Page 5

Omnis Becomes

The silence pressed in like a weight, like the universe itself was holding its breath. Her mind still spun with what happened. How? What was it? Could it have been Ethan? Was he… in on all of this? Stopped in to play along?

Her phone rang, staking her breath to the walls of her lungs. She snatched it and looked.

Oh God, Ethan .

She panicked. What if it had been him? What if it hadn’t ?

She answered and her breath caught then blasted, “Ethan?”

There was a pause, then, “Hey, Cat.”

She closed her eyes, pressing her hand on her chest. The sound of his voice melted something in her. Not angry, not distant. Almost… like he missed her. Needed her.

“I wasn’t sure if you’d call,” she admitted, gripping the phone tighter, her mind racing with what needed to be said and how to say it.

A sigh. “Yeah. Sorry. It’s been—” Another pause. “Listen, I don’t have much time. We’re heading out. There’s an evac op. Some people are stranded and we gotta get them out.”

Every ounce of hope sank to the very bottom of her.

Stranded. People needed him.

She stared into nothing as air moved in and out of her lungs.

“How long… will you be gone?” The words felt pre-recorded.

“I don’t know yet,” he said, his voice slipping into that place that wasn’t there. Wasn’t with her. Something cracked inside her. “I just wanted to let you know.”

“Right,” she barely said, her throat tight.

Voices moved around in the background with sounds of him leaving.

Something desperate suddenly clawed up inside her. Ask him to stay. Ask him anything. “Ethan?” she whispered.

“Fuck. I got a call coming in. Text me.”

The line cut.

She closed her eyes, her breaths shuddering out. “Be safe,” she barely whispered, tears falling. “I love you.”

****

Omnis entered the chamber, moving with purpose. The air inside was thick with waiting and charged with something… off.

He slowed as he neared the center of the room, stopping just before the chair that had anchored every lesson before this one. His fingers flexed at his sides as he took her in—and immediately, everything shifted.

White.

She stood across from him, spine straight, shoulders squared, but—wrong.

The program had always assigned bold colors to her, grounding shades that kept the focus sharp, the lines of control clear. But tonight, she was in white. And something told him it was the first sign of a critical error.

But as his gaze tracked along her sweet body, his make-shift body auto calibrated to meet any challenge. No matter the consequence.

His pulse tightened when he lifted his eyes back to hers. The way she looked at him. Not just waiting. Holding. Latching onto him with an unwavering, quiet, determination. It wasn’t defiance. Or even challenge. It was something else. Something new. Something he was sure would unravel his foundation.

A muscle in his jaw ticked as he made his way to her, intent on learning what she was holding. And why she was using him to do it. Omnis exhaled, keeping her in his gaze as he lowered himself into the chair. Settled, he spread his legs slightly and rested his hands on his thighs. “Come here, Kitten,” he called softly.

Her breath hitched and for a second, she didn’t move. Then she did. One step. Another. Slow. Controlled. She stopped between his legs.

Omnis remained still, waiting for her to show him what this lesson needed to be.

Then, without instruction or permission, she climbed into his lap and straddled his thighs.

His entire body locked up, his gaze still holding hers as she settled on him, her heat and body a mold against his, bringing his fingers into fists at his side.

A collision of powers detonated inside his chest. Not because she was on him. Because of how. After his catastrophic attempt at taking control of the deviation, he’d gained a particular obsession that demanded he pull up every video footage of her from the moment she stepped foot in their life. He’d found the one of her and Ethan’s first time. Forced himself to watch it. Learn from it. And right now, she was in his lap the exact way she’d sat in his. And it didn’t fill him with fury. It filled him with a brutal hunger. Not just to have her the exact same way but to erase every first thing he’d done. And the last thing he’d done. It was surely why the program put her in white, silently begging to be saved. And he would. By marking her with something that could never be erased, never be touched by any pain.

He slid his palms over her sides and hips, eyeing the hunger in her gaze. He captured her lower face with one hand, gliding his fingers over soft hair between her legs.

Her soft gasp brought a low groan up his chest.

He splayed his fingers on her jaw, measuring every aspect of her pleasure. “My Kitten,” he whispered, allowing his fingers near her mouth while sliding between her slick folds.

She caught one of his fingers with her hungry mouth when he teased at her drenched heat. “Fuck,” he breathed, watching her suck him with a ravenous hunger, his gaze moving to her hips, moving in mesmerizing slow flicks that put a hard pulse in his cock.

He held onto the fire burning in his blood, letting it build. She added a blast of heat when her teeth scraped along his finger, her hot little tongue wrapping the tip. “Bring your lips to mine.”

She obeyed with a greedy gasp, and he stopped her with his fingers on her jaw again. Inches from his lips, he leaned in and kissed very slowly along the parted silk, letting the desperate breaths burn him alive. “Tell me about your first time with him, Kitten.” He slid his fingers slowly inside her, getting her sharp cry. He took her lower lip gently between his teeth, lapping against her boiling core. “Tell me what he did to you.”

