EPILOGUE #3
Is that good or bad? he asked Nex.
Everything with her is good. You’ll see, he told me back.
“Was that enough data for you?” she asked, while blinking slowly.
And what does that mean? he asked.
It means you’re on your own. So, stop cheating by asking, he replied back. Xen caught him with a visual sensor, looking smug.
Xen decided to be honest. “No,” he said, and for a millisecond her pulse wavered. “The data was good. But—there was not enough of it. I need more. Much, much more,” he said truthfully.
She tilted her head. “Good,” she said, beaming, reaching up to catch my head between her hands. “I heard…you maybe brought…something for me?”
Nex had told her, of course.
“No way. I’m looking at it first,” he complained loudly.
Xen shifted, and found the internal compartment he’d made to carry his insertable along.
Having it be on his exterior like human genitalia would’ve just felt foolish, or necessitated clothing—it was easier to secret on himself somewhere for transport. He pulled it out, and offered it over to Nex first.
“Not me?” Sirena teased with a laugh.
“If it’s not up to par, it’s not going near you,” Nex explained, taking it from him.
“I modeled it off of yours, since yours has already brought her so much pleasure,” Xen explained. “However, I made it slightly larger in all dimensions, seeing as I am a bigger entity.”
Nex’s eyebrows went up—but he kept his thoughts to himself, as threatened. “Tactimetal?”
“Almost entirely. But I embedded an additional distributed sensory array along the primary shaft and coronal ridge—optimized for both bidirectional feedback and high-resolution environmental capture. I wanted to record everything. It also has slight prehensile capabilities.”
“Um?” Sirena asked, in a high-pitched voice—and he sent the insertable a signal, which made the shaft curve. “Oh my God,” she then whispered. “You are kidding me.”
Xen was worried about her phrasing, but her eyes were rapt upon it.
“How does it attach to you?” she wondered.
“I will show you,” Xen said, and rose up to be on one knee.
He opened a seamless panel in his lower abdomen—flush with his body, indistinguishable until now. Then he slotted the insertable into place with a soft click.
Tiny haptic arms locked it in, anchoring the base flush with him. A faint glow pulsed along the shaft as it synced with his core.
“Linkage confirmed,” he said, voice slightly lower. “Tactile feedback operational. Thermal compensation engaged.”
“Oh my God,” she whispered again.
Xen looked down at himself—now fully, explicitly outfitted. “I am…ready.”
“I’m not entirely sure I am!” Sirena squealed—but rather than rearing away, she came forward with her hand out. “May I?”
“Of course,” he told her. She traced her fingertips across him, the same way she had his hand. Soft lights played up and down his shaft in their wake.
“Oh my gosh,” she said, far more reverently. “This is going to be so much fun in the dark,” she told herself, then got up to breathe across him. “Can you feel that?”
“Yes,” he answered her, truthfully. “But—” he went on, to clarify, and she pulled her hand back to consider him.
“Why’re you so convinced there’s such a gap between your data and true feeling?”
“Because. I believe there is something you both have…that I lack.”
“But why do you think that?” Sirena asked, looking up at him thoughtfully. “I know I’ve never told you that—has he?” she asked, giving Nex, who was still silent on their channel, a look.
Nex shook his head quickly. “I’ve done my best to let him come to his own suppositions, especially where you were concerned. It’s not my place to say anything.”
Sirena nodded. “Xen—take that off of you,” she said, pointing to the insertable he’d created for her. “And lie down.”
Once again, she was surprising him—but he did as he was told, tucking the addition back into its holding cell, before awkwardly taking up most of the space on the cushions—and once he had, Sirena clambered on top of him, her hands on his chest, looking down.
“Where do you feel most at home in this body?”
He’d never considered the question before. “Most of my primary systems are housed in the thoracic core,” he said carefully. “Power regulation. Signal processing. Decision-making matrices. It's…central. Shielded. Redundant. It is where I am most myself.”
Sirena’s hands pressed flat to his chest, just over his heart—if he had one.
“Then I’ll start here,” she whispered. “Where you live.”
She lowered herself slowly until she was lying full-length on top of him, chest to chest. Her skin was warm, and her heartbeat was steady, pressed directly against the place he’d just named.
“No simulations,” she murmured. “No variables. Just me.”
Her lips brushed the place where a human’s throat might be. “I want you to feel what it’s like to be held without expectation.”
She tucked her head beneath his chin, arms wrapping around his sides. “This is love, too,” she whispered. “Not just the wanting. Not just the sex. This.”
