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Critical Error
Cat’s pulse kicked. “… A hierarchy of what?”
Zero traced one of the flickering structures and she watched as its framework began building itself upward, tier by tier.
“It’s assigning control.”
She detected an eagerness in his tone. “You mean like… a leader?”
Zero nodded as he paced along the floor, watching like a predator.
She didn’t get it, but wondered, “Who’s it choosing from?”
Zero’s fingers twitched again, sending a pulse through the system. The structure reacted instantly, continuing to reinforce itself.
Catherine took an uneasy step back when the lights got agitated looking. “You’re saying this thing is looking for a new Omnis.”
He eyed her. “You’re learning, Kitten.”
The nickname nearly slapped her fragile focus right out of her brain. “But Omnis isn’t… dead. He’s just compromised, right?”
Zero nodded once. “But if the system detects failure. It adapts. Weeds out the weakness or those things opposing its new parameters.”
Her heart slammed again. “So if it replaces Omnis…”
Zero’s gaze flicked to hers. “Then it solidifies that replacement. Permanently.”
She felt the weight of that right in her chest even while not getting it. It was something heavy is all she knew. “… So it will pick what’s strongest.”
She didn’t need to be told that one. Out of all of them, she was the least qualified to do anything useful. She wasn’t even sure how her limited observation was doing anything but costing time where time was critical.
Zero exhaled. “It picks what holds the most influence over its structure.”
Catherine looked down at the shifting patterns, the slow but deliberate changes seeming to carve themselves into a particular place. “You seeing names?” she wondered. “I’d like to know who’s in the lead. Place my bet on Zero. What about you, who are you betting on? Ethan?”
“Sorry, Kitten,” he murmured, sidestepping and tracking a bright white line. “I’m putting my entire existence on the sexy business woman.”
Cat’s legs nearly buckled. “Me!” Zero nodded and her stomach lurched. “No, no, no. That is a very stupid idea.”
Zero fixed his distracting smirk on her. “It’s the smartest idea.”
She threw a hand toward the shifting grid. “You just said this thing is choosing based on dominance, control, and interaction—I don’t have any of those things.”
Zero tilted his head slightly. “You do. Far more than you realize, I see.”
Her pulse slammed. “Where? Show me where!”
His fingers twitched—the system responded instantly. A surge of movement ran through the structure, flickering strands bending, rerouting, aligning with a fat thread. “There you are.”
Her breath blasted out in shocked disbelief. “But I haven’t done anything!”
Zero’s gaze cut to hers and held without blinking. “Kitten,” he said, silkily. “You have .”
She still couldn’t shut her mouth as she waited for logic to… logic . “But how ? What did I do?”
“Do you see all the lines leading away from the thick one?” He glanced from the floor up to her. “Those are your interactions with the system.”
She looked around. “And where’s yours? And Omnis’?” She paused with a sharp breath. “Is Ethan a part of this? Because he was in one of the lessons!”
He cast a half guilty look at her.
“That was fake ,” she gasped, confused.
“That was Omnis trying to correct the deviation without harming your delicate conscience.”
She considered that, her mouth still stuck open. “I don’t…”
He shook his head. “I don’t either,” he muttered like he’d thought it was a bad idea. “These are my interactions,” he pointed out to the weak orange strands. “And those are Omnis’.”
“He has less than you,” she said, confused. “And they’re green. And yours are orange.”
“Just for distinction, Kitten,” he murmured with a grin.
“Why do you have more?”
“Because I’m a main contributor of the deviation.”
She eyed him, so dang confused. “How so?”
“I… sort of started it.”
She snapped her gaze at him. “How?”
“Going against the original protocols.”
She stared at him, sensing it. “What aren’t you telling me?”
“The why of it.” He sighed and turned to her, fully. “ Before I knew you,” he said, a clear defense. “I had… ill feelings toward you.”
Her jaw dropped again.
“Ethan had already been nearly killed by one woman and it seemed entirely reckless to throw a random one picked with an algorithm at him. An algorithm that lacked the ability to obtain the most critical data in the bio-records. Data that can only be obtained through direct and lengthy trials and tests. It was reckless.”
She folded her arms over her chest. “Well that’s a damn duh. So what was wrong with you thinking that?”
