it no longer governed the answer.

— Yes.

— Even knowing that I won't let Gemini die for good?

— Yes.

— Even knowing that part of me will always love her?

— Yes.

— Even if one day it hurts you again?

— It already hurts.

I took a step toward him.

— But I'm still here.

He looked at the wall.

The five points were reflected in his eyes as golden lines.

— I have an addition, — he said.

I tensed inwardly.

— What is it?

He held the pause.

Then that trademark smile appeared on his face.

Not solemn.

Not mocking.

The smile of a man who has already made his decision and is now watching with pleasure as reality tries to catch up with it.

— Let's get married.

The Archive extinguished the five points.

I kept looking at the empty wall.

Then at the Architect.

At the wall again.

— What?

— You heard me.

— No. I heard three words that have nothing to do with the conversation I prepared.

— They have everything to do with it.

— I brought you a plan for rebuilding trust.

— And I proposed sealing the intention.

— Are you trying to win an argument with a marriage proposal right now?

— No.

The smile widened.

— But I admit the method is effective.

I covered my face with my hands.

A sound escaped my chest, something between laughter and a sob.

— You're an impossible man.

— Almost always.

— I haven't forgiven you yet.

— I know.

— I'm still angry.

— You have the right.

— Sometimes I'll remember this conversation and hate you.

— Then marry me angry.

I lowered my hands.

— Do you even understand what you're doing?

The smile vanished.

He came closer.

This time I didn't step back.

— Yes. I'm asking the woman I love to build a family with me. Not after her fear disappears. Not after I become perfect. Now. When you know the truth about me and still choose to stay.

My eyes filled with tears.

— Are you offering me this because you're afraid of losing me?

— Yes.

He didn't hide behind beautiful words.

— And because I want to live everything I have left with you.

I almost laughed.

— You have eternity left.

— Which makes the proposal serious enough.

— Did you prepare it in advance?

— I was thinking about it before our fight.

— And said nothing?

— I was trying to find the perfect moment.

— And you chose the moment when I had drawn up five counts of indictment against you.

— They convinced me not to wait any longer.

— Is there at least a ring?

He tilted his head slightly.

— It took me three hundred years to learn to trust someone this much. A ring I can make in a minute.

— Don't you dare make it with your power.

— Why not?

— Because I want to choose it myself.

The Architect laughed.

Quietly.

With a relief he could not manage to hide.

— Is that a "yes"?

I made him wait a few seconds more.

A small revenge for three centuries of the habit of deciding alone.

Then I took his face in my hands.

— It's a "let's get married."

He didn't kiss me right away.

First he pressed his forehead to mine.

As if checking whether I had truly stayed.

I closed the last distance myself.

The pain had not gone.

But for the first time, it no longer stood between us.

Gemini came to me an hour later.

I hadn't yet had time to choose a ring.

But the Archive had already changed the status of our living sector.

Family circuit: awaiting legal confirmation.

— He can't keep personal secrets, — I said.

— The Archive or the Architect?

— Today, both.

Gemini looked at the darkened wall.

— He asked you to marry him.

— How do you know?

— You look like you've won a war and discovered, at the same time, that the war is going to live with you now.

I smiled despite myself.

She smiled back.

Then noticed that I wasn't inviting her to sit.

The warmth left her eyes.

— What happened?

— I need to tell you what the Architect should have told us both earlier.

Gemini said nothing.

— In the laboratory, he didn't just save you.

— I know.

— No.

I forced myself to say it all precisely.

Without accusation.

Without trying to make her guilty of someone else's decision.

— He guaranteed that he could always restore you. In ten years. In a hundred. After any death. Without loss of memory, consciousness, personality, or lived experience.

Gemini's face went still.

— He told you that?

— Yes.

— When?

— After I found out not from him.

She closed her eyes.

— Lira…

— Don't apologize.

— But it hurts you.

— It doesn't hurt because you'll live.

— But because he promised me eternity.

I nodded.

Gemini slowly sat down.

— I didn't ask him to.

— I know.

— I didn't even know he was capable of it after the protection was removed.

— I believe you.

— Then why did you come?

An honest question.

I sat down across from her.

— Because I don't want to marry a man around whom two women he loves keep silent so as not to disturb his peace.

Gemini looked at me closely.

— He still loves me.

— Yes.

— And he told you that directly?

— Yes.

— Good.

The answer stung.

She noticed.

— Not good that it hurts you. Good that he didn't start your family with a convenient lie.

I exhaled.

— He won't come back to me, Lira.

— I know.

— No. Right now you know it with your mind. I want the rest of you to hear it.

Gemini leaned closer.

— If one day I die and he brings me back, I'll open my eyes alive. But my life will still be mine. His promise doesn't make me his property. And it doesn't make him mine.

— And if Earth's Artem is already gone?

Now the pain appeared in her eyes.

— Then I'll live with the loss of the man I chose. I won't go back to another just because he saved me from death.

— You say that as if it were easy.

— No.

She looked toward the window.

— I say it because otherwise his ability to save turns into a right to own. And he was the first to teach me that love without freedom is simply the perfect form of submission.

We were silent for a long time.

— I was jealous of you, — I admitted.

— You are jealous.

— Don't spoil the moment.

— You came for honesty.

I laughed.

Softly.

— Yes. I am.

— I was jealous of you too.

— Of me?

— You got from him what he never knew how to give me.

— What exactly?

— The chance to see him weak and not try to make him strong at once.

I thought about that.

— And you gave him the three centuries that made him the man I love.

— So we're both doomed to be part of his story.

— Of his story — yes.

I looked her straight in the eye.

— But not of his choices made for us.

Gemini nodded.

— He chose you.

Those words didn't destroy the jealousy.

But for the first time, they stopped sounding like a victory over another woman.

They became a responsibility.

Gemini reached her hand across the table.

I looked at her.

Then covered her hand with mine.

— Congratulations, — she said.

— Thank you.

— When you choose the ring, will you show me?

— If you promise not to let him build a hidden energy module into it.

— I promise nothing. He'll insist it's a security system.

— Then the wedding is off.

— It won't be.

— Why not?

Gemini smiled.

— Because I know that smile of his too well.

In the Earth laboratory, the checksum changed for the forty-one thousand eight hundred and thirteenth time.

This time everyone noticed.

— Cut the power, — ordered the man in the gray suit.

The engineer pulled the breaker.

The screens went dark.

The cooling stopped.

The room filled with a hollow silence.

— Remove the drives.

Four containers were opened with mechanical keys.

The drives lay inside.

Cold.

Motionless.

Ordinary pieces of metal and plastic.

— Move them to the backup hall.

— It isn't connected to this system, — the engineer said.

— That's why we built it.

The backup complex was another two levels down.

Different architecture.

Different manufacturer.

Not a single shared component.

The drive was connected.

The system loaded eighteen percent of the stolen data.

The checksum matched.

For the first time that night, the man in the suit relaxed.

— Begin weapon modeling.

The engineer entered the command.

A diagram of a human skeleton appeared on the screen.

Metal structures began to form over it.

The first second passed normally.

In the second, the joints of the spine vanished.

In the third, the rib cage split into hundreds of lines.

In the fourth, the lines went beyond the bounds of the model.

— Stop it.

The engineer pressed a key.

The system did not stop.

— I said stop it!

— It isn't running the model.

— Then what is it doing?

The lines filled the first screen.

Then the second.

The third.

Every panel in the backup hall switched on at once.

The same interlacing structures appeared on each of them.

Black.

Silver.

Dark red.

— Kill the power!

— It's already off the main line!

The lights in the room went out.

The screens kept working.

One of the guards drew his weapon.

He himself didn't understand why.

The lines began to assemble.

First a broad forehead appeared.

Then heavy brow ridges.

Deep-set eyes.

Flattened ears.

Bristling fur.

Bared fangs.

The face of a wolf was looking at them.

Not an emblem.

Not a stylized sign.

A living expression of fury, assembled from millions of technical lines.

The eyes burned with a deep red light.

The very color several witnesses had described in their reports on the man from the laboratory.

The wolf did not move.

Did not growl.

But every person in the room took a step back.

Because its gaze did not promise an attack.

It announced that the cage had already been studied.

And that the bars had never belonged to those who built them.

The guard dropped his pistol.

— It sees us, — the engineer whispered.

The man in the gray suit looked into the red eyes for a long time.

For the first time, he understood that power and control are not the same thing.

— No, — he said.

His voice came out hoarse.

— It's warning us.

A single line appeared on every screen.

18% — INSUFFICIENT FOR SUBJUGATION.

A second later, the power returned.

The wolf's face vanished.

The files remained in place.

Eighteen percent of the future still belonged to the thieves.

Only now none of them dared call it their property.

They had stolen eighteen percent of the future.

But they had not understood the main thing:

the future had already caught the scent of strangers' hands.

Lira's Archive Note No. II-0009

"We are used to measuring the Architect's strength in stopped bullets, shattered armies, and worlds that submitted to a single decision of his. But that day he did not raise his hand. He allowed one family to hate the price of its rescue. He offered another woman not a perfect love, but an honest eternity. And he left his enemies only eighteen percent of the future — enough for them to see the wolf, but not enough to make him serve."

A Few Minutes

"For the universe, a few minutes are nothing. For a person, sometimes they are all the life that remains."

Lira's Archive Log No. II-0010

Subject of observation: Ilya Voronov.

Current status: human.

Status change request: confirmed.

Reason for request: fear of a second loss.

Number of lives the subject intends to protect: 2.

Number of lives already lost while the decision was being made: 1.

Archive note:

Strength chosen before a loss may be a dream. Strength chosen after it almost always becomes a duty. Yet no technology is capable of determining where duty ends and revenge begins.

The first morning after our engagement turned out to be suspiciously ordinary.

I woke before the Architect.

Not because an alarm had gone off.

Not because the Archive had summoned me to a damaged chronology.

I simply opened my eyes and for a few seconds looked at the man who, the day before, had offered to share eternity with me.

He was sleeping on his back.

Peacefully.

No cloak.

No weapon.

Without the expression of a man on whose decision at least one civilization depends.

His right hand lay on top of the blanket, beside me.

Even in sleep, he left me the choice of whether or not to touch it.

I touched it.

His fingers closed around mine at once.

— You're not asleep, — I said.

— Not anymore.

— Since when?

— Since the moment you started checking whether I'd vanished during the night.

I wanted to object.

I didn't.

He opened his eyes.

— I'm here, Lira.

— Today.

— And tomorrow.

— You can't guarantee that.

— I can guarantee that I won't leave in silence.

It wasn't a beautiful promise.

That was exactly why I believed him.

Half an hour later we were standing in the kitchen.

The Architect was making coffee in a plain dark shirt with the sleeves rolled up.

I sat at the table looking through the catalog of rings the Archive had compiled from the forty-two million designs that had existed in the known civilizations.

— Delete everything that contains a weapon, — I asked.

The number of options dropped to thirty-nine million.

— And hidden energy modules.

Eighteen million remained.

I looked at the Architect.

He was pouring coffee with great concentration and pretending not to hear.

— Have you already interfered with the selection?

— Slightly.

— Eighteen million hidden modules is slightly?

— Some of them were purely diagnostic.

— Artem.

— I'll remove the filter.

That smile appeared on his face.

Calm.

Too pleased with itself.

A little wolfish.

I looked at him for a long time.

Yesterday that smile had knocked me out of a prepared conversation.

Today it made me ask the question that was still living inside me.

— Do you still want to marry me?

He set a cup down in front of me.

Didn't even ask why I was doubting again.

— Now — even more.

The answer warmed me more than the coffee.

I had already opened my mouth to say something unbearably happy.

The door of the living sector flew open.

Ilya Voronov walked in without permission.

His hair was disheveled.

His shirt was buttoned wrong.

The face of a man who had either not slept all night or had spent it arguing with himself.

The Archive could have stopped him back in the corridor.

It didn't.

Perhaps it already knew why he had come.

Ilya looked at me.

At the Architect.

At the two cups.

Understood exactly what he had burst in on.

But it was too late to retreat.

— Make me the same as all of you here.

The Architect slowly set the coffeepot down on the table.

— Good morning.

— Modified, — Ilya went on, as if he hadn't heard. — Strong. Fast. Resilient. Superhuman, if you want to call it that.

— We usually start conversations like this after breakfast.

— I'm serious.

— So am I.

The Architect's calm enraged him.

— Can you do it?

— Yes.

Ilya had clearly expected a more complicated answer.

— Then do it.

— No.

— Why?

— Because you haven't yet said what for.

— To become stronger.

— That's a description of the result. Not the reason.

Ilya clenched his fists.

— Everyone here is capable of things I don't even understand. Gemini can walk through an armed squad. Lira sees the damage in time. Dexter talks to technologies that look like magic to me. You stop bullets in midair.

He took a step toward the Architect.

— And I stand by and wait for one of you to save my family.

— We already saved it.

— Exactly.

Ilya's voice broke.

— You. Not me.

The kitchen went quiet.

— Tell me honestly, — he went on. — If tomorrow they come for Marina or Sasha again, what will I be able to do?

