Heavy knocks on the door echoed through the apartment. Ray opened the door to find the building administrator, a paunchy man named Sal. He had a cheap, flickering neo-tattoo of a smiling bullet on his hand and a shirt stained with grease.

"Someone reported screaming," the man said, his tone bored as he glanced inside. Ray let him.

"Kids of a friend," Ray explained calmly. "They had been through an ugly accident. His daughter suffers from memory loss and she had an episode just after she woke up. Sorry about that."

The man grunted, his gaze lingering for a moment before he shrugged and left. It was a formality. Sal knew Red no longer lived here; the deal Ray had struck for the apartment was clear and concise.

Ray walked back inside and sat on the couch, which was no longer worn out, as he had used his nanites to seamlessly patch its tears and started to formulate a plan. The raw, paternal emotions of Ralph's ghost were a constant, screaming static in his consciousness, but his approach was driven by a cold logic.

He approached Selena first. She was awake, huddled in a corner, glaring at him. He stopped a respectful distance away. "How are you feeling?" he asked, his voice calm.

No response.

"Your mind is still yours," he said, his voice softening slightly. "No one will force it open. You are safe here. You are in control of this room."

He carefully placed the datapad he had recovered from their old apartment on the floor before her and took a step back. He turned away, picking up his own datapad from the couch, feigning indifference.

He watched her from the corner of his eye. After a long moment, her hand slowly moved towards the datapad. It was unlocked. The gallery was already open. Hundreds of photos.

She scrolled through them, her expression a mixture of confusion and a deep, hollow ache. She saw a man, over and over. He had her sharp jawline and Max's dark chestnut hair. His eyes, the same storm-gray and green as her own, were kind but etched with a weariness that seemed to seep through the screen. He was smiling in most of the photos, a genuine, warm smile that made something unfamiliar twist in her gut. She closed her eyes hard, trying to force a connection, a memory, anything. But there was nothing. Only a black, empty void where a name should be.

She continued to scroll, her frustration mounting. She saw Max standing beside her in dozens of photos, a big, cheerful smile on his face, a stark contrast to the silent, broken form on the futon across the room. The dissonance was a physical pain. She glanced at the nearby coffee table, where Ray had carefully arranged the other items: the bag of old family photos and her heavy, vintage toolkit.

The key for helping her wasn't reassurance; it was agency. For Selena, whose greatest fear was being controlled, this act of granting her absolute authority, of letting her explore these artifacts of a forgotten life on her own terms, was profoundly disarming. The fire in her eyes flickered, confusion replacing some of the rage. It was the first crack in her defensive wall.

He left her with the ghosts on the screen and went to Max. Words were useless here. The boy's trauma was a fortress of silence. Ray employed a strategy of non-verbal presence. He sat in a chair in the corner, not speaking, not demanding a reaction. After an hour, he took a small piece of metal that resembled Max's metal bird figurine and placed it right next to the original on the small table beside the boy—a simple, sensory offering. As he turned away, a nearby bio-monitor showed a flicker of change: the boy's heart rate, previously erratic, settled for a brief moment into a calmer rhythm. A tiny victory.

Days passed in a blur, each one stretching longer than the last. Ray spent every waking moment consumed by his research, desperate to find a way to help Max, a silent burden heavy on his artificial heart. Simultaneously, he navigated the delicate dance of slowly earning Selena's trust, a fragile commodity that felt perpetually just out of reach.

Selena stood by the apartment's single, grimy window, her gaze fixed on the sliver of polluted sky that was all that was visible between the suffocating towers of buildings in the late afternoon. The light that struggled through was a sickly yellow, mirroring the turmoil within her.

"I want to go outside," she said, her voice barely a whisper, yet it held a fragile defiance. She didn't look at him, her back a testament to the wall she'd built around herself. This was more than just a request; it was a desperate plea and a test. She needed to know, truly know, that he wasn't her jailer, but someone who genuinely wanted to help.

Ray simply nodded, the simplicity of his agreement a stark contrast to the earthquake it caused within her. "Okay."

