41. REGENERATE
alistair
Death, I’ve learned, is rarely instantaneous.
Not even when it’s deserved.
The human body resists the end with a persistence that borders on being pathetic—muscles locking, lungs clawing for air, neurons firing long after the outcome has already been decided.
Synthètes, however, they glitch.
A subtle twitch in one of the fingers or a minor flutter of eyelashes, and voilà, the regeneration is about to begin.
My unblinking eyes track for the slightest disruption in the stillness of the body sprawled across the floor.
Blood has stopped spreading. More accurately, Delilah has stopped letting it.
Now that Ariella is gone, or Delilah thinks so, her fingers twitch. Barely there. A tremor that would be easy to miss if I weren’t already watching for it. Her eyelids follow, a subtle flutter beneath the weight of false lifelessness.
Then, within seconds, her eyes snap open.
They burn brighter than ever before. Unnatural light sharpens the irises as the blood that spilled from her throat begins to retract.
It doesn’t flow back so much as it’s taken, drawn inward through the slit like the hungry wound itself is breathing.
Not all of it returns, though. Some of the blood has already dried into the leather bodysuit. It doesn’t matter.
Synthétes metabolize efficiency itself. Every nutrient, every fragment—optimized, consumed, repurposed. Recovery is not a concern for them.
The floor clears in slow increments, red thinning into absence until only faint smears remain.
Delilah lifts a hand to cradle her head. Her fingers press lightly against the clean slice across her throat. She pushes herself upright with her free hand, too cautious not to destabilize her recalibrating body.
There’s just a moment where her balance falters before she stabilizes herself in a blink.
If only her head had been fully severed or her neck twisted, this wouldn’t be happening. But that knowledge belongs to only Dominion members and the buyers.
“Mm… that was excessive,” she murmurs, the sounds low and distorted, layered with a mechanical rasp that fractures the sound into something inhuman.
Each vibration of words sends a fine spray of blood droplets into the air from the slit of her throat.
“I needed her convinced.”
“Whatever,” she mutters, already disengaging and moving on.
Delilah walks toward the nearest mirror with small, careful steps, each one placed with precision as her body isn’t fully finished regenerating yet.
“You owe me for that performance,” she stops in front of the mirror.
The edge in her tone sounds almost… amused.
“Why didn’t you kill her anyway?”
“I thought you liked it each time she watched you fucking me. And then performed somnophilia on you,” she scoffs. “But wow, I didn’t know she was Ariella. No wonder you bought it here for her recovery.”
What was I expecting?
I watch her aligning her head—tilting, adjusting, pressing until the edges of the wound meet perfectly, readying to fix it with a grotesque kind of perfection.
“Do they know?”
“Of course they do. But not that she was Ariella,” she rolls her eyes, “since I know it just now. Didn’t have much time to dig about your human admirer.”
Through my peripheral vision, I catch a slight disturbance in the stillness. A shift in the shadows.
The line of sight is calculated. Ariella lingers behind the glass, half-concealed by darkness, watching us—no, watching her—from behind the windows.
Is Delilah aware of her presence?
One corner of my lips subtly curves up into a smirk.
She wants a show? I’ll give her something worth remembering for life.
The thought alone is enough to drag heat back into my veins, enough to stir my cock from its brief lull. It swells against the fabric, thickening, pressing insistently until there’s no ignoring it.
Meanwhile, Delilah lifts her hand, her index finger hovering just above the gaping slash at her throat. The moment her fingertip aligns precisely with the wound, a thin beam of surgical light slices into existence. It glides over torn flesh, mending as it goes.
I think she’s too busy with healing herself to notice the presence observing her from the shadows this time.
I wait for her to regenerate.
Tissue knits. Veins reconnect. Bone realigns beneath the surface with a grotesque efficiency. Even her vocal cords are restored with the same unhurried precision.
The wound seals itself into seamless continuity, as if it were never there to begin with.
By the time the beam flickers out, there’s nothing left. No trace. No scar. Just smooth, unbroken skin where death should have lingered.
She rolls her neck, a sharp crack echoing in the silence. Then coughs once, testing her vocals.
Satisfied, she begins peeling off her bodysuit, each piece stiff with drying blood. They hit the floor one by one. Shirt. Pants. Underwear. Nothing left.
I move toward her without urgency, letting my steps drag to feel intentional. My fingers hook into the waistband of whatever I threw on after the shower, tugging it loose while closing the distance.