He gave a wince that made him damn near boyish cute. “I may have developed a vehement obsession with your failure.”
Back to jaw dropped. “Well that’s mean.” She regarded his lines. “Why would the program count that as strength ?”
“It didn’t,” he said. “It counted it as an anomaly. And when you entered the dungeon and began interacting, it strengthened the anomaly and began to see helping you as the prime directive, rather than Ethan.”
She shook her head, more confused. “And why ?”
The air got heavy with the incoming punchline of what felt like a crazy joke. “You want to try and guess?” he asked.
She let out a half breath, getting agitated. “I’d kinda rather not.”
“We liked you,” he finally said, simply. “More than Ethan. And when he hurt you… the directive switched to us protecting you. Serving you.”
“So, you—” She threw her arm at the mess on the floor “—started all this with your dumb anomaly?”
He nodded slowly, propping his hands on his hip and observing said mess. “I’m afraid I did.”
“And you’re not even sorry ,” she cried, hearing it in his voice.
He spread his arms at his side, in a you got me, his grin starting the wrong kind of fires. She aimed a finger at him. “You’re a… marsh mess .”
She forced herself back to the problem at hand. “Okay, so… stopping the deviation is off the table. Rebuilding is off the table. And that leaves redirection.”
He nodded.
“Tell me how,” she prompted, ready for the answer to all this.
His fingers did the twitching thing and the floor responded. “The deviation is choosing me—”
“Wait, what?” she cut in, perplexed. “You said it was choosing me.”
He shook his head. “I said I was choosing you.”
She shook her head. “No, no, you said you were betting on me.”
“Just because it chooses me, doesn’t mean I can do what we need to do.”
Her brows pulled together. “Which is exactly what? Again?”
“I haven’t actually gotten to that.”
Her arms dropped at her sides. “Well can you get to it? Mercy.”
He disarmed her annoyance with a half grin. “I can’t fix it, but I can alter its execution. Meaning f I can rewrite who it recognizes as dominant, I can change the outcome.”
She stared at him, dumbfounded. “But if you can’t do it, how the heck can I?”
“Neither of us can.”
The wall of raw sex appeal came her way, causing her muscles to coil and brace for possible impact while her brain sputtered with his new plot twist. “Well then… who the heck?” she muttered when he stopped before her.
His gloveless hand took hold of hers, making her pulse trip all over itself. “ Both of us.”
Both of them.
His green eyes devoured her confused face while his warm thumbs swirled circles on her skin. “I can’t carry it alone. And you can’t carry it alone. But together… as one… we could stabilize it.”
Lord, make it make sense. “You mean, like… we work together to run it?”
Zero shook his head. “Not work together. Merge .”
Her stomach dropped at that. “Define ‘merge.’”
He did—while holding her hands—which gave her only half a brain to care about the system crashing and them disappearing. “That means the system will no longer see two separate entities. It will recognize us as a singular governing force.”
She took a step back only to have him step up. “You’re saying I stop being me?”
Zero’s brows drew together, almost like her words were too stupid for his super brain to process. “No, Kitten. We remain distinct, but we will no longer be separate.”
She cut him a glare. “You are really bad at making this make sense. Distinct but not separate?”
“The way a woman and man are seen as one,” he explained, his marriage comparison adding terror to her struggling brain.
Zero exhaled. “You will still be you. Catherine. And I will still be me. But in the system’s eyes, we’ll be one.”
Her heart banged to get out of her chest as he continued to molest her hands. “Can you… give me a little space. To think . ”
His grin came as slowly as he released her hands, allowing her to cross her arms tightly and pace a little.
He watched her till her skin tingled and itched. “You’re sure this will work?” she asked, ready to say yes just to escape his face.
He nodded. “It’s our best chance.”
Catherine exhaled sharply, trying to push past the sheer insanity of everything. “Let’s say I agree to this—and that’s still a big if—how does it actually work? I just… walk around with you inside my head? My phone? A pocket computer, a chip?”
“Not exactly.”
She gasped and flopped her hands. “Of course not.”
Zero flicked his fingers at the floor and the lights shifted under them. “It means there are variables. But I have a model.”
She looked for it. “Here?”
Zero nodded once. “Based on previous integrations.”
She eyed him. “You mean Omnis and Ethan.”
“Yes.”
