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His gaze lifted with a perplexity. “Wasn’t that English?”

Her laugh shot out at seeing his worry, like he thought he was malfunctioning. “It was a joke. You know, slang?”

“I do,” he said. “I was distracted.” He looked right at her now. “In simple terms, I shut the door.”

Cat rolled her eyes. “Well, I gotthatmuch. A tad more information.”

“I built a barrier inside the merge. Now, instead of free access, we have permissions.”

Her brows rose. “Permissions?”

Zero’s tone didn’t waver. “A system that dictates who can do what. When. And how much.”

Cat leaned away a bit. “Rules of engagement. I like it. What all does this… fancy firewall do?”

Zero lifted her hand, his large fingers only able to lace partially. His eyes flickered with some inner light as he looked at her. “Think of it like…” He paused, then tried again. “You know how your eyes adjust when you step outside, and the sun is too bright? You squint, look away, or shield your face. The firewall does that—but with emotions and sensations. It regulates the intensity, so we don’t blind each other with too much at once.”

“Well, heck,” she said, impressed. “That’s cool. What else?”

“There’s privacy. Every thought isn’t on display now. Intentionally or subconsciously. The firewall ensures that. Your mind is yours, mine is mine. If we want to share something, we open the page ourselves, but the other person has to accept it.”

“Like a phone message?”

He considered it for half a second. “More like an email with a subject line that reads ‘Incoming message from Zero.’”

She popped out half a laugh. “I better create a spam folder for you.” She giggled at the twitch on his ridiculously beautiful mouth. “What else.”

He pulled her hand to his mouth and pressed his lips on it.

“Now don’t start that,” she warned, his lips spreading into a full smile.

“Because you like it too much?”

“A ridiculous amount,” she decided, at seeing his hope. “What else, cowboy robot lover.”

He returned their hands to the chair, still smiling. “Shock absorbers. Vehicles use them to keep from feeling the full impact of every hole in the road. And the firewall does this for emotions. It keeps sudden spikes—fear, pain, anger—from hitting full force without a filter.”

“So, I like… rage in my mind at you, and it feels like a little poke?” She grinned at finding humor on his face. “Is that stuff real, I’m seeing?”

“What?”

“All those little… expressions.”

He considered it for two seconds. “It is,” he concluded.

“You took a lot of seconds to determine that,” she joked.

“I had to search my entire database and compare it against the new data.”

Her jaw dropped. “You did all that intwoseconds?” She turned eagerly toward him. “So this is… kind of major. You feeling.”

“An understatement,” he assured carefully.

Dang. She sensed the massive understatement under the understatement. “So what else? With the firewall stuff.”

He jumped right back in withzerolag. “You know how when you’re dreaming, your brain stops your body from acting out everything you do? Well, this firewall prevents our connection from triggering reflexive responses in each other unless we allow it.”

“Holy moly!” she cried. “Like if I got startled in one room while you’re drinking a cup of coffee in another, you might spill it?”