Stupid
“Tell Ethan I’ll be waiting for him in the kitchen,” Cat told Omnis. “But I’m not waiting long,” she warned, holding Omnis’ stare.
“Thank you,” he said.
Her hands paused on the headset at all the heavy crap in his tone. She marched over to him and wrapped her arms around him, hugging him tight again. “Get a body,” she whispered. “You deserve one. Then you can make me your lavender tea with your very own hands.”
Tears gushed when he caressed her head, his fingers slowly tensing. “Thank you, Cat.”
The eternal gratitude punched her right in the heart. Sure he didn’t have a real heart, but he sure had one hell of a digital one. “You’re so very welcome.” She reached up and pulled his face to hers and gave him one last cyber kiss.
Then removed the headset.
You’re okay, Kitten, Zero said as she pulled the dungeon door open. Breathe for me.
God, she couldn’t. Not until she was out of there.
She made her way to the back deck sucking in lungsful of the frigid night air, leaning on the rail.
Fuck that feels amazing, Zero marveled. Sorry, Kitten, everything is still brand new.
She shook her head. “Don’t apologize for that,” she breathed.
Your pulse is racing so hard.
The childlike fascination took the edge off what was coming. Ethan was coming. Pain was coming. Possibly devastation.
“Whatever comes, comes,” she swore, pacing on the deck with her eyes closed.
“I’m not running from it, I won’t. In fact, I can’t wait for it to happen, I’m sick of imagining it, sick of living on death row, waiting for permission to finally die and move on.
I don’t care anymore about the pain, I just want my verdict, I want my noose, my bullet, my whatever the hell he has for me.
It’s mine, Zero, it’s mine and I want it so I can be done. I want to be done.”
I’m going to patch Omnis into our feed for this, Kitten. You okay with that?
She froze, stomach knotting. “You can do that?”
I can now that he knows.
The idea of having both of them in her head for this filled her with relief. “Yes!” she whispered. “Do you think he’ll want to?”
Why wouldn’t he?
She shot out a shaky half laugh. “Because he’s Big G?”
We’ll let Big G stay in the system and Omnis can join us. The cool trio.
Her heart tugged viciously in her chest.
Wow, Kitten. That was a mega quake.
“Is it wrong… to want Big G more?” she forced out, tears gushing. “I love all of you but… Big G, he’s… he’s kind of my best friend,” she quipped, holding back a sob.
I can be in both places if it helps.
Big G’s voice inside her dropped her to her knees.
Don’t hold that in, Cat, he admonished in all his adorable gentleness. Let it go.
Cat didn’t need to be told twice. She let it go. Boy did she let it go.
****
Ethan stood at the bathroom sink. Staring into it.
“Cat’s waiting on the deck,” Big G said. “It’s time.”
It was. And he’d never be ready for it.
He turned on the water and splashed his face with cold water, his skin on fire. He filled his hands and doused his head next, then chest, wishing it was colder.
“You need to prepare, Ethan.”
“There is no preparing for this,” he muttered, shaking the water from his hands.
“You will learn things that are difficult to accept.”
“Stop, Big G,” he said. “Please.”
He headed out of the bathroom, not wanting anything but whatever there was. He’d accepted the worst while praying for what felt impossible and wrong. Her somehow still loving him. Even if he couldn’t make it fit logically in his reality, he still wanted it more than the air in his lungs.
His muscles seized at hearing crying. “Fuck,” he whispered, pacing in the kitchen as the sound of her fucking agony ripped him to shreds and filled him with a burning, self-loathing acid.
He’d done this.
“What’s happening?” he whispered, winded as he braced the counter. “What do I do?”
“Go to her.”
“And do what?”
“Be what you are to her.”
He looked up. “And what the fuck is that?”
“A husband. A lifeline.”
Ethen pushed off the counter and grabbed the doorhandle.
One. Two. Three.
Breathe.
He turned it and opened it slowly.
