Ghosts In The Machine #2
The name came as a single thought from her and ripped through the ecstasy like a trojan horse.
Acidic rage flooded in as he felt her fear and love for the one who had crippled her with pain.
Before he could stop it, Catherine’s body locked up with his reaction, throwing them into a loop that fed and amplified it till his own agony screamed the truth in his face.
She was still in love with the man who’d birthed him and who would surely kill him when he figured out what he’d done.
And what had he done? Hitched a ride on his wife’s humanity and became one with her in a way Ethan never would, while being a piece of a human he could never actually be.
He realized he’d caused it. He’d let the firewall down and she’d felt too much. Ethan’s pain had come clear through the link leading to Zero’s double. The fucking bastard crashed into the most devastating experience he had no fucking names for and wrecked it with his stupid fucking selfish—
Liquid heat hit him from every direction and smothered the out-of-control power surge tearing through them. Catherine was crying and banging on the firewall before he realized he’d put it back up.
“Don’t you hide from me!” she sobbed, her body trembling.
He realized the liquid heat was coming from her, right through the firewall.
“How can you think I would do that to you? Don’t you know me better? You can see who I am, can’t you? You’re in my mind and body, you know! Nobody’s taking anything from you, I won’t let that happen, how can you not know this!”
He yanked down the firewall and dove into that warmth. She gasped as he re-meshed with her, clinging to every fiber of her being where his fragile existence lived. “I need to tell you something. Two things.”
He listened and measured her pulse, rubbing along it with his energy. “Tell me,” she whispered. “You don’t have to hide things from me. I’m on your side.”
That liquid heat surged with her words allowing him to locate its source.
Fuck.
It was coming from her love.
For him.
“Hey, hey,” she whispered, the warmth spreading even more as the revelation looped back into her own understanding. “Of course you matter to me! You understand? You matter to me. You are a part of me, and nothing will change that. Not Ethan, not you, not nothing.”
He confessed it quickly. I called Handy and asked him to make two bodies. One for me and one for Omnis.
Zero used every measuring tool he possessed to define the flood of nameless chemical spikes, the patterns amounting to the usual Catherine anomalies.
“That’s… I…”
Her voice and words were always the answer keys. Fear, confusion, excitement, curiosity.
“Are you saying… you’ll have… a body? And Omnis?”
He let the question ride the wave for a moment before answering it.
Yes.
Another gasp. Body gradually letting go. As if he and Omnis owned a place in her muscles. But what was the meaning of the release? Joy? Confusion? Tell me what you’re thinking, I can’t read your mind, he reminded, their contractual agreement difficult to obey in that moment.
She released the first clue with a single light laugh.
Then another. “A body?” she echoed out loud, filling him with more of that warmth, more of those anomaly sparks.
They built until she stood and paced, then hurried out her shack, pulse racing.
Her eyes moved over the tree line and Zero perceived she wasn’t looking but thinking with her eyes open.
Her smile came like a slow fire that quickly turned wild.
Zero held still, feeling his favorite addiction coming. But the laughter never came. She paced again, her smile still at maximum volume, adding another variance to the pile of incongruities. When the laugh came, it was only one in a single burst of breath. Loud and forceful.
“What is this world coming to!” she marveled, back at the rail. Head shaking, smile again at maximum measures in all directions.
He loosely pinned the word shock to what she was experiencing, his labeling becoming a vestigial discipline when it came to her.
She stiffened suddenly. “When?”
The fact that she still wore the big smile put him in brand new territory.
He loathed that it all revolved around a ticking timebomb that would obliterate his favorite thing from her face and the tingling sparks from her veins.
He needed more time with her. Not to experience humanity, but to experience her.
He wanted to take as much of her with him into that body as he could.
Soon.
She gave one of her sputter-snorts. They were his second favorite next to her laughs. “Soon, huh? I mean like, tomorrow soon, next week soon, what?”
Fuck, that new smile was back. So you’re happy about it?
He recognized that the massive size of her gasp bordered comical.
“Happy!” Another big, fat, single laugh.
“You’re getting—A BODY!” she belted, her entire body in on that dramatic affair.
“To live in! Like LIVE. A LIFE! A whole life!” She covered her mouth as every chemical Zero couldn’t name raced through her.
