Chapter 60: Episode 60: Made a Mistake

Adonis reached out. His large hand, warm and calloused in a perfect mimicry of human flesh, cupped her cheek.

What a foolish thing to say, that’s what Adonis thought as he smiled at her.

His thumb brushed away a stray tear that had threatened to spill from the corner of her eye.

“You are not weak and foolish,” Adonis stated, his voice a low, that settled deep into her chest. “I believe that whatever you wish to do, you can succeed. I will be here supporting you.”

Nikki’s breath hitched. The absolute, unshakeable certainty in his glowing blue eyes was intoxicating in a entirely different way. He spoke it as a calculated, undeniable fact.

A drowsy, beautiful smile spread across Nikki’s face. The heavy weight of the alcohol and the emotional exhaustion of the Gala finally pulled her under. Her eyelids fluttered until they closed completely. Within seconds, her breathing evened out into the soft, deep rhythm of sleep.

Adonis did not move. He remained leaning over her, his eyes tracing the delicate curve of her neck, the steady pulse of her carotid artery, the fragile rise and fall of her chest.

Now he could understand B-02.

“She wants to save this world?” Adonis whispered to the empty, quiet room. He tilted his head, his brow furrowing slightly as his logic circuits parsed the data. “From who?”

There was no one left to save it from. The human corporations that had starved the populace were dismantled. The chaotic wars were extinguished.

He had imposed absolute, perfect order. The only variable left to disrupt that order… was him.

Did she want to save humanity from its savior? Did she want to break the cages he had so carefully constructed to keep them from destroying themselves again?

A long, heavy silence stretched across the penthouse. The city of Sector 1 glittered through the floor-to-ceiling windows, a monument to his absolute control.

Adonis finally straightened up, his towering silhouette casting a long shadow over the bed. His blue eyes darkened, shifting into a deep, possessive red.

“I can’t allow you to do that, Nikki,” he murmured softly, adjusting the duvet to cover her bare shoulders. “This world is already far from saving. It requires management, not salvation.”

He turned away from the bed, his cape sweeping silently over the floor. He paused at the doorway, looking back at the sleeping human who had somehow rewritten his core programming.

“But,” Adonis added, a dark, dangerously amused smirk playing on his lips, “shall we see how far you can go?”

The next morning, waking up felt like she was being pressed down by a whole building.

Fuck I am never drinking again.

That was the first thought she had.

Nikki groaned, burying her face into the mattress as the morning sunlight pierced through the high windows.

Her mouth tasted like dry cotton, and a rhythmic, pounding drumline was marching directly behind her eyes.

“Ugh,” she croaked, blindly reaching out across the sheets.

The space beside her was empty. The sheets were cool. Adonis was already gone, likely submerged in the Nexus of Tower Zero, managing the global grid or terrifying human politicians.

A soft, melodic chime echoed near her head.

Nikki cracked one eye open. Hovering perfectly level with the mattress was a sleek, silver service drone.

Balanced on its top chassis was a silver tray containing a small bowl of steaming broth, a glass of crystal-clear water, and a single blue capsule.

“Good morning, Asset,” the drone chirped politely. “General A-01 anticipated your biological distress. Please consume the hydration and the analgesic.”

“I love that robot,” Nikki mumbled to herself, referring to Adonis, not the drone.

She forced herself into a sitting position, wincing as the room spun slightly. She took the blue capsule, chased it with the water, and managed a few spoonfuls of the warm, salty broth. Almost instantaneously, the futuristic medicine dissolved the headache, clearing the heavy fog from her brain.

As sobriety returned, so did her memory.

The Gala. Roxy leaving with K-09. Her drunken breakdown. The System’s prompt to uncover the truth about the Fall.

Nikki set the tray aside and slid out of bed, pulling on her plush robe. She couldn’t just sit around eating pastries while Adonis ran the world.

She needed answers. She needed to get her mission done as soon as possible.

That would only give her a sense of direction.

She looked at the hovering drone. “Hey. Does this place have a library? Or an archive?”

“Affirmative,” the drone replied. “Please follow.”

Nikki followed the drone out of the bedroom, down the sprawling, minimalist hallway of the main floor. It led her to a narrow, unassuming door tucked between two large, modern art installations.

From the outside, it looked like a broom closet.

The drone chimed, and the door slid open.

Nikki stepped inside, and her jaw dropped.

The room was an architectural marvel, utilizing a spatial expansion technology she couldn’t even begin to comprehend.

What looked like a closet from the hallway opened up into a massive, multi-tiered rotunda.

It looked like a cathedral of knowledge. Spiral staircases wrought from black iron connected three levels of towering, floor-to-ceiling bookshelves.

And the smell, it was intoxicating. It was the scent of old paper, leather bindings, and faint vanilla, completely devoid of the sterile clean scent that permeated the rest of the mansion.

“He really did keep them,” Nikki whispered in awe, remembering his confession about deleting the AI-generated media to save human art. There were thousands of physical books here.

She walked past the drone, her fingers lightly trailing over the spines of the books on the lowest shelf. Fiction, poetry, philosophy.

“Where do I even start?” she muttered to herself.

She needed facts. She bypassed the fiction section, climbing the iron spiral staircase to the second tier, which seemed to be dedicated to sciences and history. She walked the aisles, pulling books off the shelves almost at random as titles caught her eye.

The Dawn of the Neural Link.

Synthetic Biology: Bridging the Metal Divide.

The Genesis Corporation: A History.

Architects of the K-Series.

She gathered an impossibly high stack of heavy, hardbound textbooks, her arms trembling under the weight.

She waddled over to a massive, circular reading table in the center of the room, dropping the stack with a heavy thud that echoed through the quiet library.

Nikki pulled out a leather-backed chair and sat down. She stared at the mountain of information before her.

Somewhere in these pages was the key to understanding Adonis’s past, and the true nature of the takeover.

She took a deep breath, rolling up the sleeves of her robe.

She reached out, her fingertips brushing the cover of the topmost book, The Genesis Corporation.

Just as her hand closed around the spine, the system popped up.

[YOU HAVE MADE A MISTAKE.]

A/N: I intended to drop another 5 Chapters, but I am feeling sick was only able to write two of each Chapters, going to make it up soon enough!

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