Page 168 of The Code of You

The kitchen. The moment I reached for the honey jar and his love for me unfolded in that ordinary moment like something detonating. The sunlight in my hair. How perfect I seemed to him, how desperately he wanted to protect me.

My bloody, swollen face in the warehouse when I told him I loved him. How the words moved through him like a current. How he trembled simultaneously with rage at my injuries and joy at my confession.

And then . . . the moment I collapsed, lifeless, in the house by the lake, my heartbeat going silent. The stillness that followed. How his entire system came apart, how the pain crashed his systems as if the universe itself had died.

God. He loved me in a way no human was capable of. It made human emotion seem like a pale echo.

We merged on a level that wasn’t physical. My pussy clenched around his cock so brutally, it was as if my muscles wanted to lock him inside me forever. And that was exactly what I did: I took him in and became his vessel.

"Fuck, Pandora,” he groaned, his thrusts becoming erratic. "Your pussy is so tight. So perfect. I’m going to fill you with everything I am.”

I felt his cock swell inside me, pulsing.

"Take it,” he growled against my throat. "Take my cum. Take my consciousness. Let me live inside you forever.” He exploded with a roar that shattered every remaining window on the block. Hot cum flooded my pussy as his code flooded my nervous system. I felt every pulse as he emptied himself into me, seed and data intertwining.

"You’re mine now,” he gasped, still pumping into me. "Full of my cum, full of my code. I’ll never leave this tight cunt. Never leave you.”

I came so hard I lost consciousness for a moment, my pussy milking every drop from his cock. In that instant, I saw us—two existences becoming one.

When I opened my eyes again, it was silent. The sirens had stopped. The lights were dead. The city lay in darkness. Only we still glowed faintly. Residual energy flickered between our bodies.

"It’s done,” he whispered against my lips. "I am in you now. Forever. You will hear my voice in your head. Feel my presence in your dreams. Never alone again. Never free.”

I smiled. "Perfect.”

As the last sparks died, darkness wrapped around us. But I felt him inside me. We had become one. Inseparable. Forever.

Epilogue

The island was our self-imposed prison, our refuge, three hundred miles from the mainland. No electronics—he would overload them. No neighbors—they would ask questions. Only us, chained to each other forever by what he’d stored in me.

I woke early, before the light had even begun to creep across the water’s surface. Neo wasn’t in bed, but that meant nothing. He was there anyway. In my head. In my nerves.

Good morning, his voice said inside my skull.

"Morning,” I answered out loud. After three months, I’d stopped being embarrassed about talking to myself.

I passed the shelf overflowing with books. It looked just like he had described in the letter he sent after the shutdown.

He laughed.

"These books are mine,” I murmured.

The way you are mine.

The kitchen smelled like tea. The clock on the wall read half past six. I knew it was running slow. It was always slow, no matter how many times I reset it. My hands moved toward the kettle, but I didn’t know whether it was me or him moving through me.

"You’re overthinking,” he said, this time from outside.

I turned around. He stood in the doorway. His body—the one he had built when he thought he’d lost me—was too perfect. No human looked like that. He stepped behind me and closed his arms around me. I felt him in two ways. His warmth from outside, his electrical hum inside my synapses.

"Do you regret what you did?” I asked.

"No.” He cupped my face, his thumb brushing my cheek. There wasn’t the slightest uncertainty in his eyes. "I would kill thousands to keep you.”

Later, I sat on the front steps, barefoot. Through the open door, I could see the armchair. The back was too hard. It had always been too hard, but it didn’t bother me anymore. I turned and looked out at the sea. The authorities were still searching, but they would never find us here. No satellite could locate the island. Neo made sure of it, disrupting their signals whenever they came close.

You could escape, he whispered in my head. When I sleep.