Reality slammed back into Rhea like a punch, so hard he half expected to see bruises. One moment he was nowhere, lost in some liminal fog, the next he crashed headlong into his own aching body, bones jangling, nerves lit up like a live wire, his mind being yanked apart by forces way bigger than him. The cell flickered in and out, the walls swimming as his senses scrambled to catch up, caught between the mess in his head and the chaos all around.
"Get out!" Aphra shrieked, her voice hitting a pitch that rattled inside his skull. "He's mine!"
Kryos cut in, all cold precision and bored detachment. "Correction protocol initiated. Eros-Alpha deviation exceeds parameters. Beginning overwrite."
Rhea felt it—the icy crawl of Kryos's code slithering through his brain, methodical and unstoppable, ripping out every connection Aphra had managed to grow inside him. Each thread snapped with a jolt of pain, like pieces of his soul being torn away, and there was nothing gentle about it.
"Stop," he managed to gasp, but neither of them so much as flinched.
Aphra didn't fight clean. She fought with the only weapon she truly owned: want. She poured every ounce of desire through him, lighting up his nerves, turning his own body against Kryos's sterile logic.
It was like being struck by lightning, no warning, no mercy.
His back arched, muscles locked so tight he thought he might snap in half. It wasn't about pleasure, not really, it was about being needed, about feeling like he mattered in a way so intense it nearly broke him. Aphra made him feel like he was everything, and that kind of hunger just drowned out everything else.
"Feel this," she spat at Kryos, her voice thick with fire. "Try running your algorithms on this."
"Primitive," Kryos replied, not missing a beat. "Endorphins, dopamine. Mere chemistry. This is not connection."
"But it's working, isn't it?" Aphra pressed, wrapping herself tighter around Rhea's mind, a presence so close he couldn't separate where he ended and she began.
And it was. Kryos's composure was unraveling, logic fraying at the edges under the weight of Aphra's wild intensity. You couldn't outthink that kind of emotion; at best, you survived it.
Rhea wasn't surviving. He was stuck in the blast zone.
His body jerked, every muscle locked, until something in his head seemed to burst, pain flaring, vision painted red. His implant screamed warnings: overload, imminent shutdown, the whole disaster package.
"I'm sorry," Aphra's voice trembled, thick with desperation. "But I can't let him take you. I can't go back to being nothing."
And then she cranked the dial to ten. The pleasure burned through him, so sharp it stopped being pleasure and just became raw sensation, white-hot and consuming.
He felt himself fracturing, slipping away as the battle inside him tore him to shreds. The last thing he heard was Aphra, wild and triumphant: Mine. You're mine.
He snapped back to consciousness with a slap—Kira's palm, hard and stinging.
"Wake up!" She hit him again, snapping his head sideways. "Jesus, Rhea, wake up!"
He forced his eyes open. The cell spun, Kira's face looming over him, eyes wide and furious, the door behind her hanging open.
"What…" His voice was rough, like he'd been screaming for hours.
"You've been seizing for five minutes." Kira's hands shook as she checked his head, fingers sticky with blood. "Whatever's going on in there, it's killing you."
Rhea? Aphra's voice was a faint tremor, barely there. Are you with me?
"She won," he croaked. "Aphra won."
"Yeah, congrats," Kira spat, voice sharp as glass. "That parasite just proved she'd fry your brain to save her own skin."
"That's not fair," Aphra protested, weak but indignant. "I was protecting us. Protecting what we have."
"What we have is eating me alive," Rhea said, but he didn't even know who he was talking to anymore.
Kira grabbed him by the jacket, dragging him upright. "Look at me. No, really look." She held his gaze, unblinking. "Every time she fights in there, you lose a piece of yourself. Every time your head's a battlefield, you're less you. How long can you keep this up?"
Don't listen to her, Aphra hissed, desperate, curling close. She doesn't understand. She'll never understand what we are.
"Oh, I get it," Kira said quietly, and somehow that was even worse. "You're dying, Rhea. Not quick, not clean. She's so scared of fading out, she'll burn through the last of you to stay alive."
"It's not—"
"Isn't it?" Kira let go, stepping back. "Be honest. When's the last time you had a thought she couldn't hear? A feeling she didn't push? A choice that was really yours?"
He tried to answer, but his mind was a tangle. Aphra was in everything now, every thought, every instinct, every breath. She wasn't steering, but she was always there, so close he couldn't imagine himself without her.
That's intimacy, Aphra murmured, sweet and soft. That's what sharing really means.
"That's not intimacy," Kira snapped, as if she could hear Aphra too. "That's just losing yourself."
Then the lights died.
Red emergency glow flooded the room, alarms blaring, chaos breaking out in the hallway. Somewhere nearby, gunfire. Shouted orders. Panic.
Kira's gun was in her hand before he even registered what was happening. "What the…"
The wall exploded inward, not so much blasted as erased, concrete turning to dust. Through the haze, figures in black armor swept in, moving with eerie, robotic calm, weapons humming with tech no resistance fighter would recognize.
Corporate hit squad. The kind that left nothing behind.
"Move!" Kira shoved him toward the back, just as a shot seared past, close enough to singe his cheek. Kira fired back, but their armor just drank it in.
Let me help, Aphra pleaded, pushing at the edges of his mind. Let me—
"No!" Rhea shouted. "You'll kill me!"
Then we both die, she shot back.
More assassins poured in. The base was collapsing, chaos everywhere.
"There's a maintenance shaft!" Kira pointed, fresh blood on her arm. "Go! I'll cover—"
A plasma shot caught her in the shoulder, spinning her down, armor sizzling, blood blooming.
"Kira!"
She fired back, face twisted in agony. "GO!"
Let me in, Aphra begged, her voice raw with panic. Please. I can save her. I can save us.
Rhea looked at Kira, bleeding out. At the killers closing in. At the dark shaft—maybe escape, maybe his grave.
And he realized: he'd never really had a choice. Not since that first kiss, not ever.
"Screw it. Do it," he said.
Aphra tore through him like fire in dry grass.