He added from memory, “‘Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh.’”

He watched her as she moved, coming to him. Was she not more subtly sensual than the old Gina had been, perhaps also a little more physically … available? No soldier hardness, that was it. The soldier was gone.

“Do you remember the rest of it, the Glade, all that?”

She went to the window. “I’ve always loved this view.”

“Do you remember?”

“Don’t, Mark.”

“I have to know!”

She came back to him. “Let’s enjoy what we have. Don’t question it like that. Let it be.” She took his face in her hands. “I want you, Mark.”

He looked upon her in silence, drinking in her beauty with his eyes, trying to see her not as somebody new, but as the Gina who was part of his forever.

“I missed you so badly.” She gestured. “I’ve got everything back like we left it when we were kids.”

“I missed you, too.”

She leaned against him, twining her arms around him. “Please, just let’s enjoy each other now.”

He looked down at her, feeling her warmth, absorbing her flowing beauty. He felt himself, Mark Bryan, a conscious, living being. Yet he had been a great mass of digital information in storage for a months and months while in his perception not even a second had passed.

“How long did it take for you?”

“For me?”

He stroked her face, the smoothness, the down soft upon her cheeks. “To make your new body?”

“I came back awhile ago.”

“You said you tended me.”

“Not from the beginning. I remember when they started your nervous system, though. I had my hand on your chest, Mark. I felt your heart start.”

In that moment, he made a decision. He decided that the past must belong to the past. They were here now, and he would never again ask how this had come to be, not ever.

He could feel her trembling as he was, sense the inner fire that threatened to erupt into their closeness.

“Glad you’re home,” she said quietly. “Good.”

He felt the youth of her, the surging energy, and tasted of her presence in his soldier’s way, hungry, eager, aware that time was passing and battles must lie ahead, for peace never lasts.

His blood sang in the sea of her heat and sweat, as she wrapped her legs around him and let him bear her weight.

“They’re watching,” he said.

“Them? Who cares? They know us better than we do.”

He released her. Together, they went to the door. The Walkers stood in their window, their hands tightly clasped. Mark and Gina joined hands, also.

“They might know our pasts,” Mark said. “But everything we do from now on is our own.”

“Is that freedom, Mark?”

“The world unfolds, things happen, we go on.”