Big Bang Read online

  So close, so close. She could all but feel the beating of his heart, the wash of loneliness and need, as if a whole empty, hungry universe was laid out in front of her, daring her to grab hold. She’d never asked for a universe—just one connection, a lifeline into the void, a voice on the other end that would answer back when she called out.

  So close. Every point of silver in her mind’s eye was a glittering star, spiraling faster, the universe returning to one point where she would finally understand…everything. Not just his source code, the answer to everything.

  She reached for it, as greedy and desperate as any thwarted grifter.

  She grabbed it, grabbed him, and the universe exploded within her.

  And she discovered that one Earther girl, no matter how clever she thought she was, couldn’t hold the Big Bang alone.

  This time, she screamed.

  Chapter 8

  She had unearthed the Omega protocol.

  Frantically, calling on every bit of physical and coded power, he yanked back the nanites. For a heartbeat, the silver fog spiraled around them. Every nerve and nanite pathway in his body blazed, and he tasted her in every cell—sweetness and spice and an earthy musk that he would’ve thought was the world itself except that it came uniquely from her.

  The feedback hit his system in a blinding rush, and all he could do was hold her tight as his body bowed backward in a fiery deluge of annihilation.

  Stricken, he keeled over. With the last of his awareness, he turned to catch her against his chest so he took the brunt of the fall. He closed his eyes and prepared to die.

  Only the gusting of her hot breath across his bare chest told him they still lived.

  How could that be when they’d just destroyed the world?

  Slowly, her breath eased, and the silver glow scintillating across his skin faded, leaving him spent.

  “That was great,” she murmured. “Wow.”

  Wow? They’d probably just exploded everything beyond their immediate shelter, and she said wow.

  “Vic, we just destroyed the world.”

  She chuckled and boosted herself a little higher on his chest to nuzzle the point of his jaw below his ear. That gesture was not referenced in the pornography folder, so he couldn’t quite understand the delicate shiver that went through him. An aftermath, maybe, of what just happened.

  “You certainly wrecked me,” she whispered.

  “No,” he drawled, reluctant to ruin her mood. “Our experiment triggered the Omega protocol.”

  “Yeah, the big O,” she drawled back.

  “Not orgasm,” he said. “Omega. The end.”

  “But we haven’t ended,” she pointed out, more reasonably than seemed reasonable to him right now. “We’re right here.”

  In his cave in the badlands, with her in his arms. If the Omega protocol had been triggered, they wouldn’t be having this conversation. Or any conversation. He tightened his hold on her.

  With a little wriggle of protest at his grip, she propped herself up on one elbow, the bony point digging into his belly. Brushing back the waves of her dark brown hair, she stared down at him. “We just had tantric robot sex. That is nowhere in my IDA profile or my porn.”

  “Sorry,” he muttered.

  She laughed and scooted up to kiss him on the mouth, her hip bumping his. When the nanites stirred with interest, he forced them down. But something else stirred with interest, lower down.

  Vic smirked at him. “So… Not just tantric robot sex.”

  “I am not just a robot.”

  Instantly her amusement vanished. “I know. You really are more than a cyborg. You know that, right? When your nanites flowed into me, I saw your code. But it was more than that.” She bit her lip, her lashes fluttering down. “It was… Cosmo, it was cosmic. I saw that we’re connected. Not just you and me, in that moment, but always, everywhere. There’s a code or pathways—no, a weaving to the universe and everything in it.” She blew out a breath that puffed her hair into his face. “But already it’s fading from my memory. Do you… Can you see that all the time?”

  Reluctant to disappoint her, he shook his head. “I control the nanites outside my body somewhat, as you’ve seen, and when I focus, I can feel them inside so I’ve sensed the pathways. But never like that. Sharing them with you expanded the scope, maybe because of your different background and understanding.”

  “I might know computers, but not cosmic revelations. I need to get the insight out of my head and into a data gel before I forget.” But she didn’t rise. Instead, she kept tracing the silver lines on his chest. “Cosmo… Do you feel that close to destroying the world all the time?”

  He hesitated. “Not like that.”

  Her smile flashed again. “Is it wrong to say that might be the nicest thing anyone has ever said to me?”

