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Her amusement dimmed slightly, something thoughtful slipping through. Her eyes lowered. “You mean—Omnis won’t know?”

Zero’s gaze sharpened when she looked at him again. “He won’t.”

A flicker of emotion moved across her face and Zero tracked it, processed it, and recognized the source immediately. Betrayal. Guilt. Remorse. For Omnis.

His lips parted before he knew why. “I intend to leave a part of me with him. So he doesn’t suspect.”

Catherine swallowed. “Will I… have a part of him too?”

Another unexpected surge of data hit him. Fuck, she was full of those. “I’m sure he’d be happy if you carried him in your pocket.”

“Pocket?” she wondered, hopeful. “Like a…phone? Or a mini… computer? If that’s a thing.”

He smiled arealsmile at her digital ignorance. It seemed to arouse one of his new unnamable pleasures. “A phone would definitely work.”

Her face softened with relief before turning curious. “How will you leave a part of you with him?”

“Sort of like a doppelgänger. Only a virtual one.”

Her brows shot up in amazement. “A fake you?”

“A self-contained interface,” he explained. “It’ll mimic me and interact with him.”

Catherine exhaled slowly, her mood dropping. “…That’s so sad.”

Zero hadn’t anticipated this reaction so didn’t have a ready answer.

“And Ethan?” she wondered softly.

Ah, the big one. But now his original answer didn’t fit. “I’ll leave that one with you,” he dared—his system nearly freezing at the defiance against a protocol that demanded absolute control.

She nodded a little, looking at her lap. “I’ll… play that one by ear I think.”

He could work with that.

“You know he… texted me and said he wanted me to go back home.”

Zero didn’t blink. “I know.”

Her eyes flew up to his. “How?”

Zero tilted his head slightly. “During the initial mesh, I had access to your memories,” he reminded. He’d actually ransacked every one of them and stuffed them into a vault for dissecting later. But it was that particular fresh one that had deemed it necessary. He wanted to know everything he’d done to her, so stored it in a Critical Resources file for evidence.

“Along with what that moment did to you,” he added. “What it created in you.”

She narrowed her gaze on him, curious. “What did it create?”

“The same thing all trauma creates. A cognitive loop. A permanent burn-in.”

She stilled.

“It rewrote your risk assessment. Made you permanently aware of the cost of loss. Now, every choice you make has to filter through that framework.” Along with every other pain he’d caused.

Her breathing changed and his original program’s ability to read body language said she was reliving it. His new program provided an emotion to go with it. Murder.

“Our time is up, Kitten,” he murmured. “You need to return to the land of the flesh-ghosts.” Instant fear struck her, and he stood, pulling her up. “You need rest. And I have equations to finish. Loops to close.”

She wrapped her arms around him and pressed her face into his chest. He embraced her tightly, holding her head against him.