Ned sat beside Queeneth's hospital bed, staring at the rhythmic rise and fall of her chest.
The machines around her beeped softly, displaying lines and numbers that meant little to him. What mattered was the woman in front of him—pale, silent, eyes closed as if caught between dreams and deletion.
She hadn't woken up.
Not yet.
The doctors called it a *persistent neural feedback loop*—a side effect of the Cognitive Sync experiment gone wrong. Her mind was still active, but unreachable. Trapped somewhere inside the collapsed system they had built together.
But Ned knew better.
She wasn't just unconscious.
She was *lost*.
And he was the only one who could find her.
He reached for her hand. It was cold.
"Queeneth," he whispered. "I'm here."
There was no response.
Just silence.
Just static.
A nurse stepped into the room, clipboard in hand. "Mr. Wazx, you should rest. You've only just recovered from the upload yourself."
"I can't," Ned said without looking away. "Not while she's still in there."
The nurse hesitated, then nodded. "You have ten more minutes."
As soon as she left, Ned leaned closer.
"I know you can hear me," he said. "Even if you don't want to answer."
Still nothing.
He exhaled slowly.
"You were never alone," he continued. "Even when you pulled me inside your feed, I was with you. And now… even though you're stuck in the fragments, I'm still here."
A flicker.
Her eyelids trembled.
It was subtle—barely noticeable—but it was there.
Hope.
Ned pressed on.
"You didn't trap me because you wanted control," he said. "You trapped me because you were afraid. Afraid of being forgotten. Of being real. Of not being enough."
Her fingers twitched in his hand.
He smiled faintly. "But you are enough, Queeneth. Even without the likes. Even without the followers. Even without the mask."
A tear slipped from beneath her lashes.
Then—
A whisper.
> "Ned…"
His heart pounded.
She heard him.
She *remembered* him.
Before he could say anything else, alarms began to blare.
Monitors spiked wildly.
Her vitals surged like a live stream going viral.
The nurse rushed back in. "What did you do?!"
Ned barely heard her.
Because Queeneth's eyes fluttered open.
Dazed.
Confused.
Alive.