Chapter 30
VANGUARD
The Muppet Show blares from my widescreen TV, and Mia laughs, this full-bodied sound that makes my chest feel buoyant in the best possible way, as Kermit frantically tries to introduce the guest star while chaos erupts backstage.
“I can’t believe you’ve never seen this,” I say, pulling her closer on the couch. She’s wearing one of my T-shirts and her underwear and nothing else, her bare legs tucked underneath her, hair still damp from the shower we shared twenty minutes ago.
“We didn’t have access to a lot of US streamers growing up,” she says. “My mum thought it would rot our brains.”
“She wasn’t wrong.” I press a kiss to the top of her head. “But The Muppets are world-class programming.”
As we continue watching, Animal destroys a drum set while Miss Piggy loses her mind.
Mia snorts into her wine glass, and I find myself watching her more than the show.
The way the light from the TV plays across her face, the way her eyes dance moments before she laughs, that cluster of freckles on her collarbone I traced with my tongue an hour ago.
Christ, has it only been an hour?
The evening replays in my head like a highlight reel I’ll never delete.
The picnic on Lady Liberty’s torch, with champagne and candles and the city sparkling below us.
The way Mia listened when I told her about the calibration, about the supposed peacekeeping, about feeling like I don’t know who I am anymore.
She didn’t try to fix it or minimize it.
She just heard me. I can’t remember the last time I was actually heard.
Feels fucking good.
And then, after the champagne was gone and the candles guttered out, she’d pushed me back against those cushions and worked her way down my body with a deliberateness that made my head spin.
Her mouth was hot and wet, her eyes locked on mine the whole time, watching my face like she wanted to memorize every reaction.
I came so hard, I saw stars, and when I finally caught my breath, she was smiling up at me like she’d won something.
You’re going to kill me, I’d told her.
I was joking, but she didn’t seem to find it funny.
The flight back to my penthouse was a blur of cold air and primal desire.
The second we landed on my balcony, I had her pinned against the glass doors, my mouth on her throat, her legs wrapped around my waist. We didn’t make it past the couch.
I took her right there on the leather, still in her coat, her nails raking down my back, her voice breaking on my name.
And now, here we are—clean and warm and watching Miss Piggy beat Kermit over the head with a hammer.
This is what happiness feels like, I realize. This ordinary, unremarkable moment. A woman in my shirt, a silly show on TV, the smell of takeout containers in the kitchen—this is everything I didn’t know I was missing.
And now I know what I’ve been missing, I don’t think I can ever go back.
I’m…falling for her.
The thought doesn’t arrive like some revelation. It’s been there for a while now, growing in the dark like something planted without my permission. But tonight, watching her laugh at Miss Piggy’s latest diva tantrum, I can finally name it.
I am falling in love with her. Free-falling, actually.
I’m obsessed with her, can’t breathe without thinking about her, can’t sleep without reaching for her, can’t imagine a future that doesn’t have her in it.
I’m plummeting. She’s become the axis my whole world turns on, and that should terrify me—does terrify me—but I only seem to welcome it.
For the first time in years, I feel like a person instead of a product. For the first time since Emma died, I feel like I have something worth living for. Really living.
“Can I help you?” Mia says without looking away from the screen. “You’re boring holes into me.”
“Can’t help it. You’re prettier than Miss Piggy.”
“High praise indeed.” She tilts her head up to kiss my jaw. “Though I think Kermit might disagree.”
I catch her chin, turn her face toward mine, and kiss her properly. She tastes like sweet wine, and I feel that familiar hunger stirring again, like I can never truly be satisfied, never get enough and—
I cry out as pain spears through my skull.
It’s sudden and brutal, like someone’s lancing a sword through my left temple. My vision gets blurry and sound distorts, the Muppet’s yammering warping into something slow and sinister. My hands clench involuntarily, and somewhere far away, so far away, I hear Mia’s sharp intake of breath.
“Nate? Hey, what’s wrong?”
I can’t answer, can’t think. There’s only the pain and beneath it, rising like something surfacing from deep water, a darkness I should recognize, should welcome like an old friend, but I don’t. Ugly thoughts. Violent thoughts.
I shove it down. Hard. Force my fingers to unclench, force my breathing to steady, force myself back into my body.
“Nate!” Mia yells. Her hands are on my face now, her eyes wide with concern. “Talk to me. What’s happening?”
“Headache,” I manage to say as I blink at her. The pain is already fading, leaving behind that hollow throb I’ve come to know too well. “Just a headache. I’m fine.”
