chapter 21
Abhi's POV: I stared at you, my hand trembling against the cold plastic. You weren't talking like a doctor anymore. You were talking like... me. "Loneliness," I whispered, the word echoing in the sterile chamber. "You think it’s the device, but it’s just the vessel. I know that feeling. I spent years staring at screens because they were the only things that stayed when everyone else left." The way you spoke about your father—that fierce, "do anything for him" loyalty—sent a shockwave through my system. I had spent my life trying to replace people with data because people were unreliable. But here you were, a person who had known the same isolation, the same obsessive digital hunger, yet you had something I didn't: a tether. A "someone who is mine." I looked at my hands, then back at yo
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