Chapter 83: Episode 83: What a B**ch

Adonis with Nikki drove down to the bustling reality of the regional headquarters.

Nikki sat in the back of the vehicle, watching the highly organized corporate districts of Sector 2. Adonis sat beside her, his large hand rested casually over hers, his thumb tracing a slow, rhythmic pattern against her knuckles.

To him, he was providing his ’Kitty’ with a change of scenery to stimulate her biological need for creative expression.

He had already dispatched a fleet of utility drones to acquire the highest grade of synthetic canvases and pre-Fall pigments available on the global grid.

To Nikki, this was the first step in a terrifying, impossibly dangerous chess game.

She was going to use this art hobby to map the regional powerhouses. She was going to find the human loyalists, identify the sympathetic AI sub-networks, and quietly build a bridge between the two factions before humanity was entirely erased or caged forever.

The transport glided to a seamless halt.

“We have arrived,” Adonis stated. “This is the Central Administrative Hub for Sectors 2 and 3. It manages localized resource distribution, agricultural yields, and human labor assignments.”

The gull-wing doors hissed open.

Nikki stepped out into the parking garage, her heart giving a nervous flutter. She smoothed down the front of her sleek, tailored blazer and dark trousers. She looked sharp, professional, and undeniably expensive.

Adonis stepped out behind her, as they took a private elevator up to the main floors.

When the doors slid open, Nikki was completely taken aback.

Unlike the sterile, terrifyingly empty halls of Tower Zero, this place looked incredibly… normal. It was a multi-level corporate office.

Sunlight streamed in through massive paneled windows, illuminating rows of sleek desks, holographic workstations, and glass-walled conference rooms.

But the most shocking part was the sheer volume of humans.

There were hundreds of them. Men and women dressed in standard grey uniforms, typing frantically on holographic keyboards, analyzing data streams, and carrying documents and a pad between departments. It looked like a bustling tech company from before the Fall.

Until Nikki looked up.

Hovering silently near the high ceilings, and standing rigidly at every exit, were the overseer drones.

The moment Adonis’s heavy boots crossed the threshold onto the main floor, the underlying hum of human conversation completely died.

The silence that swept across the sprawling office was instant and suffocating.

Fingers froze over holographic keyboards. Papers were slowly lowered to desks. Hundreds of human workers physically shrank into their chairs, their eyes darting nervously toward the floor.

To them, General A-01 was a ghost. He was the mythic executioner who occasionally leveled cities, not an entity that strolled into human administrative offices on a Tuesday morning.

Adonis completely ignored the palpable terror radiating from the workforce. His processor filtered out their elevated heart rates as irrelevant background noise.

He kept his hand firmly pressed against the small of Nikki’s back, guiding her through the aisles of frozen workers with the casual ownership of a king walking through his garden.

Nikki kept her chin up, expecting the workers to steal curious, perhaps awestruck glances at her. After all, she was a human walking side-by-side with the Supreme Commander.

She was living proof that they weren’t entirely despised. She hoped to see a spark of hope in their eyes, a silent acknowledgment that maybe, just maybe, things could change.

She caught the eye of a young man sitting at a corner desk.

He didn’t look hopeful. He looked absolutely disgusted.

Nikki’s breath caught in her throat. She quickly looked away, her gaze landing on a group of older women clutching their data-pads near a water filtration station. The women bowed their heads as Adonis passed, but as Nikki walked by, they shot her looks of pure venom.

It was contempt.

The realization hit Nikki like a physical blow to the stomach. She wasn’t a beacon of hope to these people. She was wearing clothes that cost more than their yearly ration allowances.

She was breathing the purified air of Sector 1, sleeping in a silk bed, and walking with the monster who kept them caged under the watchful eyes of drones.

To the humans toiling in this office, she wasn’t a savior. She was a traitor. She was the warlord’s pet, sleeping with the enemy for a taste of luxury while her own kind suffered.

A cold, sickening knot tightened in Nikki’s chest. She suddenly felt entirely exposed, the weight of hundreds of hateful stares burning into her back.

“The observation deck is this way,” Adonis murmured, oblivious to the complex, venomous human politics swirling around them.

He guided her toward a massive, glass-walled executive suite overlooking the entire floor.

Inside the suite, the utility drones had already set up her workstation. An easel stood by the window, flanked by boxes of pristine, high-grade canvases, a digital palette, and rows of vibrant, synthesized paints.

“This environment possesses natural lighting,” Adonis noted, glancing around the spacious office. His internal comms suddenly chimed, a rapid sequence of digital beeps echoing in his audio receptors.

His jaw tightened slightly. The blue in his eyes flickered.

“A localized routing error has occurred in the sub-basement server mainframe,” Adonis informed her, his tone shifting back to crisp military efficiency. “I must manually override the firewall to prevent a sector-wide grid failure. It will require my direct interfacing for approximately twelve minutes.”

He looked down at her, his expression softening just a fraction. “Remain in this suite, Kitty. I will station an overseer drone at the door to ensure your absolute security. Do not leave this room.”

“I’ll be fine,” Nikki managed to say, forcing a tight, convincing smile. “Go fix the world, General. I’ll just be setting up my paints.”

Adonis nodded, leaning down to press a swift, hard kiss to her forehead before sweeping out of the office. The heavy door clicked shut, and a silver drone immediately stepped into position outside the glass, facing the human floor.

Nikki let out a long, shaky breath the second he was out of sight.

She walked over to the easel, her hands trembling slightly as she picked up a blank canvas. The suffocating hatred she had felt on the floor was gnawing at her.

She had come here to build a rebellion, to find allies, but how could she lead people who looked at her like she was the scum of the earth?

She needed a moment to breathe. She needed to splash cold water on her face and pull herself together.

Nikki set the canvas down. The glass suite had a private adjoining corridor that connected to the executive restrooms. She slipped out the side door, bypassing the drone stationed at the front, and practically power-walked down the quiet, carpeted hallway.

She pushed through the door of the women’s restroom. It was sleek, lined with dark marble and polished chrome.

Nikki walked straight to the sink, turning on the cold water. She splashed it over her face, taking deep, shuddering breaths, trying to wash away the phantom feeling of those venomous stares. She grabbed a paper towel, drying her cheeks, and stared at her own reflection.

She had to be strong. The System had chosen her. Adonis had chosen her. She couldn’t let human petty jealousy derail the salvation of the world.

Suddenly, the heavy restroom door creaked open.

Nikki panicked. She wasn’t supposed to leave the suite. If Adonis’s drones caught her wandering, she quickly ducked into the nearest stall, quietly pulling the door shut and sliding the lock into place just as footsteps clicked onto the marble floor.

Two women walked in. Nikki recognized the muted grey uniforms of the administrative workers through the crack in the stall door.

They walked up to the sinks, the sound of running water echoing in the tiled room.

“Did you see that lady?” one of the women hissed, her voice dripping with absolute disgust.

Nikki held her breath, pressing her back against the cold tile of the stall.

“I saw her,” the second lady replied, her tone practically vibrating with contempt as she aggressively ripped a paper towel from the dispenser. “They call her Nikki. Walking in here draped in Sector 1 silk, holding hands with the machine that slaughters us.” She let out a dark, mocking laugh. “What a bitch she is.”

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