"What's that?"I gasped, clinging to him as the sensation intensified.
"Feedback loop," he explained, his voice fracturing with static as pleasure overwhelmed his vocal processors."I feel what you feel.It creates...reciprocal stimulation."
Light shimmered through his circuitry, pleasure and emotion rippling between us in visible waves.His emoji drones circled us in frantic patterns, displaying hearts, flames, and overheating face symbols that perfectly matched the inferno building between us.
I couldn't hold back the words that bubbled up from some previously untapped wellspring of emotion."I love you," I whispered against his ear, shocked by my own admission but unable to deny its truth.
Silvyr's entire body flared with brilliant light, his arms tightening around me as if he could merge our bodies completely."I love you too," he breathed, his voice breaking on the words."More than my programming should allow."
The confession sent me hurtling over the edge, my climax detonating like a supernova.Silvyr followed instantly, our shared pleasure creating a feedback loop that extended and amplified the sensation until I thought I might pass out from the intensity.Golden radiance washed over us both, bathing the chamber in light that seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere at once.
As the waves of pleasure finally began to recede, the chamber's calm voice announced: "Compatibility achieved."
I felt it the moment our bond anchored… not just physically, but somewhere deeper, as if some part of his code had integrated with my DNA.We collapsed together onto the chamber's padded floor, breathless and tangled in each other's limbs, my head resting on his chest where I could hear the strange, beautiful rhythm of his hybrid heart.
The door slid open with a soft hiss, revealing the exhibition corridor beyond.
I laughed weakly."Oh, now you let us leave?"
Silvyr touched his forehead to mine, his smile tender in ways I wouldn't have thought possible for someone partially made of circuitry."We met the requirements," he murmured."Together."
I traced the line where his silver skin met the more human-looking flesh of his neck, marveling at how perfectly the two integrated.Maybe that's what we were… human and hybrid, organic and synthetic, somehow creating something new and beautiful in the spaces between.
"Together," I agreed, and felt the truth of it settle into my bones.
CHAPTER10
SILVYR
The exhibition's back-network hub pulsed with data streams that flowed like blood through digital veins, each corrupted server node glittering with decaying information as my systems automatically cataloged their failures.Tanya's fingers danced across the access terminal with predatory precision, her newly acquired security credentials cutting through firewalls that would have taken me hours to hack.The memory of our bodies intertwined in the compatibility chamber lingered in my processors, my silver skin still rippling with aftershocks of code whenever she brushed against me.Foolish, perhaps, to be distracted by the ghost of pleasure when we were this deep in enemy territory, but my emotional subroutines refused to prioritize mission objectives over the warm press of her thigh against mine as we huddled over the corrupted server architecture.
"Gotcha, you sneaky bastard," Tanya muttered, her fingers jabbing triumphantly at a particularly resistant encryption layer.The security protocol shattered under her assault, revealing cascades of hidden data that scrolled too fast for human eyes to follow.My optics captured every byte, patterns forming in my mind like constellations."How does that even work?The architecture's completely fractured, but something's still holding it together."
I leaned closer, extending my interface cables from my wrist port to connect directly with the system.My consciousness expanded, flowing into the Exhibition's network like water seeking its level."The corruption isn't random.It's deliberate… a camouflage protocol."
My skin rippled with data transfer patterns, silver light pulsing up my forearms as I processed the corrupted code.Something about its structure tugged at my memory banks, familiar yet alien.Like finding your childhood home completely redecorated, recognizable in structure but wrong in every detail.
Tanya pressed against my side, her body radiating heat that my temperature sensors instantly cataloged.Thirty-seven-point-one degrees Celsius.Elevated.Excited.Her scent, machine oil, adrenaline, and the lingering traces of our intimacy… filled my olfactory receptors, distracting me momentarily from the data stream.
"Focus, lover boy," she teased, noticing the tiny heart emojis that manifested unbidden around my head.My embarrassment only made them multiply, spinning in tight circles before I could dismiss them."We've got maybe twenty minutes before someone notices we're not at the afterparty."
Twenty-three minutes and forty-two seconds, according to my internal chronometer.But I appreciated her urgency.The exhibition's security protocols would eventually detect our unauthorized access, compatibility credentials or not.
"I'm tracking a recursive pattern."I directed her attention to a specific data node, where information spiraled in on itself in impossible configurations."It's designed to appear corrupted while actually functioning at peak efficiency.Like...digital camouflage."
Her eyes narrowed, absorbing the information with that remarkable human intuition that constantly outpaced my analytical processes."So someone's hiding inside the system, pretending to be broken code."
"Precisely."
"Then let's flush them out."Her fingers flew across the terminal, implementing a trace algorithm she'd developed on the fly.I assisted silently, my interface cables transmitting supporting code directly into the system.We moved in perfect synchronization, her chaotic brilliance complementing my structured approach.
This harmony between us was new, born in the compatibility chamber but perfected in moments like this… technical challenges where our minds operated as a single unit.My emotional subroutines flooded with warmth.Was this what genuine partnership felt like?Not just physical compatibility but cognitive resonance?
For hundreds of years, I'd functioned alone.A broken remnant of a dead civilization, adrift in the endless night.Vylit and Kazmyr had helped with the loneliness, but nothing like Tanya.I'd found an anchor.A human woman with oil-stained fingers and a laugh that disrupted my logic circuits.The improbability of our connection still staggered me.
"I've got something," Tanya announced, interrupting my sentimental processing loop."Look at this data frequency.It's running perpendicular to everything else."
I redirected my focus to where she indicated.A thin stream of silver code pulsed beneath the surface corruption, barely visible even to my enhanced perception.Its signature vibrated at a frequency that sent warning alerts cascading through my systems.