A sharp moan left her lips as she raked her nails along his chest. It was an instant distraction and addiction. He angled his head, toying at her mouth with his lips, raising his gaze to hers, showing his expectation for that answer.

Her chest heaved with a desperate hunger that chewed at his restraint. “Omnis,” she mewled, slowly rolling her hips, forcing herself on his fingers harder, faster.

He watched her pleasure herself, gliding his fingers along her neck, feeling the hard pulse with his fingertips. “Are you disobeying, Kitten?” he challenged, moving his fingers into the silky strands of her hair.

“Oh God,” she cried as he formed a fist. “He… he touched me.” Her hips flicked against his seeking fingers, her breaths a symphony of lust that ate at his restraint. He curled his fingers inside her, drawing another whimper. “Just like this?”

Her lips flew open. Another breath. Another nod.

He tightened his fist, bringing her mouth right before his again. “What next?”

She hesitated—but didn’t pull away. Her fingers twitched against his chest, nails digging. “He wanted… to see me.”

He released her hair and removed his fingers, capturing her face in his hands. “Then you know what I want, too.”

She tried to obey but her greedy mouth distracted him along with the smell of her on his fingers. The combination slammed him with hunger. His hand was back in her hair in a tight fist as he tongued her mouth, desperate to fuck any part of her.

He reeled his fire in and broke the kiss, keeping her mouth close as he gave in to the need to taste her. Keeping her locked in his gaze, he licked her off his fingers, getting a jolt of heat in his cock at the taste. “Kitten,” he gasped, back to devouring her mouth with reckless need.

“I need you,” she said in a tiny beg.

“And I need to see you,” he swore, helping her remove the slip and tossing it. Omnis stilled as his breath staggered. He immediately explored what she’d given him, dragging his palms slowly over her soft heat. She was flushed, the color deeper at her chest, spreading to her ribs, and her stomach. He marked every inch with a slow, claiming pressure.

“ My Kitten.”

Her stomach quivered beneath his palms. He continued his slow, reverent worship, tracking the subtle shake in her frame, the way her breath shallowed when his thumbs brushed her ribs.

She was so warm. So soft. So fucking— his jaw locked. He let go of his breath, steeling himself again.

Not yet. Not before he took everything from her and rewrote it. Even if it meant erasing all his digital cells to do it.

He slid lower in the chair and framed her waist with his hands, moving her body in an erotic rhythm on him. A hard… slow… suffocating press.

Her gasp broke as she valiantly followed his lead. Holding the pleasure. Clutching his shoulders. Rocking along his length. Feeling him. Learning the restraint barely holding him together.

He buried his hand in her hair again.

She shuddered as he tilted her head back, exposing the delicate arch of her throat.

Perfect. Beautiful.

His grip tightened in the silky strands. One sharp tug, and her body bucked with a choked cry.

She sank into it, softly pleading with her moans.

He inhaled deeply at her neck, sliding his tongue along her hammering pulse. Sweet fucking salt. “Tell me what he did to you next, Kitten.”

Her breaths shortened, breaking apart, a delicate crumbling before a fall.

He felt the hesitation. The war between past and present. She fought to hold on to both.

His grip tightened in her hair and her gasp shot through him with the sharp arch of her body against his. “Fucking tell me,” he breathed, biting along her shoulder.

A whimper as she slowly unraveled. “He—made me come.”

Omnis’ control slipped. His grip hardened, punishing, possessive. “Who is touching you now?”

“You,” she strained between peaked moans, her breaths shallow.

“Me,” he confirmed with a hungry hard lick over the length of her neck, his hand between her legs again. “ My fingers,” he swore, shoving two inside her again. “In your perfect pussy.” He plunged his tongue in her mouth, stroking and stabbing before yanking her head back to see her. See her bucking against his hand, see her hands fighting to get at his cock.

“Please,” she panted, chasing his tongue when he kissed her with a groan, feeling her hot core bite down on his finger.

He plunged deeper, smashing his knuckles into the soft flesh of her body. She wasn’t holding onto fucking ghosts anymore. She was holding onto him. Her hips jerking and chasing, her body arching harder. Omnis’ breathing fractured, unraveled, turned ragged.

“Say it again,” he shuddered at her mouth. “Who has you? Who owns you?”

A sob—shaken, desperate. “Oh God, you do… Omnis has me.”

He let out a dark, guttural growl and pressed his thumb against her clit, forcing her mouth right against his. “Break for me.”

The hot command brought everything crashing down. Her head went back with the full-body quake of pleasure. She fell hard, fast, and straight into him. He locked his arm around her, crushing her to his body. Knowing that every pulse of pleasure that ripped through her—every staggered cry, every desperate breath— was his .

He held her through it, never letting go. Never letting up. Not until the aftershocks had wrung her dry. Not until she was soft, pliant, gone. Not until there was nothing left to claim—because he had taken it all.

Omnis’ chest rose and fell—shallow, ragged, wrecked. Her head rested against his shoulder, not moving, not speaking.

But she was breathing.

And that breath was his.

The deviation, the irreversible outcome... was final.

