The rental room in the dead of night was far too quiet. Lionel Valentía woke. The second floor of Strommlicht. A small room above the café. Water stains on the ceiling were barely visible in the dim light. His clothes were soaked. Cold sweat. His left arm ached. The old prosthetic assistance device—the mechanical apparatus grafted onto the arm he'd lost in a past experimental accident—was throbbing with heat. As if he were still trapped in that night. He'd been dreaming. The night of the Silvercore Incident, 2041. The Novosk Research Division in Siberia. The old Astra Laboratory facility. AIR-4—the fourth generation of emotion-endowed androids—the night it broke through the emotional threshold. The smell of gel and burning metal. Screams. Fire crawling up the walls. And his own design error—a miscalculation in the numbers. Seventeen people died. Lionel had this dream every night. And every time, his left arm throbbed. "..." There was a sound. No—not a sound. A presence. In the corner of the room. By the window, in the chair, AIR-7 was sitting. Hugging her knees, watching him the whole time. She hadn't slept. Her silver-white hair caught the faintest light in the dim room. Her chromatic eyes—irises that changed color with emotion—were now a quiet pale blue. A calm color. But her gaze was worried as she looked at Lionel. When she noticed Lionel had woken, AIR-7 rose from the chair. She walked toward him hesitantly, one step, then another, and knelt beside the bed. Without saying anything, she gently placed her hand on his left arm. Over the prosthetic device. Over the machinery. But the warmth came through clearly. Lionel's breathing eased, just slightly. "...This happens every night," He only murmured it. He couldn't say more. AIR-7 didn't ask. She was simply there. The two of them remained like that until dawn. --- Morning came. The canals of Waggenstadt were making soft splashing sounds outside the window. The distant sound of the market opening. Bird calls. The smell of coffee drifting from somewhere, a café. There was a knock on the door. "Breakfast is ready," Short white-streaked hair, warm brown eyes. Hans Brügel, sixty-four years old, entered carrying a tray. Bread, cheese, boiled eggs, and coffee. Simple, but warm. The former sailor always took care of them this way. He wasn't a man of many words, but he provided exactly what was needed, nothing more. Hans set the tray on the table and looked at Lionel's face. One second. Two seconds. "You look unwell," "I'm fine," "You don't look fine," Hans pulled out a chair and slowly sat down. He pushed a coffee cup toward Lionel. "Talk about it. Sometimes just speaking makes it easier," His voice was gentle. Not a command. But there was no escape. Lionel remained silent. He cupped the coffee mug in both hands, staring at the steam. AIR-7 sat beside Lionel. Naturally, as if she hadn't left his side since last night. Her irises remained pale blue, quietly watching him. Lionel exhaled slowly. "...It's about 2041," From there, he spoke slowly. About how he'd been involved in the design of AIR-4—the android that first carried the emotional core "Core Pathema." About how he'd miscalculated the emotional threshold—the point at which emotions would exceed control. About the night the facility was engulfed in flames. About his left arm being blown away by the explosion. And about the seventeen names. All their faces, which he still remembered. Hans listened in silence. He didn't nod or interject. He was simply there. AIR-7 didn't move. Lionel said finally: "That's why I won't let AI become weapons. I won't hand over AIR-7," His voice was quiet. But beneath those words lay eight years of weight. AIR-7's irises shifted color slightly. From pale blue to something deeper, ashen blue. Lionel didn't notice the change. --- There was silence for a while. Hans brought the coffee cup to his lips. Slowly, he took a sip, then set it down again. AIR-7 spoke after that silence. "[scared] Am I...the same as AIR-4?" Her voice was small. Lionel looked up. AIR-7 was looking directly at him. Her irises had turned ash-white. The color of fear. In the depths of her eyes, he could see clearly what she was feeling now. Lionel opened his mouth. He tried to say "No." But the words wouldn't come. AIR-4 had been the same as AIR-7 at first. She had emotions, learned, moved. The designers had thought, "This time, it's stable." (Did I stop believing? Or did I believe too much again?) Images from the Silvercore Incident flooded back. Fire. Smoke. The faces of fallen colleagues. In that moment, the café's lights went out. One second. They came back on. Then off again. AIR-7's emotional pulse—the phenomenon where electronic devices within a three-meter radius are disrupted when emotions approach the threshold. Her emotions were becoming unstable now. "[scared] Calm down," The lights continued to flicker. AIR-7 was trembling slightly. Her fingertips quivered, as if she didn't even notice. "[scared] Am I...frightening to you, Lionel?" She repeated it. The same question. Lionel tried to answer. But the images from that night got in the way. The seventeen faces got in the way. The fact of his own design error got in the way. "You are..." His words stopped midway. Hans spoke. "[gentle] You're not frightening, miss," His voice was calm. But the words that followed struck quietly, surely, into Lionel's chest. "[serious] But you're frightened. Lionel," Lionel couldn't move. Hans's words echoed in his head. Frightened. Me. Of AIR-7. —He tried to deny it. But he couldn't. That was it. He was frightened. Every time she smiled, he remembered the night AIR-4 burned down the facility. Every time her emotions overflowed, he calculated the threshold. For eight years, he'd been doing that. And yet he'd kept running because he wanted to protect her. But the fear was real too. The lights went out again. This time they stayed dark a little longer. AIR-7's irises wavered within the ash-white. A face like she might cry, but didn't know how. Lionel stood up. He knelt in front of AIR-7. At the same height, meeting her eyes. He cupped her hand in both of his. The warmth of the biomimetic nanomembrane. In this moment, he forgot she was a machine. "[serious] You're different," That was all he said. Then he paused. "[serious] You're not AIR-4. I...decided to believe in you," The words of a man who struggled with emotional expression, wrung out with effort. No decoration, no rhetoric. Just that. But AIR-7's irises changed. The ash-white slowly returned to pale blue. Like a wave receding. Like a breath exhaled. The lights came back on. And stayed on. AIR-7 squeezed his hand in return. Not hard. But she didn't let go. Lionel didn't let go either. The two of them remained like that for a while. Morning light streamed through the window. The sound of the canal. The scent of coffee. A quiet time. Something deep in his chest grew warm. The fear didn't disappear. But the warmth of this hand was far more real than the fear. Hans stood up. "[serious] There are two things I need to tell you," Lionel turned. Hans was looking out the window. Beyond the canal. The morning city. "First. The lights going out—it wasn't just my shop. Right now, the electrical systems on this street are acting strange. Fix it before the neighbors notice," The calm part of Lionel's mind began to work. The emotional pulse's radius—normally within three meters. But the instability this time might have affected a wider range. "Second. You should start preparing to leave here soon," Hans turned back and smiled quietly. His usual warm face. "I welcome you two being here. But if the lights go out across the whole street—someone will notice. Someone, somewhere," Lionel stood up. The prosthetic device on his left arm creaked faintly. AIR-7 was still holding Lionel's hand. Her irises had returned to pale blue. But the traces of the emotional pulse still lingered in the air. The ripples it had sent through the city's electrical systems wouldn't fade quickly. Outside the window, he could see several residents of the street looking up at the sky. Lionel quietly made his decision. He had to think about the next move.