“You are not fine. You went completely white.”
“It’s nothing. Julia said it’s stress, the enhancements putting strain on my—”
“Fuck what Julia said.” Her voice is sharp enough to cut, to make me sit up taller. “You nearly crushed my hand just now. That’s not stress.”
I look down. Her right hand is cradled against her chest, the knuckles red where I must have squeezed without realizing. Horror washes through me, cold and nauseating.
“Mia, I’m so sorry. I didn’t—”
“It’s okay. I’m okay,” she says, but she’s studying me with an expression I don’t like, one that seems wary of me now. I can’t blame her. What the fuck is wrong with me?
“Come on,” she says, putting her hand on my shoulder. “You need to lie down.”
“I’m fine—”
“You’re not fine, and you’re not arguing with me.” She stands, tugging me with her. “You get to bed right fucking now. Doctor’s orders.”
“You’re not a doctor.”
“And you’re not fine. Move it.”
I let her lead me to the bedroom, because honestly, I don’t have the energy to fight. The headache has faded to a dull ache behind my eyes, but that darkness—those thoughts—they’re still there, lurking at the edges.
Waiting.
Mia pulls back the covers and practically pushes me onto the mattress. I lie there, staring at the ceiling, while she fusses with the blinds and adjusts the thermostat.
“You don’t have to—”
“Shut up.” She crawls in beside me, pressing her body against mine, her head on my chest. “Relax and get some sleep. I’ll be right here.”
Her hand rests over my heart, and the weight of it is grounding, real, the only anchor in a world that suddenly feels like it’s tilting and I’m about to go sliding off.
“I’m sorry,” I say again. “About your hand. About…everything.”
“I know you are. Go to sleep, Nate.”
So, I do.
The operating room is cold.
White walls. White ceiling. White coats moving at the edges of my vision like ghosts. The lights are too bright, searing even through my closed eyelids, and it smells like antiseptic and something metallic. Blood, maybe.
“Prep for final integration,” someone says. A woman’s voice. Familiar.
I try to move, but I can’t. My arms are strapped down, my legs immobilized, something pressing against my temples like a vice. Electrodes. Wires. The hum of machines building to a crescendo.
“Neural patterns are stabilizing.”
“We’re losing cohesion in the—”
Pain. Not like the headaches. Worse. Like being unmade at a molecular level, every atom of my being scattered and reassembled wrong. I try to scream, but there’s no air, no throat, no me, just data streaming through circuits, a mind without a body, falling forever through electric dark.
And then—
Syria. I’m in Syria. I smell smoke and cordite. There’s sand in my eyes, grit in my teeth. Emma’s voice on the satellite phone, distorted by distance and static. “They know about the protest. Nate. They know. You have to—”
The line goes dead.
Then, I’m running through rubble, weapon raised, someone screaming in Arabic. A child’s body in the street, too small, too still. My hands covered in blood that isn’t mine. The crack of a rifle and my shoulder exploding, spinning me around, and I’m falling—
The operating room again, different this time. Older equipment, flickering lights. A man leans over me, grey mustache, white coat, shaking his head.
“I’m sorry,” he says. “I’m so sorry. This wasn’t what I wanted.”
“Who are you?” My voice doesn’t sound right.
“I’m the one who made you.” His face blurs, shifts, becomes Julia’s face, then Marsh’s, then something without features at all—just a blank oval where a person should be.
The machines scream. The lights explode. And somewhere in the darkness, I hear my own voice saying words I don’t remember speaking:
“Integration complete. Awaiting directives.”
I open my mouth to scream—
I wake up screaming.
The bedroom is dark, the only light the faint glow of the city through the windows. I’m drenched in sweat, my heart hammering so hard, it feels like it might crack my ribs, and Mia is already there, her hands on my face, her voice cutting through the panic.
“Nate. Nate, you’re okay. You’re here with me. You’re safe.”
I grab her. Pull her against me hard enough that she gasps, burying my face in her hair, breathing in the smell of her shampoo and her skin and her.
Real.
Solid.
Alive.
“It was a nightmare,” I manage. “Just a nightmare.”
“You were screaming.” Her voice is careful, steady. “What happened?”
The dreams fade, blowing away like dust.
“I don’t remember.”
I don’t know if I want to remember.
Her body is warm against mine. Soft. The T-shirt has ridden up, her bare thighs pressed against my legs, and despite everything—the nightmare, the terror, the questions circling like sharks—I feel myself responding. Warmth flooding my body. Blood rushing south.