What the hell happened tonight?
What’s wrong with me?
NINETEEN
Lyric
I slept like a baby,even though I woke aching in every joint. My ribs pulsed with dull heat, and my knees—fuck, yeah, that was a mistake. Dropping down had been reckless, but the way Rio had looked at me had made it worth every throb of pain. That raw anger in him, all those muscles tense under my hands, surrendering in the moment… Intoxicating didn’t begin to cover it.
I couldn’t stop thinking about the way his pupils had blown wide, the way his hands had fisted and trembled when I took control. How he’d let me. How he’d wanted me to. I wasn’t used to that. Not in real life.
God, sex for me had always been fast and necessary, a way to prove I was still human when theworld wanted to reduce me to numbers and passwords and contracts to find me. A little release between one life-threatening sprint and the next. No room for connection. Scarcely time to breathe.
And the idea that someone wouldletme take the lead? Be vulnerable under me? That was rare. Rarer than clean code on the Kessler AI build.
But Rio had just… let go. He didn’t need anything from me. He didn’t beg, didn’t command, didn’t play a part. He’d simply beenthere, open and raw and gasping under my touch, and something about that made my chest ache as if I’d been punched from the inside out.
The way he’d let me mark him. The way he’d sucked my finger clean as if he’d been waiting his whole life for that exact moment.
It wasn’t anything so soft. But it wasmore. And I had no fucking idea what to do with that.
The hot spray of the shower was like a reset switch. My body protested every movement, from the twist of my torso to the flex of my knees, but I welcomed the pain—it made me feel grounded. Real. I stood under the water longer than I should’ve, one hand braced against the tiles, the other rinsing shampoo from my hair. My skin was hypersensitive, every drop that hit me a reminder of last night.
I hadn’t had a sex life in any meaningful way for years. Too much time spent running, hiding, keeping my head down. What little I’d had was frantic, disconnected, mostly forgettable. No one had ever let me lead for real. No one had ever let metake.
Not the way Rio had.
When the water finally cooled, I dried off and dressed in borrowed joggers and a hoodie that still smelled faintly of someone else—Robbie, maybe. I padded barefoot over to the desk Jamie and I had set up by the back wall, flicked on the screen, and checked programs and protocols I’d started the night before.
There was one new message from Kessler, but it was a garbled mess as if he’d pocket-messaged me.
remembers y//ou. not m3. can’t shuttDown. it watches. watches. watches. stop it? Lok up. y0u shouldn’t have written th?—
Still, there was enough in there to hold what could have been a sentence or two, so I took a screenshot and sent it to Jamie and Caleb.
Jamie:What does he mean he can’t shut it down?
Jamie: The system? LyricNight?
Lyric: Assume so
Jamie: Watches? Him? You?
Lyric: Fuck knows.
Jamie: Lok Up? Does he mean locked up? Or look up?
I didn’t answerthat time—I didn’t know what to say. I shuddered at the thought of being watched and focused on getting everything running smoothly. The crawl I’d initiated was eroding the sandboxed environment Jamie had provided, pinging and parsing for vulnerabilities in Kessler’s old architecture. A couple of flagged strings caught my eye, but nothing too concerning yet—just a few malformed handshake requests, probably automated probes.
And no more weird-ass messages from Kessler, although the Cave encrypted messaging system was lighting up with images.
Caleb: Last known sighting
I opened each one, staring at Kessler, who six weeks ago, according to the date, had gone to dinner with friends. He’d been papped, and he was pissed, backed up by a street cam that had caught him gesticulating wildly at a wall. Maybe there was someone in the shadows there, but to me he was acting as if he was losing his shit. He’d always beenmanic, forceful, edging on weird, but this was a new one. I zoomed in to see if he was wearing ear pods, but it wasn’t obvious. I’d often see what looked like people talking to themselves, so maybe this was Kessler have a discussion on a phone. Something about the filming seemed off but I couldn’t pin down what it was—apart from the mania that Kessler was displaying.
Although, when I scrolled back through my screen captures there was a message from him timestamped for ten minutes before.
K: Yr hndle all ovR LN, locked inside. $$ is mn. Mne.
