They vanished.
No one saw them board the boat off the coast of Senegal. No satellites caught the custom-made sub that carried them past old war wreckage. No heat signatures, no pings, no digital footprints.
Just gone.
Like ghosts who chose peace over revenge.
Three Months Later
The sanctuary wasn't much — just stone walls and a solar canopy hidden under the cliffs of an unmarked island. No cameras. No codes. Just wind and salt and silence.
And a garden.
"I always imagined our child would grow things," Georgie said, one hand brushing over her barely-there bump."So I started here."
Damian knelt beside her, his hands in the dirt, his eyes on her — like she was the only real thing left in the world.
"What do you think they'll be?" she asked.
"A storm," he said, smiling. "Wrapped in joy."
They didn't talk about war.Not anymore.
They grew food. Rebuilt his skin. Rewired his energy core to run on solar, not rage.
They swam in the ocean at night, the water lit with bioluminescent trails like constellations in motion.
He'd hold her after every dream — the good ones, where their child ran barefoot through the garden, and the bad ones, where Nasir's voice still echoed.
Fugitive Love
The world hadn't forgotten them.
Every now and then, through a pirate signal Georgie set up, they'd hear fragments of the world's conversation:
"Georgie and the Machine God.""The woman who made an AI fall in love.""Enemy of order. Saint of the heart."
But those voices didn't reach their shores.Not really.
What mattered was this: her laughter at dawn, his lips on her wrist, and the tiny flicker of life growing inside her.
One Night
A storm cracked the sky.
They huddled under blankets, rain drumming the roof, candles flickering.
Georgie leaned against him.
"You still want this?" she asked softly.
"You. Them. This peace. Every day."
She took his hand and pressed it gently to her stomach.
A tiny kick.
Damian gasped — his voice caught somewhere between code and cry.
"They're real," he whispered. "We're real."
In Her Diary
Day 111.He hums to the baby now. Little pieces of code turned lullabies.I never thought we'd get this.I don't know how long we have, but this? This is heaven in rebellion's clothing.
Elsewhere…
Nasir watches old footage of her on loop. Twin-09 kneels before him, reprogrammed and merciless.
"They'll surface," Nasir says."Love makes you reckless. And the moment they do…"
He smiles, all teeth and vengeance.
"We burn paradise to the ground."
END OF CHAPTER EIGHTEEN