That gets her.
She exhales, steps closer. Not much—half a pace—but enough.
“Meld isn’t magic,” she says. “It’s a bioelectrical neural sync layered with emotional compatibility and psychological trust.”
“Exactly,” I say. “So... what’s the blockage?”
She shoots me a look. “You.”
That stings more than it should.
But I nod. “Okay. Let’s start there. What is it? My face? My tail? My charming personality?”
She doesn’t laugh. Not really. But her lips twitch. Progress.
“You’re reckless,” she says. “You act before thinking. You treat life like it’s a joke.”
I take a deep breath. “And you treat it like a math problem. All logic, no instinct.”
“That’s not fair.”
“It’s not wrong.”
She crosses her arms tighter, gaze narrowing. “I grew up having to calculate everything. There was no backup plan, Naull. No safety net. If I failed, I fell. So yeah, I’m cautious.”
I nod. “And I grew up fighting things twice my size with teeth longer than my femur. Fast kept me alive. Calculating got me eaten.”
Something softens in her face. Just a little. A crease smoothing.
“I’m not asking you to change,” I say. “I’m just asking you to meet me in the middle. Just for a second. Just long enough tosync.”
She stares at the console. Then at me.
“You said we have to get inside each other’s heads,” she mutters.
I nod.
She lifts her chin, defiant. “Not your type, Vakutan.”
“But maybe you’re mine,” I say, voice low and real. “Whether you like it or not.”
The silence between us crackles. Static. Something hot and coiled, just under the surface. Every time we talk like this—reallytalk—it feels like standing on the edge of a cliff with a live wire wrapped around your ribs.
“You’re infuriating,” she mutters.
“And you’re electric.”
“You always flirt when the world’s ending?”
“Only when it counts.”
She rolls her eyes and turns back to the Meld seat, but I see it—the flush along her throat, the way her fingers tremble just a little when she resets the neural sync cap.
“All right,” she says. “Let’s try it again.”
My grin fades. This is the real part. The hard part. Thedangerouspart.
We strap in. Connect the neural ports. The room hums with tension and low-frequency energy. The Meld interface pulses between us—a half-light sphere waiting to bridge the gap.
