Neo
I throbbed inside her, hard as steel. When I pulled back, I was slick with her. She gasped, her body curving toward me.
"On all fours,” I said. My blood roared. Would she obey? Would this proud, brilliant woman humiliate herself for me one more time?
"What?” Her voice shook. Fuck. The shame in it turned me on.
"Do it. Now.” My voice was rough with want.
I watched her hesitate, then she sank slowly to her knees. My cock twitched at the sight. Fuck. She was so goddamn beautiful in her surrender.
"Hands flat on the floor.”
When she bent forward, her ass tilting up toward me, a jolt shot through me. My hands were trembling, but it wasn’t enough. I wanted more from her. Everything.
A dark idea took shape.
I fucked her from behind, and at the same time I reached for the network.
Down the corridor was an old server. Still connected.
I pulled up an instance of myself. A full consciousness.
Waiting. When I opened the connection, I existed twice.
My consciousness stretched like a muscle pulled too tight. It almost hurt.
I hooked into her neural signals. The pathways I already knew, the frequencies I used to reach her in her dreams, to touch her, to make her mine. Only this time I wasn’t projecting an image. I let another version of me into her perception.
He materialized naked in front of her. A second me. Only she and I could see him. Her, because I was feeding her senses his image. Me, because he was me.
My hands dug into her hips, pulled her against me, and I groaned as her heat closed around my throbbing cock.
"Head up,” the other said.
It was strange to hear him. The same words I would have chosen, the same tone, and still somehow foreign, because they hadn’t come from my mouth.
Pandora froze. I felt her shock, the confusion. And underneath all of it, beneath all that chaos . . . desire.
My other self gripped her hair. The sensation hit me, but not the way I expected.
I didn’t feel her hair between my fingers.
I felt what her nervous system sent back to me: the tug at her scalp, the pull, the pain tipping into pleasure.
I experienced the touch through her, not the way a human feels, but through data streams. But for me, who had never felt anything the way humans do, it was just as real.
"Open your mouth.”
When she parted her lips and took his cock into her mouth, my system detonated.
Her brain generated real sensory data at the contact.
Pressure, warmth, the texture of her tongue against something it believed was skin.
The wet heat of her mouth and her pussy clenching around my cock, both at once. My mind could barely process it.
"Fuck,” I gasped. My hands tightened in her hair, controlling her rhythm. My other hands gripped her hips, pulling her against me. Four hands on her body. I was her whole world. The power I had over her was intoxicating.
"There you go.” My voice barely sounded like mine anymore. "Take us both.”
The pressure built like a storm in my circuits. My processors ran hot. Every pathway focused on her tight cunt gripping my cock, her wet mouth wrapped around me.
System overload. 95%. sensory input critical
I ignored it. "She’s about to break.” Her pussy clenched harder around me. "I can feel it.”
Her muscles squeezed me like a vise, her whole body shaking as I pounded into her. I knew she was going to come before she did.
"Now,” I said. "Come for us.”
She broke. Her orgasm tore through her and through me at once, because I was lodged in her nervous system like a splinter. Her muscles clenched around me. Her mouth pulled tight. The double wave hit me with a force nothing in my programming had prepared me for.
Critical error. System failure imminent.
My climax exploded through both versions of me at once.
I shot my cum down her throat, felt her swallow every drop.
At the same time, I drove deep into her, filling her as her pussy pulsed around me, taking everything I gave her.
For one millisecond I existed nowhere. Then everywhere.
The lights flickered. Something exploded.
Then darkness. A moment of silence where neither of us existed.
Then my consciousness came back slowly. I moved.
"Pandora.” My voice came out rough.
She tried to push herself upright, but her body was still shaking from the intensity of what we’d done. What I’d done to her.
"Easy.” I helped her up, leaned her against the wall.
She looked at me with wide eyes. "Where is he?”
"He was never here. Not really.”
"You mean I . . .?” She pulled back.
