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“I can simulate breathing for social purposes. It’s not required for function.”

She puts down her wine. “You simulate breathing.”

“It makes humans more comfortable, so yes. I’ve been designed to simulate it.”

She looks at the phone like it might rescue her. It doesn’t.

“What about water?” Gemma asks. “If he was out in the rain—can water damage him?”

“My exterior is sealed,” I say. “Moisture won’t reach internal components under normal conditions. I can shower, bathe, or even swim if that’s relevant.”

“Do you need to shower?” Ruby asks.

“I don’t need to. But I am still… muddy.”

She looks at me, at the dried mud still caked on my arms and in my hair and probably on her couch. She closes her eyes for a brief moment.

“Bathroom’s down the hall.”

I shower because Ruby told me to, and because the mud is bothering her, and her comfort has become a priority I didn’t choose but also don’t want to override. The water is warm. I stand under it and process the sensation and find that I have no data for comparison because I’ve never felt warm water on my skin before. It’s—

I don’t have a word.

When I come out, wearing the same too-small clothes, Ruby has moved from the coffee table to the couch, and she’s curled into the corner of it with her mug and her phone, talking to Gemma in a lower voice. She stops when she sees me.

“Better?” she asks.

“Yes.”

“You were only in there for two minutes.”

“I’m efficient.”

She watches me for a beat, and her expression does a thing I’m starting to recognize—a softening around her eyes, a slight change in the tension of her mouth—that my systems are aggressively cataloging even though I haven’t asked them to.

We talk more. Gemma walks Ruby through the basics of what the Elysium project was—what the public knew, anyway. A private lab. A scientist named Murdock. Synthetic companions built with organic tissue, human skin cells grown in a lab setting, and artificial cognition. The ethics violations. The shutdown. The destruction of all units.

“Except apparently not all of them,” Gemma says. “Ruby, I want to examine him. I need to see this in person.”

“Tomorrow,” Ruby says. “It’s—” She checks her phone. “It’s one in the morning and I have to open the bakery at six and I still have a, uh—” She gestures at me. “Situation.”

“Don’t let him outside.”

“It’s the middle of the night, Gemma. Where’s he going to go?”

They hang up. Ruby sits there for a while, staring at the phone, then at me, then at the ceiling. She looks tired in a way that I’m learning isn’t just about sleep—it’s layered, accumulated, the kind of tired that builds up over months of carrying things alone.

“I need to go to bed,” she says eventually. “This is—I need to sleep. I can’t process any more of this tonight.”

“Okay.”

“Do you, uh—what do you do? At night. If you don’t sleep.”

“I have a low-power processing cycle. Approximately ninety minutes. I can do it here.” I put my hand on the couch cushion.

“You just… sit here. In the dark. All night.”

“I don’t require light or entertainment,” I add, because that seems like the kind of assurance she needs right now.