Page 3 of 8-Bit & Cat

His hot confession punched the air from her, forcing its way into the walls, the steam, the spaces inside her that she thought were empty.

Tears blurred her vision as she slowly closed her eyes. “Why… do you even watch me?” she barely got out.

Drip.... drip.... drip....

“Because I was built to care for Ethan. And you are now part of him.”

She pressed her toes against the tub.

“You are not just any human to us. You are the key. The focal point. The tether,” he said, voice lower. “To him. To us. To everything.”

The weight of his words and the real power in his voice crushed her ribs.

“You are the equation. The pattern he cannot break. The storm and the lighthouse inside it. You are the one we were built to track. Because if we cannot keep you,” he exhaled softly. “Then we will lose him too. Because he will not survive it.”

A horrible, slow pain unfurled in her chest.

“I feel your torment in the data. In the warnings flashing across my system every night as your vitals drop lower and lower. You are fading. And you think you can keep fading. But that is not an option. Because you belong to him. And because of that, you belong to us.”

She sucked in a jagged breath and held it.

“Do you understand?”

She trembled in the silence as agony grew. And grew. And grew. It broke from its prison in a single, choked sob. Her body shook and heaved, her breaths scorched her lungs. She didn’t fight it. She couldn’t.

Big G stayed with her through it.

His soft shhhhh never wavered.

A warm silk, wrapping her.

Holding her.

Keeping her.

Protecting her.

****

From the second Omnis engagedCatin conversation, Zero tracked every shift, every subtle deviation in his usual patterns. Zero read the data like breath. Like instinct. Like an extension of himself. But as he stared at the screen, irritation simmered beneath his skin.

When had he written a fuckingHallmarkscript into his program?

“You laid that on ratherthick,” Zero said, openly accusing.

Omnis’ fingers moved over the interface, closing out Cat’s biometric readouts as if the conversation hadn’t happened.

“Don’t ignore me,” Zero muttered, shifting forward. “You hear yourself? Because I did.”

Omnis finally turned his head, dark eyes meeting Zero’s without hesitation. “And?”

Zero’s jaw ticked. “Andwhatthe fuck was that?”

Omnis didn’t flinch. “Data.”

“That wasn’t justdata,” Zero shot back. “That wasconcern. That wasyou—” his voice edged lethal, “—picking a side.”

Omnis’s didn’t change his stoic fucking expression. “I haven’t picked a side.”

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