He reached for his dark jacket. Selena glanced at him, her eyes wide with a mixture of surprise and a flicker of something akin to hope. Perhaps she hadn't expected him to agree so easily, had anticipated a struggle, a battle of wills. His effortless acceptance was a disarming blow to her carefully constructed defenses.

Ray walked to the door, leaning against the cold metal, a silent invitation.

Selena pulled up her hood, the soft fabric a meager shield against the unknown. She walked beside him, her movements hesitant, as if each step required immense effort. Her eyes were riveted on the door, a dark, looming hurdle that she needed to overcome, a barrier to a life she couldn't remember. Her lips thinned into a tight line. Then, with a soft, almost imperceptible hiss, the door opened.

Ray walked first, his strides even and sure. Selena followed, her steps slow and tentative, like she was walking on shards of broken glass, each movement a conscious act of will, each breath a painful acknowledgment of the world waiting beyond.

Ray glanced back, a brief, lingering look at Max, who was sleeping peacefully in his futon, oblivious to the momentous step being taken. Then, with a soft click, the door closed shut, sealing them off from the sanctuary within.

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"Where do you want to go?" Ray asked as they stood in the sterile hallway, the question hanging heavy in the air, echoing the emptiness within her.

She didn't respond. She couldn't. With no memory of her life, no anchor to her past, his question bit deeper than she wanted to admit, a cruel reminder of the vast, terrifying void where her identity should have been.

Ray, seeing the silent anguish etched on her face, started to walk ahead, allowing her space, allowing her time. After only a few steps, Selena rushed to his side.

They moved through the city's crowded streets, a strange pair. Selena walked with a tense, guarded posture, her eyes darting everywhere, taking in the overwhelming sensory input of the city. Ray walked beside her, a silent, watchful presence. He made sure that he didn't appear to hover, but his sensors were on high alert, mapping the crowd and flagging potential threats.

"Did he... did my father like it here?" she asked, her voice almost lost in the roar of a passing mag-lev train.

Ray accessed a memory. A wave of Ralph's weary frustration washed over him. "No," Ray said, his voice tinged with an echo of the ghost's emotion. "He hated the noise. He always dreamed of taking you and Max somewhere quiet. Somewhere with real trees."

They passed a street vendor selling brightly colored, synthetic sweets. Ray stopped. He remembered a specific, vivid memory of Ralph buying a similar treat for a five-year-old Selena, the look of pure joy on her face. He bought one for her now, a swirl of neon pink and blue, and handed it to her without a word.

She took it, surprised. After a tentative bite a genuine, unforced expression crossed her face—a flicker of a smile, as a ghost of a forgotten taste sparked something deep within her. It was a small, simple excursion, but for Selena, it was a profound act of trust, a quiet confirmation that this strange, quiet man was not her captor. He was, for now, her protector.

But this delicate peace was shattered by a ghost.

Back in the apartment Ray was feeding Max when his gaze, usually fixed on the far wall, drifted. For the first time, he looked directly at Ray. As the boy's eyes focused, his traumatized mind glitched. He didn't see a man. He saw a towering, twelve-foot-tall monster of black alloy and red light. He saw the Juggernaut.

The silence broke. A sound tore from Max's throat that was not human. It was the raw, guttural shriek of a tortured animal, a scream of pure, undiluted terror that echoed off the apartment walls. He thrashed on the couch, his eyes wide with a horror that was all too real.

Ray moved instantly, grabbing a pre-filled sedative injector. He administered the dose, and Max's screams slowly subsided into choked, gasping sobs before he fell into a fitful sleep. Ray stared at the broken boy, the echo of the boy's terror and the ghost's agony still ringing in his processors.

"Is he going to be okay?" Selena whispered, her face pale, her own trauma momentarily forgotten in the face of her brother's.

"He will be," Ray said, his voice a low, resolute promise. "I will make sure of it."

A few hours later the order he had placed arrived. He brought the plain, unmarked box inside and set it on the main table. Selena glanced at him from next to the window.

