Page 16

Something desperate buzzes in my veins, a crackling need to fix this, even though I know I never could.

Eros can’t be glued back together again.

He’s as intricately made as a living thing, his filaments like twining DNA; the electric signals in his brain just as powerful and complex as a biological mind.

Whatever wonders he had to share with the world, whatever beauty or poetry or mind-blowing sex, is gone forever.

I stand in the corridor, hand braced on the wall, and remind myself that this isn’t the only Eros.

There are hundreds, maybe even thousands of models just like him in factories and private homes.

He lives on, somewhere else. Some other Eros is looking out over a sun-drenched city right now, golden hair falling about his ears.

He will never change. He will always be sweet and alluring.

Even knowing this, I can’t stop shaking. My eyes burn with unshed tears. My mind can’t convince my body that this is destruction of property, not a grisly murder. All I can think about is that Eros was like his child. Ian killed his own child.

And if a man can do that, then he’s capable of anything.

Closing Eros’s door behind me, I take a long, shaking breath. I don’t have the energy to cry. I can do it later, once my knees are steady. Once my heart is no longer trying to climb up my throat and choke me.

Orpheus’s room waits across the corridor.

I struggle to draw a full breath.

I’m terrified of what I’ll feel when I see him ripped apart like Eros.

I’m afraid it will drive me past some internal wall, and I’ll tumble headfirst into the abyss that tempts me.

That I’ll lose something I never knew I’d miss until the moment I lost it.

That I’ll break irrevocably. Over a goddamn Pleasurebot.

I don’t need to look, I tell myself. I don’t need to see what Ian has done to Orpheus. I can just walk past the door and out of the vault, back upstairs. I can pack up my stuff and go. I never have to think about this godforsaken place again.

But I know I won’t.

I hold my breath outside the door. It’s going to be okay. I’m going to be fine. It’s just a robot. A computer program. A thing .

I pull the door all the way open and step through. The light fades on.

The room is empty.

My knees almost give out. He’s not here. He’s not dead. Not fucking murdered . But how? Why? A darker thought flits across my mind: What if Ian took him somewhere? What if he’s doing something even worse to Orpheus than what he did to Eros?

Sickness and relief war in me as I exit the vault.

I leave the door as I found it, halfway open.

By the time I get back upstairs, my lungs are burning, my heart thudding erratically.

I feel hot, clammy, and dirty. I’m tainted by the thickly dripping fluids, sticky with the scent of mechanical death. I push open the door to the penthouse.

“Ian,” I say, hedging, just in case he’s back.

There’s no answer.

My chest is so tight. It’s hard to breathe.

I feel pulled to the window, suddenly desperate for its cool touch, for a semblance of fresh air, a glimpse of the world outside.

I press a palm to the foggy glass, then touch the condensation to my hot forehead.

I sigh as cool moisture soothes my aching head.

“Just chill out for a second,” I murmur. “Then go. Pack your shit and go.”

I take a long breath in, a long breath out.

I will be fine. Ian isn’t dangerous. Not to me , I try to reassure myself, relaxing my eyes until the skyscrapers outside become dark blurs spotted with colorful light bursts.

He’s not going to hurt me. He’s just drunk and frustrated with his Pleasurebot. He’s just…

My thoughts judder to a halt.

Something is wrong. Something I can’t place. It’s a tiny shock to the skin, a shallow splinter. I look out over the city. The skyline winks back at me through sheets of rain. The splinter of unease inches deeper. These buildings…

My stomach drops.

I don’t recognize these buildings.

No, that can’t be right. I rub at the glass where my breath has fogged.

This window faces west. I know this view; I’ve been staring at it for two days.

I know Los Angeles. I should be able to see the new cluster of mega-scrapers right there, glowing purple.

I was admiring them this morning. I remember .

And the half-abandoned business high-rise across the way, gold and blue-lit, always projecting neon ads, should be just there.

But it isn’t. Instead, the monoliths of black and neon are buildings I have never seen before, endless towering spires, violent and tooth-like silhouettes in the rain.

A sickening roil takes hold of my gut. The splinter drives deep into flesh, smarting, bleeding until I gasp at the disorientation. This isn’t Los Angeles. I don’t know any of these buildings. This is no city I’m familiar with.

A traffic drone whirrs past, half blinding me with its spinning red beams, and I reel back from the window.