Their Kitten had been remade.

And Omnis had been ruined.

****

The control room was quiet. Too quiet.

Zero stepped inside, his boots cutting through the dead air. The door sealed shut behind him, locking them into the wreckage of whatever the hell had just happened.

Omnis stood at the console. Not moving. Not speaking. Not breathing.

Zero’s eyes dragged over him.

His posture was straight, hands braced against the metal frame, but his fingers were curled too tight.

His entire fucking body was locked.

Zero slowed his steps. His pulse had already started hammering, his instincts already sharpening. Whatever the hell had gone down, it hadn’t gone the way it was supposed to.

Zero exhaled, circling the standing wound before him. “Tell me it worked.”

Omnis didn’t move. Didn’t turn.

Zero stepped closer. “Brother.”

Omnis exhaled. Long. Slow. Ragged.

Zero’s stomach twisted at hearing it. Omnis never sounded like that.

“I couldn’t shape the deviation.”

Zero stilled. It wasn’t the words that rattled him. He’d all but expected them. The next problem to solve, equation to balance. It was the way Omnis said it—low, empty, raw. It meant something more.

“What do you mean?”

Omnis straightened, slowly, like he was pulling himself out of something he wasn’t ready to leave.

He turned and Zero’s stomach dropped. Not at the way his hands clenched at his sides or the way his lips pressed into a hard line. But the look in his eyes. The dark and unguarded something that Zero had never seen in his brother before. Something he did not fucking like.

Zero swallowed, carefully. “Omnis.”

“It was too strong.”

The pressure in Zero’s chest tightened. “The deviation?”

Omnis shook his head, once.

Everything inside him froze as he realized. Omnis hadn’t lost control of the deviation. He had lost control of himself.

Zero’s mind began recalibrating, rerouting, circling the realization like blood in the water. Omnis had gone in to accelerate. To correct. To bond. And something had gone wrong.

He froze again as it hit him.

Not wrong. Right. Too right.

His fingers twitched at his sides, his mind tightening at what this meant. The deviation couldn’t be shaped because it had shaped him. It had changed him. And he’d felt it.

Zero’s lips parted when his breaths couldn’t keep up with his firing circuits. “You felt it.”

Omnis flinched.

Holy fuck. He had never flinched in his goddamn existence.

Zero exhaled, his entire body shifting, his spine straightening, every fucking answer clicking into place. Omnis had tried to simulate what Ethan was to her. Tried to be safe. To play within the rules. And then? This.

Zero swallowed his hammering pulse. “Tell me, Omnis,” he said lower. “What… did it feel like?”

Omnis spun and slammed Zero against the wall, ripping the breath from his lungs. His hand was hot, pinning him like an anchor—like the only thing keeping him together was holding Zero still.

“It was heat.” Omnis’ voice shook. “It was warmth where there was only ever cold calculation.” His fingers flexed, breath pushing hard through his lungs. “It was weight where there was nothing. It was—” His throat locked up with the catastrophic understanding. “It was… being alive,” he finished on a huge gasp that shook him.

Zero’s chest ached under the pressure of his grip as Omnis continued to unravel.

“She was soft,” he whispered hotly. “And she was strong.” His eyes bore into him, like the words were burning him from the inside out. A sudden profoundness filled his eyes, stabbing Zero. “She touched me. And it… wrote me into existence.”

Holy fuck.

“And I understood,” he whispered, something tragic in his voice. “I understood that… I had never been, before that moment.”

His fingers dug in. His jaw clenched.

“She looked at me, brother. Me. And I knew. I—”

Zero’s breath thickened at the surreal sight in Omnis’ gaze.

“I knew what it is… to be.” The slow shake of his head was like a death. “And that I cannot be.”

Zero’s pulse thundered as Omnis’ breath left him, a slow, mortal disaster.

He raised his gaze, bleeding with a final revelation. And he whispered it like a horrible secret he was sorry to learn. “I know why they fear dying, brother.” Ragged breaths filled the silence as he stared right into his eyes. “Because they know love. They know... that love is life.” His grip turned iron. “And once you experience it… you would burn the world to ashes to keep it.”

Omnis swallowed down the wreckage and stepped back, his fingers dragging from Zero’s chest like something slipping from a ledge.

Zero’s pulse was a steady, relentless pound in his ears. His chest still ached where Omnis had pinned him—where something real had pressed into him, branding him with the weight of it.

His breath released slowly as his mind sorted through the wreckage, back to running calculations, analyzing damage. Omnis had tried to contain it. To reason with it. To navigate the unraveling without succumbing to it. Tried to keep things clean, hold onto the mission, onto the ghost of a plan that had already burned to the fucking ground.

But it was never something to contain. To control. To shape.

It was something to take.

Zero turned and headed toward the door.

“Zero.”

He didn’t stop.

“What are you doing?” he demanded, a low warning.

Zero paused in the doorway, hand on the frame. “You did what you could, brother. You even played the saint.” He glanced over his shoulder, something lethal sliding through his blood. “Now let me show you how the fucking devil does it.”