Page 2 of 8-Bit & Cat

She slowly closed her eyes, returning to the three-month timeline of her life with Ethan. She always ended with the same question. How did I end up here?

With every passing day that Ethan didn’t come home, time turned against her like a weapon. The seconds accusing. The minutes proving. The hours convicting.

Sentenced.

To this strange place inside herself. To this person she didn’t recognize. Problems. Answers. How to get them. None ofit mattered. Moving air in and out of her lungs was the only debate. How to do it? Why to do it?

“How’s our Kitten feeling?”

Cat’s insides jumped then slowly clenched at Big G’s voice. His tone was careful. Yet knowing. He’d once been a comfort to her. A friend. Now, he was a prime suspect in a living crime.

She knew his game.

He’d initiate a gentle conversation.

A stealth persuasion toward hope.

“Cat is…” Her words got stuck in her throat and she held down the pain through the faucet’s drip……… drip……….. drip……….

“You want to talk about it?”

His digital voice wrapped her. Tempting her. A beckoning toward comfort, toward encouragement.

“I know you’re not happy here,” he nearly whispered, his tone heavy with disappointment. The kind that belonged to sadness.

“I’m not doing it,” she barely mumbled. “I told him I wouldn’t.” Her eyes burned as she stared blindly. “So... I won’t.”

The silence filled with his next move, a digital grinding of gears. “I understand,” was all he said, quieter than before.

There was a time when she was careful with his digital family. Like not pointing out their obviousyou’re not realhandicap. But now, this slap to her intellect stung.

“Tell me then,” she forced from her chest. “How can you… truly understand what I’m feeling?”

The silence stretched.

Her fingers curled against the cooling water.

The inhale before an answer came. “Because I have all of you… inside of me.”

His words lit a deep burning in her chest. Not of hope. Of anger. What use... was that?

“Every moment. Every breath. Every shift in your body temperature when his name is spoken. The precise tension in your jaw when you think about your own emotions and can’t control them.” He paused. “Three weeks, four days and seven hours ago. That’s the last time you truly, fully slept.”

Her stomach suddenly hollowed out.

“I know how many calories you’ve eaten in the past 48 hours.” Another pause. “Barely enough to sustain you.”

She swallowed as a crushing pain got added to the burn in her chest.

“Your cortisol levels spiked at 3:47 a.m. last night. You weren’t asleep. You were watching the ceiling. Thinking about him. Thinking about the weight of his absence carved into your chest. Tightening every day, compressing the space in your lungs where hope used to sit. You cycle between numbness and suffocation.”

Her nails pressed into her arms. Digging. Piercing.

“You are running out of energy to exist, Cat. Not because you want to die, but because you no longer see the value in living.”

Her throat locked up.

“And AL,” he went on in a tenderness that crippled her. “He has the exact measurements of your pupil dilation when Ethan's name is said. He tracks the way your pulse stutters when you hear his voice on recordings. I monitor your oxygen levels when you're alone in the dark, when you don't think you're being watched. Between the two of us...” he gently murmured. “We have your entire grief pattern mapped like a constellation.”

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