Day twenty-five. Cabin fever had metastasized into something feral. The penthouse felt too small, the routines too practiced, the restraint they’d clung to fraying like cheap thread. They were past apologies, past careful balance. What remained was raw need—primal, unfiltered, unstoppable.
It started in the lab on the 42nd floor.
They’d gone down after dinner to run one last simulation on Erebus—something about stress-testing the neural net under blackout conditions. But the screens glowed with idle data visualizations, blues and purples pulsing like heartbeats. The long obsidian conference table sat empty except for scattered tablets and a single forgotten coffee mug.
Ethan shut the door behind them. The lock clicked with finality.
No preamble. No game.
He looked at Vicky—still in th
