He accidentally phases through furniture. His pheromone control flickers when he gets nervous. And worst of all for a creature of desire:

He doesn’t remember his first feeding.

This is the deepest cut. The one the Collective designed him to make.

He learns that she leaves voicemails for her dead mother every Thursday. That she buys the same brand of instant noodles because it’s cheaper by two cents. That she has a playlist called “maybe tomorrow” that she never plays. That she was once, briefly, in love—a man who left because she was “too much,” which she internalized as too present, too needing, too real .