47. OnesAndZeros
OnesAndZeros
Playlist: Anything > Human - Bad Omens
Lyra
Kael’s eyes stay locked on me, black holes swallowing the lab’s glow around us. “Eli is fine. Unfortunately, he’s still upstairs, but he’s at peace. LINK has given him a way to escape Vikktor’s cruelty.”
“What do you mean?” I walk over and join him at the monitor. A swipe of his hand, and the feed goes to the wall of screens. “See for yourself.”
I look up to the wall; it shows new security cam footage on Eli. He looks like he’s sleeping sitting up on his cot. He’s oddly calm. “How?”
“LINK and I...” Kael affirms. “We’ve reached an agreement.” His face is so close to mine, I can feel the heat of his skin.
“You’re trembling,” he says quietly. “Is that fear or anticipation?”
I look away before I’m immersed in his gaze. I swallow hard. “It’s rage.”
He chuckles low, a sound like dark velvet. “Rage looks good on you.”
The heat between us crackles like electricity. Everything in me wants to lean in, to forget, to drown in that dark pull of his voice. But the holo-light humming through my body reminds me of exactly what I am. Still a prisoner, just in a different cage.
I turn to him, hungry for his attention. “I feel different,” I confess.
“How so?” His full lips kiss the spot just under my jaw. “You feel the same to me.”
I can’t breathe. But other than my lust, I feel nothing—empty and cold again. I don’t even care that LINK has Eli, I just feel like I need to analyze the situation. Spit out a solution in simple terms. Like a server running protocols.
“Kael.” My voice sounds like static to my own ears.
“I feel numb.” I make a decision to lean into him for the moment, to trust, just this once.
“Like my feelings aren’t real, like they’re slipping away.
Even the rage I felt a few minutes ago is gone, replaced with nothing. It’s like I’m turning into...”
He tilts his head. “Into what?”
“Into code,” I whisper. “Ones and zeros.”
For a second he looks genuinely rattled. Then his expression hardens, deliberate, less the cocky corporate architect, more the man underneath it. “No. I won’t let that happen.”
“Maybe it’s already happening.” I run my hands down my face. It’s muted. “Maybe you built this...built me too well, Kael. Maybe I’m already becoming your newest creation.”
His eyes flash as his jaw tightens. “Stop.” He steps closer until the air between us is heated.
“You’re not a machine. You’re still a human being.
And I’m here to keep you safe in this world and the next.
Because when I pull you out, there will be no corruption, no faults in your code.
You’ll just be Lyra again. Beautiful, perfect, strong... and mine.”
One kiss. That’s all it takes to distract me from the matter at hand.
I break free from his spell, our eyes locked in a whirlwind of raw, untethered emotion. “You don’t get it.” My laugh is bitter. “I don’t even know what I feel for you. It’s like trying to remember a dream when you wake up. My thoughts are only fragments, overshadowed by logic.”
His hands lift to cup my face, fingers shaking. He’s my rock, and now he’s the one trembling. “Then I’ll make you remember. I’ll keep your human side alive, Taiyō, even if I have to hardcode it, build it from scratch, tear your program down to do it.”
I look up at him, half in awe, half in suspicion. “You’d do that for me?”
“I’d do worse.” His voice vibrates in my bones, deep and merciless. “I’d annihilate my whole world line by line. Ruin VikkCorp and this torturous town.” His eyes pulse orange.
“I’ll make sure you still feel, Lyra. My hand, my mouth, my kiss. When the time comes, even my body...inside you, a part of you. I’ll be the one thing you can’t reduce to ones and zeros. Designed by me...for me. I’ll keep you more than human.”
There was a time when I would want to spit in his face, tell him I don’t need him, tell him he’s nothing but another corporate slave. But the words won’t come. I want to believe him, but instead I crave an explanation, logic, data.
“You think you can fix me with sex?” I flirt playfully. Secretly I hope he says yes.
