He brings me a glass of water, his hand brushing mine as he hands it over. The touch is electric, a surge of grounding energythat makes my lungs expand. I drink it down, the cool liquid helping to settle the nausea.
"I'm okay, Jorak," I say, setting the glass on the nightstand. "I just got lightheaded."
He sits on the edge of the bed, his head in his hands. "They shouldn't have done that. They shouldn't have used you. I told them... I told them I’d kill anyone who tried to categorize you."
I reach out, my fingers trembling as I touch his forearm. The power humming beneath his skin is immense, a roar of entropic force that should be terrifying. To me, it just feels like home. "They know now. They know I'm more than an F-Class. I just don’t know what that is."
He looks up at me, his eyes dark with a grief he doesn't know how to name. "Do you know what they do to things that are useful, Asa? They don't let them go. They build bigger cages. They build better locks."
He stands up and walks to the door, pointing to the heavy mag-locks and the camera mounted in the corner. "They watch everything. They record my heart rate, my power output, my sleep cycles. They treat me like a reactor that might melt down at any second. And they're right. I am." He turns back to me, his expression grim. "Even if I walked out of here today, Asa, I wouldn't be free. The Black Current... it isn't just a power. It’s a leak. Without the suppression nodes, without a Guide who can handle the backlash, I’m a walking catastrophe. I’d burn out every civilian in a three-block radius just by breathing."
The weight of his words hits me harder than the testing did. He’s not just a prisoner of the ESA; he’s a prisoner of his own biology. He has spent twenty-seven years being told he is a weapon, and the worst part is that he believes it. He believes he is too dangerous to exist anywhere but in a lead-lined room.
"I can handle the backlash," I say, my voice firm. "You saw what happened in the lab. I didn't burn out. I stabilized you."
Jorak moves back to the bed, his presence overwhelming the small space. He reaches out, his thumb tracing the line of my jaw. His touch is heavy, possessive, and so desperately tender it makes my throat tight. "You shouldn't have to be a stabilizer, Asa. You should be a professor. You should be arguing about design theory and failing students who don't study. You shouldn't be the only thing keeping a monster from eating a city."
"I'm not doing it for the city," I whisper, leaning into his hand. "I'm doing it for you."
He lets out a low, broken sound—half-growl, half-sob—and pulls me into his lap. I wrap my arms around his neck, my legs tangling with his. He buries his face in my hair, breathing me in like I’m the only oxygen left in the world. The scent of pear and vanilla from my skin mixes with his black cedar, creating a bubble of safety in the middle of a fortress built on fear.
He’s shaking. The S-Class Enigma, the man who could tear a building apart with a thought, is trembling against me. I hold him tighter, my fingers fisting in his shirt.
"They won't take you," he murmurs against my skin. "I'll burn this whole city to ash before I let them turn you into their property."
I pull back just enough to look him in the eye. "Then we find another way. We find a way that doesn't involve burning things down. But for right now? Just stay here. Just stay with me."
He leans in, his mouth finding mine in a kiss. I open for him, my tongue meeting his, the spark of our connection flaring into a roar. The distance sickness is gone, replaced by a heat that is entirely our own. It’s not enough to be safe. It’s not enough to be stable. I want to be his. And as his hands slide under my shirt, his fingers hot and heavy against my skin, I realize that the cage doesn't matter as much as the person inside it with you.
He pulls back, his forehead resting against mine. "I think I’m falling in love with you," he whispers. He lets out a soft hum, as I murmur the same back to him before pulling his head down and kiss him again, letting my silence be the answer he needs.
The bed creaks as he shifts his weight, the sound echoing in the oppressive silence of the room. He looks at the monitor above the door, its steady green light a reminder that even our breaths are being quantified by someone in a lab coat three floors up. Jorak's hand remains on my waist, his thumb tracing the curve of my hip with a slow, meditative rhythm. It's the first time I've seen him truly still today, yet the tension in his muscles tells me he's ready to spring if that door so much as twitches.
"They'll be back, Asa," he says, his voice gravelly and low. "Mercer isn't a man who takes 'no' for an answer. He'll frame this as a partnership, a way to 'optimize' our mutual benefit. He'll talk about the nodes failing in the districts and how we are the only ones who can stop the cascade. He'll use the city as a bludgeon against your conscience."
I look around the room again, taking in the bolted-down desk and the reinforced seams in the ceiling. Mercer hasn't just been keeping Jorak here; he's been hoarding him. "I'm an academic, Jorak. I've spent my life studying the way systems fail. I know exactly what he's doing. He's creating a dependency. He wants me to believe that without this facility, without his doctors and his suppression mesh, I'll be the one to kill you, or you'll be the one to break me."
Jorak's eyes darken, a flash of that terrifying Black Current swirling in the iris. "Could you? Leave?" The question is raw, stripped of the bravado he showed the guards. He's asking if I'm brave enough to walk back into the world knowing I'm the only thing between him and a total entropic meltdown.
"I'm not going anywhere," I say, reaching up to cup his face. His skin is hot, the fever of the testing still lingering, but it's aheat I can carry. "At first, I was too scared to let this happen. We’re not compatible on paper and you’re now my student, even if only in just name. I… but now I can’t imagine being far from you. I’m not staying because of the city or the nodes or whatever. I’d be staying because of you. Because I wantyou. Oh my god, I sound like an Omega.”
My body warms a little as I curl in closer, Jorak laughing into the curve of my neck before pressing a kiss there. “MyOmega. You sound likemyOmega.”
Asa
I open my eyes and find myself staring at a ceiling that is too smooth, too white, and far too reinforced. There are no seams, no cracks, and no signs of life. Just a smoke detector and a recessed camera lens that glints like a dead eye.
I shift on the narrow mattress, and the institutional sheets crackle beneath me. The room is small, a utilitarian box that makes my college dorm look like a palace.
“You’re awake,” a voice says, and the air in the room suddenly feels breathable again.
Jorak is sitting on the floor by the bed, his back against the reinforced wall. He looks exhausted. His hair is a mess, and the dark circles under his eyes are bruised-looking, but when he sees me sit up, his expression softens into something so tender it hurts to look at. He reaches for a plastic cup on the desk and hands it to me.
“I slept? How long was I out?” I ask, my voice sounding like I’ve swallowed a handful of dry needles. I drink the water in greedy gulps, feeling the chill of it settle in my chest.
“A few hours,” he murmurs. “The resonance testing always leaves a hangover. Your nervous system isn’t used to carrying that much static. I should have stopped them sooner.”
“You couldn’t have,” I say, setting the cup down on the floor because the desk feels too far away. I look around the room again, my eyes stinging as I finally take in the cage he stays in. “Is this it, Jorak? This is where they keep you?”