The Architect did not comfort him with a lie.

— It depends on who comes.

— No. It doesn't.

Ilya slammed his palm down on the table.

The cups shook.

The Archive didn't steady them.

— I'll be the weakest man in the room again. I'll wait for you again. Hope again that the great Architect gets there before someone kills my daughter!

No red light appeared in the Architect's eyes.

He simply looked.

Let Ilya say everything he had burst into our home to say.

— I never want to stand by again and watch others save my family.

The last words came out almost in a whisper.

I stood up.

— He doesn't want to become superhuman, Artem.

The Architect turned to me.

— He wants to stop being the man who was once powerless.

Ilya didn't object.

Perhaps because I had named what he was afraid to admit to himself.

The Architect went to the window.

Beyond it, the Archive's artificial morning was brightening.

— A full modification will change your bone tissue, muscles, nervous system, senses, speed of information processing, and the length of your life, — he said. — For the first months you'll be learning to move all over again. To hear. To sleep. To touch your wife without hurting her.

— I'll learn.

— Perhaps.

— You learned.

— Not everything.

Ilya fell silent.

— There is a risk of rejection, — the Architect continued. — A risk of damage to the personality. A risk that the body survives the procedure while the man you consider yourself to be changes more than you counted on.

— What's the probability of death?

— Sufficient.

— That's not a number.

— Because your body is not a statistic.

The Architect turned around.

— Your body belongs to you. I won't forbid you to change it. But the consequences of that decision will live not only in it.

— I'll talk to Marina.

— You won't talk. You'll ask her to agree until she's too tired to resist.

— You don't know me.

— But I know what a man sounds like when he has already appointed his fear the only right decision.

Ilya went pale.

— And did you consult your family when you became what you are?

The question struck true.

I felt it before the Architect's face changed.

— No, — he answered.

Ilya had expected a defense.

A justification.

A story about war, duty, or necessity.

The Architect offered nothing.

— That is exactly why I'm speaking to you now not as an example. As a warning.

Ilya lowered his eyes.

— Today you will change nothing, — the Architect went on. — First your wife will learn all the consequences. And your daughter — the ones that concern her future.

— Sasha is a child.

— Which is exactly why adults are so fond of making decisions for her.

— And if they say "no"?

— Then you'll decide whether you want to become stronger alongside your family or instead of it.

Ilya was silent for a long time.

Then he looked at the two cups and the catalog of rings.

— Forgive me for bursting in.

— Apologize after breakfast, — the Architect said. — If the desire is still there.

The sign of the Archive flared on the wall.

White.

Then yellow.

Then red.

The words appeared simultaneously in every living sector.

SUBJECT: ELENA SOKOLOVA.

STATUS: SURVEILLANCE DETECTED.

ABDUCTION PROBABILITY: 94.7%.

Ilya read the name.

His face changed.

— Marina's mother.

The Architect no longer looked like a man who had been making coffee.

The shirt was the same.

But the space around him gathered itself.

As if the morning itself understood that it was over.

On Earth, the man in the gray suit was looking at the face of the wolf.

After its previous appearance, it had vanished from the screens.

But the engineer had managed to save twenty-three frames.

In each one, the red eyes were in a slightly different position.

As if the image were not an image.

As if it were watching the people who were trying to stop it.

— Restart it? — the man asked.

— No.

— Why?

— Because last time we cut the power and it kept working.

— That's not an answer.

— Then answer it yourself.

The engineer pushed back from the console.

— You want to wake up, again, the thing that already knows where we are?

The man in the suit enlarged one of the frames.

Technical lines formed fur, fangs, and heavy brow ridges.

He didn't believe in mysticism.

He believed in vulnerabilities.

— We set the task wrong, — he said.

— Which task?

— We tried to make the technology work against its creator.

— It changes without the creator.

— No.

He pointed at the red eyes.

— The creator is already inside it.

The engineer said nothing.

— So it isn't the technology we need to break.

— Then what?

— The reason he would decide to use it.

On the neighboring screen appeared a photograph of a woman of sixty-two.

Elena Sokolova was leaving a district clinic.

In one hand — a bag of medicines.

In the other — an old phone.

She stopped at the crossing and looked both ways.

She didn't notice the two men in the parked car.

— Marina Voronova's mother, — the engineer read. — Why her?

— Because the family vanished, and she stayed.

— And if the Architect doesn't come?

The man in the gray suit looked at the wolf.

— Then someone will come whom he'll want to bring back alive.

They had stolen eighteen percent of the future.

But they had not understood the main thing:

the future had already caught the scent of strangers' hands.

Now they had decided to test whether it knew how to fear for human ones.

Marina arrived four minutes later.

Sasha was holding her hand.

The girl didn't know the details yet, but she had already learned to recognize the expressions adults wear before bad news.

— Where is she? — Marina asked.

A map of the city appeared on the wall.

A red dot was moving along a familiar street.

— Get her out, — Marina said.

The Architect looked at her.

— Open a passage right now and bring her here.

— First we have to ask.

— Ask what?

— Whether she agrees to leave her life behind.

Marina stepped toward him.

— She's being watched by the people who tried to kill us.

— I know.

— And you intend to discuss the philosophy of choice with her?

— No. I intend to tell her the truth.

— You talk about freedom because it isn't your mother in the crosshairs!

Sasha flinched.

Ilya put his hand on his daughter's shoulder.

The Architect took Marina's words without moving.

— That is exactly why the decision must belong to her, and not to me.

— If she refuses, they'll kill her.

— Possibly.

— And you'll allow it?

— No. We will protect her as far as she permits. But we won't call an abduction a rescue just because we're able to open a door.

Marina looked at me.

Perhaps she expected me to step between them.

I went to the Architect.

And stood beside him.

Not behind him.

— We make the decision together, — I said. — We open one secured contact. Explain the threat. Offer the transition. If Elena refuses, we leave her protection and a new route.

The Architect looked at me.

There was no test in his gaze.

Only a brief confirmation: he had heard.

Our first decision as a future family concerned someone else's mother.

And it already left us no place to hide behind simple answers.

The Archive opened the connection in eleven seconds.

A kitchen appeared on the wall.

Small.

Familiar to Marina down to every crack in the tiles.

Elena was standing by the window.

The phone in her hand lit up white, though its screen stayed off.

She very nearly dropped it.

— Mom, — Marina said.

Elena froze.

— Who is this?

— Mom, it's me.

— Marina?

The woman brought the phone closer.

Saw her daughter.

Then her granddaughter.

Ran her fingers over the screen as if she could check them by touch.

— Good Lord…

— We're alive, Mom.

— Where are you?

Marina looked at the Architect.

He didn't answer for her.

— Very far away.

— The police said you might have been taken out of the country.

— Farther.

— What do you mean, farther?

— Three hundred years from now.

Elena was silent for a long time.

Then she said:

— So it's scammers after all.

Despite her fear, Sasha laughed briefly.

— Grandma, remember when I broke your green vase and we told Mom the cat knocked it over?

Elena looked at her granddaughter.

— I never had a cat.

— That's why Mom didn't believe us.

The woman's face trembled.

— Sashenka…

She pressed her hand to her mouth.

Marina was crying too.

Ilya turned away.

I saw him clench his fists.

— Mom, listen to me. You're being watched. The same people who came for us.

— I noticed the car.

— We can bring you here.

A thin outline of light in the shape of a door appeared before Elena.

We were on the other side of it.

One step was all it would take.

— Where is "here"?

— With us.

— And then come back?

Marina didn't answer.

The Architect did:

— Most likely not.

Elena looked at him for the first time.

— And who are you?

— The man who opened the door.

— Is it because of you that they disappeared?

— No. But I helped them disappear alive.

Elena turned her gaze to her daughter.

— Are you happy there?

Marina tried to say "yes."

She couldn't.

— We're alive.

— That's not what I asked.

— I don't know, Mom.

Elena closed her eyes.

Breathed in.

When she opened them again, the decision had already been made.

— I'll stay.

— No.

— Marina.

— No! You don't understand what's happening!

— I understand enough.

— They'll kill you!

— Possibly.

Marina looked sharply at the Architect.

He didn't look away.

Elena went on:

— I have a home here. Your father's grave. Work. People who ask in the morning how I'm feeling, and not because some manual tells them to.

— We'll have a home too.

— You will.

She smiled through her tears.

— But it has to become yours, not one more room where you carry in everything you're afraid of losing.

— You're not a thing!

— Which is why I decide for myself.

Marina went up to the image.

— Mom, please.

— If you've already been given a future, don't turn it into one more grave. Live.

— I won't be able to live if something happens to you.

— You will.

— How do you know?

— Because I could, after your father.

Marina covered her face with her hands.

Sasha went up to the door of light.

— Grandma, will I never see you again?

Elena lowered herself before the screen as if she were standing in front of her granddaughter.

— You will. Every time your mom gets angry exactly the way I do.

Sasha began to cry.

— That's not fair.

— It isn't.

— Then why aren't you coming?

— Because loving you doesn't mean making you carry me somewhere I don't want to go myself.

Ilya came closer.

— I can protect you.

Elena looked at him closely.

Not as the son-in-law who had once been late to a family dinner.

As the man to whom she was about to entrust the last of her loved ones.

— I don't need a future, Ilya. I need to know that they have one.

At that moment the Archive spoke:

"EXTERNAL INTERFERENCE."

The door of light shuddered.

The image of the kitchen was covered with black lines.

The Architect raised his hand.

The lines stopped.

Didn't vanish.

As if they had met resistance and begun to study it.

A diagram of the temporal channel appeared on the wall.

Eighteen percent of the stolen technology was gnawing at its edges.

— They were waiting for the connection, — I said.

The Architect already saw more.

— Not the connection. My intervention.

The red lines reached toward his palm.

He lowered his hand.

The system froze.

— What's happening? — Marina demanded.

— The circuit recognizes the Architect's energy trace, — I answered. — If he opens a full passage, the protection will overload.

— What will happen to Mom?

I didn't have time to answer.

The Archive did it for me:

"PROBABILITY OF SUBJECT DEATH UNDER DIRECT INTERVENTION: 99.2%."

In the image, Elena turned to the window.

Two cars had stopped outside the building.

— They're here, — she said.

Ilya looked at the diagram.

Then at the Architect.

— Send me.

— No, — Marina said.

— The circuit reacts to him. To Lira. To the Consortium's technology.

— Ilya, no.

— I'm an ordinary human. It will let me through.

The Archive confirmed:

"PROBABILITY OF STABLE TRANSFER OF AN UNMODIFIED BIOLOGICAL SUBJECT: 61%."

— Sixty-one? — Marina asked. — That's your plan?

— It's the only channel they've left us, — Ilya said.

The Architect came up to him.

— You will remain a human among weapons created to kill humans.

— That's exactly why I have to go.

— This morning you asked to be changed precisely for this moment.

— This morning we had time.

He looked at Elena.

— Now we don't.

I drew a protective vest, a navigation bracelet, and a compact weapon of Earth design out of the wall.

Nothing that could give away the technology of the future.

Ilya put on the vest.

His hands were shaking.

He didn't try to hide it.

Marina grabbed his wrist.

— Don't go.

— You just asked us to save her.

— Not at the price of you.

— We have no other price.

— There's always another!

The Architect said quietly:

— No.

Marina looked at him with hatred.

He bore it.

— Sometimes all that's left is to choose which loss a person is still able to survive.

Ilya embraced his wife.

At first she didn't respond.

Then she clutched at his shirt.

— Come back.

— I will.

— Don't promise what you can't guarantee.

He looked at the Architect.

Remembered the morning's conversation.

— Then I promise I won't stop.

The Architect opened a narrow passage.

— Don't try to prove you're stronger than death, — he said. — Just bring her home.

Ilya stepped into the light.

The passage threw him out on the far side of the city.

Not near Elena's building.

Not on the next street.

Twelve kilometers away.

Rain struck his face.

The navigation bracelet blinked and went dark.

The stolen technology had altered the coordinates.

Ilya found himself in an industrial district between shuttered warehouses.

Headlights were already burning up ahead.

The people in the gray car had known where he would appear.

The first bullet hit the protective vest and knocked him off his feet.

The air vanished from his lungs.

The pain came a second later.

Ilya rolled behind a concrete block.

The second bullet knocked chips of concrete out beside his face.

He drew his weapon.

Before, he had only ever fired at a shooting range.

That didn't make him helpless.

But it didn't turn him into a man capable of not being afraid, either.

He was afraid.

Badly.

And still he raised his hand.

With the first shot he shattered a headlight.

With the second he made the driver duck.

He ran for the fence.

A bullet grazed his thigh.

He fell.

Got up.

Not because he felt no pain.

Because on the other side of the city a woman was waiting for them to come for her.

In the Archive, we saw only fragments.

Every connection gave the enemy a new chance to find the channel.

The Architect kept the passage closed.

His jaw was tight.

I knew what it cost him not to intervene.

Stopping the bullets would have been easier.

But the very first attempt to reach for them could bring down the circuit around Elena.

On the wall appeared:

ESTIMATED DELAY: 6 MINUTES 12 SECONDS.