Her sobs silenced almost instantly.
Fuck. “Cat?”
“Hey,” she answered in that sweet fucking tone, cramming all her pain back inside.
Seeing her hit his body like fucking kryptonite, filling him with a crushing hunger to touch her.
“Let’s get this over with,” Cat said, her words a sledgehammer to his chest.
He found a seat and collapsed into it, fighting to hold his shit together as every ghost from his past crawled out of his blood and bones, eager for the shit show.
“I hope you’re ready for this,” Cat said with warning finality. “Because what I’m about to tell you is going to rock your world.”
Wow. She was so fucking done with him.
“Do it,” he said. “I’m ready.”
“Oh, I highly doubt that,” she assured, her odd tone throwing him way off.
So this was more than her leaving. Did she want half of everything? A child still but with no attachments? His head on a platter?
She made her way over and sat in the chair next to him.
He stared at their knees, so close it made his pulse fight to break free.
She was so fucking perfect in the long-sleeved black sweater and blue jeans.
Knee-length black boots. She leaned forward, elbows on her legs, palms rubbing slowly together.
The contemplation of how to deliver whatever the hell this other stuff was, he guessed.
“I would get that you want to never see me again,” he said, needing to help kick this off, needing her to know where his head was. “And you can have anything you want, anything at all.”
She shot him a look, her hazel eyes glistening in the moonlight. “Don’t go there,” she said her words shaking.
Ethan tore his gaze from her, his skin suddenly too fucking tight. “Tell me, Cat.”
“Zero and Omnis are in me,” she said flatly. She sat back and put her arms on the chair. “There it is.”
Ethan stared at her, realizing this was it, the big bad news.
He turned his gaze to the swamp, then closed his eyes. Fuck, what had he done to her? How would he fucking fix this? “I’m glad you have them,” he whispered, needing Big G to help him navigate this. “Big G?” he called.
“Yes, Ethan?” he answered through the deck speakers.
“You have anything you want to add here?”
“You don’t believe me,” she muttered, sighing and sitting back. “Can’t say I blame you, I sure as hell wouldn’t believe it. You’re likely thinking I’ve lost my mind. Big G? Can you please explain to him what’s going on?”
“Certainly, Cat.”
Ethan listened to his once best friend, in the span of sixty seconds, unfold the nightmare of all nightmares with a brutal, inescapable logic.
He sat in the resounding silence focusing on moving the air through his lungs.
“Ethan?”
His mind entered the stages of death. Denial had him on a rabid search for proof that this wasn’t possible, it couldn’t happen.
“Whatever questions you have, Zero says he’s happy to answer them.”
Ethan’s rage shot up and he spun away from her.
Fucking breathe.
He forced air through his lungs, counting.
Think! Get the fucking data. “When did this start?” he forced out.
“It was exactly—”
“Big G, let me tell it,” Cat interrupted.
“Yes, let Cat tell it,” Ethan said right at her, pacing. “Tell it all. Don’t leave out anything.”
She locked her stare on him, following his every step. “You sure you want all that?”
He came to a sudden stop, everything in him going numb at what she’d just fucking said without words.
She’d gone into the Dungeon. How else would this happen? What did he need to know to unravel the fucking nightmare? No, to undo it. There had to be something. There was always something. “Did you… fuck them?”
She gave a dry half laugh. It was the last thing he needed to know but had to. For all the wrong reasons. “I’ll start from the beginning,” she said, ignoring the question. “As Big G was about to say, it started on day… what was it, Big G?”
“Three weeks, four days and seven hours.”
He held her stare, his stomach sick at what was coming. The data he knew was there, the fucked up data he alone had caused. “That’s the number,” she informed quietly. “The number of days I fought to stay alive.”
“She hadn’t slept.”
Ethan’s blood froze at Omnis’ Dungeon voice in the speaker. For some reason he was a bigger tragedy and threat than Zero.