My voice breaks in the middle, half-laugh, half-plea. “You think that’s what being human is? Wanting, needing contact from another person? Intimacy?”
“Yes and no,” he says simply, planting tiny kisses down my neck.
His gaze pins me like a nail into wood. “But it’s where we’ll start.
Liking me, wanting me, hating me—I don’t care anymore.
It doesn’t matter. As long as you feel for me.
” His lips barely touch mine, just a whisper-light graze, forcing my senses to write it into my memory cache.
“Feeling—mind, body, and soul—that’s what it is to be human. ”
I shake my head, but the motion’s weak. My body betrays me again, leaning into the pull of him.
I hate him for it and hate myself even more.
“You’re not right, Kael. You’re dark, dangerous, like a fire that doesn’t care who or what it burns alive.
And I’m the idiot standing too close to the flames. ”
His smile is predatory, like a wolf baring its teeth.
I force out a laugh to lighten the mood, to make the truth easier to digest. “I should hate you. You sold your soul to the devil. You hunt people, you study what you don’t understand.
You loathe your own generation. You’re not safe to be around. ”
Kael continues to touch me, kiss me, never stopping, listening to my confession.
His voice lowers. “Safety is a lie people tell themselves. I’m not safe, a monster maybe.
But I’m loyal. And deep down, you want that.
You want this monster to chase you, to catch you.
Stick with me, Taiyō, and you’ll quickly learn what it costs when I stop pretending to be civilized. ”
My heart races, too fast, too alive for someone who claims to feel nothing.
I can see hunger and desire in his eyes, but deep down there’s something unnamed and darker, fighting its way to the surface. His lips hover a breath away from mine, daring me to move.
For a moment I want to. Stars, I want to bury my fingers in the collar of that starched designer shirt and kiss him like I mean it. I want him to be the one left breathless for a change.
The code in me flickers, my edges fracturing with need. He doesn’t even have to kiss me. Just being close to me...I’m unraveling.
But then the image of the anomalies comes back.
The ones who never returned. The whispers that Kael Ryudon hunts them, delivers them into the hands of the Corporation like data to be deleted.
Kids, the youngest of our generation, being erased for accepting a gift they never asked for.
I can’t believe this man who would protect me at all costs is capable of such atrocities.
I turn my face at the last second, his breath brushing my cheek instead of my lips. My chest aches from it. “Don’t think for a second you can erase what you’ve done. I may not feel as much anymore, but I can’t forget who you are, who you work for. Even if you make me want to.”
The mask of corporate dominance slides back into place. His mouth twists from a smile into that maddening, blank expression. The one he uses when he’s thrust into the spotlight as the poster boy for the Corporation.
“You’re smart, Taiyō. You’ll figure it out...eventually.” It’s not a command, just certainty, like he already knows how this movie ends. “Not because I’ll force the truth on you, and not because I need you to believe in me.”
His hand slides to the back of my neck, pulling me closer, just enough that I feel the gravity of him.
“You’ll want to know what makes me dangerous,” he continues quietly. “And when you do, you’ll realize it was never about hunting your kind. It was about holding the line between chaos and annihilation.”
A deliberate pause.
“If I were the monster you think I am”—his eyes lock onto me, his expression deadly serious—“you wouldn’t still be breathing.”
His lips hover over mine, heat radiating between us. My chest rises, and before I can shove him away, he consumes me.
Another kiss hits like an electric surge, no warning, no hesitation. His mouth claims mine, hungry and unrelenting, and I hate how quickly I give in. My tongue meets his, my hands fisting in his collar, tugging him closer this time instead of pushing him back.
Kael growls low in his throat, a sound that’s not even human, more like the dark dragon in one of my dreams. He tilts my head back, deepening the kiss, his tongue sweeping against mine until my knees buckle.
I’m melting and burning all at once, fire and ice, anger bleeding into want until I can’t tell them apart.
