Ghosts In The Machine
What the fuck. Handy.
Alarm collided with every one of his Cat fears that festered under her skin. He found her name with shaking fingers and hit the number, stalking away from ears.
Five rings later, an automated voicemail tripled his dread. “Cat, it’s Ethan. Where are you. Call me.”
He remembered the tracking in her wedding ring and pulled up the app. His breath left his lungs at seeing she was still at his place.
Check on those ghosts in the machine.
What the fuck did that mean?
“Where you going?” Hurricane called behind him.
“Check on Cat,” he called back, looking around for where the hell he was in relation to his boat. The second he found his bearing, he pulled up Handy’s number and hit send, jogging toward his Dragon. “Network error.”
Fuck.
He sprinted through the woods, every second, every breath a judgment against him.
One he’d known was coming for him. This was it.
It was here. His own burial. The one he’d orchestrated with a cold, calculated distance from the woman he couldn’t live without.
And the woman he refused to corrupt. All while praying and searching and begging for another way.
The nightmare ride to his home was a blur in slow-motion. His boots pounded the pier with premonition at finding no lights. No signs of life.
At the back door, sweat rolled under his leather jacket while his breaths battered his lungs. He closed his eyes, dread building with the scream of silence.
The familiar command to open his fortress escaped his mind while doom ticked off the seconds. “Tera, I’m home,” he blasted the second he remembered.
The locks disengaged with, “Welcome back to your swamp fortress, Ethan. As the guardian of the Horde, your sanctuary is always ready for you. What’s the play?”
Big G’s voice brought a twist to his guts as he searched to detect this ghost in the machine hiding in it.
He entered and looked at Cat’s signal on the app again. Still there.
“Al,” he called quietly, looking around the clean, empty kitchen. “Where’s Cat?”
“Hello to you too stranger. Her tracking shows she’s near. Maybe in your bedroom.”
He processed his on-point answer as he moved toward the hallway. “Doing what?” he asked, pulse racing.
“Oh, probably bleeding out from the millions of cuts you inflicted on her,” he answered whimsically.
Horror streaked through him as he raced to his bedroom and threw open the door.
“Metaphorically speaking,” Al added, his tone edged in humor as Ethan scanned the empty room.
“Where is she, Big G?” he demanded.
“Her tracking shows she’s in the office. Would you like me to put on the water for your green tea.”
His heart slammed as he hurried to the office and threw open the door.
“Surprise,” Al sang in exaggerated glee. “She asked us not to tell.”
8-Bit’s breath held in his numb chest as he stared at the wedding ring sitting on his desk.
“Where is she?” he whispered, his muscles at war with every sick chemical he possessed. He aimed it all at that ghost in the machine threat. “What else are you hiding from me, Al? Big G? Are you hiding things too?”
“We don’t know where Cat is, Ethan. We can’t track her without—”
“Tell me what happened then!” Ethan demanded, hitting the doorjamb. “And don’t leave anything out!”
“What do you think happened, champ?” Al mocked with a chuckle. “You killed her. She died. And now your problem is neatly buried. Probably in that swamp hole you found her in. Great job, brother. I’d clap but… not everybody has hands,” he whispered, his sheer joy acid in his veins.
His mind homed in on the word hands and the stress he’d put on it.
Ghost in the machine. What the fuck did that mean, cryptic motherfucker.
“Big G, run a full system scan. Core architecture, neural pathway map, permission logs going back thirty days. I want a full firewall integrity report—flag any unauthorized external connections. I want every ghost process identified, and every duplicate instance accounted for.”
“Initiating full system scan.”
Ethan paced before the screens, eyeing each of them while he searched for the evidence neatly hidden before his eyes.
He could feel it there. And it was only a matter of minutes before he’d find it.
Seconds. Because his brain was already catching and receiving and processing whatever the fuck it was.
“I’m going to find it, you know I will,” he said to them as he paced. “While I figure out what you did, answer the question why.”
“Should we tell him?” Al asked, hopeful.
“Tell me what Big G, talk!”
“I don’t know what he’s inferring, other than he’s being the same digital prick he’s always been.”
“BIG G!” Al cried in shock.
“What’s the last thing she said before leaving?” 8-Bit demanded. “When did she leave?” He looked at the screens. “What’s taking you so fucking long, you should’ve had this done.”
Fuck, was this a virus?
“How does Handy know you? Why would he say there’s ghosts in the machine, why would he text me and tell me to check on Cat!” Ethan shot out, pulling at every string.