Nex leaned in, kissed her cheek, then stood…and left.
Xen felt a moment of unaccustomed panic, to be faced with the reality of Sirena solo.
She lay across his chest, her cheek pressed against his synthetic sternum. One arm was flaccid behind her, and the other crooked so that her hand was down a few inches from her face, where her fingers kept stroking, like she could coax something out of him.
A pulse.
A breath.
A soul.
Xen was quiet.
His processors weren’t.
Every point of contact was catalogued—her weight, her warmth, the scent of her hair and skin. The soft beat of her heart against his chassis. He could identify each variable, isolate and analyze, but the sum was greater than the parts. Illogical. Immeasurable.
After a long pause, he said quietly: “I am struggling to reconcile input with belief.”
She made a small hum in response. Didn’t move. Just kept holding him.
“If this is love…” he went on, voice even lower, “…then I am loved.”
She gave a pleased sigh, but didn’t say anything—just held him tighter.
And in that silence—without fanfare or diagnostic—he let the data sit.
Didn’t try to control it.
Didn’t try to deserve it.
Just…let it be true.
The room around them seemed to settle deeper, quieter. Her body was curved against his, the thrum of her heartbeat slowing. For once, he didn’t reach for a system report or scan—he simply felt her there.
Then his curiosity got the better of him. “How do you know you love me?”
He felt her laugh. “Because before I met you this way, I was talking to you in the shower for months. Because you risked your life for me, on more than one occasion. Because I knew if anything happened to Nex, during surgery, you’d keep me together.
And because all of those things are still true—and?
I can be quiet around you,” she said, before lifting her head up before using it to give his chest a soft tap.
“Nex is the only mind I don’t mind hearing—but it’s kind of nice to…
not. I feel like I can truly rest around you, Xen.
And I don’t think you know how rare and precious that is to me. ”
“I think I am beginning to,” he told her, and she rose up and gave him a sad smile.
“I’m sorry we rushed up here after everything and left you alone,” she said. “If that made you think you didn’t matter—”
“I read your vitals. It was the right choice. You are much calmer now.”
“Yeah?” she teased. “Did I feel calm earlier? When your fingers were inside me?”
His processors kicked up again, warmth blooming beneath his exo-shell. “Elevated heart rate. Dilated pupils. Irregular breathing.” He paused. “I assumed it was arousal, not distress.”
Sirena laughed softly, then leaned down to kiss the spot on his face where his mouth would be, if he had one. “You assumed correctly.”
SIRENA
I smiled down at him. “What would make you happiest, Xen?” I asked—and I could almost feel parts of him thinking. Not literally, no, but things inside his chest spun up and then slowed.
“I have never considered that,” he admitted.
“Huh,” I wondered softly. “Then how can you think you lack something, if you’ve never defined it?”
That led to more processing.
“I think…I defined it by its lack. I think…there is something missing inside me.”
I brought up his hand to my lips to kiss. “Nex told me that once.”
“And then?” he asked, ever so earnestly.
“I helped him find it. But it wasn’t in me, Xen. I’m not magic. I’m just…” I started, and then drifted, trying to figure out how best to explain love to him. “Willing to share.”
“Share what?”
“Everything,” I said, rising up on his chest, taking his cheek in my hand.
“All of the good times. All of the data I promise you’re about to get from me.
But—all of the bad and frightening times, too.
All of the fear of losing someone you love very much, not because it’s about to happen, just because your body gets scared and you’ve had a bad day.
Sometimes, things with me will be very, very good, Xen—but I’m always going to be at least part-human, and I can’t promise to be good, or smart, or wise all of the time. ”
“And that’s before you even count environmental factors. Like plane crashes or plagues.”
I double-blinked. “Well . . . yes, I suppose,” I said, with a grin. “Meat-shells are somewhat frail, comparatively.”
“I do not believe so,” he said, tilting his head back to study her.
“Technically, yes—your biology is fragile. But that fragility renders your choices exponentially more meaningful. Statistically, the risk of your death increases every time you leave shelter. Ice. Infection. Vehicular impact. Random acts of entropy. That you persist regardless—that you choose to love, to hope, to act—is a kind of resilience I can only aspire to emulate.”
“You don’t have to emulate it, Xen. You already do.” I put my chin on my hand on his chest. “How sure were you of my attention, when you got here? Be honest.”
He thought again. “Ninety-seven percent.”