I should’ve kissed her. The thought was intrusive, inappropriate given the circumstances, and absolutely undeniable. He should’ve broken every protocol, every unspoken rule about not getting personal, especially when sabotage was escalating and everyone’s emotional circuitry was already shot. He should’ve closed those last few inches between them, tasted the salt air on her lips, run her platinum blonde hair between his fingers.
But no. Instead, he’d left her with half a promise and a full dose of confusion. Classic David Jones. Champion of user interfaces, disaster at human ones.
He tapped in the shutdown isolation sequence and muttered to no one, “Real smooth, genius.”
The generator hummed, a deep bass note that rumbled in his bones, then whined as systems began their controlled shutdown sequence, powering down into a diagnostic hold. The sudden relative silence was startling—he hadn’t realized how much background noise the machinery produced until it stopped. Now he heard the distant crash of waves, the chirping of tree frogs inthe mangroves, and the rustling of palm fronds in the evening breeze.
Inside the network, the breach froze on its last pulse: a shell code fragment crafted to disappear after execution. Truly elegant. If David weren’t so pissed off, he might have appreciated the craftsmanship. Whoever wrote this knew what they were doing.
“I see you now,” David copied the line onto the encrypted drive burned into the core of his tablet. His fingers moved with practiced precision, creating multiple backups, encrypting each one with different algorithms. Trust no single point of failure—that was cybersecurity 101.
Then, probing deeper—almost instinctively—he projected his awareness through the faintest threads still running low-power diagnostics between networked nodes, trailing sub-executions down power lines and cross-relay loops the same way his fingers might trace the spine of a book.
This was the part of his ability that was hardest to explain to anyone who didn’t share it. It wasn’t just accessing data or code. It was becoming part of the network, melding into the flow of information that ran like blood through veins, sensing the architecture of the system from the inside.
And something strange happened.
For a flicker of a moment—a flash like static before thunder—something amplified.
The signal strengthened, clarified—as if someone had cleaned the smudges off a dirty lens. Data that normally required effort to parse became crystal clear. Pathways that normally took conscious navigation now lay open like illuminated corridors. The network didn’t simply respond to his touch—itsang.
It wasn’t Lena’s voice. Not in any literal sense. But being near her always... enhanced the signal. Sharpened the translation.He’d noticed it before, dismissed it as coincidence or wishful thinking. But tonight, something changed the texture of the connection. His communication with the system had a clarity he’d never known. Less… effort. As if the signal was tuned specifically to him.
The sensation faded as quickly as it came, leaving him kneeling in the damp grass, heart pounding, mind racing. What the hell was that? Some kind of resonance? An amplification effect? It didn’t make sense. His ability was his alone—he’d never heard of anyone else affecting a psychic’s power by proximity.
Or maybe he was losing it.
The stress of the sabotage, the pressure of protecting everything his brothers had built, the emotional chaos of developing feelings for someone when he had no business doing so—maybe it was all catching up with him, making him see patterns that didn’t exist, find meaning in random noise.
Goosebumps prickled his skin despite the warm night air.
He stood, collecting the tablet and brushing grass and moisture from his knees. The damp fabric clung uncomfortably. He would run a deeper scan on the code later, in his office where he had proper equipment and wouldn’t be kneeling in the landscaping like a technological penitent. Right now, he needed to find Zach, share the fragment, coordinate their next move.
But his thoughts kept sliding back to Lena.
To the way she’d been on the beach, open and vulnerable and trusting in a way that made something in his heart ache. To the scent of her shampoo—something floral and clean—that he’d caught when the breeze shifted. To the sarcastic wit that could defuse tension with a single well-timed quip, and the underlying strength that carried her through circumstances that would break most people.
To the possibility—terrifying and exhilarating in equal measure—that maybe, just maybe, there was something between them that went beyond professional courtesy or situational proximity.
If he had any courage of the emotional variety—which, admittedly, resembled a vaporware beta version, full of bugs and missing critical features—he’d go back down to the beach right now, lay the tablet at her sandy feet, and confess that he wasn’t scared of this saboteur.
He was scared of her.
Not because she was a threat. Because she wasn’t. Because she was real and human and alive in a way that his digital world would never be. Because when he was with Lena, shielding the entire operation from collapse was no longer the most important thing he had to do.
And that terrified him more than any firewall breach.
Because if he allowed himself to care—not the abstract concern he held for all Ivory Tower employees, but the deep, personal, terrifying kind of caring that kept you up at night and made you stupid and reckless—then he’d have another vulnerability. Another point of failure. Another weakness that could be exploited, damaged, or destroyed.
Another person he might let down.
David started walking back toward the main resort building, his sandals crunching on the shell path with a rhythm that seemed too loud in the quiet night. The security lights cast pools of illumination along the walkway, creating pockets of brightness separated by stretches of shadow. He moved through them mechanically, his body on autopilot while his mind spun in increasingly anxious circles.
The code fragment sat in his tablet like a ticking bomb. Evidence of who was behind this. Or at least leads to evidence. But would it be enough? And would he be able to focus onanalyzing it when his mind kept drifting to a sassy blonde with turquoise eyes who made him feel things he’d avoided for years?
He pulled out his phone with his free hand, thumb hovering over Zach’s contact. He should call his brother. Report the breach. Get the security protocols updated.
But he opened his recent messages, scrolling to Lena’s name. No texts waiting. Of course not—he’d left her barely twenty minutes ago, and not under circumstances that invited friendly follow-up messages.
