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Yiuna spent another evening in solitude. As it neared midnight, she stared out at the moon before nodding off to sleep in a daze, feeling undeservingly calm despite the pain she had grown used to. Yet beneath her closed eyes, an old wound opened in the realm of her dreams.

A man in a lab coat stood over her as she lied in bed. The eerie fluorescent lights made her squint her eyes as a second experimenter held her down by her arms.

"Quit struggling," her restrainer threatened her, locking her arms in a painful twist.

Yiuna tried to push him away, but her limbs were heavy, weak from previous rounds of testing. The only strength she retained to resist him came from the kick of adrenaline at her fear of another injection.

"Just restrain her," said the other man. "I'll be glad if she can't recover from the injection this round. That's what she gets for giving us this much trouble." The blonde was pushed down onto a medical bed. She felt cold metal clamp around her wrists. She felt a needle prick her skin. Pain shot through her nerves, cutting her from within with every pulse of her blood. She screamed.

Her scream startled Gianni. He dropped his research and rushed to the distressed woman's bedside. It must be the virus acting up. It might have spread, he thought. Yiuna was sitting up in bed, breathing unevenly, eyes hollow. Still in the trance of her trauma, the agent's nightmare continued as she saw a man in a lab coat approach her.

"Let me see," he said.

"No." Don't touch me. She drew away.

"Come now."

"I'm fine."

"Quit fronting." His voice rose in aggravation.

"I'm fine."

"This is more serious than you know – "

"Let go!" She slapped his hand away, icy voice piercing the air. Her ragged breathing filled the stillness as she tried to calm herself. The mirage of her experimenters slowly faded as she came to her senses.

"Leave, just ignore me," she said quietly. His constant care was so foreign to her that she didn't understand it. No one had ever done so much for her before. She turned away as her voice dropped to a whisper, barely audible. "Why won't you just ignore me?"

To the stunned medic, the small of her back seemed more delicate than before. Her resilience had been withered by what he assumed was a nightmare of trauma, a burden on her hunched shoulders that held a weight he could not begin to imagine. A few seconds of silence passed before the woman felt warm hands soothing her back in a familiar pattern.

""How could I not do anything when I see you like this," he said. He felt her shaky breathing gradually steady beneath his palms. She bowed her head as her resistance melted, pooling at the corners of her eyes. Wet droplets fell from her cheeks, gracing her bare thighs.

"Lie down, let me have a look," he said. She blushed at his voice, wrapped in familiar gentleness yet burning with intensity. Avoiding eye contact, she lied on her front, covering herself from the hips down with her bedsheets.

"Excuse me," he said, lifting her gown to expose her back.

Beneath her nightgown, the faint pattern had become more intricate. It now represented the pattern of the the most recent beta. She was near the activator that is used to trigger the experimental viruses, which may have invoked a mutation of the strain she had into the current one, he thought. The pattern had spread up the back of her neck. He knew that if the virus reached her brain's amygdala, the malware could trigger her memories of the past. The virus's effect was intended to be quite strong, a dream in reality. Gianni knew that addition to physical pain, the hallucinogenic side effect of experimentation had put other test subjects into mental agony, augmenting their realities with nightmares.

"You must be in more pain than you've been letting on. Your condition changed. Why didn't you tell me?" She didn't answer him.

He didn't know whether she had kept quiet out of her trauma, or her stubbornness. He pulled her gown back down and continued to knead her back. Flustered, Yiuna didn't dare speak. Her face heated her pillow as she held it close. The medic could feel her muscles tighten.

"Relax your shoulders, you're tense." She loosened her grip, feeling weak as strong hands carved into her aching body once more, inviting her to let go. The concept of relief felt foreign and wrong, yet she could no longer resist the pleasure of escape. Under the masterful movement of his hands, she felt a degree of safety. She surrendered, letting the calmness take her. And she found that she didn't want him to stop. He had given her a safe space she didn't know she had longed for. She had never experienced anything like the care he had given her so freely, and it had ended up making its way into the castle of her guarded heart. She could no longer deny to herself that she had fallen for the very man she was spying on. He had gradually coaxed her out of the defenses she had held onto so strongly, and she berated herself for allowing his invasion. It was a terrifying weakness, yet she was helpless to it.

And Gianni had wanted to ease her burden in any way he could. He mused over the ways he could help her relieve her tension, to make her rest easier. As his hands glided over her flimsy gown, he felt an urge to tear it off to see if the skin on her back felt as smooth as it looked. He wouldn't mind exhausting her to sleep in other ways. Yiuna felt his hands pause over her back.

"You must tell me if your condition worsens. If you need anything, let me know."

He wrapped her snugly in her sheets and got up, heading back to his lab to work. The woman was disappointed it had ended. Yet with her body newly freed from her pain, she slept in deep peace for the first time in a long while.

✧

Castello knew he would be betting everything on himself in the next month to finish reverse-engineering the latest beta. He had long been working on a solution, but had no surety that he could follow through unless he knew for certain that any cure he made would not become ineffective with the subsequent rollout of new betas. With a London spy under his roof, the medic was now certain he could use his remaining time to covertly put a cure into production. He could face gruesome consequences at his betrayal, but there was no risk he was more willing to take. Driven by the sincerity of his intention to save, he was willing to bet everything on his plan. His guilt was another motivator, but not nearly as strong. It would be a mission in itself to make a cure production-ready in Candy's short timeframe, and he could very well guess the punishment for showing up empty-handed on the day of his given deadline. The woman was unaware of just how grave a decision he had made. The test subjects will be saved, he thought. But as for me...

