Chapter 199
After dinner, Milton stood up and headed upstairs. "I'm going to take a shower. Been sitting in a car all day—I'm covered in dust."
Lucinda also stood, preparing to return to her room.
She'd just reached the staircase when footsteps sounded behind her.
Dahlia hurried over from the dining table, holding a palm-sized silver robot in her hands.
"Lucinda, look."
Her voice carried a light cheerfulness as she held the little robot up in front of Lucinda.
"This is what Milton gave me—the latest companion care robot. It can do full-body massages and even monitor sleep quality. He said this is an internal test version that hasn't hit the market yet. You can't buy it even if you have money."
As she spoke, she lightly pressed the top of the robot's head.
The little robot let out a soft hum, and its two mechanical arms unfolded.
"See? It can adjust the massage intensity too. Super comfortable. Milton said I'm the one in the family who needs to relax the most, so he specially saved one for me."
Lucinda paused and glanced down at the little robot.
She frowned slightly. She recognized it immediately—it was based on a design she'd drawn last year.
She'd handed it over to a partner research institute for production. Even the internal logic code had been written by her.
She withdrew her gaze, looking at Dahlia's expression that clearly said, "See how good Milton is to me?" Her tone was flat. "Looks decent."
Dahlia waited a moment. When the expected surprise didn't come, her smile stiffened slightly.
She hugged the little robot back to her chest, her voice still light. "Well, I'll head upstairs then. Milton gave this to me, so I need to study it carefully. After all, it's a token of his thoughtfulness."
With that, she turned and went upstairs.
Lucinda watched her figure disappear at the end of the hallway. She didn't say anything, just turned and went upstairs herself.
When Milton came out after his shower, he happened to see Dahlia's door slightly ajar, the hum of the little robot drifting out from inside.
He paused, then walked in. He saw Dahlia sitting on her bed, still holding the little robot.
"Dahlia, this…" Milton pointed at the robot. "Where did you get that?"
Dahlia looked up, an obedient smile on her face. "Milton, didn't you give it to me? Last time you said there was a test version left at home. I've been having some neck and shoulder discomfort lately, so I just took it to use."
Milton stood there, opened his mouth, and his brow slowly furrowed.
He remembered that test version had been specifically set aside by Liam for Lucinda. It was the first production model after an iteration—only three existed in the entire country.
He'd casually placed it on a shelf in the study, planning to give it to Cindy the next time he saw her.
He glanced toward Lucinda's room at the end of the hallway, then back at the humming little robot in Dahlia's arms. He was silent for a moment.
Dahlia watched his expression, her smile unchanged. "Milton, what's wrong?"
Milton was silent for two seconds, then shook his head. "Nothing. Use it well."
When Milton walked out of Dahlia's room, the door closed softly behind him.
He stood in the hallway for two seconds, looking down at his empty palms.
He shook his head and turned toward the other end of the hallway.
Lucinda's door was slightly ajar. Milton raised his hand and knocked lightly on the door frame. Hearing a voice inside say, "Come in," he pushed the door open and stepped inside.
Lucinda was sitting at her desk. Her laptop screen was lit up, dense streams of data scrolling down line by line.
Her fingers tapped the keyboard twice, then stopped, as if waiting for a calculation result.
"Milton? You're not asleep yet?"
"Can't sleep." Milton walked over and sat down in the chair beside her. "What are you working on?"
"Helping a friend look at some data." Her fingers tapped twice more. The numbers on the screen jumped. "They've been unable to calibrate a parameter. I'm checking if it's a problem with the underlying logic."
Milton murmured in acknowledgment and didn't interrupt. He just sat there quietly, waiting.
The night breeze drifted in through the half-open window, carrying the sweet fragrance of tuberose from the garden.
He watched the rhythm of her fingers rising and falling on the keyboard, watched her gaze follow the constantly shifting numbers on the screen with total focus. Suddenly, the scene felt familiar.
As if he'd seen it somewhere before. Or as if it had walked out of a memory he'd replayed over and over.
"Cindy." He suddenly spoke. "Have you ever thought that your skills are actually higher than most chief researchers at research institutes?"
Lucinda's fingers paused. She turned to look at him. "Why are you suddenly saying that?"
"Just a thought." Milton leaned back in his chair, his gaze resting on her profile. "The way you just handled that data reminded me of someone."
Lucinda's brow twitched slightly.
"Felix." When Milton said the name, his tone grew unconsciously more serious. "When I contacted her last time, the way she handled our fuel system data was really similar to what you just did. I thought at the time that if I could meet her in person, I'd definitely ask her how she developed that kind of thinking."
Lucinda withdrew her gaze, tapped the keyboard twice more to lock in the final parameter, then closed her laptop.
She turned to face Milton, looking at the eager light still glowing in his eyes. She was silent for two seconds.
"Milton."
"Yeah?"
"I am Felix."
The air in the room went still.
Milton's expression froze instantly.
He stared at Lucinda, then at the laptop in her hands. His eyes widened, as if he wanted to say something but didn't know where to start. "You… what did you say?"
"I am Felix." Lucinda spoke each word clearly. "The person who sent you that plan back then—that was me. The person who sent the raw materials—also me."
Milton was completely stunned.
He sat in the chair, his entire body frozen in place, his gaze unmoving on Lucinda's face, as if he were seeing this face he thought he'd known well for the first time.
His Adam's apple bobbed. His voice was lower than before. "Do you… do you know how long I tried to contact Felix? I went through four layers of connections within the system. It took three months just to get a contact number… and that person was you?"
Lucinda nodded.
Milton shot up from his chair.
He turned in a circle, then looked at Lucinda again. The light in his eyes was startlingly bright. "Do you… do you know how much your plan helped us? Do you know we spent a year looking for a source for those materials and never found one? Do you know I stayed up three days and three nights studying the documents you gave me?"
He stopped mid-sentence.
He looked at the sister in front of him—wearing home clothes, hair casually tied back—and suddenly felt an overwhelming sense of dissonance.
His sister… was Felix?
Felix… was his sister?
Was this real?