Page 67 of Immersed
But Asher’s smile only widened.“You could have just walked away. Or told me to shut up again. But you touched me.”
“Let’s just keep moving,”Levi said, turning back around so he wouldn’t have to look at Asher’s pleased expression.
They reached a door marked“Maintenance Access - Authorized Personnel Only.”Levi tried the handle, surprised when it opened easily.
The room beyond was small and cluttered with old equipment—pipes, electrical panels, and boxes of forgotten supplies. But what caught Levi’s attention was the window set high in one wall, showing a view of the sanitarium’s exterior grounds.
Finally. A reference point.They were maybe on the second floor, based on what he could see from the window.
“Levi.”
Something in his tone made Levi turn. Asher was standing beside a set of storage shelves, looking down at something on the floor.
Elliot lay crumpled between two electrical panels, his expensive camera smashed beside him. His neck was bent at an impossible angle, eyes staring sightlessly at the ceiling. A thin line of blood dried at the corner of his mouth.
No.Levi rushed forward, dropping to his knees beside the body.“Elliot?”
But even as he reached out to check for a pulse, he knew it was pointless. The way Elliot’s head tilted, the stillness—death was obvious.
“His neck’s broken,”Asher said, stuffing his hands in his pocket.“Probably fell down a shaft or got caught in some kind of trap.”
The matter-of-fact tone, the clinical assessment, made something crack inside Levi’s mind. He stared down at Elliot’s face, remembering the NPC’s scripted flirtation, his programmed personality, his artificial concern.
But he felt real.Even knowing Elliot was just programming, just scripted responses and fake memories, seeing him dead hurt.
“This is n-never going to end,”Levi whispered, his voice breaking.“Is it?”
Asher moved closer, kneeling beside him.“What do you mean?”
“The loops. The deaths. I’m going to keep dying, over and over, and slowly lose my mind.”He buried his face in his hands as he felt tears burning his eyes.“I c-can’t... I can’t keep watching people die. Even if they’re not real, even if it’s just programming, I can’t—”
His breath hitched, the walls of the small room suddenly feeling like they were closing in. The weight of everything—Ethan’s death, the isolation, the repeated trauma—crashed down at once.
“Hey.”Asher’s voice was surprisingly gentle.“Look at me.”
Levi turned, expecting to see predatory satisfaction or cold amusement. Instead, he found genuine concern in those heterochromatic eyes.
“I’m helping you,”Asher said.“We’re figuring this out together. You’re not alone in this.”
The kindness in his voice was so unexpected that it shattered what remained of Levi’s composure. Tears he tried to hold back spilled over, and he buried his face in his hands again.
“I just w-want to go home,”he sobbed.
Warm fingers pulled his hands away from his face as Asher moved closer, close enough that Levi could feel body heat radiating from him. This close, the sharp angles of his face looked almost serene in the flickering light.
“We’ll find a way out,”Asher promised, his thumb brushing away a tear from Levi’s cheek.“I won’t let you stay trapped here.”
The touch was so gentle, so careful, that it made Levi’s chest tight with confusion. This was the same person who strangled him, shot him, drowned him. But right now, in this moment, Asher felt like safety incarnate.
God, he’s beautiful.
Even knowing what Asher was capable of, even remembering all the deaths and violations, Levi couldn’t deny the attraction that pooled low in his belly. The strong jaw, the intelligent eyes, the careful way he touched—as if Levi were something precious.
I want to kiss him.The realization was horrifying and undeniable. Here, beside Elliot’s corpse, while trapped in a death maze, he wanted to lean forward and press his lips to Asher’s. The urge was so strong and sudden that he actually started to lean closer, drawn by the promiseof comfort.
A grinding sound echoed through the walls around them. Something heavy was moving in the building’s infrastructure, getting closer.
Asher’s head snapped up, instantly alert. The gentle moment shattered.