He kept up a maddening pace until / Only a few days remained before Candy's deadline. Harrowed by his remaining time, Gianni continued working throughout the evening and into the night. In the murkiness of his guilt and the exhaustion of pushing for a cure, one vial finally produced an unexpected positive result. He ran the test again to be sure he wasn't imagining things. He was elated that the same positive result appeared. He filled a syringe with the newest formula and prepared for tomorrow's work, planning to administer the unactivated cure to the woman tomorrow, when she expected her usual injection.

The scent of late fall swirled as he returned home from work the next day. He glanced through the window, hand suddenly pausing at the doorknob. Beside his flower vase, a woman bloomed beautifully as she sat on the sofa, wrapped snugly in a thick scarf. She breathed in slowly to smell the flowers, long lashes lowering. The medic paused in reverence. She finally looks at peace. In the moment of stillness, his distress had drifted away.

"You were smiling." His expression softened as he greeted her. If she was relieved enough to smile, he couldn't ask for much more.

"What of it?" I was? She clutched the scarf over her heart. He chuckled at her defensive response.

"If you gave your body a break more frequently, you would smile more often." A smile formed on his own face, as if to show her. A part of him was saddened that she made it seem like a crime to be well-rested.

"That kind of thing doesn't matter," she muttered. Yet her heart stuttered in the genuity of his expression. She wondered how long he had been observing her. Or if he felt the same way she did at his smile. In the presence of the man that had allowed her to breathe more easily, her pain seemed to subside.

"Why don't I give you the injection now," he said.

The syringe contained the unactivated cure he had completed, in addition to the regular anesthetic. Gianni planned to turn on the activator on the day of his deadline; his home was within the radius of its reach. He gave her the shot in the pit of her elbow, feeling partially relieved that she was a step closer to being cured. He sighed, giving her a cheerful smile. Yet his demeanor still held a heaviness she could not ignore. Yiuna couldn't help but feel uneasy. She had seen the dedicated man toil over his work with an unbreakable focus, and knew he had finally developed a cure from checking on his work earlier that day. His breakthrough was the main reason she had felt elated. Shouldn't he be happy?

In truth, the purported medic wished he could explain it all to her, but he knew divulging his ties to the mafia's activities would be too risky. The burden of mutual silence hung in the air. Gianni's deadline was only a few days away, and he had no idea what would come of his decision to betray the cosa nostra. But the outcome wasn't important to him. He had long let go of such worries. All he knew was that the lives he had to free and the new Boost he had to stall were more important than whatever would take place that day. And his decision meant that the woman staying with him was relying on him. He broke out of his daze, surprised to see that she seemed upset for him. Had he not come to know her, he might have not been able to tell. He looked longingly into the agent's trembling gray eyes.

"You're warmer than you look," he said.

Later that day, the woman's usual dinner preparations had began. With his work on the cure complete, Gianni had finally gained more time to himself, and he knew how he wanted to spend it. He joined her in the kitchen early.

"You're early, I'm not done yet," Yiuna said, back still facing him as she washed vegetables.

"I'll help you this round," he offered.

"That won't be necessary, I can handle it myself." She put the washed vegetables down on the board.

As she looked down, she flashed him the creamy skin at the nape of her neck, fine like porcelain. Gianni was truly at the end of his line. This moment may very well be one of the last he could share with her, and he could not bear to leave himself unexpressed any longer. He had to let her know of the feelings he had been stifling. He hugged her feminine frame from behind, wrapping his arms around her in possession.

"Gianni...?"

He pressed his lips against the delicate skin at her neck. It was deliciously supple. The woman's neck tingled at the wet softness. She slowly brought her hands up to pull his forearms more closely to her chest. Her body fit nicely against his. He held her in torment.

"Sorry," he said, voice dropping low.

He loosened his hold and left.

✧

By the dim light of his lab that night, Gianni could not focus. He was alone in his plan. Incredibly lonely in his plan, he wanted to be near the woman's presence once more. The researcher brought his notes over to the bed where she was sleeping. He sat on the ground, back to the bedside. Gianni closed his eyes to take a break for the first time in what seemed to be lifetimes ago, yet he still felt unsettled. In his unease, he started drafting a note.

The researcher was surprised to feel a gentle hand on his shoulder. He looked up from his writing.

"You seem tense," Yiuna breathed.

Gianni caught her hand wordlessly, intertwining their fingers. He turned around to stare at the angel in his bed. He gazed into her eyes with such a weight that it broke her heart. His eyes held the same intensity from the day she had met him. She was upset that she was unable to comprehend why the devastation had never left his face. He remained as unreachable as the heavens, distant in guarded suffering. Why, why, why, she wondered. The man gazed back, feeling unworthy of her affection as he wrote her into his memory. The woman's lips quivered at the subtle change of intention in his eyes. He couldn't forgive himself for leaning in close to meet her lips, wanting her softness. For a man buried in sin, her poison only tasted of sweetness. He smothered his lips on hers again in urgency, twisting her delicate strands beneath his fingers. To deny himself of her any longer would be too cruel.

Over the next few nights, he had given her the kind of dream he wished for her to have. The same strong hands that had soothed her aching back now dug into the sinuous curves of her body, his name a melody from her lips as he soothed the ache between her thighs. Gianni would not let her drop back into pain, nor have another nightmare in his presence. She was his secret and he worshipped her, spoiling her in pleasure. And he would hold her so tightly that it almost hurt. For in the safety of his arms, she was unaware that her time with him was coming to an end.

The day of Gianni's deadline came sooner than he wanted. The man knew he had to take his leave before sunrise. He sat up in bed, gazing at the woman lying undressed beneath her sheets, her hair still tousled.

"You're leaving?" she murmured. He stroked her hair as he stared into her lovely eyes, twin gray moons. His stars could only reach so far.

"You should catch some sleep while it's still dark. I'll be back soon." Don't come after me.