She didn’t speak right away.
The clinic had settled into its low-energy state — lights dimmed, systems idling, the kind of quiet that pretended to be rest. Taylor sat on the edge of the bed, far enough not to crowd her, close enough that the pressure didn’t climb.
This distance, he was learning, was a skill.
“You’re going to keep watching me like that,” she said, eyes still closed, “unless I give you something solid.”
“I’m not—”
“You are,” she said. “It’s fine.”
She shifted carefully, wincing despite herself. Taylor looked away this time, deliberately, letting the moment pass without intervention. The system noticed. The pressure twitched, then steadied.
“That was good,” she murmured. “You learn fast.”
He didn’t answer.
“When I was young,” she continued, “names still mattered.”
That got his attention.
She opened her eyes and looked at him — not measuring, not warning. Remembering.
“I had one,” she said. “A real one. Given, not assigned.”
The pressure in the room didn’t change.
That mattered too.
“Why don’t you use it?” Taylor asked.
“Because it’s inefficient,” she replied. “Names create continuity. Continuity creates claims.”
She exhaled slowly. “The system doesn’t like claims it didn’t authorize.”
Taylor felt something cold settle behind his ribs.
“So, it took it?”
“No,” she said. “It priced it.”
She studied his face, as if checking whether he was ready for this much truth.
“It learned that people with names resisted longer,” she said. “Not violently. Persistently.
They remembered who they were supposed to be.”
Her fingers curled slightly against the sheet.
“So I stopped using mine.”
The system remained silent.
Taylor realized then what that meant.
“Say it,” he said quietly.
She hesitated — not from fear, but from habit.
Then she spoke.
“My name is Mara.”
The word landed with no fanfare.
No alarms.
No pressure spike.
Just a faint sense of something aligning that had been misfiled for a long time.
Taylor repeated it once, softly. “Mara.”
She closed her eyes.
“Don’t use it often,” she said. “Not here. Not yet.”
“I won’t,” he replied.
He meant it.
Outside, the city continued its quiet accounting.
Inside the clinic, something unoptimized took root — fragile, costly, and stubbornly human.
Mara breathed, and for the first time since he’d met her, Taylor felt the pressure ease without being rerouted.
Not because the system allowed it.
But because, briefly, it didn’t know how to price a name.