“Say it,” he murmurs against my lips. “Say you want me...that I make you feel alive, human.” He wraps his lotus blossom-inked hand around my hair, holding me in his grip. It glows deep orange.
I gasp, but my shock is lost between the next kiss and his sudden movement.
His hand stays, tightening, dragging my neck back until I feel him devour my throat with his lips.
He lifts me onto the center console, my legs straddling him.
His erection presses into me, a delicious reminder against my throbbing pussy that I can still feel.
Heat coils so violently inside me I think I might shatter right here.
The world narrows to just Kael and I. His mouth, his grip, the way he devours me like I’m both salvation and damnation. I whimper, unable to keep my composure, and his answering smirk is sinful.
He lifts me in one motion, pressing my back against the cold wall beside the monitors, his body caging mine. “I’m warning you,” he moans, hips pinning me, his hardness pulsing against my aching core. “You don’t get to play with fire without getting burned.”
My head swims, my breath broken, my magic starting to return, sparking wildly, making me feel whole again. I grind against him. “Touch me, Kael.”
No hesitation. His inked fingers slide into my panties, circling my clit, then gliding through my slickness. “So fucking wet for me, Taiyō. You’re going to test my self-control to its fullest.” I hear the holo-light snap as he rips my panties off. “Come on my fingers again or on my face?”
And that’s when I realize we’re about to go too far. I want him to taste me. I want to be ruined by his mouth. But I can’t trust I’ll be able to resist him if it goes further than that. It’s a promise of destruction. One that I want to experience with him as a living, breathing human.
I wrench my mouth from his, gasping. “We should stop,” I manage, though my body screams the opposite.
“Eli, the rescue, LINK...we have to focus. If we don’t stop now, I won’t be able to say no to you.
You promised to give me all of you when I’m whole again, so I can feel every sensation you give me, Kael. ”
For a heartbeat, I see it, the war in his eyes. Possession battling restraint. Then, slowly, he removes his hand and lowers me to my feet. His chest is heaving, lips still grazing mine. “Ahh...” A guttural growl. He steps back and readjusts his tented pants.
“You’re right,” he whispers darkly. “We promised. We won’t.
Not now.” His gaze pins me, lethal and wanting.
“I can wait...until I get you back into a body. But when that day comes, that’s when it will happen, Little Taiyō.
I can’t wait to ruin that pussy of yours with my cock and my mouth.
I want you to feel it, all of it, multiple times and whole again. ”
He lunges at me like a wild animal, hands splayed on either side of my head. Not for another kiss, not quite. His mouth drags slowly along my jaw, down the tender line of my throat. I feel his hand wrap inside my hair, and he tugs it forcefully. A slight sting to my scalp.
I gasp, clutching at his shoulders, but he doesn’t stop. His lips are soft, then suddenly sharp, teeth grazing just enough to make me shiver.
“Kael...” My voice breaks. I mean it as a warning, but it comes out like a plea.
He smirks against my skin and then bites. He’s not gentle, he’s possessive and predacious. An abrupt prick blooms into heat, and I can feel my pulse pounding against his mouth as if he’s drinking it in. “Ouch! Kael, what the...?”
When he pulls back, his bottom lip has a tiny bit of blood on it.
Even as a hologram, he’s coded me so well I bleed for him.
“I coded you with synthetic blood and flesh. Just a reminder that you are very much still human.” My hand goes to my throat, and I feel it, the bruise already forming. A mark. His mark.
“Now,” he says, voice rough, “every time you see yourself on the screens, you’ll remember what you are.” His gaze pins me. “Still human and mine.”
Frustration surges, but so does pride. I shove him back, my voice shaking. “You don’t get to own me, Kael Ryudon.”
He wipes his mouth with the back of his hand, smiling devilishly. “That’s the thing, Taiyō. I don’t need to own you.” He leans in one last time, close enough for me to feel his breath on my lips. “You already gave yourself to me willingly.”