Chapter 49 DLC #2
Asher paused, looking at Levi with an almost innocent expression. “They were interrupting us,” he said with a pout, as if that explained everything. “And I don’t like the way he looked at you.”
Maddie made a break for the door, but Asher was faster, firing twice more. She collapsed mid-stride, body skidding across the polished floor with momentum. He fired one more time at Zoe as she stared at Maddie’s corpse.
Only Jasper remained, still hidden behind the sleep pod.
“Please,” his voice came, high and trembling. “I won’t tell anyone. Just let me go.”
Asher tilted his head, like he was considering the request with the detached curiosity of a cat watching a cornered mouse. Then he looked at Levi. “Your call.”
The realization hit Levi with sickening clarity—Asher was giving him the choice, offering Jasper’s life as some kind of gift or test. It was horrifying and touching all at once, a twisted form of consideration from someone whose moral compass was so fundamentally broken.
“Let him go,” Levi said.
Asher frowned, but he nodded. “You heard him,” he called to Jasper. “Go. Don’t come back and keep your fucking mouth shut.”
Jasper didn’t need to be told twice. He bolted from his hiding place and through the door, footsteps fading down the corridor beyond.
“You’ve made a mess,” Levi sighed, feeling queasy as he looked at the bodies of his friends.
Asher holstered his weapon with a shrug. “They’ll reset eventually.” He pulled Levi close again, his hand drifting down to squeeze his ass. “Now we have privacy. Speaking of which...”
He reached into his tactical uniform and withdrew the small hard drive he stole from Faine’s security system. “I still have it,” he said with a grin. “Want to watch? I bet one of these fancy computers on the ship can play it.”
Levi stared at the hard drive in disbelief. “Are you serious?”
“You know I am.” He tucked the drive back into his pocket and threaded his fingers through Levi’s hair, his eyes roaming over his face as if to make sure all of Levi had come back. “We should find somewhere more comfortable before someone else interrupts us.”
Despite everything—the bodies cooling on the floor, the alarms still blaring, the upheaval of their environment—Levi found himself responding to Asher’s touch. It was familiar in a world of constant change, a twisted constant needed, and he felt his cock twitch to life as Asher tugged on his hair.
“There’s a breach,” he pointed out weakly. “Something escaped.”
“Let it rampage,” Asher muttered, his hand leaving Levi’s hair and settling along his throat. “We have more important things to do.”
His mouth found Levi’s neck, teeth grazing the mark he left days and a world ago. The sensation sent a shiver through Levi’s body, a Pavlovian response to a stimulus that had become intricately linked with both danger and pleasure.
“You’re impossible,” Levi murmured as he leaned into the sensation.
“But effective,” Asher countered against his skin. “You missed me. Admit it.”
And Levi had. He was terrified at the thought of being separated from Asher, of navigating another nightmare scenario alone. “I missed you,” he admitted.
Asher pulled back, studying his face with those mismatched eyes that knew too much. “You’re thinking too hard. I can see it in your expression.”
“Can you blame me?” Levi gestured around them. “One minute we’re in a collapsing sanitarium, the next we’re in space with... whatever’s escaped from containment. And in between, I saw—”
“What you think you saw,” Asher finished for him, his grip tightening on Levi’s throat as he licked the bruise.
Levi sucked a breath through his teeth as Asher kissed his way up his neck, trying to remind himself that he was in a very loose jumpsuit that would do nothing to hide his growing erection. “What do you mean, what I think I saw?”
Asher pulled back again to look at Levi. “Everything feels real when you’re in it. The forest felt real. The sanitarium felt real. This feels real.” His thumb traced Levi’s lower lip. “We feel real. That’s what matters.”
There was something he wasn’t saying, something in his avoidance of discussing the lab, the researchers, the possibility of a world beyond the game. Was he afraid? Did he know something Levi didn’t?
“Asher,” Levi began carefully, “what if we could get out? Both of us. For real.”
A complex series of emotions crossed Asher’s face—fear, hope, doubt, and something darker that Levi couldn’t quite identify. “Out to where?” he asked, voice unnaturally neutral.
“To reality. To whatever exists beyond this... simulation.”
Asher’s jaw tightened, a muscle twitching beneath the skin. “And if there’s nothing for me there? If I don’t exist in your reality?”
“You do exist,” Levi insisted, surprising himself with the intensity of his conviction. “I saw you. Or someone. In another bed in the lab.”
“And if it wasn’t me?” Asher pressed, something desperate entering his expression. “If what you saw was someone else entirely? What happens if you’re right, I exist in some other place, but I’m different? Would you still choose me like you have in here?”
The question laid bare the fundamental insecurity beneath Asher’s possessive exterior—the fear that Levi’s attachment was conditional, temporary, limited to their shared experience within the game.
I don’t know. But I can’t tell you that.
Before Levi could answer, the alarm system shifted to a higher pitch, the computerized voice returning: “Warning: Containment breach has reached Sector 3. All personnel evacuate immediately. Sealing bulkheads in thirty seconds.”
Asher’s hand moved to his weapon again, attention dividing between Levi and the potential threat. “We need to move.”
Levi nodded, grateful for the interruption even as anxiety about the approaching threat built in his chest. “Where to?”
“Somewhere defensible,” Asher replied, already moving toward a weapons locker on the far wall.
He looked at it for a moment, then placed his hand on the scanner.
The locker hissed open to reveal an arsenal of futuristic weapons.
He selected a larger rifle-like weapon for himself, then offered Levi a smaller sidearm similar to his own. “Take this.”
Levi accepted the weapon hesitantly. It felt light for its size, the grip molding to his hand as if designed specifically for him. “I don’t know how to use this.”
“Point and pull the trigger,” Asher said, checking his own weapon.
A distant screech echoed through the ventilation system, followed by the sound of tearing metal. Whatever escaped was getting closer, and it sounded big.
“This way,” Asher directed, moving toward a maintenance hatch rather than the main door. “Service corridors will be safer than main passages.”
Levi followed, mind still churning with questions even as survival instincts took precedence. As Asher pried open the hatch, Levi made a decision. Whatever Asher was—test subject, AI, something else entirely—he wouldn’t abandon him. He couldn’t abandon him.
I couldn’t save Ethan, he thought as he climbed into the narrow maintenance shaft after Asher. But I might be able to save Asher. And myself.
The hatch sealed behind them, plunging them into near-darkness broken only by emergency lighting strips along the floor. Asher moved with confidence through the cramped space, one hand occasionally reaching back to ensure Levi was still close behind.
“Stay with me,” he said, the words both command and plea. “I’ll keep you safe.”
“I know.”
For now, they would navigate this new horror together. For now, they would survive. And when the opportunity came—when he understood more about the nature of this new game, about Asher, about himself—then he would find a way for both of them to escape.
Even if that meant confronting the possibility that the Asher he knew might not exist beyond the game.
Even if it meant facing the terrifying, exhilarating truth that their relationship might continue beyond the simulation—with all its darkness, its intensity, its undeniable connection.
The screeching sound came again, closer now, echoing through the metal walls around them. Asher paused, his sidearm raised, body positioned to shield Levi from whatever approached.
In that moment—poised between horror and hope, between one nightmare and the next—Levi found himself strangely content. Whatever came next, they would face it together.
The game continued, but the rules had changed.
And this time, Levi intended to win.