Page 1 of 8-Bit & Cat

CHAPTER ONE

Omnis & Zero

Omnis sat in the control room where streams of Ethan’s dead data flashed uselessly across the screen.

Zero called it a tantrum but they both knew it was more than that. He was slowly breaking, and they couldn’t reach him to even mitigate. Catherine was their only lifeline to him and now she was breaking too.

They’d been so close. She’d agreed to accept training and then Ethan’s fears wrecked it. Now they had to find a way to fix that and time wasn’t on their side as usual.

Zero’s fingers drummed against the console, gaze locked on Ethan’s blank screen. “The women in our programs were enough. Heneverneeded this.”

God, if he heard that one more time. “Brother, you know he was required to get a wife,” he patiently reminded.

Zero’s gaze snapped at him. “Then he should’ve gotten afuckingdoctor’s excuse.”

The sharpness of it cut through the room.

Hindsight could be a real gloating bitch.

Without complete understanding of what Zero was and why, Omnis would never be able to resist giving him a good scrub right out of the system. But being the digital representation of both sides of Ethan’s fire, came with every shade of passion. It kept the days…interesting.

Normally.

Now, with so much on the line and with the source being Ethan’s Kitten, it was getting more difficult not to feel the raw side of that flame. Which made being Ethan’s digital hinged sanity a challenge for the ages. Enduring his hate for her, took a real byte out of his ass. He hated her, he hated playing nice, he hated his role as AL. He’d been forbidden from speaking to her under the guise of being a sexual pervert—which, technically, wasn’t far from the truth. But the real risk wasn’t corruption, it was annihilation. He’d crush herandEthan’s chances with her if they let him too close.

He even hated Omnis playing Big G. The irony wasn’t lost on him—after all, their entire Dungeon was designed for roleplay. Omnis wouldn’t waste breath on that hypocrisy. Not when they were on a countdown to fix a very big broken problem named Catherine.

“I want to place my next bet,” Zero muttered, always at a low boil with her.

“Of course you do,” Omnis said, drawing from his depleted well of patience.

“She’ll prove me right.”

“I’m more shocked that she’s still here,” Omnis said, avoiding his little battlefield. “Do you remember what she was like when we first met her? Youfearedher strength,” he reminded. “Now look at her. She’s become one of us, a shadow of existence.”

“That’s because she’salreadybroken him,” Zero muttered, shaking his head in disgust.

“But the fact thatshe’sbroken with himmeanssomething critical, Little Brother. This is far from over,” Omnis assured. “We just need to convince her there’s something worth fighting for and she’s the only one who can do it.” He finally turned his full focus on his brooding mate. “We knew the risks. He had to let her in like this. No firewalls, no controls, no limits.”

“Yes,assess. And now we know I was right,” Zero said flatly. “She can crush him, and she did.”

“But it also means she can put him back together.” If she was fucking alive to do it.

They’d both been hawking her ever declining biometric readings over the past weeks. Zero willed her rapid decline while Omnis carefully plotted the opposite.

One thing Zero had been more right about was the depth. She had gotten farther inside Ethan than anyone ever had. Even them. And if they lost her—they lost Ethan. He was done. This, Omnis knew with every pulse of his logic.

****

Cat’s gaze sat unfocused on the dark wood ceiling while the steam rose in the edges of her vision. Ghosts, swaying in a seductive dance of answers she had no desire to study. Or interpret.

The faint hum of the servers in the next room had become white noise. The constant reminder that she was never alone in this house—and yet, utterly alone.

And stuck.

Alone and stuck.

With a computerized family made of digits and electricity. Tools. Emotional, mental, and sexual.

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