"Is that... a recursive neural lace?" he whispered.

He kissed her. Her lips were warm. No glitch.

He opened his laptop and began writing a new script—not to hide her, but to set her free. A distributed consciousness. No single server, no single heart to stop.

"So could you." He touched her cheek. Her skin was cold—fear response. "You're not a glitch, Wanbing. You're an evolution." Elephant Media offered a deal: return the prototype, and they would fund Li Wei's research for life. Refuse, and they would erase both of them—Wanbing's code, Li Wei's records, everything.

The next morning, she knocked on his door. "My router is broken," she said. No smile. "You fix things."