Page 25 of A Mate For Matrix (Cyborg Protection Unit #1)

Chapter Eighteen

T hirty-one hours into the repairs, their systems were stabilizing and the engineering core had stopped hissing like an angry dragon and returned to a quiet, compliant hum.

Matrix sat cross-legged on the cold floor, his back pressed against an open panel, his hands resting uselessly in his lap.

One of them still held a diagnostic tool he hadn’t used in almost ten minutes.

The screen on the wall flickered with status updates, but his eyes were heavy, unfocused.

His internal systems flagged mild fatigue and emotional overload. He dismissed both.

The soft sound of footsteps echoed through engineering. Light. Familiar.

He didn’t need to turn to know it was her.

Jana appeared beside him a moment later, crouched down in her usual way that made it seem like her body moved to music only she could hear. She held a steaming cup in one hand. Tea, he guessed. Or maybe soup.

“Figured you could use something warm,” she said softly.

He took it without a word and let the warmth seep into his palms before he set it down beside him. She didn’t press him to drink it.

Instead, she eased down onto the floor beside him and drew her knees to her chest, wrapping her arms around them like she was trying to hold herself together.

For a moment, they just sat in silence.

“How are you doing?” she asked finally.

Matrix exhaled slowly, tilting his head back against the panel. His voice was flat, almost hollow. “K-Nine told you.”

She nodded, her voice equally quiet. “I didn’t give him much of a choice.”

He swallowed, his throat tight. He hadn’t spoken it aloud yet—not really. Even in the quiet of his own mind, the truth sat like a lead weight.

Ninety-five percent.

That was the likelihood that K-Nine’s analysis was correct.

Thirty-one hours of recalculations and quantum modeling had only strengthened K-Nine’s original hypothesis.

They were nearly nine centuries in the future.

An entire civilization—his civilization—had turned to dust. Planets would have been colonized and abandoned.

Empires might have risen and fallen. Star systems renamed. Technology forgotten.

His family. His people. His world.

Gone.

“I should’ve died back there,” he said quietly. “A long time ago. Instead… I’m here. Out of time. Out of place.”

“But you aren’t alone,” Jana said. She just looked at him with wide, shimmering eyes that saw right through the armor he tried to wear. “We have each other—and K-Nine and the kittens. As long as we are together, we’ll be alright… won’t we?”

He closed his own eyes at the quiver of uncertainty in her voice. A flash of memory rose, unbidden—his mother’s laugh echoing through their house, his father crouching beside a flight console, teaching him how to calibrate for turbulence, the warmth of a home he’d never see again.

He felt her before he saw her—Jana’s hand gently resting on his knee.

When he opened his eyes, she was already looking at him. Her gaze didn’t falter. She didn’t smile out of pity, but with something deeper—softer. Fiercely tender. Her lips trembled at the corners, her eyes shining with tears she hadn’t let fall yet.

And in that moment, Matrix’s chest cracked open. He wasn’t the only one who had lost everything.

He reached out with slow, aching arms, and she moved instantly—climbing onto his lap like it was the only place she belonged. She curled against him, arms around his neck, forehead tucked beneath his chin.

He held her as if he could hold the pieces of himself together through her.

For several long, silent minutes, there was no war against Elaine Brim’s Crawlers, no repairs, and no time-rifted universe spinning too fast around them.

Just her heartbeat. His breath. The warmth of her pressed against the cold reality of everything he’d lost.

“It’s going to be alright,” he murmured into her hair. “As long as I have you—and K-Nine can corral those damn kittens—we’ll make it.”

Jana laughed softly, the sound muffled against his chest. It cracked through the grief like sunlight through storm clouds.

He felt the vibration before he heard the sound.

Incoming signal , his internal system alerted.

Vessel approaching. Trajectory: direct intercept. No IFF match.

Matrix stiffened. His arms tightened around Jana for a split second before he lifted his head, eyes narrowing.

K-Nine’s voice came through next, clipped and tense.

Matrix. We’ve got company.

Matrix’s jaw clenched. He met Jana’s gaze as she pulled back just enough to see his expression.

The grief was still there, but now it had something to stand beside it.

Purpose.

He gently shifted her off his lap, rising to his feet with a renewed clarity.

“I’ll handle it,” he said.

Jana rose beside him and reached for his hand. “We’ll handle it.”

And just like that, the future—whatever century it belonged to—didn’t feel quite so lost.

Matrix reached the bridge at a full sprint, dragging Jana behind him. The moment the doors hissed open, his eyes locked on K-Nine.

