Page 32 of 8-Bit & Cat

He made his way right up to her, pulling her right into those green prisons. “I wish it were.”

She considered everything he said, eyeing the surreal strobing lightwork beneath them. “So… what exactly are we trying to do?”

Zero turned and twitched his fingers at the floor and the system shifted again beneath them. “Do you see the pattern? And how it’s moving toward something?”

She did. “I think I do.”

“It’s not mindless. It has a trajectory.” He gestured toward the decaying strands, showing her the slow unraveling. “I need to figure out where it’s going before it stabilizes into something we can’t undo.”

Her stomach tightened. “Isn’t… stabilizing a good thing?”

“Not in this. It means the change becomes irreversible.”

That didn’t sound good. She met his gaze. “So then…”

“Whatever it’s becoming, that’s the reality it will be.”

She hesitated. “And you’re obviously concerned about this… new reality.”

His eyes flicked to the system again before locking back onto her. “You, Ethan, Omnis, and I—none of us are outside of it.”

She barely nodded, eyeing him. “Meaning?”

“If the deviation stabilizes in the wrong way, the four of us don’t just lose control of our environment. We lose control of ourselves.”

Her pulse kicked hard. “How?”

Zero’s tone remained steady, but an edge crept into it now. “Option one: the deviation erases me and Omnis entirely. We cease to exist.”

“Option two,” he continued. “For you, it means the system will no longer recognize you as an external user. You won’t need the headset to enter—it will pull you in automatically. Your biometric signature is already embedded. The system sees you as part of its core framework.”

A chill threaded down her spine. “So… even if I don’t log in—”

“The system will still recognize you. It can track you. Respond to you. Interact with you. Whether you’re inside or not, whether you command it to or not.”

Her stomach dropped. “Okay. Is there an option three?”

“It overrides us. Rewrites us. We could be anything. We could be anyone. And we wouldn’t even know it.”

A chill ran through her. “Is there an optionfour?”

Zero turned toward the shifting web again. “There is. We can try to redirect it.”

Catherine swallowed. “Redirect?”

“We alter thetrajectoryof the deviation before it locks in. Guide it into something we can work with, something that doesn’t erase or overwrite us.”

She didn’t like the way her stomach felt. Like something deep inside her already knew and made the choice before her brain could catch up.

“… So we have to pick one,” she realized.

Zero exhaled, watching the system flicker beneath them. “Yes.”

Her voice came quieter than before. “And you already know which one makes sense.”

Zero nodded once, his sharp green eyes angled on her. “Option four. Redirect.”

She crossed her arms and paused at seeing she wore a black pencil skirt, matching heels and a red satin blouse. “What theheck?” she muttered, finding his mildly humored look on her.

---