Chapter 287
These silent gifts—Diana never asked about them, never refused them.
She simply spent longer and longer hours in the studio, entire afternoons sitting in the conservatory.
She painted, sculpted clay, tended those oddly shaped plants, and occasionally picked up the cello Rupert had sent over—supposedly once belonging to some archduchess—to saw through tuneless practice pieces.
Her world extended from the precise, rigorous, logic-symbol-filled laboratory into a vast realm of color, earth's fragrance, and chaotic melodies.
It was an entirely new experience.
The end of logical deduction was inevitability, but the destination of artistic creation held infinite possibilities.
This uncertainty, once a variable she'd worked hard to avoid, had become the greatest pleasure in her tranquil life.
Late at night, after finishing a video conference with Sterling Row, Rupert didn't return to the bedroom. Instead, he entered the study.
He didn't turn on the lights, only pulled up his personal light screen.
No candlestick charts appeared on the display, no encrypted intelligence—just photographs.
The newest one had been taken this afternoon through the conservatory glass.
Diana knelt before a patch of bioluminescent moss, using a tiny dropper to water them.
That ethereal blue glow reflected on her focused profile, her eyes completely absorbed.
His fingertip swiped, moving to the previous image.
Her in the studio, a smudge of paint on her face that she hadn't noticed. Sunlight poured through the massive glass wall, gilding her entire form with a fuzzy golden halo, even the dust motes in the air glowing.
Further back—the moment she'd first drawn sound from that antique cello and laughed at the harsh noise.
Her smile was faint, yet he'd looked at it for a long time.
His phone held thousands of such photographs.
Rupert closed the light screen. The study plunged back into darkness.
He'd built her an isolated Noah-01, keeping the world's malice outside.
And she, within this steel ark, had carved out a true Eden for him.
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Azurefall Isle.
Diana sat in the terrace shadows, with only an open sketchbook before her.
She was capturing a patch of sunlight filtering through a glass, the pattern it cast on the wooden table.
She drew slowly, her pencil tip making soft scratching sounds against paper.
Rupert sat not far away, simply watching her.
He'd noticed she'd recently become fascinated with capturing these fleeting things—light and shadow.
The arc of grass blades swaying in the wind. The trajectory of an ant carrying a petal. These phenomena had no logic, no formulas, yet possessed their own order.
Just then, Diana's hand holding the pencil suddenly froze.
The pencil slipped from her weakening fingers, hitting the stone floor with a sharp crack.
Rupert's gaze instantly solidified.
Diana, absorbed in games of light and shadow just moments before, now looked pale as paper, fine beads of cold sweat instantly breaking across her forehead.
Her entire body curled inward, hands pressing tightly against her temples, her frame shaking with uncontrollable tremors.
"Athena."
Rupert crossed to her side in one stride, half-cradling her against him, his body shielding her from external light and wind.
"Mr. Russell, Ms. York's brain alpha waves show severe abnormal discharge, dopamine and endorphin levels dropping rapidly, cortisol index... exceeds safety threshold."
This was an old affliction.
Something buried beneath the genius's halo—a sudden-onset neurological dysfunction.
"Julian," Rupert held her, feeling the tremors coursing through her body. His voice transmitted through a bone-conduction earpiece, without a ripple of emotion. "Clear the flight path from Azurefall Isle to Greyharbor City. I need to take off in fifteen minutes."
"Isabella, activate the Hermes medical jet. I need complete neuro-monitoring equipment debugged within two hours."
"Oscar, notify Greyharbor City tower control—cancel all commercial flight takeoffs and landings for the next six hours. Our runway cannot have any delays."
Orders issued one after another—precise, ruthless, brooking no argument.
Oscar resignedly began contacting diplomatic departments and air traffic control agencies worldwide.
The Hermes jet—this Gulfstream G650 normally used as an airborne office—had now transformed into a top-tier flying ICU.
The cabin held only the crisp scent of disinfectant.
Diana lay on the emergency-converted medical bed, connected to a dozen lines, data streams silently surging across monitoring screens.
She'd slipped into semi-consciousness, brows tightly knit. Even under sedatives, her body still convulsed slightly from intermittent neurological agony.
Rupert dismissed the accompanying medical team, keeping only Athena as backup.
He sat bedside, personally changing her IV bags, adjusting intravenous drip rates.
When a curve representing brain pressure fluctuated slightly onscreen, he immediately picked up a pre-filled syringe, slowly pushing a neural blocker through the venous line.
These nursing skills—he'd once learned them for himself.
But he'd never imagined this cold knowledge would one day be applied to her.
His movements were practiced and calm, yet his gaze never left her face for a moment.
He watched her pale lips, dampening them bit by bit with a cotton swab dipped in warm water.
Watched her fingertips, cold from medication reactions, and clasped her hand in his palm, warming it with body heat.
The plane carved a straight contrail through the stratosphere, galaxies brilliant outside the windows.
Inside the cabin, silence held only the regular beeping of instruments and their intertwined breathing.
The jet didn't land at Greyharbor City International Airport, but descended directly onto the private helipad atop the Russell Group Building.
An elevator led straight to the private medical center in the building's core.
This facility possessed the world's most cutting-edge equipment and absolute physical isolation.
Kenji and numerous biomedical experts he'd urgently recalled from Noah-01 had been waiting.
After a series of tense, precise examinations, the treatment plan was quickly determined.
"It's a sudden-onset failure triggered by a neurotransmitter synthesis disorder."
Kenji looked at the complex, dizzying brain function imaging, his expression grave. "Conventional drugs can only relieve symptoms, not eliminate the root cause. We need to perform 'neuronal regeneration induction,' but the risks are extremely high..."
"Prepare for surgery," Rupert interrupted.
He understood Diana's physical condition better than anyone.
He couldn't let her face this alone anymore.
For the next seventy-two hours, Rupert barely closed his eyes.
He refused all nursing staff's close-care requests, personally maintaining vigil at Diana's bedside.
The room's lighting, temperature, and humidity—all adjusted by Athena in real-time based on Diana's EEG feedback, calibrated by the second.
He prepared liquid nutrition for her. Not having the kitchen send it up, but personally working in the meal prep room, using molecular gastronomy techniques to recombine a high-protein nutritional solution with the tomato flavor she liked.
Then, repeatedly confirm with a digital thermometer, ensuring the temperature upon entry.
He turned her regularly, wiped her body, movements gentle.
He suddenly realized that "DY," who could single-handedly shake the foundations of world physics, that Diana who stood calmly at the center of data torrents observing humanity like a deity—was contained in such a fragile frame.
The third morning.
Diana's lashes trembled lightly. She slowly opened her eyes.
Her vision shifted from blur to clarity. The first thing she saw was Rupert sitting in the chair beside the bed.
He'd just fallen asleep, still wearing the shirt he hadn't changed since returning from Azurefall Isle.
Except his cuffs were rolled up, collar unbuttoned two buttons, showing a few traces of exhausted dishevelment.
He leaned against the chair back, head tilted slightly, yet his hand still gripped hers tightly.
His brows remained slightly furrowed. Even in sleep, he carried an unshakeable tension.
Diana didn't move.
She could feel the temperature of his palm—dry, warm, with an unquestionable strength.
She quietly watched him for several minutes, then tried moving her fingers.
Almost instantly, Rupert's eyes opened.
Those eternally unfathomable pupils first flashed with newly-woken confusion, then sharpened into keen alertness.
Finally, seeing her calm gaze, all his emotions settled.