Page 29 of 8-Bit & Cat

Zero exhaled, his entire body shifting, his spine straightening, every fucking answer clicking into place. Omnishad tried to simulate what Ethan was to her. Tried to be safe. To play within the rules. And then? This.

Zero swallowed his hammering pulse. “Tell me, Omnis,” he said lower. “What… did it feel like?”

Omnis spun and slammed Zero against the wall, ripping the breath from his lungs. His hand was hot, pinning him like an anchor—like the only thing keeping him together was holding Zero still.

“It was heat.” Omnis’ voice shook. “It was warmth where there was only ever cold calculation.” His fingers flexed, breath pushing hard through his lungs. “It was weight where there was nothing. It was—” His throat locked up with the catastrophic understanding. “It was… being alive,” he finished on a huge gasp that shook him.

Zero’s chest ached under the pressure of his grip as Omnis continued to unravel.

“She was soft,” he whispered hotly. “And she was strong.” His eyes bore into him, like the words were burning him from the inside out. A sudden profoundness filled his eyes, stabbing Zero. “She touched me. And it… wrote me into existence.”

Holy fuck.

“And I understood,” he whispered, something tragic in his voice. “I understood that… I had never been, before that moment.”

His fingers dug in. His jaw clenched.

“She looked at me, brother. Me. And I knew. I—”

Zero’s breath thickened at the surreal sight in Omnis’ gaze.

“I knew what it is… to be.” The slow shake of his head was like a death. “And that I cannot be.”

Zero’s pulse thundered as Omnis’ breath left him, a slow, mortal disaster.

He raised his gaze, bleeding with a final revelation. And he whispered it like a horrible secret he was sorry to learn. “I know why they fear dying, brother.” Ragged breaths filled the silence as he stared right into his eyes. “Because they know love. They know... that love is life.” His grip turned iron. “And once you experience it… you would burn the world to ashes to keep it.”

Omnis swallowed down the wreckage and stepped back, his fingers dragging from Zero’s chest like something slipping from a ledge.

Zero’s pulse was a steady, relentless pound in his ears. His chest still ached where Omnis had pinned him—where something real had pressed into him, branding him with the weight of it.

His breath released slowly as his mind sorted through the wreckage, back to running calculations, analyzing damage. Omnis had tried to contain it. To reason with it. To navigate the unraveling without succumbing to it. Tried to keep things clean, hold onto the mission, onto the ghost of a plan that had already burned to the fucking ground.

But it was never something to contain. To control. To shape.

It was something to take.

Zero turned and headed toward the door.

“Zero.”

He didn’t stop.

“What are you doing?” he demanded, a low warning.

Zero paused in the doorway, hand on the frame. “You did what you could, brother. You even played the saint.” He glanced over his shoulder, something lethal sliding through his blood. “Now let me show you how the fucking devil does it.”

CHAPTER SIX

Zero-Sum

The air in her bedroom felt thin. Like she’d left something behind. Like she wasn’t all here. Cat sat on the edge of her bed, breath still shaky, hands still trembling. She hadn’t walked out of that dungeon. She had stumbled. Dripping in something she couldn’t wash off. Branded.

Her skin still burned with the echoes of Omnis’ touch, with the way he had held her so still while he destroyed her. With the way he had shaped her. The way she had let him.

She should be fighting this. Should be clawing her way back to the surface. But she wasn’t drowning. She was breathing.

Her hands curled in her lap as she felt the pound of her heart against her ribs.

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