Ray ignored her, his finger tipped with a very small blade running along the seal of the box, opening it and checking the contents. Inside, nestled in soft, gray foam, were three MemStream headsets. They looked like minimalist halos of matte-black carbon fiber, thin and seamless. Across the inner rim, faint neural induction prongs shimmered with a pale blue light, calibrated to tap directly into cortical signal pathways. As he lifted one, a row of tiny status LEDs blinked to life, ready. This was the tool he needed.

He spent the next hour interfacing with the device, his consciousness diving into its core programming. He began to write a complex software patch using the intricate knowledge he'd consumed from Monzo Vale's technician.

Finally, he approached the children. Selena, who had been watching his every move with deep suspicion, tensed.

"What is that?" she asked, her voice sharp.

Ray stopped a respectful distance away, holding one of the headsets. "It's a device that will allow you to speak with your father."

Selena's eyes widened, a storm of disbelief, hope, and fear warring in their depths. "How?" she whispered, the word barely audible.

"He has a headset where he is," Ray explained, the lie a necessary, calculated mercy. "This will allow you to talk to him in a shared virtual space. I will wear one too, and so will Max. "

He gently offered the headset to her. She stared at it as if it were a venomous snake. She took a half-step back.

But then her gaze flickered to Max, sleeping fitfully on the futon, his face etched with a pain that even sedatives couldn't erase. She took a deep, steadying breath.

She carefully took the headset.

Ray gently placed a headset on the sleeping Max, then fitted his own. He glanced at Selena, who, with a final, trembling breath, placed it on her head.

He initiated the link. He intentionally lowered his own psychic defenses, a terrifying act of surrender. He opened the floodgates, and the ghost of Ralph surged forward. The sudden, overwhelming wave of pure, irrational, parental love was a beautiful and terrifying experience. He felt his own consciousness recede like a tide, becoming a passenger in his own body as Ralph's personality, his love, his grief, his very soul, took control.

The world dissolved.

Inside the simulation, Selena awoke. She was standing in her old apartment, but it was cleaner, warmer, bathed in a soft, gentle light—a memory of a memory. Confusion was etched deep on her face as her eyes darted around, terrified.

A figure walked through the apartment door, his expression was one of profound, loving sadness.

He opened his arms.

For a moment, Selena froze. Then, a force deeper than memory, a pure, subconscious instinct, took over. She ran to him, collapsing into his embrace. They held each other in a heartfelt, tearful reunion that was both real and impossible. In the real world, tears started to roll down the sleeping Selena's cheeks.

Ralph looked past her and saw a small, sleeping form on the couch in the simulation—a representation of Max, brought into their shared consciousness. He knelt, placing a hand on the simulated Max's head, bringing the entire family together one last time.

The sleeping form stirred. Max's eyes opened, and for what felt like an eternity, they were clear. He saw his father.

"Dad?" he whispered, his voice raw and unused. Then the dam broke. He lunged forward, burying his face in his father's chest, his small body wracked with gut-wrenching sobs. Selena watched them, a strange and overwhelming mix of emotions washing over her—joy, grief, and a dawning, fragile hope.

Ralph took Selena's hand, his touch both real and ethereal. "I can't give you back what you lost," he said, his voice thick with emotion. "But I can show you your life. I can show you how I saw it."

The simulation shifted, the apartment dissolving. They were standing in the same room, but without the filter. The air smelled of ozone and cheap noodles, but also of something warm and sweet. A woman with kind eyes and hair the same sable-black as Selena's was humming softly, holding a tiny bundle wrapped in a worn but clean blanket. Ralph—the real Ralph—stood beside her, his face a mask of pure, unadulterated awe. Max, standing beside Selena in the simulation, stared, his eyes wide. He had no memory of this woman, but he felt an instinctive, powerful connection. He reached out a small, hesitant hand, as if to touch a ghost.

"She's perfect, Elara," the memory of his voice whispered. As his wife—their mother—placed the sleeping baby Selena in his arms, a wave of fierce, protective love washed over the simulation. Selena felt it, a warmth that spread through her chest. Max saw the look on his mother's face, saw the love of the woman he never knew. Tears rolled down his cheek.

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