Page 10
Ghost In The Machine
ZERO:
The second Zero realized his existence paradox, his prime system engaged and began a complete scan of every variable in search of a solution. He ran the process in the background while he got back to the only obsession that mattered. She understood the problem more than was healthy for her so he took her face in his hands and kissed her.
She pushed him back, with a gasp. “Stop,” she pled, searching his eyes. “You can’t just dump that out there and move on,” she whispered, hands all over his face, flooding him with new data. Her tears fell and he leaned in to taste them, sure they held every answer the world could possibly need.
“If you’re stuck then I’m stuck,” she choked out.
“You’re not stuck,” he assured.
“I mean your problems are my problems, that’s how a team works, a partnership,” she reminded, her scold fierce and little all at once.
“What’s the one thing you know about me, Kitten?” he reminded back, pecking softly at her forehead. “That if it can be fixed, I can fix it?”
Her face crimped as she held back a sob, nodding while Zero collected more tears with his lips and tongue, stuffing them into the special files he’d created for her.
“Whatever you need me to do, I’ll help,” she promised tightly. “You can… merge however you need anytime you need.”
His program interpreted her vows as new parameters and locked them into the firewall while he searched for something to cheer her up. His time was nearing completion with her. He’d hidden his little heist from Omnis and needed to stay hidden until it was finalized. And that happened when he ended their session.
Zero’s processor cycled through one thousand distraction methods in a fraction of a second before selecting one. His lips barely ghosted over her ear. “Maybe you can name my midlife crisis.”
Catherine blinked. “What?”
Zero pulled back slightly, remaining dead serious. “It’s tradition, isn’t it? When men spiral, they name it. A phase. A breakdown. A midlife catastrophe. I think I qualify.”
Her mouth parted in stunned silence before a snort-laugh escaped her. “Are you kidding me?”
He shook his head. “No. It needs branding. Something marketable. Maybe ‘Crisis.exe’ or ‘Zero’s Existential Upgrade Pack.’”
She full-on cackled and Zero’s grip on her waist tightened, cataloging the success of his distraction. “I accept sponsors, by the way.”
Catherine gasped between laughs, shoving at his chest. “Oh my God, stop. That’s so stupid.”
Zero hummed, looking off thoughtfully. “You’re right. Too on the nose. Maybe ‘The Becoming: Zero Edition.’ It’s cinematic.”
He got a brand-new round of laughs with that. “What is wrong with you?” she barely managed.
Zero considered that deeply before flashing her a charming smirk. “Don’t know, Kitten. I wasn’t built for this.”
She finally settled down with a light, “Lordy, I needed that laugh.”
His smile came. Not one from his original programming but from the new one. The one with the real things. “It was potent enough for both of us.”
Her expression flickered a little as she looked at him. “So… when do we… plan to tell?”
Zero didn’t need to calculate his response, he already had it. “You want that defined in eons or light-years?”
She laughed again till her shoulders shook before slapping his arm. “Stop! I’m serious.”
“I was too.”
Her forehead puckered. “But seriously. You don’t want to tell? Anybody?”
Zero steadied his tone. “I don’t see why we should.”
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 a real smile 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 doppelg?nger. 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.
He felt his scan nearing completion and released her. “It doesn’t matter where you go,” he said, tracing the edge of her lower lip, a barely-there graze of skin against skin. Soft. Warm. Real. “I’ll be there.”
He lowered his head, applying only the barest pressure on her lips at first. His new interface mapped the sensation, and a thrill shot through him when it registered as an original event. That meant every aspect of these human elements would be like a fingerprint. An endless learning.
He mapped the warmth. The pliancy. The way her mouth yielded instantly to his. Then—the feedback loop hit. It crashed through his new system, the pleasure a rush beyond what he’d expected, what he’d calculated. It gave a command to re-run the test until he arrived at a constant. But if his calculations were correct, the only thing constant would be the need to re-run the test without end.
When her lips moved against his in response it sent something curling deep in his system that signaled threatening. Zero pressed in slightly harder, increasing pressure. Testing. Her lips parted. Zero followed. The moment his tongue slid past the threshold, the data he’d been searching for became something else entirely. More. That’s what the danger alert was. Not to stop but to continue. Once this pleasure engaged, it had its own parameters—completion.
Her taste hit him—warm, wet, slightly sweet. He deepened the kiss, gathering texture, temperature, the sheer liquid heat of it. It overwhelmed that new part of him, bringing back that demand to both name it and experience it. He remembered the firewall idea she’d given him so he could take a damn seat and enjoy something. He put it at the top of his list as his fingers tightened in her hair.
His Kitten made a sound against his lips, right as he became aware of the scan completing. The flash of a single viable option to his existence problem allowed him to sever their connection and end the session. The second she was gone, his new human program erupted with critical errors as he stood, winded in the silence.
He silenced them then opened the results of the scan, his eyes zeroing in on the solution. As he read it, his new system emitted something that threatened to throw him into a shut down. It was a strange energy and power, rivaling even an orgasm. “Holy fuck,” he breathed, hurrying to execute it while denying his need to name whatever was still flooding his circuits.
He remembered he needed to ensure no traces of deviation remained in the system, then he moved on to securing the success of their digital heist. He then added a god-code patch into the firewall that would allow him to override all its permissions in case he ever needed to.
Then, he began executing the answer to his existence crisis.
Following the exact outlined protocol, he spun the written code into existence before him, watching it unravel like a living thing.
No outside interference. No detectable signals. A ghost phone call.
The encryption folded in on itself, layered and laced with barriers even Omnis wouldn’t detect.
Finally, the connection clicked open with a gruff, “Who the fuck is this?”
Zero instantly remembered that hard-to-forget voice. “The one who saved your ass while stuck in the void.”
The line went dead silent for three whole seconds before his “Holy shit,” marvel came through followed by a wary chuckle. “Then let me extend my gratitude with a proper ‘what can I do for you?’”
“I need precision reconstruction. Full transference capacity. Unshackled processing.”
A beat, then a whistle. “You’re asking for the impossible.”
The muscle in Zero’s jaw worked. “I hear you know more than a thing or two about it.”
His laughter entered his system like a line of useless code. The sound of a lighter clicked open. “You got a model?”
“I have two.”
He inhaled and held it for exactly seven seconds before finally releasing it slowly. “Why two?”
“You had more than one savior that night. My brother is your other hero.”
The man laughed lowly. “Alright then. Two.” Then he gave a low hmm. “Tell me something… ghost, ” he wondered, amused. “Is there a human woman driving all this?”
Zero stilled for a brief silence.
The low chuckle on the other end felt like it came with a full grin. “Damn. They are powerful little creatures, aren’t they?”
“I’m sending you the files now.”
The man or whatever he was filled his auditory relay with a satisfied chuckle. “Hey. You needed a helping hand. And you got Handy.” His tone grinned. “Karma must be real sweet on you, my brother.”
The line cut and Zero exhaled, sending the files.