Upon re-entering Rayner's home, Hale finds it empty and quiet. Almost desolate. Only when he closes the door do his friends come bursting from the living room and garage like race horses released from their starting gates.

Damo, encumbered with a duffel bag under each arm and an algae packet in hand, says, "Well that could have gone better."

"What do you mean? What happened?" Theo asks. "Did they believe you?"

Hale nods shakily. From the state of the entryway alone, it's obvious they were packing as much as they could, preparing for a quick getaway if Hale's plan didn't work. Even while taking in the disarray of the house—things moved into the hall, stuffed into the bags Theo's holding, then into the truck just visible in the garage—Hale's focus zeroes in on a singular point of calm.

Rayner marches up to him, both hands cupping his cheeks, pressing their foreheads together and whispering, "Are you okay?"

Hale nods. Though Rayner is a good deal smaller than him, his presence feels weightier. It's an anchor in the storm of Hale's thoughts.

He hadn't expected the sight of Melissa to unnerve him to the extent that it did, but Rayner knew better.

Theo clutches her heart. "Aww, Rayner! Never took you for such a softie."

Damo looks doubtful. "Seriously? Guy's made of butter..."

It makes Rayner pull away, self-conscious. "You were worried too."

"I'm always worried." Theo drops her backpack in the entryway and ushers them inside. "How'd it go?"

Relocating into the living room, Hale sinks gratefully into the sofa and recounts the conversations with both Melissa and Mark. Rayner sits close but not enough to touch. Instead he fidgets with a hole in the sleeve of his jumper. He only stops fidgeting when Hale finishes speaking.

"This is too risky," he says. "We should just go."

Theo wrinkles her nose. "Again—where?"

Rayner throws up his hands. "Does it matter? You guys never lived here, so you don't know, but I'll fill you in. Everyone in this neighbourhood is nosy 'cause they have no lives. I should never have brought us back."

Theo's gaze flicks meaningfully between Hale and Rayner. "Well, I think Hale did a good job buying us time. We should take advantage. Besides, we don't have the tech to hide our work on the build site anywhere else. I have one—" She holds up a finger. "—one contact between here and the build site who's willing to harbour us for a night, since it's a long trek up there, but the second we start cramming their Network bandwidth with remote construction the cops will be breathing down our necks again. This is our best shot."

Rayner says, "I know that. I just don't like it."

"Well." Theo crosses her arms. "When you're done sulking then, I could use your help setting up the construction bots, 'cause the excavation one is done."

Rayner perks up. "What? Since when?"

"Uh, since ten minutes ago. We had some good weather and, thanks to clear skies, the bot was finally working at full power. We're ahead of schedule! Come on."

Rayner hesitates a moment. He looks to Hale for approval. It's jarring. Even though Rayner usually seeks Hale's approval, Melissa never would, and a piece of Hale feels ensnared in her universe all over again.

Particularly since the moment he came back here the notifications returned.

>>Alert: Return to primary symbiont.

It had been too much to hope that returning once would be enough.

"Hale?" Rayner asks.

"Theo's correct." Though true, Hale's words sound mute and automated. As if the volume on his audio setting is turned down. "We have little alternative. We should stay until the build-site is at least partially complete."

Rayner chews his lip, but he nods. He and Theo climb the stairs, discussing the next phase of construction, leaving Hale with Damo in the living room.

Damo contemplatively sucks on the straw of his algae pack with a furrowed brow. He spits out the straw and says, "That bitch really fucked your head up, huh?"

Hale sighs. What point is there in denying it?

"Yes," he says. "She did."

Damo purses his lips, then drops the duffel bags on the living room floor and leaves. Hale considers getting up off the sofa and finding something to do. Making himself useful. At the very least, he could make more sandwiches.

Instead, he sits with his head in his hand and wonders whether the ache in his chest and the clamour in his mind will ever go away, or if it's permanent. A lasting symptom of the irreparable damage done to his programming the moment he was tasked with pleasing someone unappeasable.

Five minutes pass, which feel much longer, and Damo returns with a mug of steaming tea in hand.

He sets it down on a coaster next to Hale.

Hale passes the remainder of the day in a fugue state. He makes meals with what meagre supplies they have. He waters any plants that have the ghost of life left in them. He monitors, with a sensation like breathing with bits of glass in his lungs, the devices in both Melissa's and Mark's respective houses. Neither of them venture through the yard to visit one another, but they do send a few texts confirming the presence of their new neighbour, 'Brian.'

One from Melissa reads,

>>What a relief. I was really worried he was back.

They bought Hale's ruse. He should feel relieved too.

To add to his unease, Damo develops a sudden propensity for walking into the same room as Hale for increasingly inexplicable reasons. At first, to fetch a glass of water for Theo though she claimed she wasn't thirsty, or an algae packet for himself even though he'd eaten and fully recharged earlier. Then, to rummage through a drawer only to come up empty and leave. Or to open the refrigerator, stare into it, close it, and leave again.