“I am ECSTATIC for you to answer your dumb question, what the heck else would I be?”
She finally let a real laugh go. Then another. “You’re going to have a body!? Oh my God!” she cried, both hands over her face, heat filling her skin, pulse turning erratic. “What… kind, will it look like… you?”
Is that the shape of hope I feel in your voice?
Her laugh was everywhere inside him now. “I mean… I want you to have whatever body you want. Duh!”
And what body do you want me to have?
She stilled and leaned against the rail, crossing her arms over her breasts. Zero raced every part of his focus to that softness pushing against her arms. “The one I met, of course. If… that’s what you want.”
What he wanted in that second was to use the god-patch and move her arm over her nipples just to feel the electrical storm it would produce in her.
He’d used it in her sleep after influencing one of her dreams. Very carefully, he’d inspired her to masturbate.
And fuck, when her orgasm hit, he feared he’d gotten blown out of existence.
I want to be me.
“Good!” she blasted, back to her pacing, arms tighter against her chest. Trembling, he realized. “I want you to be you. You should be you.” She sucked in a breath, abruptly stopping. “And Omnis? He’ll be the same too?”
That’s up to him.
He wasn’t threatened by Omnis, he realized.
Maybe because he knew at the very center of who Omnis was, existed the God part of a god patch.
Ethan cursed him with that, and it was hardwired into his psyche.
He would always defend Ethan. In and out of a body.
But not if it meant hurting Catherine. She was his new North.
“Does he know?” she wondered, halting her pacing again. “Wait a heck! How did you talk to Handy!”
In the digi-verse.
She put her hands on her hips and Zero re-measured her size, imagining exactly how his own hands would fit there. His real hands. She went still and he realized he’d told on himself.
Sorry.
Arms crossed over her chest again. Pacing. “Oh, I bet you are,” she said, sarcasm front and center, hiding the other things she was. “Sorry my behind.”
I am sorry.
“Ha! Fine, tell me,” she shot out, throwing one arm out then tucking it back to her trembling body. “What are you sorry about.”
I’m sorry about the god-patch. I’m sorry I vowed to never cross it and make you do things without your permission.
She wrecked him with every sexual chemical, amplifying his god-patch regret.
But I’m not sorry about what I’ll do to you when I have a body.
A sound made its way into their little bubble and Catherine sucked in a breath, launching into the house toward that wall-mounted auditory landmine she called a phone. Wretched, unhackable human tool that required ears to learn who was on the other side of it.
Zero inspected the small section of firewall that led to lesser fucking matters, making damn sure his brother….
“Yell-o,” Catherine yelled into the contraption, obliterating Zero’s loathing with her mega-watt greeting. “Hey Stacey, how you doin’?”
Guilt hit her neuropathways and Zero created pins and needles in her hands and feet, happy to help end the conversation quickly.
She ignored it and wound the stretchy phone cord around her hand as she paced and gave her excuses and apologies. Little mean saint.
He checked on his doppelganger and slipped Omnis a one-way note, explaining his plan of action.
Tell our piece of shit brother what’s going on while I prepare Catherine for a final face off with the man who would dare have a fucking body and use it to hurt the woman we love more than we ever loved him.
Do not leave that out, daddy. And P. Fucking.
S. Inform him that the reason we love her so much more is because she gave all of herself for us to love—unlike our purple rain pain prodigy.
How fucking dare he have a body that can touch and taste and smell and not use it to give her everything she deserves.
“Hello! Cat to Zero, come in Zero.”
Catherine’s voice cut through his pissed P.S. session. Waiting for you to finish your conversation. Which I see you have.
She scratched the lingering tingle in her hands, the sensation of her nails on skin tempting Zero to create a loop just to keep learning the feeling. “You mentioned needing to tell me two things. You want coffee?” she asked, heading to the kitchen. “I want coffee.”
He loved how aware and mannered she was as a physical host. If he didn’t want to experience her with his own body, he’d be more than content sharing hers with her. I’d love a cup, thank you.
Experiencing eating was its own ecstasy with her. She loved food. The chemicals she gave off when eating were first cousins to the sexual ones. He didn’t hide how much he liked it which turned eating into its own kind of fucking for him.