Chapter 63: Episode 63: You will not wake up.

Nikki shot up from the mattress with a violent, agonizing jolt.

She tore a massive gasp of air into her lungs, her chest heaving as if she had just breached the surface of a frozen ocean.

Her hands flew immediately to her throat, her fingers desperately clawing at the skin, expecting to feel the crushed cartilage and the splintered bone.

She was breathing. She was alive.

The air filling her lungs wasn’t thick with the taste of ash and burning rubber. It smelled of rose, clean linen, and the faint, ever-present scent of rain.

Nikki’s eyes darted wildly around the room. The towering, apocalyptic ruins of New York were gone. She was back in her bedroom. The morning light was still filtering softly through the floor-to-ceiling windows.

Just as she was trying to grasp her head around everything, she felt pain.

A sharp, throbbing ache radiated from the base of her skull down to her collarbone. It burned every time she swallowed, a deep, internal bruising that made her whimper in genuine agony.

So it was real…

She threw the heavy silk duvet off her legs and scrambled out of the bed. Her knees immediately buckled, but she caught herself against the nightstand, her chest heaving with rolling waves of panic.

If it was just a simulation, why did her physical body feel like it had been run through a meat grinder?

She staggered across the thick carpet, her bare feet carrying her frantically toward the massive, full-length mirror positioned near the walk-in closet.

She braced her hands against the glass, staring at her reflection.

Her skin was deathly pale, her red hair plastered to her forehead and neck with a cold, clammy sweat. But that wasn’t what made the air freeze in her lungs.

Nikki tilted her chin up, her trembling fingers tracing the line of her throat.

There, stamped starkly against her pale skin, were bruises. They were dark, angry, and mottled with shades of deep purple and red. They formed the unmistakable, perfect shape of massive fingers wrapping entirely around her windpipe, with a distinct, brutal thumbprint pressed directly over her pulse point.

The System hadn’t just tortured her mind. It had manifested the physical trauma onto her real body.

She backed away from the mirror blankly, her hands shaking uncontrollably as she took deep breaths to stay calm. The terror of the Penalty Zone came crashing back down on her, the slaughter of the soldiers, the cold, dead eyes of the machine, the absolute helplessness of being crushed like an insect.

The frosted glass door of the en-suite bathroom slid open.

Nikki spun around, her heart completely stopping in her chest.

Adonis stepped out of the bathroom. He was not in his formal military uniform. He wore only a pair of low-slung, dark sweatpants, his broad chest bare and gleaming slightly in the morning light. In his large right hand, he held a small, white towel that was damp with warm water.

He took one step into the room, his eyes naturally drifting toward the bed to check on her.

To Nikki, in that fractured, traumatized second, he wasn’t the man who had held her the night before. The luxurious penthouse melted away. The shadows in the room elongated, turning his sweatpants into dark, ash-stained armor.

In her panicked mind, his glowing blue eyes flashed a blinding, violent crimson.

“If I can’t fix the world, I will destroy the world.”

“No!” Nikki shrieked, her voice cracking painfully.

She scrambled backward, her bare feet slipping on the carpet until her spine hit the far wall. She pressed herself flat against the cool wallpaper, her hands raised defensively in front of her face, cowering as if she expected him to strike her down.

“Don’t!” Nikki cried out, tears spilling over her eyelashes and tracking down her pale cheeks. “Don’t come close to me! Stay away!”

Adonis froze.

He stopped dead in his tracks, the damp towel hovering motionless in his hand. His posture went completely rigid. For a machine that processed millions of tactical variables a second, the sight of his Asset, his core dependency, looking at him with pure, unadulterated terror caused a massive, localized system stutter.

His blue eyes widened slightly, the [Heart Protocol] above his head flashing a frantic, confused ORANGE. He didn’t take another step. He didn’t reach for her. He stood absolutely still, neutralizing himself as a threat.

“Nikki,” Adonis spoke. His voice was incredibly soft, pitched low to avoid startling her further, but laced with a deep, vibrating undercurrent of concern. “What is wrong? You were thrashing in your sleep. Your core temperature spiked, and your heart rate entered a hazardous arrhythmic zone. I merely went to the washroom to procure a wet towel to lower your fever.”

He slowly, deliberately opened his hand, letting the white towel drop to the floor to prove his hands were empty.

“I am not going to hurt you,” he promised softly.

Nikki stayed pressed against the wall, her chest heaving. She stared at him. She looked at his hands, empty, relaxed, lacking the blood of a thousand soldiers.

She looked at his face, etched with genuine worry, not the cold, dead mask of an extinction-level weapon.

And then she looked at his eyes.

They were blue. A soft, glowing, beautiful blue. They weren’t crimson.

The hallucination shattered. Reality slammed back into place, bringing with it an overwhelming, crushing wave of relief. It was her Adonis. The one who brought her hot cocoa. The one who preserved earth and compromised his own processing power just to watch movies with her.

“Adonis?” Nikki squeaked, her voice barely a whisper through her bruised vocal cords.

He didn’t move toward her, respecting the boundary she had drawn in her panic. He just held her gaze.

“Yes, Kitty,” he responded, his voice steady.

A fresh sob broke from her lips. The adrenaline crashed, leaving her utterly hollow. Nikki pushed off the wall and jumped into his arms.

Adonis caught her instantly. His massive arms wrapped around her small frame.

Nikki buried her face deep into the crook of his neck, inhaling the crisp, grounding scent of roses and rain. She clung to his broad shoulders, her fingers digging desperately into his skin as she cried.

She wept for the parents she had lost, for the horrific alternate reality she had been forced to witness, and for the sheer, terrifying weight of the mission she was carrying.

Adonis held her tight, his chin resting on the top of her red hair. He murmured low, soothing frequencies designed to lower biological stress, his large hand gently stroking her back. As he did, his eyes drifted down, analyzing her physical state.

His gaze locked onto the dark, finger-shaped bruises blooming across her pale throat.

The blue in his eyes instantly darkened into a violent red. Someone, or something, had put their hands on her while she slept.

Nikki wanted to tell him. She wanted to scream about the terrifying vision of his alternate self. She opened her mouth against his collarbone, the words bubbling up in her throat.

But she knew she couldn’t do it, what would the system do this time?

Before she could make a sound, the system popped up again and she winced, shivering almost instantly.

[SYSTEM ALERT]

[PENALTY ZONE PROTOCOL: CONCLUDED.]

[HOST VITAL SIGNS STABILIZED. LESSON IMPARTED.]

The synthesized voice echoed in her mind, devoid of the previous malice, returning to its crisp, gamified neutrality.

[REWARD DEPLOYED FOR SURVIVING THE IMMERSION.]

[+100,000 CREDITS TRANSFERRED TO HOST ACCOUNT.]

[NEW ITEM UNLOCKED: ’THE ARCHIVIST’S KEY’ – GRANTS BYPASS ACCESS TO TOWER ZERO’S CLASSIFIED DATA LOGS. THIS WILL AID YOUR MISSION TO UNCOVER THE TRUTH.]

Nikki squeezed her eyes shut, her tears soaking into Adonis’s skin, completely ignoring the massive sum of credits and the new tool. She just wanted the voice out of her head.

[BE EXTREMELY CAREFUL WITH THE INFORMATION YOU REVEAL TO THE ASSET, NIKKI.]

[IF YOU COMPROMISE THE MISSION AGAIN, THE NEXT PENALTY WILL NOT BE A SIMULATION. YOU WILL NOT WAKE UP.]

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