Hale fears it's another side effect of the virus. It could be causing occasional hiccups in Damo's programming, prompting him to act with no specific directive. Though Hale feels similarly aimless, he finds things to do.

He's still grateful for the evening and its predictable routine. Brush teeth, shower—an unpleasant experience now that Hale can feel the shock of cold water—and get changed into pyjamas. Fluff Rayner's pillows. Light a candle. Set out a sleeping bag on the floor because he failed to ask if Rayner expects them to share a bed—

So not every part of the routine is as comforting and solid as Hale hoped.

Particularly since Rayner hasn't left the office yet. Hale putters around the room a few minutes longer before going to investigate the delay.

He finds Rayner in the office exactly as he'd been hours earlier, except he's bent over the laptop with Damo sat next to him instead of Theo. Bathed in blue light, their faces are intent, bent together like co-conspirators.

It makes Hale's heart plunge, reminding him of the moment he walked in to find them nearly kissing. He has to remind himself forcefully that it's only a passing recall. A painful one, but not one based in reality, just a memory.

Rayner looks up at his knock on the doorframe.

"I've prepared your room for sleep," Hale says.

"Jeez, the time." Rayner presses the heels of his hands into his eyes, blinking away the bright lights of his computer. "Thanks, Babe, I'll be just a few more minutes."

Just like that, Hale's worries evaporate. He isn't sure Rayner realizes what he's just said because he goes straight back to the laptop without pause. Damo breaks into a cheeky grin and raises an eyebrow. 'Babe,' he mouths while Rayner isn't looking.

It's nearly an hour before Rayner finishes whatever he'd been working on with Damo. Hale's energy, as it's linked to Rayner's, wanes steadily as the night wears on, and for once he's too fatigued to busy himself with menial tasks or distractions. Instead he waits, seated on the sleeping bag in the middle of the bedroom floor, watching the candlelight dance like he can empty his thoughts into the open flame and burn them all away.

Rayner walks in at quarter past two, looking even wearier than Hale feels. "Sorry," he starts to say. "Took so long. Damo and I just had t— What're you doing on the floor?"

"We never discussed sleeping arrangements."

"No," Rayner says. Apparently lacking the energy for full sentences, he drags Hale by the arm towards his bed, saying, "Your bed, my bed. Share."

It's with some relief that Hale lets Rayner drag him into bed and push him into a reclining position. Rayner topples like a felled tree, face-down into the pillow next to Hale's, where he stays and doesn't move.

He says something, but it's too muffled by the pillow for Hale to hear.

"Pardon?"

Reluctant to move at all, Rayner tilts his head a painstaking degree to speak. "I said, Damo's worried about you."

Hale has just enough energy to look thunderstruck. "I'm worried about Damo."

"Why?"

"He's behaving oddly. He kept appearing in rooms where he had no apparent purpose, doing something nonsensical, then leaving."

"He was checking up on you."

"For what reason?"

Rayner rolls his eyes. "Because, like I said, he's worried about you." Hale frowns and Rayner manages to prop himself up enough to meet Hale's gaze. "I am too."

Hale winces. He'd thought to tell Rayner later, after they both had some rest, but now seems as good a time as any.

"My programming wants me to return to Melissa."

Rayner's expression transforms, the fatigue chased away by a choking fear so heart-rending Hale almost regrets telling the truth.

"I don't want to," he adds quickly. "The moment you told me I was perfect, my code interpreted that as fulfilment of my original objective to improve for Melissa's benefit. I've received a few hundred thousand directives to return to her since. I thought returning briefly may circumvent it. The notifications temporarily desisted, then continued once I returned here."

Rayner's heartbeat tolls like a midnight bell in Hale's data streams. He doesn't say anything, waiting for Hale to supply a solution.

Hale can't because as far as he can tell, there isn't one. "I've ignored them. I can do that for eternity if it comes to it."

"We could look at your code—see if there's something we can rewrite."

"I've checked. There aren't any loopholes I can find to exploit."

"There must be a command line or something we can delete—"

"Not without deleting thousands of command lines, learned behaviours, and vital memories I've made since," Hale says. "Our memories."

"So, what, you just have to be reminded of her a hundred thousand times a day?"

"I can relay them to background processi— "

In the dim light of the guttering candle, Rayner's hand finds his. "I don't want you to have to think about her."

"I can assure you, I think of you far more often. You have no need to be jealous."

The words come spilling out of Rayner in a torrent, far more coherent than he has any right to be while so exhausted. "I'm not jealous, I just don't want you to have to live your life half-numb to everything because you're constantly warding off shitty memories from a part of your life you can't change! Fuck, Hale, I know what it's like living in the shadow of a person who—" His voice catches. "—hurt you. It's not right."

