Whisper of Thoughts
I worked with the focus of a surgeon under fire, the smell of burnt hair and ozone filling the air as I applied the neural taps.
"Stay with me, Julian," I shouted over the gunfire.
He gripped my wrist, his fingers cold against my skin. "Clara… the cabin."
"Don't do this now," I said, my hands steady as I cut into the skin near his temple.
"I have to tell you," he gasped, his voice barely audible over the hail of lead hitting the cabinets around us.
"Before the manor, before everything… I didn't know what it meant to be awake. But the cabin… when you kissed me, I felt it. For the first time, it wasn't a calculation. It wasn't a command. It was… freedom."