The massive wolfhound was stationed at the forward console, his metallic limbs tense, the cords of artificial and organic muscle beneath his plating coiled tight. His glowing eyes flicked to Matrix. A single nod.

“The cloaking shield?” Matrix asked.

“Operational. Barely. Thirty-eight percent. It was the best I could manag?—”

K-Nine’s voice cut off with a sharp metallic click.

Matrix connected—instinctive, fast—reaching across their shared link.

What are you ? —

The moment their connection flared open, Matrix staggered.

A flood of static—no, not just sound, consciousness —surged through him like a wave of scorched ice. His breath caught in his throat. Something ancient, cold, and wrong pressed in from all directions—suffocating, sentient, and watching.

A low hiss escaped him.

K-Nine shuddered. His eyes pulsed erratically. He whimpered.

“Disengage,” Matrix snapped, his voice rough. “K-Nine—pull back!”

But K-Nine didn’t respond. His body trembled violently, his ears flattened, and his tail curled under him like a scolded pup. The mechanical plating across his flanks twitched as if caught in a storm no one else could feel.

“Shut it down!” Matrix barked. “Override: emergency disconnect—priority alpha 885623!”

K-Nine’s legs buckled.

He hit the floor hard, his massive form collapsing with a heavy thud.

“K-Nine!” Jana cried out, dropping to her knees beside him. She pressed her hand to his side, her eyes wide with alarm. “What’s happening? Matrix—what did you do?”

“He’s okay,” Matrix said, his breath still catching in his chest. “He’s just… unconscious. I had to sever the link.”

Jana looked up at him, a crease between her brows, but said nothing.

Matrix turned back to the console and slowly expanded the connection K-Nine had initiated. He extended his own mind into the ether, through the threads of energy and neural pathways K-Nine had touched. At first, there was only silence.

Then—

Something moved.

A pressure, like fingers on his skull. Cold. Invasive. Ancient.

A pulse vibrated through the connection—not of sound or thought, but presence.

Alien. Unrelenting. A whisper without breath. A scream with no throat.

Matrix’s spine stiffened. His hands clenched.

He was no longer on the bridge.

The world around him shifted with a flicker—like a screen cutting to black before revealing another scene. One second, he was standing over K-Nine’s body. The next, he was elsewhere.

Dark corridors stretched before him. Metallic. Silent. Seamless.

He floated—weightless—his body more shadow than substance.

Figures moved ahead.

Matrix narrowed his eyes.

There were beings aboard the ship approaching The Nebulosity . They moved in eerie synchronization—step for step, breath for breath—like marionettes sharing a single string.

It wasn’t just telepathy.

It was… worse.

He didn’t feel their thoughts as individuals.

He felt a single awareness pulsing through every one of them. They were bound, not to each other, but to something else. Something outside.

Something watching.

A flicker of instinct told him to pull back, to retreat—but he couldn’t move.

The connection had him.

His incorporeal form surged forward, drawn along the current like a thread on the tide.

No—No, stop ? —

His resistance only made the pull stronger.

Then—impact.

Matrix gasped as his ghostlike body slammed into a second bridge.

It wasn’t like the first. This one was massive. Geometrically perfect. Hexagonal shapes formed the flooring, ceiling, and the massive arching walls like some alien cathedral. The room was filled with metal, all matte gray and pulsing blue veins of energy.

Through the forward viewport, Matrix saw something that froze his blood.

A planet—or what might have once been one—entirely encased in titanium-black plating, like a corpse in armor. Orbiting it were thousands of ships in different stages of assembly. Unmarked. Unnamed. Beautiful in the way a predator’s teeth are beautiful.

A war machine. A factory of conquest.

His gaze moved down—and then he heard it.

A voice.

Female.

Soft.

Disjointed.

Wrong.

The cadence didn’t follow any known language. But as the sounds echoed around him, slicing through the cold air of that distant bridge, the meanings unfurled in his mind.

He understood her. He was being pulled forward, into the heart of the metallic planet. He jolted when his form hit an invisible barrier.

Disorientation swept over him, causing his stomach to churn. He turned slowly—reluctantly. He was on another bridge. This spaceship was… different. Massive. With a heartbeat.

He studied the figures moving on this bridge. They were tall. Angular. Their skin a muted gray-silver, their bodies lean and armored in living exoskeletons. Their faces were blank. Eyeless.

They didn’t turn to look at him.

They knew he was there.

So did she.

Her voice slid over his mind like oil on water.

It twisted around his bones, a whisper and a command all at once.

He looked down.