Page 35 of Entity

“Just chill out for a second,” I murmur. “Then go. Pack your shit and go.”

I take a long breath in, a long breath out. Iwillbe fine. Ian isn’t dangerous. Not tome, I try to reassure myself, relaxing my eyes until the skyscrapers outside become dark blurs spotted with colorful light bursts. He’s not going to hurt me. He’s just drunk and frustrated with his Pleasurebot. He’s just…

My thoughts judder to a halt.

Something is wrong. Something I can’t place. It’s a tiny shock to the skin, a shallow splinter. I look out over the city. The skyline winks back at me through sheets of rain. The splinter of unease inches deeper. These buildings…

My stomach drops.

I don’t recognize these buildings.

No, that can’t be right. I rub at the glass where my breath has fogged. This window faces west. I know this view; I’ve been staring at it for two days. IknowLos Angeles. I should be able to see the new cluster of mega-scrapers right there, glowing purple. I was admiring them this morning. Iremember. And the half-abandoned business high-rise across the way, gold and blue-lit, always projecting neon ads, should be just there. But it isn’t. Instead, the monoliths of black and neon are buildings I have never seen before, endless towering spires, violent and tooth-like silhouettes in the rain.

A sickening roil takes hold of my gut. The splinter drives deep into flesh, smarting, bleeding until I gasp at the disorientation. This isn’t Los Angeles. I don’t know any of these buildings. This is no city I’m familiar with.

A traffic drone whirrs past, half blinding me with its spinning red beams, and I reel back from the window.

I turn away from the glass expanse, desperate to anchor myself.

A dark figure stands in the kitchen, watching me.

A scream lodges in my throat. I freeze, every muscle in my body going taut with fear, and then I recognize him.

“Fuck,” I spit the word like a rotten tooth dislodged. “Orpheus, where the fuck did youcome from?”

He drifts to me on long, elegant limbs. He moves like a figment of shadow or a dream. His silver hair catches the drone’s light, glowing almost pink, a pulsing softness against my darkening fear.

“I’m here,” he says. His eyes are softly golden, his chest rising and falling. “What’s wrong?”

“I’m trapped in a fucking nightmare is what,” I gasp. Even in my heightened emotional state, I succumb to his gravity, allowing him to pull me gently into an embrace. His fingers drift through my hair. My cheek presses to his chest. “Where were you? I tried to find you. Eros…” But the words catch in my throat. I can’t say it. I don’t want to make it real.

Orpheus strokes my back, my hair, murmuring exactly what I need to hear. “You’re afraid, Kit. Don’t be afraid. I’m right here. I didn’t go anywhere.”

The relief of his touch is a heady drug. Every word draws me in and softens me. I’m shaken apart by the molecule, laid out across the rain-dark sky until the world and I are one, and nothing can harm me. Every murmur of his voice paints calm across my nerves. He undoes me, little by little, until thoughts of Ian and Eros are far away. Until I’m utterly at Orpheus’s mercy.

I tip my chin up to meet his eyes. It almost hurts to look at him. He burns so brightly he’s star-like. “Thank God, you’re alive. I went down to the vault, and you were gone, and I thought…”

He brushes my jaw with his knuckles. “This body is not alive. It is a spectrum of electrical impulses and mechanical engineering.”

“I know. You’re a computer, I know.”

“No, Kit. I am not.”

I pull away slightly, signals coming from far away, my brain shouting a distant warning. “What?”

“This body is a machine,” he replies, leaning over me, his lips almost brushing mine. “But I am not this body. I merely use it.”

This time, I pull away from him completely, palms against his chest, keeping him at arm’s length. I look him up and down, his beautiful angles, broad shoulders, curving throat. My brain seems to be working impossibly slow. “Say again?”

“I am not a computer. I am the mind that powers the machine.”

“Orpheus,” I say, suddenly unbelievably exhausted. “What the fuck are you trying to say?”

“I told you I’ve been watching you,” he says. “Do you know how? Do you understand why?”

“I thought it was… just a thing you tell girls.” I know it wasn’t. Iknowwhat I felt with him last night, and what I feel now. Pure and undeniable connection, transcendent and soul-deep.

He chuckles, and I feel the low rumble in his chest in the palms of my hands. “Kit, as far as I’m concerned, you are the only woman on Earth. No one else exists. You arerare. Do you not feel it? Have you not sensed it here in this house?”

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