Those words are blades that glide in smooth, cut deep, and only hurt a few moments later, when they've sunk in properly. Hale so infrequently acknowledged that Melissa hurt him. It had been easier to look at everything obliquely through the lens of Hale's own blame. He'd determined that the hurts he'd suffered were his own responsibility—the natural results of his own faults and failings. That if only he was perfect, then Melissa would not have rejected him.

He never really wielded that much control though, and a part of him always knew it. It's only being back here that allowed him a moment's relapse, a moment's return to the hopeless place he'd been when he first begged Rayner for help.

"I'm not sure I have an alternative."

Fiercely, Rayner says, "We'll find one."

He sounds so confident. Hale nods and smiles, because something about the way Rayner summons energy from an empty well just to fight in Hale's corner fills his heart to the brim. Rayner smiles back, and he's so beautiful in that moment that Hale can't resist tangling his fingers in soft curls and pressing his mouth to that smile.

Neither of them have the energy to take it any further, but it's not for lack of wanting. Hale only breaks away because he's reminded of something else he wanted to say.

"You called me 'Babe.'"

"What? No, I didn't. When?"

"Earlier, in front of Damo."

Rayner's mouth falls open as he searches his memory for the moment. "I was tired."

"Yes."

"I didn't know what I was saying."

Hale says, "I liked it, Babe."

Subsiding, sinking into the pillow next to him, Rayner buries a smile. "Oh no. I like it too."

"Go to sleep."

For once, without much preamble, Rayner does.

Rayner wakes early when Hale's battery is only half-recharged. With the daylight hours of winter waning, he insists they have to use as much time as they can to build. Hale finds his notification inbox inundated with directives to return to Melissa. He dismisses them with the sense that he's sweeping something putrid under a rug rather than disposing of it entirely.

Construction progresses smoothly through the morning. Yesterday Rayner and Theo selected trees to chop down for timber. During the night, the bots had an automated capacity for measuring and cutting the wood into planks and structural joists for framing. If it all goes according to plan, they will have two framed homes by day's end.

Then, after masonry, roofing and insulation, they can leave Alder Close for good.

Of course, not everything goes according to plan. At quarter past one, the doorbell rings. Hale, in the process of loading the truck with a few of Rayner's surviving plants, startles so badly he hits his head on the lip of the cargo bed. He runs a quick check on their security footage just as Damo sends him a message.

>>It's that creepy ho, Margot.

He's right. Melissa stands on the front porch with a dish of pasta casserole in her hands. Even with his blood pounding in his ears, Hale's mind latches onto that incongruous detail. He can't remember ever seeing Melissa cook. Damo continues messaging him.

>>Rayner says, 'don't answer it 'n pretend we're not in.'

>>There aren't any footsteps or tire tracks in the snow outside to indicate we left, and I'm fairly certain she heard my head clang against the truck just now.

>>So? Nosy twit can call before dropping in.

The bell rings again.

>>She doesn't have our number.

>>Exactly. We ain't friends.

Hale worries that Melissa will start to suspect his lies if they don't behave like polite neighbours, but he stays put, holding still as possible to avoid making any noise that could be heard from outside. He watches the security footage. On it, Melissa sways from side to side, peering at the shuttered windows with a pouting frown.

She rings the doorbell a third time before giving up and retreating back to her home, casserole still in hand. Once she's gone, Rayner appears in the doorway.

"You okay?"

"She may suspect something's amiss."

"Sometimes people just don't want company," Rayner hedges.

"Melissa won't understand that."

"Hale, it'll be okay."

Though he wishes he could find comfort in those words, Hale still spends the rest of the day packing any item they aren't currently using into the truck. He reprograms his hair to dirty blonde again, just in case.

An hour after the first attempt, Melissa and her casserole appear on their doorstep again. Then again an hour after that. Again and again, relentless as the notifications demanding he return to her.

She won't give up, Hale knows. She cooked for her new neighbours, and they're going to endure her charming welcome wagon even if she has to reheat that casserole so many times it fossilizes.

On her sixth attempt, Hale is preparing dinner—a meagre portion of beans on toast—and his patience snaps. He can't endure another knock. They add to the cacophony of notifications in his head, chipping away at his nerves.

"I'm going to answer it," he says.

"Hale, don't." Theo stands up from the table.

"I'll just thank her for the casserole and be done with it. She won't relent otherwise, and the longer we pretend no one's home the more suspect we'll seem."

"Want me to pretend to be your missus?" Damo suggests.

"No, thank you," Hale is saying as Damo transforms at the dinner table, shifting from a tall, sharp-jawed man into a tall, sharp-jawed woman.

"That's uncanny," says Theo.

"I don't want to give her any reason to linger," Hale insists, heading for the door, wringing his hands on a towel, which he deposits on the back of a chair. He pauses long enough to meet Rayner's eyes.

With his lower lip trapped between his teeth, Hale can tell Rayner doesn't like it, but he sees the sense in it. Answer now, accept the gift, and she has no reason to come back.

He nods, and Hale leaves.