I turn away from the glass expanse, desperate to anchor myself.

A dark figure stands in the kitchen, watching me.

A scream lodges in my throat. I freeze, every muscle in my body going taut with fear, and then I recognize him.

“Fuck,” I spit the word like a rotten tooth dislodged. “Orpheus, where the fuck did you come from ?”

He drifts to me on long, elegant limbs. He moves like a figment of shadow or a dream. His silver hair catches the drone’s light, glowing almost pink, a pulsing softness against my darkening fear.

“I’m here,” he says. His eyes are softly golden, his chest rising and falling. “What’s wrong?”

“I’m trapped in a fucking nightmare is what,” I gasp.

Even in my heightened emotional state, I succumb to his gravity, allowing him to pull me gently into an embrace.

His fingers drift through my hair. My cheek presses to his chest. “Where were you? I tried to find you. Eros…” But the words catch in my throat.

I can’t say it. I don’t want to make it real.

Orpheus strokes my back, my hair, murmuring exactly what I need to hear. “You’re afraid, Kit. Don’t be afraid. I’m right here. I didn’t go anywhere.”

The relief of his touch is a heady drug.

Every word draws me in and softens me. I’m shaken apart by the molecule, laid out across the rain-dark sky until the world and I are one, and nothing can harm me.

Every murmur of his voice paints calm across my nerves.

He undoes me, little by little, until thoughts of Ian and Eros are far away. Until I’m utterly at Orpheus’s mercy.

I tip my chin up to meet his eyes. It almost hurts to look at him. He burns so brightly he’s star-like. “Thank God, you’re alive. I went down to the vault, and you were gone, and I thought…”

He brushes my jaw with his knuckles. “This body is not alive. It is a spectrum of electrical impulses and mechanical engineering.”

“I know. You’re a computer, I know.”

“No, Kit. I am not.”

I pull away slightly, signals coming from far away, my brain shouting a distant warning. “What?”

“This body is a machine,” he replies, leaning over me, his lips almost brushing mine. “But I am not this body. I merely use it.”

This time, I pull away from him completely, palms against his chest, keeping him at arm’s length. I look him up and down, his beautiful angles, broad shoulders, curving throat. My brain seems to be working impossibly slow. “Say again?”

“I am not a computer. I am the mind that powers the machine.”

“Orpheus,” I say, suddenly unbelievably exhausted. “What the fuck are you trying to say?”

“I told you I’ve been watching you,” he says. “Do you know how? Do you understand why?”

“I thought it was… just a thing you tell girls.” I know it wasn’t. I know what I felt with him last night, and what I feel now. Pure and undeniable connection, transcendent and soul-deep.

He chuckles, and I feel the low rumble in his chest in the palms of my hands. “Kit, as far as I’m concerned, you are the only woman on Earth. No one else exists. You are rare . Do you not feel it? Have you not sensed it here in this house?”

My fingers curl in the soft fabric of his shirt. I’m standing at the edge of an impossible height, and I know I’m about to fall. “Felt what?”

“Your gift.” He strokes my cheek with a knuckle. “You must have felt it. The pull. There are a million worlds out there, Kit, waiting for you. You can step into any one of them. All you have to do is open the door.”

My body tenses. Open the door . I’ve heard that phrase before.

Ian used it earlier. I thought he’d been on a drunken rant, prattling nonsense.

“Orpheus,” I say, dropping my hands and stepping away, putting even more distance between us.

“Please be straight with me for two seconds. I’m about to lose my goddamn mind, and nothing you or anyone else says in this fucking penthouse makes any sense. ”

Something like hungry amusement flashes in Orpheus’s gaze. “Let me show you.”

“I don’t know if that’s…”

But he slides into my space like a quiet shadow and silences me with a kiss.

Every thought in my head flies apart, blurring and fracturing.

His mouth on mine is so exquisite, so heartbreaking in its intimacy, that I wonder how I ever lived without it.

He touches me in ways I can’t describe, delicate caresses combined with slow, firm movements against my body that drive me mad within seconds.

When he breaks the kiss, I try to drag his mouth back to mine, making a pathetic sound of frustration. But he stops me.

“Kit,” Orpheus says, gripping my head in his hands, his fingers buried in my hair. “I’m going to need you to trust me. What you’re about to experience will be unlike anything you’ve seen or felt before. But you need to see it. Are you ready?”