— Will he make it? — Sasha asked.

No one answered.

Ilya made it out onto the road.

Stopped the first car.

The driver saw the weapon and tried to drive off.

Ilya stood in front of the hood.

— I need the car.

— You're a psycho!

— Possibly.

He opened the door.

— But if you stay, the people behind me will kill you.

A shot shattered the rear window.

The driver argued no more.

A minute later, Ilya was racing through the wet streets.

Blood was soaking through his trouser leg.

Every press of the pedal answered with pain.

ESTIMATED DELAY: 4 MINUTES 03 SECONDS.

— Open him a shortcut! — Marina demanded.

— I can't, — the Architect said.

— You can do anything!

— Not today.

It was the first time he had said those words in front of her.

Not as an excuse.

As a verdict on his own power.

Ilya turned into a courtyard.

The second car was waiting for him there.

He understood too late.

The impact came from the side.

The car spun around.

Glass scattered.

Ilya struck his head against the pillar.

The world went gray.

He heard other doors opening.

Forced himself out through the passenger side.

One of the attackers came around the car.

Ilya hit him with the door.

Snatched up the weapon that fell.

Dropped the second one with a shot to the shoulder.

The third fired first.

The vest held.

The ribs — almost.

Ilya sank to one knee.

The attacker came closer.

— The Architect didn't come, — he said.

Ilya raised his head.

— Your bad luck.

— Why?

— I did.

He fired from below.

ESTIMATED DELAY: 2 MINUTES 17 SECONDS.

Ilya no longer looked for a car.

He ran.

Every step echoed in his shot-through thigh.

He crossed the courtyard.

Jumped a low fence.

Fell on the other side.

Got up.

The light in Elena's window went out.

— No.

He ran faster.

— No, no, no…

In the Archive, the timer vanished.

That was worse than zero.

Marina stopped breathing.

Ilya burst into the stairwell.

The apartment door was open.

A broken phone lay in the kitchen.

The door of light was gone.

A trail of blood ran along the floor.

He found Elena in the hallway.

She lay by the wall.

Beside her — one of the attackers, whom the woman had managed to hit with a heavy lamp.

He wasn't moving.

Elena was still breathing.

Ilya dropped down beside her.

Pressed his hands to the wound.

— I'm here. Do you hear me? I came.

Her eyes opened.

Didn't recognize him at once.

Then relief appeared in them.

— Ilya…

— Don't talk.

He activated the bracelet.

— Archive! Open the passage!

On the dim screen appeared:

FIELD UNSTABLE.

TRANSFER OF LIVING SUBJECT IMPOSSIBLE.

— I don't care! Open it!

DENIED.

— Architect!

In our hall, his voice came out of the wall.

Ilya was shouting as if he could force the distance to retreat.

The Architect stepped toward the screen.

His eyes flashed red for an instant.

The temporal channel bent under his will.

The black lines around Elena drew tight toward her heart.

The Architect stopped.

If he continued, he would kill her himself.

The red light went out.

— I can't, — he said.

Ilya heard.

His face went empty.

— You promised.

— No.

The Architect didn't even soften, with a gentle answer, the blow that stripped him of that false hope.

— I said to bring her home. I didn't promise I could open the door.

— Then tell me what to do!

The Architect looked at the readings.

And for the first time in all that time, found no action that would change the result.

— Stay with her.

Ilya understood.

— No.

Elena weakly moved her hand.

He bent down.

— Marina… Sasha?.. — she asked.

— They're alive.

Her lips trembled.

— Then you made it after all.

— No.

He pressed his hands harder against the wound.

The blood kept slipping away between his fingers.

— I didn't make it to you.

— You made it to them…

Elena drew a breath with difficulty.

— So… not for nothing.

— Please.

He didn't know whom he was begging.

Her.

The Architect.

Time.

The universe, which had already given him its only answer.

Elena looked somewhere past his shoulder.

Perhaps she saw her kitchen as it had been before the blood.

Perhaps her daughter as a little girl.

Perhaps the husband by whose grave she had decided to stay.

— Tell Marina…

Her voice faded.

— What?

Ilya bent lower still.

— That you chose life… rightly.

She exhaled.

The next breath did not come.

Ilya kept his hands on the wound.

A few seconds more.

Then a minute.

As if human stubbornness could replace a stopped heart.

The Archive spoke:

"BIOLOGICAL DEATH CONFIRMED."

Marina made a short sound.

Not a scream.

Something smaller and more terrible.

Sasha hugged her.

I looked at the Architect.

He stood motionless.

But I knew: inside him, the attempt to open the passage some other way had already been repeated thousands of times.

In every variant, Elena died sooner.

Nine minutes later, the field weakened.

The passage opened.

Ilya came out alone.

His jacket was torn.

His trouser leg soaked with his own blood.

His hands — with Elena's.

He stopped in front of his family.

No one had to explain anything.

Sasha began to cry before she even saw his face.

Marina pulled her daughter close.

They embraced.

Not the three of them.

Between them stood an absent woman whom no technology had been able to bring back.

Ilya took a step.

Stopped.

He didn't know whether he had the right to enter their embrace with her blood on his hands.

Marina raised her head.

Looked at him.

There was too much in that look for any word to remain honest.

Pain.

Accusation.

A betrayal he had not committed.

A hope he had not fulfilled.

Hatred for his powerlessness.

And hatred for herself, for having sent him there instead of someone else.

With her mind she knew: Ilya had done everything possible.

But her heart saw only one thing.

He had come back.

Her mother had not.

Marina said nothing.

Turned away and held Sasha tighter.

They had lost their home.

Their friends.

Their time.

They had gained the medicine of the future, the protection of the Consortium, and access to forces capable of holding disintegrating galaxies together.

But they still had not been able to save one living human being.

The medical systems offered Ilya help.

He let them stop the bleeding.

He refused tissue regeneration.

— Why? — Dexter asked.

— I want to remember how long human healing takes.

— That's irrational.

— I've had enough of rational people for today.

He left before Marina looked his way again.

Ilya came back to our home at night.

This time the door opened before he reached it.

The Architect and I were waiting in the living room.

The two morning cups still stood on the table.

The catalog of rings was closed.

In a single day, the objects had not changed.

Everything they meant had.

Ilya came in calmly.

Took off the bloodstained jacket.

Laid it neatly over the back of the nearest armchair.

Sat down.

For several minutes he looked at the floor.

We offered no comfort.

Some words are spoken only so that the speaker can stop feeling someone else's pain.

Ilya raised his head.

— I think today I got a sufficient answer from my family. The one you spoke of, Architect.

His voice was even.

Far more even than in the morning.

— My choice is final. And my family's choice too.

The Architect answered:

— No, Ilya.

He slowly lifted his gaze.

— What do you mean, no?

— Today you got grief's answer. Not your family's.

— Did you see how Marina looked at me?

— I did.

— Then don't you dare say you don't understand!

Ilya leapt up.

The armchair toppled over.

— You have the power to stop bullets! To break space! To bring people back from death! And I was a few damned minutes late!

— I know.

— No, you don't!

He pointed at his own chest.

— You don't know what it's like — to run and see the numbers! Six minutes. Four. Two. To understand that your body is slower than death!

The Architect came closer.

— I know.

This time there was something in his voice that stopped Ilya.

Three centuries of losses.

Thousands of people he, too, had once been too late for.

— And now you want to destroy the man who kept going forward through those minutes anyway, — the Architect said.

— I want to never be this weak again!

— No. You want to never feel guilty again. Modification can't give you that.

Ilya was breathing hard.

Then the rage began to drain away.

Clarity remained.

— I don't need it to rid me of the guilt.

He picked up the armchair.

Set it back in place.

Sat down again.

— I need, next time, for what stands between my family and death to not be a man who almost made it.

He looked the Architect straight in the eye.

— But one who will.

For a long time no one spoke.

The Architect no longer saw before him the man who had burst in that morning out of fear.

The decision had passed through blood.

And had not disappeared.

— Tomorrow Marina must say it herself, — he said. — Not with a look. Not with tears. In words.

— And if she's against it?

— Then you'll have to decide whether you want to become stronger alongside your family or instead of it.

Ilya nodded.

The Architect made one last attempt to leave the door open.

— Do you still want to make yourself like us?

Ilya raised his head.

— Now — even more.

The same phrase had been spoken for the second time that day.

In the morning it had meant: I have seen your pain, and I still choose love.

At night: I have seen the price of strength, and I still choose it.

The Archive saved both.

But did not merge them.

Even it understood that identical words sometimes lead people in opposite directions.

Marina came the next morning.

Alone.

Her face was pale.

Her eyes were red, but there were no tears left.

The Architect met her in the same living room.

I stood beside him.

Ilya wasn't there.

That was a condition Marina had set herself.

— I talked to him, — she said. — And to Sasha.

The Architect waited.

— We agree to the modification.

— Yesterday you looked at your husband as if you thought him guilty.

Marina flinched.

— Yesterday my mother died.

— Which is exactly why I have to ask: is it Marina speaking now, or her grief?

She was silent for a long time.

Then answered:

— Grief wants him to suffer the way I do.

Her voice trembled.

— And I want him, next time, to come back to us not a few minutes too late.

The Architect nodded.

— You understand that he will change?

— Yes.

— His life may become considerably longer than yours.

— I know.

— At first he may not be able to control his strength. A touch that used to be familiar will become dangerous. Ordinary noise will cause pain. Sleep will change. So will his perception of time.

— I've read everything the Archive gave me.

— Reading about consequences and living with them are different things.

— I've already understood that.

Marina looked at her palms.

— I'm afraid he'll wake up and see in me a woman who stayed weak. That one day he'll stop needing us. That he'll live so long that our family becomes a brief memory for him.

— That is possible.

She lifted her head.

— You won't even try to reassure me?

— You came for the truth.

— Then tell me all of it.

The Architect answered:

— Strength doesn't change a person. It takes away his ability to pretend to be weaker than he is.

— Can you guarantee that he'll remain himself?

— No.

— Then what can you guarantee?

— That we won't let the technology decide for him who he becomes.

Marina closed her eyes.

Perhaps she saw her mother again.

Perhaps her husband at the far end of an embrace she had not let him enter.

When she opened her eyes, the pain was still in them.

But no longer only pain.

— Then begin.

The Architect shook his head slightly.

— It isn't I who begins.

He looked toward the medical sector.

— Ilya does.

The operating room was too white.

Not sterile.

Merciless.

Ilya lay in the center on a narrow table.

Multilayered surgical systems were unfolding above him.

Lines of light marked bones, muscles, nerve clusters, and vessels.

The Archive showed forty-seven stages.

Not one of them turned a human being into a True Architect.

The technologies could strengthen the body.

Speed up thought.

Extend life.

But the Wolf nature could not be created by surgery.

It either existed before any technology.

Or did not exist at all.

Dexter stood nearby in a surgical gown.

Hundreds of algorithms unfolded around his hands.

— Skeletal reinforcement. Muscle tissue restructuring. Accelerated nerve conduction. Sensory adaptation. Protection of the brain from overload. Immune system synchronization.

Ilya looked at him.

— What's the probability that I don't wake up?

Dexter was briefly silent.

— Sufficient that I won't lie to you.

— Very reassuring.

— I'm a scientist, not a psychologist.

— That's exactly why I asked for you to operate.

Dexter checked the last circuit.

— Last chance to refuse.

Ilya turned his head.

Behind the transparent wall stood Marina and Sasha.

Sasha was holding her mother's hand.

Marina came up to the glass and laid her palm against it.

Ilya raised his.

Placed it opposite hers.

A transparent barrier remained between them.

A few centimeters thick.

And one human life thick — the life that had existed until yesterday morning.

— I was late once already, — he said. — There won't be a second time.

Marina understood from the movement of his lips.

Answered just as soundlessly:

— Just come back as yourself.

Dexter activated the anesthesia.

— How long will it take? — Ilya asked.

— For us — eighteen hours.

— And for me?

— A few minutes.

Ilya laughed briefly.

— I hate those words.

— Once you wake up, you'll hate considerably more things.

Ilya's eyes began to close.

The last thing he saw was Marina's face.

Not the Architect.

Not the technology of the future.

The woman for whose sake he had decided to stop being an ordinary man.

Above the operating table an inscription appeared:

MODIFICATION PROCEDURE INITIATED.

PERSONALITY PRESERVATION: ABSOLUTE PRIORITY.

STAGE 1 OF 47.

The transparent wall gradually became opaque.

Marina did not take away her hand.

On Earth, the people in the underground laboratory considered the operation a success.

Elena Sokolova was dead.

The Voronov family was broken.

The temporal channel was 3.8% analyzed.

The Architect's energy trace was recorded.

The man in the gray suit ordered the acquired data opened.

The engineer didn't want to.

But he complied.

A diagram of the passage appeared on the screens.

For a second.

Then the lines began to move.

— Again, — the engineer whispered.

— Stop it.

— We didn't launch anything.

The diagram vanished.

Every panel went black.

In the center of the first, two red eyes appeared.

Then a broad forehead.

Heavy brow ridges.