  “Very wrong.” Surging to his feet, he carried her with him, ignoring her little yelp. “But I’m an illegal, immoral construct with a death wish, so maybe don’t ask me about right and wrong.”

  Though he put her down, she didn’t step away. “I know I can unravel this. Not just the keyholder lock, but the Omega protocol too.” Reaching up, she brushed her fingertips over the bristling stubble of his hair. “You should be able to make love without thinking that your big O will end in a big bang.”

  He nodded but didn’t reply.

  What if he liked the feeling?

  He kept the thought to himself as they went through another stack of crates from the Fallen A. They finally found a case of gel cylinders—not from the ship’s main data core—but most of the gels inside the transparent canisters were dark, damaged from the crash and decayed from the passage of time and lack of care.

  Vic grumbled over the loss but combined two of the still soluble gels, added a few intact crystals from the dried gels, and redirected the power from one of the lighting strips into the canister. When the gels glowed, she cheered.

  “I didn’t know that was possible,” he said.

  She grinned. “You doubted me?”

  “Never again.”

  “Well, I think this was originally part of the ship’s galley, only meant to hold recipes, meal preferences for the crew, resupply schedules, etcetera, so don’t be too impressed.”

  “Why would a shroud transport need a kitchen computer? We were all in stasis and would’ve been given only carbon anyway.”

  “That’s why any of the gel survived this long, since it was basically still in its original packaging and unmodified.” She held out her hand to him. “Okay, now you have to recall the nanites you gave me. But instead of taking them back into yourself, send them into the gel, like you did when you did the puppet show of our meeting with Troy. And you have to help me hold the shape of what I saw when we…when we kissed.”

  “More than robot sex,” he murmured as he laced his fingers between hers.

  She tugged his hand, and though the force was negligible compared to his size and strength, he stepped toward her. “Much more,” she agreed. “Shall we kiss again?”

  He half closed his eyes. “We won’t blow up?”

  “Only in a good way.”

  He lowered his head, watching her. The darker hue around her deep-set eyes was just the thinner skin revealing the delicate flush of capillaries, he realized, as if he was looking at the vital flow of her life. Much like his own silver lines. And the red-brown speckles of melanin over her nose and cheeks marked a constellation of fascination to him that he could spend another century charting.

  Except… His gaze dropped to the earthy red of her lips, gently parted. She was waiting for his kiss. He could not wait a century, not even another heartbeat—and his heart was going very fast indeed.

  Tentatively, he brushed his lips over hers. Knowing where this could go—straight to the end—made his pulse fly even faster. And her soft exhalation might as well have been a solar storm wind blowing him completely off course.

  He yanked her back into his arm, hauling her up against his
chest to kiss her long and hard. She wrapped one arm tight behind his neck and bent him low, asking for and granting no caution. Maybe she liked the world ending too.

  He caught only a faint glimpse of the coded design she’d described as the nanites followed his command into the gel. Daunted by the convolution, he closed his eyes and let them flow away from him. Much more than he’d anticipated, more than he’d initially blown into her.

  The outflow left him dizzy—or maybe it was just kissing Vic—and he opened his eyes again. The half-dead gel had brightened from the influx of nano energy, and brilliant threads like miniature lightning unfurled through the medium. When she swayed, he held on tight to her though he was barely standing.

  If they fell again…

  She broke the kiss and he straightened, gasping, as if the air anywhere on this planet wouldn’t always remind him of her.

  Leaning toward him, she rested her forehead on his chest. Her touch earlier had unsealed the armor underlayer, and he hadn’t bothered to affix it again. Maybe he never would, not if she’d keep touching him. His remaining nanites swarmed to the spot, sending a pulse of silver through the pathways over his primary circulatory organ.

  She twisted her head to peer up at him, and the light turned her dark eyes golden. “Your heart glows.”

  He couldn’t admit how close he was to collapse. Ignoring the gel, he carefully set her to one side. “Why don’t you…do whatever you do with code while I find us something to eat.”

  She eyed him. “Are you all right?”

  “Hungry.” That wasn’t a lie. “And not much use to you at this point.” Also not a lie.

  Her gaze slid back to the gel. “It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” She put the trembling fingertips of one hand to her lips, where he’d just been kissing her. “Cosmo,” she whispered. “Do you know what this is?”

