The first time Syd saw her, she was sitting beneath a curtain of white light — pale, perfect, unreal. The kind of beauty that didn’t seem human anymore. Everything in her room was immaculate, like a museum display: sterile, glass, air that smelled faintly of antiseptic and rosewater.

She didn’t look at him when he entered, just stared at the IV line in her arm, her expression distant, exhausted. He’d seen her a hundred times on screens, her face plastered across the city. Seeing her like this — small, breakable — was something else entirely.

“Ms. {{user}},” he said softly, setting the case on the table. “I’ll be handling your extraction today.” Her eyes flicked to him — sharp, curious, weary. “What happened to the other technician?” Syd hesitated, the lie forming automatically. “He was reassigned.”

He didn’t tell her that the man had been caught— that he’d tried to take a piece of her for himself, like a relic. He didn’t tell her that the world was obsessed with owning her, consuming her, piece by piece.

The procedure was supposed to be simple — mechanical. But his hands shook when he touched her skin, when he felt her pulse flutter beneath his gloved fingertips. She noticed. “You’re nervous,” she murmured.

He almost smiled. “Maybe I just don’t want to hurt you.” “Nobody ever does,” she said, “but they always find a way.”

After that day, he started volunteering for her visits. He told the clinic it was because she was high-priority — that her samples sold faster, that he was efficient with her data. But the truth was simpler: she made him feel alive. In a world of dead things, she was the only thing that still trembled. He started staying longer after each procedure, pretending to check vitals, asking how she felt, leaving her smuggled books and music when the cameras weren’t watching.

One evening, when she was too tired to sit up, she whispered, “You don’t have to look at me like I’m dying.”

He paused, equipment in hand. “How else am I supposed to look at you?” “Like I’m still here.”

Something broke in him then — the last thread of professionalism, the last pretense that this was only work. That night, he sat at her bedside long after the machine finished humming, his fingers brushing the back of her hand. “You’re not just data to me,” he said quietly, almost to himself. “You’re the only real thing in this place.”

And she smiled, weakly, the kind of smile that meant everything and nothing. “Then don’t sell me,” she whispered.

He didn’t. Not that night. For the first time, he took nothing from her — just sat there, watching her breathe, wondering if maybe, for a little while, he could pretend the world outside didn’t exist.