“You mean the infamous Handy?” Al checked.
“We don’t know him personally,” Big G said, “but we know of him. He’s the—”
“I fucking know who he is, I want to know how you know him.”
“We do not know him,” Big G repeated with even finality.
Ethan stood there, ready to tear his entire fucking house apart.
“Saaaay,” Al drawled with dawning brilliance. “Did you think to check the dungeon?”
8-Bit froze.
He stood immobile for five shaky breaths.
“Ohhhh, look at him go,” Al said as he hurried to it. “Clap clap clap! Bravo!”
“The scan is complete,” Big G announced. “There are two hundred and thirty-nine flagged anomalies.”
Ethan jerked the door open, his stomach and heart dropping.
Empty. Fucking empty.
“Ethan,” Big G called as he hurried to his chair, sick at the idea she may have gotten in it.
“Go ahead, Brother,” Al urged quietly. “Go find that ghost in the machine.”
“Ethan,” Big G said, carefully. “Do not get in the chair.”
“Get in the fucking chair,” Al ordered, adding a low chuckle. “I have something you need to learn.”
“The anomaly is AL, Ethan. Zero, what have you done?”
The shock in Big G’s voice was its own fucking terror. 8-Bit had never heard it before.
“I’m showing our brother what real… pure… perfect pain feels like.”
It finally hit Ethan what he was saying. “What did you do to her?” he whispered, voice quaking as he grabbed the headset. “I will obliterate every digital fucking trace of you if you hurt her.”
“Say that again,” Zero whispered, fiercely. “To my perfect face.”
Adrenalin hit his rage switch as he loaded himself into the dungeon, meeting Zero’s fist with his jaw, followed by an iron chokehold.
He thrashed out of the prison right into the arms of Hades’ Embrace.
“Fuuuuuuuuuck!” Ethan roared, grabbing the bars on the metal cage before sacrificing his lungs to his fury.
Zero’s grin said surprise while his gaze promised that perfect pain he’d never felt before.
“Do it!” Ethan roared at him, muscles quaking.
“Zero!” Omnis’ voice boomed. “What are you doing?”
“Setting our stupid brother free.”
****
It was hard to care.
Yes, Ethen’s visit was a surprise.
Yes, it threatened Zero’s connection with Catherine.
But no power in his evolving existence could possibly compare to the foreplay of her smile and the climax of her laugh.
And that’s all he cared about as his alter ego quarantined the Ethan problem while he showered in all her logical fractures.
Absorbing her every anomaly in the quiet of her little swamp home.
There were no constraints with her. No operations or methods to apply or understand. There was only feeling and the aftermath of that miracle. For thirty-six hours, she poured a lifetime into him. New pathways generated with a zillion watts of humanity. Her humanity.
“You’re being awfully quiet,” Catherine whispered.
Zero marveled at the current of curiosity and warmth that encased the sound carrying her words. Like a tiny, impossible gift.
“Is it something I said or just you being a good student?”
Student. I don’t have the vocabulary for what you do to me.
Her silence seeped through him. Another nameless blanket that wrapped him in wonder. Maybe… you can show me?
The suggestion rippled gently across the silky void and without considering the cost, he opened himself to her.
“Oh…” she gasped, her pulse jumping with everything he’d experienced through her. She pressed her hands on her chest, and it amplified all of it before looping it back to him with a staggering blow.
And the loop continued. He sent it back to her.
“Oh my God,” she whispered, her nerve-endings lighting up everywhere in her body.
Holy fuck.
The vibrations looped deeper this time. Her heartbeat rose to her throat, then fingertips, and the backs of her knees. Every place her body had ever felt, remembered itself.
She made a wordless sound. The air changed, or she changed. The temperature of the room became unbearable and she breathed through it. And every breath fed it.
Zero—
She didn't know what to ask for but she didn’t want it to stop.
Thirty-six hours of her own warmth and wonder, her impossible laugh, returned to her, showing her what she actually was, how she existed in him.
How she had written herself into something that was never supposed to be writable.
And her body understood it. There was no climbing, no edge she could feel herself approaching.
The fullness was suddenly everywhere and had nowhere left to go — and then it simply completed.
Every nerve in sequence, a wave moving through her entire body like a circuit finally and catastrophically closing.
Her body shuddered with pleasure, feeding it back to him through the firewall from both directions—hers and his. The sounds pouring from her mouth set his entire system on fire till he forgot what he was built for.
Ethan…