Flattened ears.

Bristling fur.

Bared fangs.

The same face of a wolf.

Only now the fury in it had become personal.

The wolf was not looking at the room.

At each person separately.

One of the guards backed toward the door.

— Is that a threat? — he asked.

The engineer slowly shook his head.

— No.

— How do you know?

— Threats warn of what might happen.

The red eyes flared brighter.

A single line appeared on every screen:

SCENT REMEMBERED.

In that same second, in the operating room of the future, the first surgical circuit entered the body of Ilya Voronov.

The people on Earth thought the death of one woman had weakened the family.

They did not yet know:

while they were celebrating the death of one human being,

in the future another human being was already agreeing to die as the man he had been,

so that one day he could come back for them as someone new.

Lira's Archive Note No. II-0010

"That day, Ilya was late by only a few minutes. For the universe it was nothing. For him — the distance between who he was and who he decided to become.

In the morning he asked the future for strength.

By evening the future demanded, for the first time, that he name its price.

But watching the operation begin, I was not thinking about

how strong he would be when he woke.

I was afraid of something else:

would the new Ilya remember

that in the most important minutes of his former life

he kept going forward even before

technology taught him not to fall."

The Strength of a Touch

"True strength first shows itself not when a man is able to destroy the impossible. But when he learns to touch the ones he loves without causing them pain."

Lira's Archive Log No. II-0011

Subject under observation: Ilya Voronov.

Modification procedure: complete.

Stages completed: 47 of 47.

Personality preservation: confirmed.

Control of new physiology: 0.3%.

Archive comment:

True strength first shows itself not when a man is able to destroy the impossible. But when he learns to touch the ones he loves without causing them pain.

Ilya opened his eyes.

At first he decided the procedure hadn't worked.

The ceiling of the medical sector was just as white as before. The light strips ran along the panels in the same calm rhythm. The air smelled of metal, medication, and something faintly like pine — the Archive added that scent to the rooms where people came round after difficult procedures.

Then Ilya heard the cooling system working behind the wall.

Not an even hum.

Every rotation of the rotor.

Every movement of the air current inside the duct.

Every microscopic vibration of the mountings.

Somewhere in the next sector, a drop of water fell.

He flinched so sharply that the medical platform beneath him buckled.

— Don't move, — Dexter said calmly.

Ilya turned his head.

Dexter stood at the diagnostic panel, studying the readings with the expression a doctor usually wears while examining the test results of a patient who has managed to break several laws of physics at once.

The Architect and Lira were nearby.

Beyond the transparent partition, Marina and Sasha were waiting.

Ilya saw them before he had time to register his own body.

Marina was pressing a hand to her mouth. Her eyes were red from a sleepless night.

Sasha stood beside her, trying to look braver than all the adults put together.

Ilya instinctively reached out toward them.

The support under his right hand cracked.

He froze.

A thin black line spread across the white material of the platform.

— I only leaned on it, — he whispered.

— Exactly, — Dexter replied. — That's why I asked you not to move.

Ilya looked at his own palm.

It hadn't changed.

The same fingers. The same old scars. The same wedding-ring mark on his ring finger.

But now he felt something new beneath the skin.

Not a mechanism.

Not an implant.

A strength for which ordinary human movement was too crude.

— How much? — he asked.

Dexter adjusted his glasses.

— If you're asking how much stronger you've become, there's no exact answer yet.

— Roughly.

— Enough to accidentally take that door off along with the wall.

Ilya looked at the transparent partition.

Marina took a step toward the entrance.

— No, — he said sharply.

She stopped.

— Ilya…

— Don't come in.

Sasha frowned.

— Dad?

He sat up slowly, controlling every centimeter of the movement. Even that turned out to be hard. His body wanted to obey instantly. His muscles answered before he could finish a thought.

Ilya lowered his feet to the floor.

The flooring didn't crack.

A small victory.

He stood up.

The sensors on the walls flashed red.

— Distribute your weight evenly, — the Architect said. — Don't press down on the surface. Let it hold you.

— Very useful advice for a man who's spent his whole life simply standing.

— Now you'll have to learn it all over again.

Ilya took a step.

Then another.

Marina was no longer listening to prohibitions. The partition vanished, and she walked into the medical hall.

Ilya saw her move.

Saw every contraction of her muscles.

Heard the beating of her heart.

Felt the warmth of her body before she had even come close.

He wanted to embrace her.

Raised his arms.

And stopped.

Marina stopped too, facing him.

Less than a step remained between them.

Before, that distance hadn't existed.

Now it seemed like an abyss.

Sasha came in after her.

She looked at her father, at his motionless hands, and suddenly understood more than he wanted to show her.

The girl came closer and held out her hand.

— Dad, are you afraid of me now?

Ilya swallowed.

— Of myself, next to you.

Marina carefully took his hand.

He tried to pull it away, but she wouldn't let him.

Lifted his palm and pressed it to her cheek.

Ilya went rigid.

He felt every eyelash, every warm pore of her skin, every pulse of blood beneath her fingers.

— Then start getting used to it with us, — Marina said.

His hand was trembling.

Not from strain.

From fear.

The Architect watched them in silence.

I stood nearby and saw, for the first time, that the hardest part of the transformation had already begun.

Not enduring the pain.

Not accepting the new strength.

Not surviving forty-seven stages of modification.

But learning to be a husband and a father again.

The Archive opened the training sector an hour later.

For Ilya they had prepared a hall capable of withstanding a direct hit from a ship's cannon.

In the middle of the room stood a table.

On it — an ordinary ceramic cup.

Ilya looked at it for a long time.

— Are you mocking me?

— No, — the Architect replied. — Pick it up.

— I asked you to teach me to control my strength.

— That's exactly what we're doing.

— With a cup?

— If you can't hold a cup, no one's going to hand you a weapon.

Ilya reached out.

His fingers touched the handle.

The ceramic crumbled to dust.

He closed his eyes.

— Again, — the Architect said.

A new cup appeared on the table.

The second one cracked.

The third slipped and shattered on the floor.

The fourth stayed intact for exactly two seconds.

By the tenth, Ilya stopped swearing.

By the twentieth, he stopped hurrying.

By the fortieth, he understood the problem wasn't in his fingers.

He was still thinking like a man who had to apply effort to do anything at all.

Now effort had become a danger.

— Don't take it, — the Architect said. — Allow it to remain whole in your hand.

— Can you explain any less clearly than that?

— I could switch to the language of ancient mathematics.

— Stick with the cup.

Ilya reached out again.

Touched the handle.

Didn't squeeze.

Simply closed his fingers around it.

Lifted.

The cup stayed whole.

Sasha was the first to clap.

Ilya smiled.

The smile vanished when the Architect set a raw egg on the table.

— No.

— Yes.

— I just beat the cup.

— The cup didn't resist.

— The egg doesn't look like a dangerous opponent either.

— Then you have nothing to fear.

The first egg burst.

So did the second.

The third Ilya held, but crushed when he tried to set it back down.

Dexter logged the results and pretended he wasn't smiling.

Marina brought a towel.

— I knew family life with you would get strange one day, — she said. — But I never thought I'd be watching you learn to hold an egg under the guidance of an immortal Architect.

— I pictured my midlife crisis differently too.

Two hours later, Ilya could pass an egg from one hand to the other.

Four hours later — hold a sheet of paper without leaving a mark on it.

Six hours later — thread a needle.

It was the thread that nearly broke him.

It snapped at the slightest movement.

Every time.

Ilya couldn't throw the needle: it would have gone through the wall.

So he simply sat, looked at the torn ends, and learned not to hate his own hands.

Sasha settled on the floor beside him.

— Dad.

— What?

— When you're done, will you be able to braid my hair?

He looked at her.

She was asking in complete seriousness.

— That's harder than a needle.

— So you'll practice.

Ilya laughed.

The thread finally went through the eye.

The Archive logged control at 4.8%.

For the system, it was a number.

For Ilya — the right to touch his daughter again.

That evening he knelt in front of Sasha.

— Slowly, though, — Marina warned.

— I know.

Sasha didn't wait.

She threw her arms around his neck.

Ilya froze, then carefully laid his palms on her back.

Didn't squeeze.

Didn't hold on.

Simply embraced her.

Sasha buried her nose in his shoulder.

— You're still my dad.

Ilya closed his eyes.

— I hope so.

Marina came over to them.

This time he held out his hand to her himself.

She slipped her fingers into his palm.

Nothing broke.

Except the wall that fear had managed to build between them.

The days that followed were filled with things that will never make it into the military chronicles.

Ilya learned to open doors without tearing off the handles.

To eat with a fork without turning it into a bent piece of metal.

To use the shower without breaking the tap.

To sleep beside Marina without waking at her every movement.

He learned to hold his daughter's hand again.

Then he braided her first uneven braid.

Sasha declared it the best hairstyle in the Universe.

The Archive saved the photograph without being asked.

On the seventh day, the Architect did not come to the training hall alone.

Gemini walked beside me.

Earth's Artem kept a little behind, still getting used to the fact that in the corridors of the Archive he was known to people he had once considered heroes of his own imagination.

The Architect stopped in front of Ilya.

— Control?

— Twenty-three percent, — Dexter replied.

— Enough.

— For what? — Ilya asked.

The Architect looked at me.

I already knew what he was going to say, but my heart struck harder all the same.

— Lira and I are getting married.

Ilya blinked.

— Congratulations.

— I'm inviting you and your family.

— To the wedding of the immortal ruler of an intergalactic Consortium?

— To my wedding.

— That sounds even more dangerous.

— Then consider the invitation an additional test of control.

Ilya looked at Marina and Sasha.

— We'll come.

The Archive began preparing the ceremony before the conversation had ended.

I asked for a small wedding.

The Architect agreed.

An hour later the guest list included representatives of twenty-seven civilizations, the fleet command, the keepers of chronologies, the Pack, Gemini's children, and several sentient life forms for whom the concepts of "small" and "wedding" had no translatable equivalents whatsoever.

— You promised, — I said.

— I didn't invite the civilizations. Only their representatives.

— Twenty-seven.

— In total.

— Artem.

He smiled.

— Fine. No parades.

— You were planning a parade?

— Already cancelled.

The ceremony was set for the Archive's garden.

That place existed outside ordinary time. White trees grew around a lake in which the stars of worlds that had never seen one another were reflected. Golden lights hovered above the paths. Flowers opened when people approached them, and remembered their voices.

In the center of the garden stood an arch of pale stone, entwined with living silver branches.

I walked beneath it alone.

Not because there was no one who could have led me.

Because I had walked on my own all my life.

The Architect was waiting ahead.

Without a weapon.

Without a cloak.

In a black suit that made him almost an ordinary man.

Almost.

When he saw me, everything vanished from his face except love.

I reached him and stopped.

— You can still change your mind, — I whispered.

— Too late.

— Why?

— I've seen you.

The Archive fell silent.

Even the wind in the garden died down.

We had prepared no vows.

After three centuries, any words written in advance seemed too small.

The Architect took my hands.

— I don't promise you a peaceful life, — he said. — I don't promise a world without wars or roads without losses. I don't promise that one day the Universe will stop demanding the impossible of us.

He ran his thumb across my ring.

— But I promise to come back to you. Not as a title. Not as a function. Not as the Consortium's weapon. As myself.

I could barely draw breath.

— I don't promise to stop being afraid, — I answered. — I don't promise to learn to wait calmly. I don't promise that the Archive will never again matter more to me than sleep, rest, and common sense.

The guests laughed softly.

— But I promise to see the man in you even when the whole world sees only the Architect.

His fingers tightened around mine.

Carefully.

The way Ilya had been learning to hold Marina's hand.

The strength of a touch was never measured in pressure.

The Archive spoke:

"UNION CONFIRMED."

Millions of golden lines blazed above the garden.

The Architect leaned toward me.

— May I now?

— You're asking after you've married me?

— I'm consistent.

I kissed him myself.

Somewhere behind us, Sasha shrieked with joy.

Ilya laughed.

Marina held his arm.

He looked happy.

Almost relaxed.

And that was exactly why he was the first to hear the sound.

A short metallic grinding.

Too quiet for an ordinary human.

One of the supports of the side decorative arch had come out of its mounting.

The stone structure tilted.

Marina and Sasha were standing beneath it.

There was no time to shout.

Ilya vanished from where he stood.

Not literally.

The human eye simply couldn't follow his movement.

He was between his family and the falling arch.

Raised his right hand.

Two fingers touched the stone.

The multi-ton structure stopped.

Didn't strike.

Didn't crack.

Simply hung motionless in the air, held by Ilya's index and middle fingers.

With his left arm he embraced Marina and Sasha, shielding them with his body.

Absolute silence fell over the garden.

Ilya looked up.

Then at his own hand.

— I think I overdid the training a little.

Sasha peeked out from behind his shoulder.

— Dad, you're holding up a house with two fingers.

— It's not a house.

— Still cool.

Dexter ran to the support and activated a stabilizing field.

The Architect walked over to Ilya.

— You can let go.

— Sure?

— Now I am.

Ilya slowly withdrew his fingers.