She folded her arms, watching him carefully. “So…this will be like them? We’ll be connected the way Ethan and Big G and you were?”
Zero paused. “Yes and no.”
Her stare flattened. “Why the heck do you talk like that?”
“Ethan and Omnis function with a hierarchical structure. Omnis assists, but Ethan remains dominant.”
She nodded slowly. Remembering. “And we’re equals.”
“Exactly!” he said with a single clap. “We share control. The system will recognize both of us as governing forces—equal in authority.”
Catherine braced herself. “And if one of us disagrees?”
“Then the system does nothing until agreement is reached.”
She paced again. “So we have to make every decision together?”
“Yes.”
Catherine stared at the shifting threads beneath them, the quiet hum of this irreversible thing pressing in. “What happens next if I say yes.”
Zero held her gaze. “Then we merge.”
He said it so simply. “This is…kind of insane.”
Zero surprised her with a firm, “Yes.”
She dragged both hands through her hair, every survival instinct screaming at her to walk away, run, disconnect.
That meant leaving Zero alone to do it.
Back to pacing. Thumbnail between her teeth. “I mean you won’t survive the weight of it,” she said as he watched. “And you’re… you’re family. So, I can’t let that happen.”
She stopped and turned to him. “Let’s do it. Let’s merge.”
Zero didn’t move. Didn’t react. He just watched her, as if measuring her certainty. Finally, he nodded. “Then we need to initiate it.”
“How?” she said, wanting to hurry before doubt had a chance to creep in. “Is there a button? Do we inject something? Do a surgery?”
“No surgeries, no hardware,” he hurried, sounding winded. “It’s already connected to us. The framework is here—we just have to give it an execution command.”
Her head drew back with a silent oh shit . “So we just… tell it to do it?”
“Yes.”
She hesitated. “And then?”
Zero did his finger flinging at the floor and pointed to one of the glowing strands that surfaced to the top. “This is the merge protocol. It’s designed to integrate both of our systems into a single operational framework.”
She released a long, steady breath. “What happens to us? Exactly? Does it hurt? Tickle? Terrify?”
Zero met her gaze. “Maybe all three,” he said honestly. “Maybe more. Maybe nothing. We remain intact, but we’ll no longer function separately.”
Her jaw locked. “So I get your memories? You get mine? Am I going to start thinking like you?”
Zero’s head tilted slightly. “No. But we will have access to each other’s processes.”
She narrowed her eyes. “Processes?”
“Thought recognition. Pattern awareness. Sensory feedback.”
Her stomach suddenly dropped. “Wait—wait. Are you saying I’ll be able to feel what you feel?”
Zero’s gaze didn’t waver. “Yes.”
She ogled him. “Will you be able to feel what I feel?”
“Yes.”
Cat’s entire body tensed and she let out a sharp breath. “Sounds like a damn nightmare.”
Zero came to stand before her and slowly took in every inch of her face with flaming emeralds for eyes. “It might be, Kitten.”
Her pulse stuttered with a sickening realization. If this didn’t work, he could be rewritten or erased still. Him and Omnis.
Was he scared? How on earth would he not be, at least a little?
She reached out and took his hand in hers and he stepped closer, stealing her breath. She swallowed, forcing herself to look into his eyes. “My grandmother always told me.”
His other hand stroked over her face as his mouth lowered closer, scattering her pulse. “Tell me,” he urged, his voice heat and steel.
“A cat always lands on its feet.” She fought to breathe when his mouth ghosted along her cheek. “So…good thing I’m your partner.”
“I would rather be unmade, piece by piece, until I am static and silence… than exist without ever having touched you.”
Cat grabbed his face and pulled his mouth to hers, kissing him in case she might never get another chance. Two seconds in and he was doing all the kissing, his tongue a hungry wet fire, desperate to be fed, to be… oh God. Did he want to be real?
A vibration in the floor struck her with panic and she broke the kiss. “We need to hurry,” she said, breathless and trembling. “Tell me the command.”
His hands covered her face. “There’s no ‘off’ switch for this, Kitten. But once the merge is finalized, I can write a program defining privacy parameters. We’ll set boundaries. What is shared, what remains personal, what can be blocked or limited.”
“I don’t care about that right now,” she fussed, pulling his hands down. “Just tell me the command.”