She ignores me at first, crouched slightly, gathering the discarded fabric, her focus annoyingly intact.
When she finally looks up, she finds me already watching her. Curated hunger sits in my eyes.
“What now?” the tone is clipped.
I let my gaze travel over her body, pretending I’m savoring it—taking in every line, every curve, making the illusion seem almost convincing.
“No, Alistair, not now. You should be thankful I’m not reporting this to the Triarchs as I was initially programmed.”
Your mistake.
“That’s exactly why I’d let you take the lead tonight,” I murmur, pushing my sweatpants down, letting them fall.
Her eyes flick once over my erection.
That’s all it takes. They darken instantly.
One last time… I tell myself. For one last time, I’ll force my way through this.
I lower myself onto the couch.
“C’mon, Delilah,” my voice dips, coaxing. “Ride me like it’s the last time you’ll ever get to fuck me.”
It isn’t a lie. She just doesn’t hear it for what it truly is.
It shows in the way she drops the bloodied leather at once, letting it spill back onto the floor as she steps toward me with no suspicion.
I reach for her the second she’s close enough, dragging her into my lap. My hands slide up her spine while her knees bracket my hips.
Not bothering to take off my glasses, I crash my mouth into hers, swallowing the sound she makes just as her fingers wrap around my length and guide me inside her in one smooth, unbroken motion. All the way to the hilt.
She’s already soaked. Too ready. Heat slick and immediate, letting her take me effortlessly.
Hips begin to move. Slow at first, then rolling with growing rhythm, grinding down against me, keeping her mouth fused to mine.
I don’t pull away immediately. I let it linger—let her breath mix with mine, her body moving against me in that steady, hungry rhythm for one final time—before I slide my hand up to her jaw and angle her face just slightly off to the side.
As usual, my eyes open mid-kiss.
My gaze cuts past her shoulder and straight through the glass. Right where I felt it—Ariella, watching me now.
I hold her there for a second longer than necessary, letting the implication settle.
Is she jealous? Shocked? Or better yet, has this already burned itself into something ugly and permanent inside her?
I can’t tell. I don’t care to.
Not when I’ve something far more interesting to break.
I drag my mouth away from Delilah’s lips and trail downward, reaching her throat. My tongue traces the line where the wound had been, tasting the faint metallic ghost of it.
Her body reacts instantly.
A soft moan spills from her lips. Hands tighten on me, fingers threading into my hair, holding me there as she needs it.
“More,” she breathes.
Of course, she needs more.
“Do you love me, Delilah?” the question slips out low, almost intimate.
She falters. “I—”
“You don’t have to say it,” I murmur, cutting her off before the system can stabilize, and she can choose a safer response.
My lips move to her shoulder, then her collarbone, brushing over her skin in a way I’ve never allowed before.
The performance almost makes it look like I’m actually making love to her. I can feel it already—the subtle shift beneath her skin, the hesitation in her responses.
I’m almost surprised Ariella hasn’t lost it yet. Hasn’t stormed in, dragged her off me, buried a blade into her chest over and over again until there’s nothing left to fix.
My mouth moves lower to her tits.
I’ve never touched her like this. Not once. Every time I fucked her before, it was detached—her face either turned away or covered, never bothered with kissing or foreplay. Just straight to the main deed, never leaving room for anything resembling care.
Tonight is new. And it’s exactly what will ruin her.
My tongue flattens against her nipple, dragging over it before I take it into my mouth, sucking just enough to make her arch into me.
Her weak point. The only one I bothered to curate if push comes to shove.
Then it hits—a sharp, violent jolt of electricity rips through my body.
My muscles tense instinctively. A hiss catches in the back of my throat as a low electric shock snaps through my nerves.
Payback.
Delilah gasps—no, moans—but it’s wrong this time. There’s raw pain tangled in it.
I don’t have much time.
I bite down hard, deliberately drawing blood. Metallic blood spills instantly. It’s unexpectedly warm against my tongue.
Her reaction is immediate—nails dig into my shoulders, sharp enough to break skin. Her grip teeters between pulling me closer and trying to shove me away. Yet she keeps rolling her hips harder.
“Alistair…”
I grab her hips, forcing her to move faster over me, setting a brutal pace to keep her off balance, to keep her system chasing too many emotional inputs at once.
“Tell me you love me, Delilah,” I press, my voice rougher now, edged with insistency.
I’m trying to make her systems go emotionally unstable, overload them to the point of collapsing in on itself.