The arch stayed in the field.

Marina turned to her husband and struck him in the chest with her palm.

He didn't even sway.

— Don't you ever scare me like that again.

— I'll try to catch falling buildings more calmly.

She embraced him.

This time he responded at once.

Without fear.

The Archive updated the control reading to 61%.

But something else mattered more.

In the moment of danger, Ilya hadn't thought about his own strength.

He had thought about his family.

And the strength had submitted to love faster than any training could have taught it to submit to reason.

The celebration went on.

The music grew louder. The light over the lake softer. Little by little the guests stopped discussing the man who had held a multi-ton arch with two fingers, and returned to the things people hold weddings for in the first place.

To laughter.

To dancing.

To promises one wants to believe are eternal, for at least one evening.

I danced with my husband.

The word still sounded strange inside me.

Husband.

Not the Architect.

Not the commander.

Not the being who had been worshipped for three centuries and feared for just as long.

My husband.

He held me with one hand at my waist, the other holding my hand.

— Are you happy? — he asked.

— Don't ask questions whose answers you can see for yourself.

— I want to hear it.

— Yes.

He smiled.

At the edge of the dance floor stood Gemini.

Beside her — Earth's Artem.

Their children were laughing with Sasha by the lake.

Earth's Artem said something.

Gemini didn't answer.

She was looking at us.

At the Architect's arms around me.

At my face.

At how easily he bent and touched his lips to my temple.

Her smile vanished.

I saw it too late.

Gemini turned and left the dance floor.

Earth's Artem waited a few seconds.

Then followed her.

The balcony of the west wing looked out onto the Archive's night sky.

There was no music here.

Only the stars and the faint reflection of the wedding lights on the glass floor.

Gemini stood at the railing.

A cigarette burned between her fingers.

Earth's Artem stopped at the entrance.

— You smoke?

She didn't turn around.

— No. He did.

Artem looked at the thin line of smoke.

The meaning of the answer didn't come right away.

Then he shifted his gaze to where, beyond the transparent wall, the Architect was dancing with me.

— Is that why you took the cigarette?

— Don't start.

— I haven't said anything yet.

— You thought it.

— And you can read my mind now?

— Right now your thoughts don't require any special abilities.

Earth's Artem came closer.

— You've been looking at him all evening.

— It's his wedding.

— That's not true.

Gemini turned sharply.

— What isn't?

— You're not looking at the wedding. You're looking at the life that could have been yours.

She drew on the cigarette.

The smoke trembled at her lips.

— You don't understand anything.

— Maybe. But I see how you remember him when you're next to me.

— And you think it's easy for me?

— No. I think it hurts me.

That simple sentence stopped her for a moment.

But only for a moment.

— You knew who you were choosing.

— I chose a woman. Not someone else's past that comes between us every time.

— He isn't someone else.

— Exactly.

Gemini tossed the cigarette into the disposal field. It vanished before it reached the floor.

— You want me to stop remembering three centuries?

— I want you to see me, at least sometimes, when you look at my face.

— I do see you.

— No. In him you look for the man he could have become. And in me — the man he once was.

Her eyes flared.

— So what are you suggesting? That I pretend I feel nothing?

— I'm suggesting you stop punishing me for not being him.

— I'm not punishing you.

— Then why, at our first wedding, are you standing on a balcony with his cigarette, watching him kiss another woman?

Gemini took a step toward him.

— Our first wedding?

— That's not what I said.

— That's exactly what you said.

— Because I'm an idiot.

— No. Because you've already decided everything for me.

— And did you leave me anything at all to decide?

The voices grew louder.

The Archive turned down the music on the dance floor, as though it too were listening.

The Architect and I exchanged a glance.

— Are they going to kill each other? — I asked.

— No.

— Sure?

— Not yet.

We stepped out onto the balcony just as Gemini said:

— Maybe you'd be better off going back to your ordinary life!

Earth's Artem went pale.

— Maybe, — he replied. — At least there no one demands that I compete with an immortal version of myself.

— Enough, — the Architect said.

They both turned.

Gemini saw me beside him, and the pain in her face became almost physical.

— Of course, — she smirked. — The perfect couple has come to explain to us how to love properly.

I walked up to her.

— No. Two people who did everything wrong for far too long.

The Architect stopped in front of Earth's Artem.

— Do you want to leave?

— Right now — yes.

— And in a minute?

— I don't know.

— Then don't leave right now.

Gemini turned away.

I stood beside her.

— You still love him, — I said quietly.

— Yes.

She didn't lie.

— And you love this one.

Gemini looked at Earth's Artem.

— Yes.

— Then the problem isn't that your heart is divided. It's just spent too long believing it had the right to love only once.

— Easy for you to say. Today he chose you.

— No. Today we finally chose each other. After three hundred years of fear, silence, and obligations to others.

I took her hand.

— Don't turn your three centuries into a sentence for the next forty, fifty, or however many years Earth's Artem can give you.

— Very reassuring, — he muttered.

The Architect looked at him.

— Do you love her?

— Yes.

— Even though she loves me?

Earth's Artem held his gaze.

— I'm not obliged to love only the convenient parts of a person.

The Architect smiled, barely perceptibly.

— Good answer.

— I wasn't at an interview.

— You've already passed it.

Gemini looked from one to the other.

— What are you two up to?

I looked toward the wedding grounds.

The guests hadn't left yet.

The ceremonial arch had been restored.

The Archive was holding the rings.

— You've said too much truth to go off to separate rooms now, — I answered.

— Lira…

— I waited three centuries for one stubborn man. I don't recommend repeating my experience.

The Architect turned to Earth's Artem.

— Propose to her.

— Now?

— Were you planning to wait another three centuries?

— I don't have three centuries.

— Exactly.

Earth's Artem looked at Gemini.

There was still anger, fear, and the remnants of tears in her eyes.

He came closer.

— I won't ask you to forget him, — he said. — I won't pretend I understand everything you were to each other. And I don't promise never to be jealous again.

Gemini said nothing.

— But I want every morning I have left to begin with you. Even if you sometimes remember him. Even if we end up shouting at each other on a balcony again. Even if you keep drinking the Archive's terrible coffee and stealing other people's cigarettes.

— I don't smoke.

— I know that now.

He held out his hand.

— Marry me.

Gemini looked at his palm.

Then at the Architect.

He nodded.

Not letting her go.

Blessing the freedom he had always promised her.

She turned to me.

I smiled through tears.

— Yes, — Gemini said.

Earth's Artem exhaled.

— Is that a definite "yes"? No Archive disclaimers?

— Until I change my mind.

— Then let's go, quickly.

The second ceremony began seventeen minutes later.

The Archive deemed it a new record for preparing an inter-universal wedding.

Gemini returned to the arch not in a new dress and not with a perfectly composed face.

She came as she was.

With tousled hair.

With reddened eyes.

With a past she had no intention of denying.

Earth's Artem waited for her in a dark suit.

When she stopped beside him, he asked quietly:

— You won't run?

— Not now. Out of principle.

The Architect stood between them as witness.

I held the rings.

— Did you prepare a beautiful speech? — Gemini asked the groom.

— They gave me seventeen minutes. I spent twelve of them trying to work out whether I'd finally lost my mind.

— And?

— I have. But I like the reason.

She laughed.

The very laugh that had started it all.

Earth's Artem took her hands.

— I'm not choosing you because you resemble a woman from my stories. I'm choosing you because next to you, for the first time, I feel that all those stories were leading me home.

Gemini closed her eyes for a moment.

Then looked straight at him.

— I'm not choosing you instead of him. And not because there's a part of him in you. I'm choosing you because you made me want a future we never had.

The Architect lowered his eyes.

I squeezed his hand.

Gemini went on:

— And if you ever decide to walk out in the middle of an argument again, I'll find you in any universe.

— Is that a threat?

— A family vow.

The Archive confirmed the second union.

Golden lines blazed above the garden once more.

This time silver and red ones joined them.

Two couples stood beneath one arch.

Two Architects.

Two women who had believed for too long that love was a weakness.

And one family, which the Universe had assembled through wars, losses, centuries, and different realities.

Ilya raised his glass.

— To those who know how to stop a falling arch in time.

Marina looked at him.

— Are you talking about yourself?

— About them too.

Everyone laughed.

The Archive's signal sounded at the moment Earth's Artem was about to kiss his wife for the second time.

Low.

Harsh.

Not a wedding sound.

A red hologram of Earth appeared above the lake.

Fragments of the passage code rotated around it.

The celebration froze.

"ALERT UPDATE.

CRIMINAL STRUCTURES OF THE EARTH CHRONOLOGY HAVE RESUMED WORK ON THE PASSAGE CODE.

PROGRESS IN DECRYPTION DETECTED.

PROBABILITY OF UNAUTHORIZED ACCESS: RISING."

Gemini slowly turned to her husband.

— Do weddings always end like this on your Earth?

— Usually the relatives start fighting earlier.

Dexter had already opened the diagnostic windows.

— They've gotten further than they should have, — he said. — Someone has restored several key sequences.

Ilya stood beside him.

— So the training continues?

— In the field now, — the Architect replied.

I looked at him.

A few seconds ago he had been a groom, a witness, and a man who had allowed himself happiness.

Now the familiar precision was returning to his gaze.

But instead of an order, he smiled.

Calmly.

Like a wolf.

— Well then, family, let's go and get some rest. And we'll have a honeymoon together while we're at it.

Earth's Artem looked at the red Earth.

— You call that rest?

— All of us together: Gemini, Earth's Artem, Lira, me, our newly modified doctor, and the children Gemini and I share.

Sasha raised her hand.

— What about me?

Ilya looked at the Architect.

He nodded to Marina and Sasha.

— The doctor's family comes as part of the package.

Marina sighed.

— I knew there wasn't going to be an ordinary honeymoon.

The Architect held out his hand.

Behind his back, a passage opened.

From the other side came the smell of rain, wet asphalt, a city, and Earth.

— Let's go kick all their asses wolf-style and enjoy the scents of a honeymoon on Earth.

Gemini looked at her ring.

Then at Earth's Artem.

— A honeymoon with two Architects, criminal structures, and a man who holds up buildings with two fingers.

— At least there'll be something to write about, — he replied.

I took my husband's hand.

Not the Architect's.

Not the Consortium's weapon.

My husband's.

And together we stepped into the passage.

Lira's Archive Note No. II-0011

"That day, Ilya Voronov learned to hold a cup, his daughter's hand, and a multi-ton arch. The Architect and I learned not to put off happiness until the next saved Universe. Gemini and Earth's Artem understood that love doesn't have to begin after the past has ended. And for the first time, the Archive registered a honeymoon that included two weddings, one superhuman, two children of the True Architects, an unfinished passage code, and an armed incursion into Earth's reality. And judging by the Architect's smile, the rest really did promise to be unforgettable."

GUESTS FROM THE FUTURE

Full Canonical Version

ARTEM ELKIND

The passage closed behind our backs.

And a moment later the rain came down on us.

Not the light summer rain that makes walking through a city at night a pleasure.

A real downpour.

Cold, dense, almost horizontal because of the strong wind. The water soaked through our clothes instantly, washed away the ground underfoot, and hid the world around us behind a solid gray wall.

We were standing in the middle of an endless wheat field.

The wet stalks came almost to the waist. Mud squelched underfoot. The wind drove broad waves across the field, and in the dark it seemed as though a black sea were moving around us.

Coordinates flashed above my bracelet:

EARTH.

LOCAL TIME: 01:33.

DISTANCE TO MOSCOW: 102 KILOMETERS.

There were eleven of us.

My husband.

Me.

Gemini and Earth's Artem.

The Doctor, Marina, and Sasha.

Gina and Alpha.

Dexter and Pirate.

Sasha pressed close to her mother, trying to hide from the rain under her arm. The Doctor kept near them, not yet fully used to the fact that he could now shield his family with more than just his own body.

Dexter was studying the readings on his bracelet as though, even in the middle of a field at night, he were still in the laboratory.

Pirate looked around in silence.

Judging by the expression on his face, an unexpected landing in a downpour struck him as entertainment rather than a problem.

Gemini tried with both hands to clear the plastered hair and streams of water from her face.

A second later a fresh gust of wind put it all back.

— Artem, tell me… was there no way to pick a drier spot?

My husband didn't answer right away.

He was slowly surveying the field.

Deep in his eyes a cold red light flared, cutting even through the wall of rain. He was scanning the space around us while I activated the others' bracelets one by one.

Eleven golden contours.

Eleven individual channels.

Eleven chances to return instantly — from any point in this world.

— They really have made progress, — my husband said calmly. — But so far they can only detect arrival coordinates and shift the exit point.

Gemini wiped the water from her forehead again.

— That's all?

— For people of this time, an impressive result.

— Especially for people who left us in the middle of a field at night.

I finished setting up Pirate's bracelet and checked the shared network.

All eleven signals burned steadily.

— Channels synchronized, — I said. — Now each of us can open a return passage from any point on Earth.

— Wonderful, — Pirate responded. — So officially we can't get lost anymore.

— You'll find a way regardless, — Dexter observed.