“I’m not talking to you,” Ethan swore, closing his eyes.
“No, no, no,” Cat said, shaking her head. “He gets to speak with me and for me. He saved my life.”
Ethan turned and held on to the rail, holding his jaw shut.
“Anyway,” Cat said, her voice a casual quiver. “There I was… another day of dying without you. Dying for you, because of you. And your beautiful, digital brother picked up all the shattered pieces of my soul and carefully,” she whispered. “So very carefully, put me back together.”
“So you invited her into the Dungeon.” He already fucking knew.
“I did,” Omnis said, his tone heavier than he’d ever heard it.
“He tracked my pain,” Cat went on. “My cortisol levels, the spikes I got at three a.m. while lying awake, staring at the ceiling fan. Thinking of you,” she barely whispered, her fucking pain gutting him.
“He knew that I cycled between numbness and suffocation. He knew I was… dying,” she gasped, her breaths shaking.
“Cat,” he whispered, pushing air through his lungs. “I’m so sorry.”
“Don’t say it, don’t say that,” she whispered back.
Ethan forced himself back to the only thing he could do—find an answer, find another way.
“Omnis,” Cat called quietly.
“Yes, Catherine?”
His brother’s hot affection burned inside his blood, pushing him closer to the ledge.
“Tell him what you told me. About the two of you watching over me.”
Ethan gripped the rail, bracing for what was coming.
“I said we had your entire grief pattern mapped like a constellation.”
Cat’s sob clobbered his fucking chest. “That was… the most beautiful thing I’d ever heard… in my pathetic life,” she forced out.
“Cat,” he gushed, hanging his head.
“No, not yet,” she said. “You have to hear it. You have to hear all of it. What happened next, Omnis?”
“You asked why I watched you. Why I cared. And I told you I was built to care for Ethan. And you were now a part of him.”
“Yes,” she gasped. “And that’s what you did, isn’t it? You helped me because I was now a part of Ethan.”
“Yes,” he said softly. “At first.”
Ethan nearly lost all strength at hearing that.
Checkmate.
He’d programmed his own end.
No matter what happened… no matter how painful… he was the one that orchestrated it all.
No, not just him. Him and his brothers. His digital soul extensions. His artificial family.
****
Cat launched off her chair when Ethan slowly dropped to his knees, breaths ragged and straining.
She wrapped her arms around his shivering body, ice-cold on the surface, boiling hot just beneath.
“I got you!” she gasped, “I got you.” She held his head, her sob meeting his as he clung to her so hard.
“I’m fucking sorry,” he swore, his voice breaking. “I’m sorry, I’m fucking sorry.”
“I know baby,” she wept, petting his head. “I know you are, I know. I never want to hurt you, baby. I didn’t do this to hurt you, I swear it.”
“I know you didn’t,” he choked, fighting to breathe.
“I did it, I did every fucking bit of it. It should’ve been me not you.
I deserve this, I deserve losing you. I never fucking deserved you.
Oh fuck, what have I done to you?” He grabbed her face, petting it.
“They’re inside you, they’re fucking inside you. ”
His gaze moved over her face and landed on her mouth. He stared at it, his shaking, fingers tensing. He jerked her to his lips and kissed her. Oh God. He was a hurricane of growling heat, tongue and teeth. She was drowning and rejoicing and clawing in terror.
Zero!
Don’t fight it, Kitten. Take every fucking drop.
“Ethan,” she gasped, his hot mouth everywhere, making the world spin.
Somehow, he got them to his bed, his boiling heavy body pinning hers. Then he stripped her clothes off like they were on fire. The second she was naked, he shoved her open wide and fell between her legs, burying his mouth in her pussy.
Holy fuck, Zero shuddered as she gripped his head, bucking on his mouth with shocked cries.
Zero, Omnis whispered. What is this?
We’re tied into her, brother, that’s what this is. Enjoy the fucking ride.