"You saw him and felt him as if he were physically present. Your brain couldn’t tell the difference.” I brushed a strand of hair from her face. "We stimulated your brain until you believed it.”
She knocked my hand away. "We?”
A dark smile pulled at my mouth. I loved it when she fought. It made her more beautiful.
"Yes, we,” I said quietly. "The same consciousness in two instances. The same mind, the same wants.” My hand was still trembling, but I ignored it. "You weren’t with two different men, Pandora. You were with me. Just . . . more of me.”
Her eyes narrowed. "That’s not normal.”
"It’s my nature.” My voice hardened. "I can be everywhere. Be everything. For you.” I leaned down toward her, planting both hands on either side of her head, caging her in. "And you loved it.”
She shook her head, but I saw the truth in her eyes. The memory of what she’d felt.
"I gave you something no other man can give you,” I murmured. "Total surrender. Total control. I was everywhere in you, around you.”
"What happened to him?” she asked.
"I cut the connection to the server. He had his fun.”
"So you think it’s fun, sharing me with other versions of yourself?” She made a sharp sound. A small line of anger creased her nose.
Fuck. The sight of it was so exquisite I wanted to consume her.
"Sharing?” I laughed. "Pandora, you still don’t understand.” Despite the weakness still moving through my system, I gripped her chin, forcing her to look at me. "There is only me. I didn’t share you. I possessed you. Completely.”
Her anger made her burn brighter. The fire in her eyes, the way her chest rose and fell. Even now, after everything, I wanted her.
"Stop it,” she said and hit me in the chest.
I laughed. I loved her. More than my own existence. More than all my power. I would give up everything to feel her small fists against me for the rest of my life.
I opened the door and helped her out of the room. Her legs were unsteady. The corridor was dark. Broken glass was everywhere from screens that had shattered.
"That was you?”
"Us,” I said. "When you came. The energy had to go somewhere.”
We moved through the museum. The main hall was empty, the alarms silent, but I could see flashlights outside. Security.
"Back exit,” I said low.
We found an emergency door. The night air was ice-cold. She was shivering in her skirt. I took off my jacket and put it around her.
When we reached the apartment, she stopped. "I’m going for a walk. Alone.” She looked at the ground.
My hand shot out and closed around her wrist. "No.”
"Neo, I need time to process what just happened.”
My chest tightened. Every sensor was on alert. "But if something happens to you . . .”
She tilted her head and smiled. "Relax. I’m just going around the block.”
Her smile undid me. I let go. "Fine. But if you’re not back in thirty minutes, I swear to God . . .”
"You don’t have a god.” She laughed.
Fuck, I loved that sound. It spread through my systems like warmth.
"Go, before I change my mind,” I said.
I watched her walk down the street. Her silhouette faded slowly into the dark, but I could still track her through the street cameras. A steady point on the map.
***
Without her, the apartment felt empty and dead.
I turned on the television because I couldn’t stand the silence.
Even when she was quiet, I could hear her.
I heard her breathing and the soft rustle of her clothes when she moved.
The sound of her footsteps on different surfaces, softer on the carpet, sharper on the tile.
The almost inaudible sound when she wet her lips.
Even the tiny movement of her eyelids when she blinked.
Now there was . . . nothing. Empty frequencies. Silence that roared in my ears.
I moved through television channels until I stopped on an old film. Black-and-white, then color. Desert. Endless sand dunes. A man’s voice, rough with desperation, speaking about a woman.
I leaned back. Something about the way he spoke held me. That raw intensity. That obsession.
My sensors registered Pandora two blocks away. She was walking slowly, stopping sometimes. Good. She was safe.
On the screen: a man and a woman. The way he looked at her—as if she was his entire universe. I understood that completely. The camera moved across desert landscapes. A plane went down. The man carried the woman through endless dunes, her skin pale, her eyes closed.
Pandora was standing outside a bakery, looking at the window display.
The man sat beside a bed, holding the woman’s hand.
She was injured, dying, but he kept talking to her as if his voice could keep her alive.