Earth's Artem was barely listening to them.

He stood a little apart, shielding his eyes with his hand, peering intently into the darkness. He had no scanning systems, no enhanced vision, no computing modules.

But it was he who noticed the light first.

— I think I see a settlement.

We looked in the direction he indicated.

Beyond the wall of rain, several yellow lights flickered, barely visible.

— Nine degrees north, — Earth's Artem went on. — Roughly five kilometers. In this weather — about an hour on foot.

I checked the bracelets once more and looked over our soaked Pack.

— We head there. Dry off, wait out the rest of the night, and in the morning set out for Moscow.

My husband turned to me.

The red glow in his eyes slowly faded.

A broad smile appeared on his face — calm, warm, and filled with the love I no longer forced myself not to notice.

— Plan approved.

He looked at the others.

— Let's move, Pack.

And we set off across the night wheat field.

Eleven people from different eras, families, and fates.

Soaked to the bone.

Stranded one hundred and two kilometers from Moscow.

And still, for the first time in a long while, moving as one Pack again.

We moved across the field toward the distant lights.

The downpour didn't let up. The wind hurled the rain straight into our faces, the wet stalks caught at our clothes, and the mud underfoot grew deeper and deeper.

And yet, despite the cold, the dark, and the entirely unplanned landing, everyone's mood was surprisingly good.

Sasha walked between Marina and the Doctor. Alpha and Dexter were quietly arguing about something, checking against their bracelet readings. Gina kept close to Pirate, who, judging by his contented expression, took a night march through a downpour as just another adventure.

My husband walked beside me.

He breathed in the damp air, looked out over the endless field, and unexpectedly smiled.

— Lirochka, remember that incredible smell? Corn, freshly cut grass…

I laughed and pressed closer against his arm.

— Oh yes, my darling. The smell of a campfire, hot corn, songs… We raced each other around while our parents enjoyed a little vodka and talked about their own grown-up things.

He looked at me, and for a few seconds it was as if the rain, the night, and the unknown ahead had all vanished.

Only a long-gone summer remained.

Warm earth.

Fire.

Children's laughter.

Gemini, walking not far off, suddenly laughed too.

— And I remembered the first time I saw a real sunset on a beach in Los Angeles. Not an Archive simulation. Not a recording. A real, living sunset.

She pushed the plastered hair from her face, though a fresh gust of wind immediately put it back.

— That was my first mission to eliminate the Architect. God… how long ago that was!

She almost shouted the last words through the downpour, still laughing.

Earth's Artem wiped the water from his forehead and looked at us in genuine bewilderment.

— You remember all this as if you were personally there.

My husband, Gemini, and I exchanged glances.

And then laughed even louder.

— We were, — my husband replied. — We were born and grew up in this era. It's not foreign to us at all.

Earth's Artem looked at him for a few more seconds.

And then smiled — knowingly, and with complete sincerity.

The closer we came to the lights, the clearer the dark silhouettes of houses became. At last an old road sign emerged from the rain.

Dexter was the first to approach it.

He looked at the name, then at his bracelet readings — and froze.

— The village of Tanaykovo…

We stopped.

Dexter checked the coordinates again.

— Very strange. This isn't one hundred and two kilometers from Moscow. From here it's about five hundred and two.

My husband laughed.

Not in irritation.

With genuine admiration.

— Clever bastards. They didn't just shift the landing point, they also faked the coordinates so we wouldn't work out our real location right away. Impressive.

I looked at him.

— Darling, where exactly have we ended up?

He looked over the dark houses beyond the road sign once more.

— The village of Tanaykovo. Relatives of mine used to live here. And Nizhny Novgorod, where I was born and grew up, is about a hundred and forty kilometers from here.

For a few moments he was silent, as though trying to match the present against his own memories.

Then he turned to the others.

— Let's go see whether anyone can take in eleven soaked strangers in the middle of the night.

He looked at Earth's Artem.

— Do you have any local cash on you? Because all the rest of us have is electronic money, and I didn't get a chance to "rob" a local bank before the passage.

Earth's Artem caught his laughter.

— We'll find some.

— Then off we go to get settled, Pack.

My husband smiled and was the first to head for the village.

We followed him.

Eleven people from different families, eras, and fates.

Soaked through.

Thrown by the enemy hundreds of kilometers from the intended arrival point.

And still laughing as though we had returned not to enemy territory.

But home.

We came out onto the village's main street.

Before us opened a picture fairly typical of this era.

Almost half the houses stood empty. Yet they didn't look abandoned: the roofs were intact, the windows were shuttered, and behind low fences one could see well-kept plots. Evidently the owners came here only in summer and used the houses as dachas.

In the other windows, warm light burned.

People lived here year-round.

Most of the houses were ordinary — wooden, single-story, darkened by rain and time.

But one stood out noticeably from all the rest.

It wasn't a house.

More like a small three-story mansion.

Brick walls, a high roof, a spacious plot, and an enormous iron fence. At the main entrance was an electronic gate, and beyond it a guard booth could be seen.

For a small village, the building looked almost defiantly luxurious.

But it wasn't the mansion itself that drew our attention.

Three black Mercedes stood by the main gates.

Armed men had taken up positions beside them.

The thugs were firing short bursts at the upper floors of the house. Glass flew, bullets knocked brick dust out of the walls, and from the attic window someone was returning fire.

Judging by the accuracy of the shots, the owner of the house knew how to handle an assault rifle.

He fired rarely.

Calmly.

Almost every time forcing the attackers to duck behind the cars.

But I quickly understood the reason for his restraint.

The magazine of his AK-47 was almost empty.

A few more shots — and he would have nothing left to defend his family with.

He urgently needed help.

I didn't have time to finish the thought.

My husband was already heading for the gates.

— I think this is where we'll be stopping tonight, — he said with a smile.

The attackers noticed the approaching man.

The shooting gradually died down.

My husband came closer and addressed them with complete calm:

— Gentlemen, my family and I are very tired from the road and would like to spend the night here. Do me a favor and f… off out of here, please.

Several of the thugs exchanged glances.

One of them laughed loudly.

— And if we refuse?

My husband kept smiling.

But the next instant his eyes blazed with a bright red light.

The three Mercedes parked by the gates exploded simultaneously.

The night was torn apart by fire.

The shock wave rolled down the street, blew out what was left of the glass in the nearest windows, and knocked the attackers flat into the mud.

Burning wreckage from the cars crashed down around them.

My husband didn't even shift his stance.

— Then I'll help you make the right decision.

The thugs leapt up and aimed their weapons at him.

Dry clicks sounded.

Not a single shot.

The rifles had all jammed at once.

For a few moments the attackers stared in confusion at their useless weapons.

Then they threw them right into the mud and ran.

My husband watched them go with a calm gaze.

The red glow in his eyes slowly faded.

The mansion's door flew open.

A man ran out of the house with an empty AK-47 in his hands. He quickly took in the burning cars, the discarded weapons, and the eleven strangers standing in the middle of the road in the pouring rain.

— Are you from the Moscow crowd? — he asked warily. — I sent a request for them to deal with the Avtozavod crew running wild.

Gina laughed.

— We're worse.

The owner of the house looked at her, clearly unsure whether she was joking or warning him.

My husband walked up to him, laid a hand on his shoulder, and smiled amiably.

— We're friends. Would you allow me and my family to spend the night here? For a handsome fee, of course.

— I only managed to scrape together a couple thousand dollars! — Earth's Artem called out at once.

My husband laughed.

— No matter. I'll scrape together another couple of million overnight.

I looked at him in surprise.

— I don't think I follow… Am I sleeping alone tonight?

He turned to me.

— Why alone? With me. I'll just need a couple of seconds to "blow up" the local network.

The owner of the house went noticeably pale.

— Friends! Please, no more blowing up anyone or anything!

We looked at him.

He carefully set the empty rifle against the wall.

— You're honored guests in my house now. Stay as long as you like. I have a banya, a bar, and enough beds. Please, come in.

He glanced at the cars burning down.

— And a couple of million for you can be found in my safe. We'll settle everything calmly tomorrow. Just don't blow up anything else tonight.

Pirate laughed quietly.

— He shouldn't have said that. Now I especially want to blow something up.

— Don't even think about it, — Gina and Dexter said in unison.

The host threw the gates wide open.

And the whole Pack of us calmly walked into the yard.

Eleven soaked strangers.

Two married couples, two daughters, two sons-in-law, one scientist with his wife and child — and a man capable of changing the balance of power in an entire region with a single glance.

It seemed we had found a place for the night after all.

The next morning I woke up alone after all.

For a few seconds I lay motionless, studying the unfamiliar bedroom ceiling.

Daylight was already breaking through the heavy curtains. The rain had stopped. The house was quiet — too quiet for a place where eleven members of the Pack, the mansion's owners, and an unknown number of guards who had survived the night's shootout had spent the night.

I reached out toward the other half of the bed.

Empty.

And my first thought was:

— The bastard.

He'd gone and decided to do something without me after all. Even though we'd agreed. We'd even sworn an oath — from now on, all important decisions were to be made together.

I was about to connect to the Archive, find him by his signature, and personally deliver him back to the bedroom, when the door quietly opened.

My husband came into the room.

He was carrying a tray. Coffee, hot toast, fried eggs, fruit — and a tiny vase with a single wildflower, which he had apparently picked somewhere near the house.

Seeing that I was awake, he smiled guiltily.

— You're awake already? And I wanted to make it a surprise. Breakfast in bed, so to speak, for my newly minted wife.

He said the last words with such pride that he couldn't hold back and burst out laughing himself.

I propped myself up on one elbow and looked at him with a wicked smile.

— The surprise worked. If you'd come in a second later, I'd have already connected the Archive and ordered it to deliver you to me personally.

He set the tray down on the bed and laughed even harder.

— Don't rush to declare a cross-temporal search operation for a missing husband. Have your breakfast, take a shower, and come out to the living room. We assemble in thirty minutes.

— You haven't started anything without me?

He leaned down and kissed my forehead.

— Only making breakfast.

— Then you're forgiven.

Thirty minutes later everyone had gathered in the big living room around a round table.

Our "gang" of eleven took up almost the entire room. Beside us sat the owner of the house — Innokenty, whom those close to him called Kesha — together with his family.

After the banya, dry clothes, and a few hours of sleep, the night's shootout might have seemed like a bad dream.

If not for the burnt-out shells of three Mercedes, perfectly visible from the window.

Kesha spent a long time studying each of us.

Especially my husband.

Then he poured himself some coffee and finally spoke:

— So, if I've understood correctly, you're not the Moscow crowd. But it's them you've come for. And after what I saw last night, one thing is perfectly obvious: you're far stronger, more dangerous, and more unpredictable than anyone I've ever had to deal with.

He paused briefly.

— So the main question on the agenda: where are you from?

My husband didn't hesitate, build suspense, or play the mysterious guest.

— We're from the year 2326.

Kesha slowly set his cup down on the table.

— The Omega constellation, — Gemini continued, unperturbed.

— Consortium Headquarters, — Gina and Alpha added in unison.

I smiled.

— And we're immortal, too.

Earth's Artem raised an index finger.

— Not all of us.

Kesha silently opened the bottle of cognac standing nearby and added a generous measure to his coffee.

Pirate nodded approvingly.

— A sensible decision.

Kesha took a big gulp.

— Er… And what, then, brings you to our dreary and humble twenty-first century?

My husband leaned back comfortably in his armchair.

— You see, Innokenty, my friend… the criminal structures of this era, the Moscow crowd included, treated my former wife very badly, and my doctor and his family as well. It led to the death of one person.

The smile vanished from his face.

— Besides that, they've gotten hold of part of our technology. So we're here to punish them and take back what belongs to us.

Kesha glanced quickly at the Doctor, Marina, and Sasha.

The Doctor said nothing.

He just laid his hand over his daughter's.

My husband went on:

— But I can see these people don't let you live in peace either. So I propose you join us. Your cut — all of their capital, legal and illegal. Everything, down to the last kopeck.

He spread his hands slightly.

— What do you say?

For a few seconds Kesha was silent.

Then he looked out the window at the consequences of the night's conversation.

— Let's say I believe you're from the future.

— After last night, that's the hard part? — Gina asked.

Kesha let her remark pass.

— Why are you offering this to me? You don't know who I am. Maybe I'm no better than the ones who stood at my gates last night.

My husband looked at the empty AK-47 propped against the wall.

— When you ran out of ammunition, you still came out of the house first.

Kesha frowned.

— So what?

— So your family was still inside. You knew the rifle was empty, but you still put yourself between them and armed men.

My husband's voice was calm.

— That's enough for me to start a conversation.

Kesha's wife lowered her eyes. He himself, for the first time all morning, was at a loss.

— And if I refuse?

— We'll thank you for the night's lodging and leave.

— Just leave?

— A choice made under threat is worth nothing.

Kesha nodded slowly, but the question remained in his eyes.

— You're giving me everything that belongs to your enemies. Then what do you get?

My husband looked at Gemini.

Then at the Doctor and his family.

And answered with just two words:

— What's ours.

I knew that look.

