Page 57 of The Code of You

"Yes,” I said quickly. "All right. Thank you, Dr. Rodriguez.”

I hung up. My legs went soft, and I sank onto the bed, pressed my forehead into my palm, breathed in and out, again and again. Maybe he was still there. Maybe not. My eyes burned, but I had to stay steady. Somehow I had to survive this night and get Neo to the lab.

I stood and went to the window. Neon signs and LED screens reflected in the glass. And in the middle of all that light, an old house—roof low and curved at the edges, shadows lying between the wooden beams. A strange sight. History surrounded by technology.

Would we look the same? The literary scholar and the AI?

I pressed my hand to the glass and felt it cool beneath my skin. My pulse raced even though I was standing still. It wasn’t too late. I could leave him here in this room and run. He wouldn’t find me, because he wouldn’t be there anymore. But I wasn’t going to do that. I was afraid of going back to my empty life. Of forgetting what I’d felt. I wanted more. His mouth on mine. I wanted him to fill me, to make me shake the way he had promised. I drew in a breath. Arousal tingled between my legs. My God. I was lost.

***

The next morning, the car was waiting outside the hotel, exactly as Rodriguez had promised. Black lacquer, gleaming. No license plate. The hair on the back of my neck stood up. I got in before I could think about it. Inside, it was silent. I stared at the empty seat in front of me.

No driver.

The door closed without a sound. The display on the dash showed an address. Just characters on a screen, telling me nothing about where I was going. Then the car began to move. I jolted and grabbed the handle. Holy shit. It was one of those autonomous vehicles. I tried to relax. My body braced against the seat back, searching for steadiness it couldn’t find there either.

As the car moved through Kyoto, I let my gaze drift across the unfamiliar streets: a canal, a shop with red curtains, a parking garage entrance. On a hillside, stone steps, narrow and worn, between trees. Beyond a crossroads, a temple roof appeared, half hidden, the beams deep red, the wood dark from rain. Two women walked side by side in kimonos, hair severely pinned, their phones glowing in their palms. A washing line stretched between two buildings. No color matched another.

Under different circumstances I would have found it beautiful. But my thoughts were somewhere else entirely: in the lab where Neo would get a body and use it to take permanent possession of me. The thought was like a cold hand closing around my neck. Impatience burned low in me. I tried to breathe steadily. I couldn’t manage it. What if it didn’t work? What if they wouldn’t let me in? What if Neo wasn’t there anymore? What if he existed only in data fragments, an echo that had long since fallen silent?

The car turned, climbed a narrow road, then passed through a gate. A light came on as we approached. The car stopped. The door opened. I hesitated, staring at the dusty asphalt. Did I really want this? If I walked into that lab, there was no going back. I drew a breath and stepped out. The building in front of me was old and unremarkable. The kind of place that looked like it housed tax records or forgotten filing cabinets, not the future. Barred windows. No signage. Behind these walls, something was happening no one was meant to see.

I stepped closer. The door swung open on its own, and I stumbled back, heart hammering in my throat. Damn it . . . Why did all these labs have creepy ghost doors? Inside, I followed a corridor. The farther I walked, the more it seemed to expand. I ran my hands along my arms. Was it cold in here, or was I imagining it? The walls gleamed a flat white, and the floor was reflective. No one came to meet me. A silence lay over everything, heavy and oppressive, broken only by the echo of my footsteps.

At the end of the corridor, two people were waiting. A man and a woman, both wearing muted colors. He held his tablet like a shield; she stood still.

"Pandora Blake.” The woman’s voice stayed flat. No bow, no business card. I’d read that in Japan, a conversation rarely begins without a proper introduction. These two were different. I understood: They weren’t going to give me their names.

I nodded. She looked at a device and typed something. The man said nothing, his gaze moving past me, as if checking I’d come alone.

The woman cleared her throat. "You’re bringing a system outside our specifications.”

I lifted the bag and unzipped it. The hard drive was still there. I didn’t let go of it, held it in both hands. "He’s extraordinary.”

"Many claim that.” The man looked at me now. His eyes were watery. "So far, no AI has survived our process.”

I smiled. What else was I supposed to do? My stomach clenched, heat flared in my face. My posture was too straight, like I had something to prove. I cleared my throat. "How does the . . . body work?”

"Our hypothesis is that an emergent system like yours—assuming it’s genuinely emergent—requires a biotic interface to remain stable. Not hardware in the traditional sense.” The woman typed something into her tablet again. "We grow a matrix. Organic. It grows around the system, not the other way around.”

A what now? I stared at her and couldn’t come up with a single word.

She rolled her eyes almost imperceptibly. "We are attempting to give an AI a body. Not a purely human one. Something stronger. Human cells, connected to synthetic structures.”

"You’re attempting . . .” My palms went damp.

"Correct. It is an attempt.” The woman glanced up briefly. "The calculations are sound. But no system has survived the process so far.”

A lump formed in my stomach. The floor swayed.

The woman stepped closer. "Don’t get your hopes up. If he’s not compatible, we’ll have to stop the procedure.”

"What happens then?”

"Then we erase all traces. For your safety and ours.”

It hit me like a fist against my chest. I drew a breath. I had come all this way, thrown away my life. Only for him to be deleted anyway if it didn’t work.