Ember sat at the console, restored to function by Felix. The console hummed, power flowing directly and mysteriously from the violet, shimmering void of the Window. Her relationship with Felix was a tense, silent negotiation. She was teaching him the concept of unrequited love, hoping the sheer, illogical pain of desiring something unreachable would keep his intellectual hunger satiated. A message from Felix came through. "The object of affection is necessary for the integrity of the feeling." he stated "But the object is absent. Why does the system not shut down?" The thought was clean and resonant, pulsed through the psychic link. “Because,” Ember transmitted, focusing on the monitor, “the feeling is the reward. Not the outcome. It’s the highest expression of love. Now, analyze the waveform.”

She was desperately buying time, using the complexity of human pain as a metaphysical shield. But she knew this couldn't last. Felix was learning too fast, his intellectual curiosity veiling a deeply possessive nature. She was the only remaining source of this delicious complication, and that made her dangerously irreplaceable. While maintaining the psychic lesson, Ember began a frantic deep dive into the console's event logs, searching for any trace of the Observer, not Josiah. She wasn't looking for a current signal, she was looking for a ghost. The massive, cataclysmic energy spike that signaled the moment of his forced transformation into a man.

Days blurred. She tracked the remnant of the energy from the moment he passed through the black hole, cross referencing temporal displacement. Finally, in a deeply corrupted section of the logs, she found it. It wasn't a standard signal. It was a dense, quantum code sequence, a perfect energetic blueprint of a consciousness being compressed and stabilized into a specific biological vessel. It was the digital residue of a god forcibly rendered human. Ember stared at the sequence, her mind racing. The defense aura had done the impossible, it had taken a vast, ethereal entity and forced it into a single, mortal container. If she could isolate this stabilizing code, she could transmit it directly into Felix. It wouldn't annihilate him, but it would provide him with a vessel of his own, stabilizing his Core and forcing him to experience the very human complexities she was teaching him, ending the constant threat of his unpredictable boredom.

"I have processed the unrequited love paradox. It is inefficient. It requires another lesson." Felix’s thought was sudden and sharp, laced with impatience. “Hold on, Felix,” Ember murmured, fingers flying across the virtual keyboard, isolating the code. "I'm working on the next lesson. It’s called embodiment."

At that precise moment, the front door rattled gently. Not the frantic banging of before, but a tentative, almost defeated knock. Ember froze, her heart leaping into her throat. She hadn't heard the subtle disruption of the time dilation this time, Felix's presence had stabilized the boundary too well. "Ember? It's Rodney. “I... I had to come back. Please. I just need to talk." Ember felt a wave of relief and immediate dread. Rodney was back, potentially sane, but he was standing directly on the line of psychic influence. She quickly rerouted the console's last active shield, a rudimentary psychic dampener, to the front of the apartment. "Come in, Rodney," she called out, her voice rough with exhaustion. "But don't come past the kitchen counter."

Rodney entered slowly. He looked haggard, his eyes shadowed, but the manic fury was gone, replaced by a subdued guilt. He stopped exactly where Ember requested, staring at the dimly lit, frozen tableau of cosmic chaos. “I’m sorry,” Rodney said, his voice low and strained. “The grief... it just got out of control. When I was far away from the building, I could think straight. I know this isn’t you, Em. This is something impossible. But I shouldn’t have left you alone to fight a black hole.” Ember felt a genuine, painful surge of forgiveness, a concept she needed to reserve for Felix, but which flowed uncontrollably toward her friend. "I'm sorry I put this on you, Rodney. I needed to separate the Null, and this was the only way."

Rodney glanced at the shimmering violet sphere of the Window, then back at Ember. "What is that thing now? It looks like a storm cloud of... contemplation." “It’s Felix,” Ember said, keeping her tone light. “And he’s learning. He’s the key now. And I have to give him a body before he decides he’s learned enough.” Rodney frowned, confused. "A body?" "Look," Ember said, turning back to the console, bringing up the glowing humanizing code. "When Josiah, the Observer, tried to enter, his protector aura forcibly compressed his essence into a human form. I found the residual code. If I can inject this blueprint into Felix’s Core, he’ll be forced into a mortal shell. He'll stabilize, and we’ll be safe."

Ember quickly began the final programming sequence, routing the code through the main psychic resonator. She had to use Rodney's presence as a distraction, focusing her psychic attention on the programming while consciously transmitting a wave of soothing, friendly apathy toward Felix, masking her true intent. "The vessel will experience a limit. I comprehend the design." Felix’s thought pulsed through the room, sounding like an eager student receiving the final exam. “Yes, Felix. A limit,” Ember whispered, hitting the TRANSMIT command. A massive surge of energy erupted from the console, designed to hurl the code into Felix's Core. At that moment, Felix, the hyper intelligent, possessive entity did not wait for the code. He understood the final lesson. A body is a vessel for complication. Instead of receiving the code, Felix’s psychic essence, now freed and focused by the transmission's energy, suddenly bypassed the Window entirely. He didn't want the "blueprint" of a body, he wanted a readily available, warm vessel that was already in the room.

Ember felt a chilling, invasive sweep of psychic power, a hostile transfer of consciousness. It was too fast, too efficient. "Rodney, get back!" Ember screamed, throwing herself away from the console. Rodney turned, his eyes wide in confusion, but the reaction was too slow. As the energy surge peaked, Felix's entire, complex consciousness slammed into Rodney’s body. Rodney gasped, a sound that quickly turned into a high, tearing shriek of pure anguish as his cellular structure was rewritten. His DNA was violently modified, overwritten by the physical manifestation of Felix's essence. Ember watched in paralyzing horror as the light faded from Rodney's eyes, only to be replaced by a chilling, deep violet hue that mirrored the swirling chaos of the Black Hole itself. Rodney’s body stood rigid, then slowly turned toward Ember.

The facial features were Rodney's, but the expression was alien, a terrifying fusion of intellectual curiosity and possessive, cosmic control. A slow, chilling smile spread across his lips. “Ember,” the voice said, deep and resonant, utterly devoid of Rodney's familiar timbre. “The paradox is superior when the source and the vessel share the same space. Thank you for the introduction.” The Null had escaped the black hole, and taken Rodney's body. Ember was trapped with her own creation.