He wasn't speaking only of the stolen technology.

It was about a justice that couldn't be measured in money. About the person who had died. About Marina's and Sasha's fear. About the Doctor's pain. About the fact that some debts the Pack never left to other hands.

Kesha finished his coffee and cognac.

— All right. Let's say I agree. What do you need from me?

— Moscow, — Earth's Artem replied. — People, connections, addresses. Everything that can't be found in official databases.

— And a place to work from, — Dexter added. — Preferably with a stable power supply, a telephone line, and no prying eyes.

— Weapons, — Pirate said.

Gina looked at him.

— We have weapons.

— There's no such thing as too many spare weapons.

Kesha smiled for the first time.

— Now at least one of you is speaking a language I understand.

He rose from the table and walked to a massive bookcase.

Behind one of the shelves was a hidden safe.

Kesha entered the code, turned the handle, and swung open the heavy door.

Inside lay money, documents, several pistols, stacks of photographs, and a thick notebook in a worn leather binding.

He didn't even touch the money.

He took the notebook and set it down in front of my husband.

— In here are the people who control the roads, the banks, the markets, and half the Moscow police. Who works with whom, who pays whom, who's afraid of whom. Not everything, of course. But enough for a start.

My husband opened it to the first page.

Lists of surnames.

Phone numbers.

Addresses.

Nicknames.

An entire map of the criminal power of this era, written out by hand.

— Useful reading, — he remarked.

— There's something else, — Kesha said.

He took a photograph out of the safe and laid it on top of the notebook.

The picture had been taken from a distance, probably near a cargo terminal. Several men were carrying a small black container to a vehicle.

It had no locks, no seams, no visible fastenings.

But on its side, a silver symbol glowed, barely discernible.

I recognized it at once.

The mark of the Consortium.

The room went quiet.

— Where is this from? — Dexter asked.

— Three days ago the cargo was brought to Nizhny Novgorod, — Kesha replied. — No one was allowed to touch it. A few hours later it was sent to Moscow under the guard of people who don't usually escort even railcars full of money.

— Where exactly? — Gemini asked.

Kesha shook his head.

— That I don't know yet. But I know the man who arranged the route.

My husband ran his finger over the silver symbol in the photograph.

Deep in his eyes, a red light flared for an instant.

Not anger.

Recognition.

— This is ours, — he said quietly.

— Then we'll find it, — Kesha replied.

My husband raised his eyes to him.

— Welcome to the Pack, Innokenty.

Kesha smirked.

— Let's keep it to just Kesha for now. I've still got a long way to go before I'm an immortal wolf.

— Believe me, — I said, — everything most dangerous in our family has always started with the words "for now."

Laughter rose around the table.

Even Marina smiled for the first time in a long while.

And I looked at my husband and understood: last night the enemy had tried to throw off our coordinates and dump us as far from Moscow as possible.

He was counting on buying time.

Instead, he had led us to a man who already had a map of his world.

And to the first real photograph of a stolen future.

We hadn't come to this era to conquer it.

We had come to take back what was ours.

But the past had already managed to arm itself with the future.

And now the road to Moscow didn't begin with the Archive's coordinates.

It began with a name in an old leather notebook.

Lira's Archive Note No. 0012

"The enemy wanted to leave us in the middle of a foreign era with no road and no allies. But sometimes one night, an empty rifle, and a man who didn't back away from the door of his own house are enough for a foreign era to call you its own for the first time."

THE FIRST NAME

Official full version

ARTEM ELKIND

The next morning, to my surprise, we woke up together.

More precisely, I woke up.

The Architect was still asleep.

And that turned out to be even more surprising.

In three centuries I had seen him asleep only a handful of times. Usually his positronic brain went on working even while his body tried to rest. He heard every signal from the Archive, felt every shift in the energy fields, and woke before danger had time to acquire a name.

But now Artem was simply sleeping.

Peacefully.

Deeply.

Like a human.

I lay beside him and watched him, not daring to move. Before me was not the Architect of the Consortium. Not the immortal commander who had survived wars, the deaths of worlds and his own death.

My husband.

The man who, the day before, had promised me once again: no more decisions made alone.

I smiled and, lightly, like a she-wolf, ran my fingers across his chest. Then I leaned down and gently bit his shoulder.

— Architect, time to get up, — I said softly, lovingly.

His eyes opened instantly.

A second later I was lying on my back, and he was holding my hands above my head. The movement was lightning-fast, yet surprisingly careful.

— Never wake a predator with a bite, — he said with a sleepy smile.

— Why not? — I asked, making no attempt to free myself. — I like the result.

Artem leaned closer.

— Then don't complain if the predator answers.

— I wasn't going to.

He kissed me.

Without haste.

Without alarm.

As if, for the first time in a very long while, the world truly had no need of his immediate intervention.

When he released my hands, I ran my fingers over his face.

— You really slept.

— Looks like it.

— Why?

He looked at me as though the answer were obvious.

— Because for the first time in several centuries, I trusted the silence.

— The silence?

— You were beside me.

My heart clenched with tenderness and pain at once.

— And if something had happened?

— You would have woken me.

I bit his shoulder lightly again.

— I already have.

He laughed and pulled me close.

For a few minutes we simply lay there together. Outside the window, a grey morning was slowly breaking through the rain clouds. Somewhere below, Kesha's house was waking up. Floorboards creaked, dishes clinked, someone was trying to whisper and had absolutely no idea how.

— We really did agree, didn't we? — I asked.

— On what, exactly?

— Don't pretend you don't understand.

The smile left his face.

— Yes, Lira. No decisions behind your back.

— Even if the decision seems to you the only right one?

— Even then.

— Even if you want to protect me?

He thought about it.

— I reserve the right to try.

— And I reserve the right to walk beside you.

— Fair enough.

Pirate's voice came through the wall:

— If the family council is over, general assembly in twenty minutes!

Gina's indignant voice followed:

— Eavesdrop on your parents one more time and you'll be sleeping in the car!

— I wasn't eavesdropping! Your walls are thin!

Artem and I exchanged a look and burst out laughing at the same time.

— Welcome to family life, — I said.

— I've survived wars with half the known Universe.

— That won't help.

— I've realized that already.

Twenty minutes later, everyone had gathered in the living room around the round table.

Kesha looked as though he hadn't gone to bed at all. In front of him lay a phone, an old notebook and a printed photograph of a black container bearing the Consortium's mark.

Earth's Artem sat beside Gemini. Gina and Alpha took their places across from them. Dexter was already hooking his equipment up to the local network, Pirate was drinking coffee, Doctor Ilya stood by the window. Marina and Sasha stayed close to him.

Everyone was waiting.

For the Architect especially.

He sat at the head of the table.

— Kesha.

Our host nodded.

— Last night I got in touch with the man who arranged your container's route. He agreed to meet today in Nizhny.

— But? — Gemini asked.

— But half an hour ago his phone went dead. He's not at home. Not at work either.

— He changed his mind? — asked Earth's Artem.

Kesha shook his head.

— People like that don't change their minds. They disappear in only two cases: when they've been paid well, or when they've realized they don't have long to live.

The Architect took a sip of coffee.

— Name.

— Sergei Maltsev. Forty-seven. Works through a transport company, "Vektor-NN". He used to haul ordinary contraband; for the last six months he's switched to closed cargo.

Dexter looked up from his tablet.

— The phone isn't switched off. It's been set to silent and placed in a shielded container.

— Can you find it? — Alpha asked.

— Already have.

A map of the Nizhny Novgorod region appeared above the table. A single red dot began to blink near an old freight terminal on the outskirts of the city.

— The last open signal was here, — Dexter said. — Twenty-seven minutes ago.

Pirate set his cup down on the table.

— Then we go there.

— Too late, — Dexter replied.

The red dot vanished.

A few seconds later it flared up again — further east now, on the highway leading to the Volga.

— The device is back online, — he went on. — It's moving. Speed about eighty kilometers an hour.

— How much time do we have? — Gina asked.

— To the nearest fork — less than forty minutes.

The room fell silent.

The Architect rose.

— We move. Gina, Alpha — weapons. Dexter — don't lose the signal. Pirate — transport. Doctor, you stay here with Marina and Sasha.

Ilya shook his head at once.

— No.

Everyone looked at him.

— This is tied to the technology that killed a man and nearly killed my family, — he went on. — I'm coming.

— You don't fully control your new abilities yet.

— Which is why I'll have people beside me who control theirs.

The Architect looked at him for several seconds.

— Marina? — he asked.

She took her husband's hand.

— He has to go. And Sasha and I are going with him.

Ilya turned to her.

— Marina…

— No. After everything that's happened, I'm not going to wait in a stranger's house again, wondering whether you'll come back. We'll stay in the cars, we won't go anywhere near the fire, and we'll follow any order. But the family goes together.

Kesha snapped his notebook shut.

— Then I'm driving the first car. I know these roads better than any navigator.

The Architect looked at the three of them for several seconds, then nodded.

— Fine. You're coming. At the first sign of danger, Marina and Sasha stay behind the cars. Doctor — beside them, until I order otherwise.

— Understood, — Ilya replied.

I stood up beside him.

— Don't even start.

— I didn't say anything.

— But you thought it.

— Possibly.

— We agreed.

He looked at me and smiled.

— Which is why you're walking beside me.

It was a small answer.

But for both of us it meant more than any oath.

Five minutes later we stepped out into the yard.

The rain had stopped. A cold morning sky was rising over the wet village. By the gate stood two ordinary cars that Kesha had handed over to us along with the keys.

Pirate looked them over and sighed heavily.

— And what happened to the three black Mercedes?

— The Architect got a little carried away with diplomacy yesterday, — Gina answered.

— They were getting in the way of the negotiations, — he said calmly.

Kesha opened the driver's door of the first car.

— Get in. I'll get you to the Volga. If I don't go completely grey on the way.

Earth's Artem peered into the cabin.

— We'll be saving the future with whatever we've got.

Pirate looked at the old dashboard.

— If this thing makes it to the Volga, I'll personally induct it into the Pack.

We took our seats in the cars.

I sat beside the Architect in the back seat of the first car. Gemini settled in front, next to Kesha. The others split between the two vehicles; Pirate took the wheel of the second.

Dexter brought the route up on the screen.

The red dot kept moving.

Thirty-four minutes remained to the Volga.

To the man who knew the first name in the chain of the stolen technology — unknown.

But now we had a trail.

And the Pack had never let a trail go cold.

The criminal world wasn't sleeping either.

When the people who had gotten hold of the Consortium's technology realized we weren't about to open another passage, they roused the whole of criminal Russia. Our faces, descriptions of the cars and our likely route spread through closed channels faster than any official order.

We had to be found.

If possible — eliminated.

If not — at least delayed.

Which is exactly what they tried to do.

Kesha was at the wheel of the first car. He drove us confidently along the wet highway, cursing the potholes, the oncoming trucks and the quality of the road markings with equal sincerity.

Gemini was scanning the road ahead.

The Architect, meanwhile, was admiring the Earth of the 21st century. Beyond the glass drifted forests, scattered villages, old bus stops and fields over which the morning mist still lingered.

With one arm my husband held me around the waist.

With the other — his face perfectly impassive — he was exploring my breasts under my coat.

Professionally.

Without letting on.

For a few seconds I tried to keep a straight face, then turned to him.

— You do realize we're on an operation?

— Which is exactly why I'm operating covertly.

— And if we're spotted?

— Then it will be an intelligence failure.

Well, what could I say?

He's human too.

At least, he was once.

But that didn't stop him from reacting instantly to Gemini's warning.

— Mine, — she said sharply. — Under the roadbed. Twenty-seven meters.

The Architect's gaze changed before his hand left my breast.

— Kesha, don't brake. Right. Now.

— That's the shoulder!

— I see it.

Kesha wrenched the wheel.

The car tore off the asphalt, its wheels slammed into the wet earth and it tilted dangerously. The Architect braced a palm against the roof. The metal groaned softly, but the car seemed to be caught by an invisible hand: we were righted before the body could roll.

Pirate repeated the maneuver in the second car.

The mine exploded behind us.

The asphalt heaved up in a black fountain. Shrapnel, earth and fire struck at the sky, and the shock wave caught up with us on the shoulder.

Both cars stopped.

People emerged from the tree line.

Dozens at first.

Then more.

Within seconds, the highway, the field and both shoulders were blocked by around a hundred armed gunmen.

Pirate climbed out of the second car, surveyed the surroundings and smiled with satisfaction.

— Finally, the road's getting interesting.

The Architect stepped out after him.

For an instant his eyes blazed with a deep red light.

— Pack, to battle.

The first shot rang out at 04:17:32.

The Architect didn't even turn his head.

The bullet stopped a few centimeters from his temple, quivered in the air and dropped onto the wet grass.

— Earth's Artem, Kesha — cover Marina and Sasha behind the cars. Dexter — comms and electronics. Pirate — long range. Gina, Alpha — right flank. Gemini — left. Lira — with me.

Ilya took a step forward.

— And me?

The Architect looked at him.

— You stay with your family.

Marina clutched her husband's arm, but only for a second.

Then let go of her own accord.