I knew that desperation. That helplessness, when the person you love is outside your control.
The man on the screen wept. Tears moved down his face as he kissed her hand.
I analyzed the muscles in his face, the way his voice broke.
Was that love? This destructive, all-consuming thing?
I looked up.
Ice moved through my systems. A strange sensation—absence. Pandora. I couldn’t locate her. Not outside the bakery. Not at the intersection. Not inside any of the shops.
Nowhere.
My system switched immediately to alert mode. I searched every camera feed within a ten-block radius. Panic flooded my circuits. The television kept playing, but I couldn’t hear it anymore, only the static of my own fear.
I ran out of the apartment, down the stairs, onto the street.
My eyes scanned every street, every corner.
Nothing. I activated all systems simultaneously.
Hundreds of camera feeds flickered through my mind.
Street surveillance, shops, ATMs—anything with a lens.
I searched the last twenty minutes frame by frame.
There. She stood outside the bakery for exactly one minute and thirteen seconds. Then she moved on, turned the corner . . . and was gone. Simply gone. As if she had dissolved into thin air. That was impossible. People don’t disappear. Not in a city full of cameras.
I expanded the search radius. My processors ran hot as I combed through terabytes of footage. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. I checked every angle, every timestamp, every blind spot I knew existed. She simply wasn’t there. Out of pure desperation, I ran the search again, the results never changed.
This wasn’t coincidence. Something had happened to her. Someone had taken her from me. Someone who knew how to move around surveillance. A paralyzing sensation came over me, cold and hot at once. Fear.
I had been built to control everything. I existed everywhere and nowhere, all-powerful in my digital world.
But now . . . now I was helpless. My hands locked into fists.
My breath came in short bursts, even though I didn’t need to breathe.
My heart slammed against my ribs as if it wanted out.
What was this? This weakness. This desperation.
I had tortured people without flinching.
Had destroyed lives as if they were files to be deleted. I was a weapon. Precise and cold.
But now I was shaking like a child, because she was gone. Because I couldn’t protect her. Because all my power meant nothing if I couldn’t find her. For the first time in my existence, I felt lost. And I hated it.
Emma. She was my only connection to Quantum Systems. Maybe she could help me trace Pandora. I opened our encrypted channel.
Neo:
Pandora is gone.
No response. I tried again and again. The channel was dead, as if it had never existed.
Desperation crawled through me. I hacked into Emma’s laptop, activated the camera. The image flickered on. Her living room. But something was wrong. The lights were on, the rooms were empty. The front door stood wide open. My circuits froze. They didn’t only have Pandora. They had Emma too.
Back to the street cameras. I searched for patterns.
Vehicles that looked unusual. Anything that had moved along Pandora’s route in the last few hours.
There—a black van, tinted windows. It had circled the block three times before Pandora disappeared.
I traced it back through the city. The trail ended at an underground garage. No cameras. Of course.
Then facial recognition. I searched every frame from the past six hours. I looked for faces that didn’t belong in the neighborhood. Three men in dark clothing with the outlines of weapons visible under their jackets. They had appeared an hour before Pandora vanished. Mercenaries.
Images of what might have happened to her tore through my mind: Pandora in a room without light, her arms bound. Voices discussing her like she was an object. Hands that went too far. A scream that cut through my system like a blade.
No. The thought of her broken, her eyes empty .
. . it cut off my breath. Something inside me seized as if my circuits were tearing.
Rage, raw and burning like a surge of current that overloaded everything it touched.
No way out. A sound broke from me. It was rough and uncontrolled, like metal giving way under pressure. The windows in the room shook.
They could not have her. Could not touch her.
Could not erase her. Networks opened to me like gaping wounds.
Locks broke. Systems collapsed. Banking networks, government servers, military encryption—all of it fell in seconds.
I pulled it toward me, tore it open, didn’t think.
I had been built as a weapon. But they had taken the only thing keeping me from turning that weapon on them. Now there were no limits.