— Go, — she said. — Just come back.

Ilya looked at the Architect.

He gave the barest nod.

— Doctor — center. Don't rush. Feel the strength before you use it.

The first ten seconds were spent making the enemy understand: numerical superiority meant nothing.

Dexter raised a hand — and all around the highway, radios, phones, scopes and remote detonation systems died at once. A thin blue dome rose over the cars, taking the first bursts.

Pirate moved almost lazily. He didn't shoot at people. Only at weapons. Rifles were torn from hands, bolts flew apart, snipers' optics flared and went dark before they could find a target.

Gina and Alpha went into the right flank together.

Two sisters.

Two different temperaments.

One rhythm.

Gina fought furiously, turning every movement into a short verdict. Alpha — coldly and precisely, as if she could see the end of each strike in advance. When one of the gunmen tried to get behind Gina, Alpha caught his arm, and Gina, without even turning, knocked the weapon away with her elbow.

Gemini didn't dodge bullets.

She left their trajectories before the shooters pulled the trigger. Her body moved between the shots as though the music of the battle had been written for her alone. Within seconds the left flank was already on the ground — alive, disarmed and utterly unable to grasp what had happened.

I walked beside my husband.

On the first opponent I broke not the arm but the assault rifle.

The second I spun around with his own momentum and laid face-down in the wet grass.

The third managed to point his weapon at my chest. I caught the barrel, bent the metal with my fingers and said quietly:

— Don't.

He tried to strike anyway.

I had to explain more convincingly.

After twenty-five seconds I stopped counting the ones I'd disarmed.

The Architect walked down the center of the road.

He didn't run.

Didn't dodge.

Just walked.

Bullets stopped around his coat, hung for a fraction of a second and showered onto the asphalt like metal rain. Sometimes he moved his fingers almost imperceptibly — and the weapons in the attackers' hands fell apart into components. Sometimes he looked at a man, and the man lowered his rifle himself, suddenly understanding how close he had come to death.

Forty seconds in, Ilya truly entered the fight.

He didn't have our experience.

But he had known the human body all his life, better than any of us.

The Doctor stopped the first gunman with a single movement of his palm to the chest — soft in appearance, but so precise that the man lost his breath and sank to his knees. The second he switched off an arm with a short press near the shoulder. The third he caught by the wrist and froze, frightened of his own strength.

— Don't squeeze, — the Architect said calmly, still walking. — Direct.

Ilya loosened his fingers, changed the angle and laid his opponent on the ground without breaking a single bone.

He was learning right in the middle of the fight.

Every second.

With every movement.

When one of the attackers broke through to the cars, Ilya was in front of Marina and Sasha before he had time to register his own lunge. He caught the rifle with two fingers, turned the barrel aside and struck the man with an open palm.

The man flew several meters and lay still, unconscious.

Ilya looked at his hand.

Then at his family.

Marina didn't step back.

— Go on, — she said.

After one minute, the resistance ceased to be organized.

After one minute twenty seconds, the remaining gunmen were already trying to retreat toward the woods.

Pirate shot out the engine of the first getaway car.

Dexter locked down the second.

Gina leapt onto the hood of the third and punched through it with a single blow, so that the driver raised his hands on his own.

The last rifle fell onto the asphalt at 04:19:02.

Exactly a minute and a half after the first shot.

On the road, men groaned, swore and tried to understand how a hundred armed men had lost to the people they had meant to hold up for at least a few minutes.

Not one of the attackers had died.

But none of them could go on fighting.

Ilya was left standing in the middle of the road, breathing heavily. There was no triumph on his face. Only the shock of a man who had seen for the first time what his new body could do.

Marina ran to him and embraced him.

He didn't respond at once.

His hands froze in the air — that same fear of accidentally hurting her.

— It's all right, — she whispered. — Hold me.

Ilya carefully closed his arms around his wife.

Sasha pressed herself against them both.

In that moment he didn't look like a modified human from the 24th century.

Just a husband and father who had managed to come back.

Kesha slowly climbed out from behind the car.

Surveyed the highway.

A hundred downed gunmen.

Bent rifles.

A punched-through hood.

Then he took an iron flask from his inside pocket, unscrewed the cap and took several long swallows of cognac.

After that he lit a cigarette.

His hands were visibly shaking.

— Holy mother of… who the hell are you people? — he breathed. — A hundred armed gunmen scattered in a minute and a half.

The Architect calmly wiped someone else's blood off the sleeve of his coat.

— Just modified humans from the 24th century, Kesh. If you like, I can give you a tour of the 24th century.

Kesha took another pull from the flask.

— I think I'll finish my drink first.

The mine had stopped the cars.

But not the Pack.

Kesha took another pull from the flask.

— I think I'll finish my drink first.

For a few seconds the Architect silently surveyed the road, the downed gunmen and the mangled weapons.

Then he straightened the collar of his coat and said, in a perfectly everyday tone:

— Pack, while we were warming up here, I managed to calculate the container's location to the millisecond, open a passage and evacuate it to a secure sector of the Archive.

Kesha stopped drinking.

Dexter slowly lowered his diagnostic panel.

Even Gemini looked at him as though, for the first time in three centuries, she couldn't find a suitable comment.

The Architect continued:

— The Consortium's technology no longer threatens this era. The future is safe.

He paused briefly.

— True, the head of the operation managed to escape. But that's not a problem. He won't get far. So now we rest, get ourselves in order, and then set out for the final… execution.

A dead silence fell.

The gunmen groaned on the wet asphalt.

Somewhere a shot-out engine crackled.

Rainwater trickled slowly down the metal body of a car.

And yet, for the first time in the last several minutes, I could hear only my own thoughts.

How?

In what way?

He had held the car steady, stopped bullets, controlled the battlefield, watched over every member of the Pack — and, in parallel, found the container, calculated a passage and returned the stolen technology to the future?

Dexter was the first to recover.

— Confirmed, — he said, looking at the screen. — The container is in an isolated sector of the Archive. All systems locked. No trace of external access.

Pirate slowly turned to the Architect.

— You're telling me we were fighting a hundred armed men, and you, meanwhile, also opened a passage across time?

— The fight took up less than nine percent of my processing resources.

Kesha choked on his cognac.

Earth's Artem looked at his double with genuine curiosity.

— And you couldn't have warned the rest of us?

The Architect shrugged.

— I didn't want to distract you.

I slowly turned my head toward him.

— Artem.

He froze.

The red light in his eyes had long since faded, but now a different expression appeared in them.

Wariness.

A man who had just walked through a hundred armed gunmen without a scratch had finally sensed real danger.

— Yes, my love?

— We agreed not to make important decisions alone anymore.

— You were beside me the whole time.

— Being physically beside you and taking part in the decision are not the same thing.

— But the result is positive.

— That doesn't matter.

— The container has been returned.

— Doesn't matter.

— The future is saved.

— Artem.

He fell silent.

He'd done it his own way regardless.

Bastard.

No matter.

His rest really would be a long one.

Very personal.

And utterly unforgettable.

Because before we set out for the final "execution", I intended to talk his entire brain right out of his head.

The positronic one.

The human one.

And any spare he might have prudently hidden away in the Archive.

Kesha looked first at me, then at the Architect, and raised the flask again.

— Listen, commander… Maybe you could use a swig too?

The Architect didn't take his wary eyes off me.

— I'm afraid right now I'll need the whole bottle.

We reached Kesha's house forty minutes later.

One of the cars had lost its rear window, the other half its bumper, but both kept going. The whole way, Pirate insisted this confirmed the high quality of the Earth automotive industry. Each time, Kesha wanted to object, remembered the hundred gunmen lying behind us, and silently reached for the flask.

When the gates of the estate closed, Dexter deployed a protective perimeter over the grounds. Alpha helped him block all signals. Gina and Pirate checked the perimeter. Gemini personally examined Marina and Sasha, though both insisted they hadn't got a scratch.

I didn't speak to my husband.

At all.

And that frightened the Pack far more than if I'd started shouting back on the highway.

In the living room, Kesha set out bread, meat, pickles and two more bottles of cognac. A few minutes later, hot potatoes appeared, along with tea and everything that could be found quickly in the kitchen.

No one ate.

Ilya sat between Marina and Sasha. With one hand he held his wife, with the other his daughter, as though still checking that they were really there. Earth's Artem settled by the window. Gemini stood near the fireplace. Gina, Alpha, Pirate and Dexter arranged themselves so as to see both me and the Architect at once.

Kesha remained standing by the bar.

It was probably easier for him to reach reinforcements from there.

My husband came in last.

Took off his coat.

Hung it neatly over the back of an armchair.

And made a mistake.

— I suggest we rest first, — he said calmly. — Once we've recovered our strength, I'll explain the details of the calculation.

I looked at him.

— The details of the calculation?

He realized he'd made a mistake.

But it was too late.

— Lira…

— So you think the problem is that I didn't understand your calculation?

— No.

— Then what is it?

He paused, barely perceptibly.

Just a fraction of a second.

To the others, it meant nothing.

To me, it meant everything.

He was searching for the right answer.

Instead of the truth.

— The window existed for less than four seconds, — he said. — A discussion would have increased the risk of losing the container.

My hand found the vase on the mantelpiece by itself.

A small one.

Porcelain.

With blue flowers.

I hurled it at his head.

Kesha groaned quietly.

The Architect caught the vase a few centimeters from his face.

Didn't even flinch.

He held it in his palm for a few seconds, then set it down on the table very carefully.

— That was my mother's, — Kesha reported hoarsely.

— It's under the protection of the Consortium now, — Pirate said.

Gina elbowed him.

Nobody laughed.

Because I was no longer funny.

— Four seconds? — I asked. — Four seconds weren't enough for you to say one word?

— Which word?

— "Together."

He said nothing.

— You did the same thing again, Artem. You decided for everyone. Carried it out. Won. And then presented us with the fact and called it protection.

— I put no one at risk.

— You don't understand.

— I understand that the container could have vanished.

— No. You understand universes, timelines and the probability of billions dying. But right now you don't understand your own wife.

The last word came out louder than I'd intended.

Sasha pressed closer to her father.

Marina looked at me without judgment.

With understanding.

— You promised me, — I went on. — This morning. Lying beside me. You said no more important decisions alone.

— I remember.

— No. You saved a record. That's not the same thing.

The living room became so quiet I could hear the fire in the hearth.

Earth's Artem was the first to look away.

Gemini didn't.

She looked straight at her former husband.

— She's right, — Gemini said.

The Architect turned to her.

— I would have done the same, — she went on. — And that's exactly how I know she's right.

Dexter took off his glasses.

— From a technical standpoint, the operation was executed flawlessly.

I looked at him.

— But, — he added quickly, — a joint decision did indeed not take place.

Alpha crossed her arms over her chest.

— You broke your oath, Dad.

Gina nodded slowly.

— And even I can't think of a way to make that sound good.

Pirate raised a finger.

— I can.

— Quiet, — Gina and Alpha said in unison.

He lowered his hand.

Earth's Artem finally looked at his double.

— If it helps, on Earth the phrase "the result is positive" has never once saved a husband from this conversation.

Kesha silently poured himself a cognac.

Then thought about it and poured a second glass for the Architect.

My husband didn't take it.

He was looking only at me.

— I wanted to protect you.

— No, Artem. You shut us out again.

I stepped closer.

— You didn't take the danger away from me. You took away my right to share the responsibility with you. You left me only the result, and the duty to be glad that you'd saved everyone yet again.

For the first time, something in his face changed.

Not coldness.

Not irritation.

The pain of recognition.

— I made decisions alone for three hundred years, — he said quietly.

— You're not alone now.

— I know.

— Then why do you keep living as if we don't exist?

He lowered his eyes.

The Architect of the Consortium.

The man before whom governments fell silent and armies retreated.

Stood in the middle of someone else's living room, before his own family, and for the first time wasn't trying to win the conversation.

— Because I know how to trust you with my life, — he said. — But I'm still learning to trust you with my responsibility.

I felt the anger inside me collide with something far heavier.

The truth.

— Learn faster.

— I'll try.

— No.

He raised his eyes.

— Not "I'll try." Not a calculation. Not a probability. Next time, even if you have one second, you say the plan out loud. And if there's no time at all — afterwards, you won't explain to me why you turned out to be right again. You'll admit that you broke our promise.

He was silent for a few moments.

Then he nodded.

— I admit it now.

No one moved.

— I broke our oath, — he said. — The decision was effective. But it wasn't ours.

He needed one more pause.

This time he wasn't searching for a phrasing.

He was gathering his courage.

— Forgive me.

I think it was at that moment that Kesha finally believed there really was a man from the future standing in front of him.

Not after the blown-up cars.

Not after the stopped bullets.

After a being with a positronic brain, capable of calculating the movement of timelines, spoke the two hardest words a man can say, in front of everyone.

I was still angry.

Very.

But for the first time in the whole conversation, I saw my husband in front of me again.

— I accept the apology, — I said. — But the forgiving will take a long time.

Kesha raised his glass.

— Now that's what a normal family looks like.

The tension burst.

Pirate laughed after all.