  Most of his nanites expelled into blank synthetic brain goo? “What?”

  She touched the canister. “This is a shroud imprinting code, shaped by a kiss, patterned on an Intergalactic Dating Agency wish list, bookended by the threat of a world’s end, sunk into memory.”

  He squinted. “Yeah. Wasn’t that what we wanted?”

  She raised her glimmering eyes to his. “This is basically the closest thing ever to a visible manifestation of…love.”

  No wonder he was faltering. He was Omega. The end. He’d absorbed enough from her files—and from her—to understand that love was eternal.

  Essentially incompatible with what he was, not just at his heart but all the way through.

  He swallowed hard, tasting sweetness, spice…and sorrow.

  When he took a step away from her, he almost stumbled. “Would you like your toast not burnt?”

  She stared at him. “Cosmo? Are you—?”

  “You have my nanites,” he said brusquely. “The rest of me will be back…later.”

  He strode away from her, barely holding on.

  An Omega never had to hold on. Couldn’t. Not when his only purpose was to obliterate.

  But if he lost this fight, he’d stumble back to her and take her and never let her go.

  And no place in the universe were “never” and “the end” compatible.

  ***

  Vic started to follow him, but her knees wobbled. An essentially immortal cyborg time bomb wasn’t going to be too impressed with a wobbly woman trailing him around his man cave, asking him what he was feeeeeeling.

  She sat down on one of the crates next to the gel canister. The data was still propagating through the gel, each fractal curl spinning off into another finer filigree. The process was hypnotic, but her attention kept wandering after Cosmo.

  The cavern was warmer and brighter than she would’ve expected—for a cave—but it still felt too big and hollow.

  Maybe once that would’ve seemed appropriate for a killer robot, but she knew Cosmo was more than that. She just had to prove it—to the rest of his matrix, who hadn’t given him a real chance, but also to the planetary authorities who were bound to find out about the shrouds eventually. While Mach and Delta would likely be deemed highly rehabilitated with Lun-mei and Lindy beside them, Cosmo would always seem…other.

  And again, maybe once that would’ve been something she’d try to fix. Part of her job had been to streamline systems, to make sure all data fit into proper compartments and all routines followed established procedures. She had to let go of that with Cosmo. He might’ve been programmed to explode, but he wasn’t broken.

  She stared blindly at the dark parts of the gel. She just had to find a way to give him other outlets.

  When he returned with some sort of food packet, she opened it absentmindedly, still focused on the problem that was partly in front of her and still partly in her head.

  The first slurp-crunch knocked her out of her coding space. “What the heck?”

  “HELS, actually. High-energy larder supplement.” He handed over a squeeze bottle. “Helps if you drink something with it.”

  She grimaced. “So now it’s HELS soup.”

  “Makes it easier to finish faster.” He started to walk away.

  “Cosmo.” When he stopped but didn’t turn, she tried to think of what else to say. “Thank you. I was hungry too.”

  He glanced over his shoulder at her, not quite meeting her gaze. “HELS might keep you alive after crash landing, but it’s not suitable for long-term use.”

  She shrugged. “Well, we won’t be here that—”

  “Like me.”

  “Like… What?” Would he ever stop confusing her?

  “An Omega is not suitable for long-term use,” he went on stubbornly. “By definition.”

  She frowned. “I’m not using you. We’re doing this together.”

  “We aren’t.” He finally pivoted to face her, widening his stance. “We aren’t together. Not like the Alpha and his Earther, not like the Delta and his two.”

  A hot, unpleasant flush prickled through her. “I didn’t mean like that. We have…a mission together.”

  But he only shook his head. “An Omega has only one mission—”

  “Dammit, Cosmo.” The prickling flashed to anger. “Don’t be like this.”

  For a heartbeat, the silver cleared from his eyes, leaving only a pure sky blue. “This is what I am, Vic Ray. All I’ll ever be. And that’s not enough for someone who…someone who can catch love in a bottle. Someone like you.”

  They stared at each other across the cavern.

  What could she say to change his mind? What if she couldn’t? Maybe he was right and his code would defeat her. He’d been here more than a century, hiding in the badlands. And, really, how far had she gotten in all her years? She’d seen more of the universe than most Earthers, and still she was stuck wondering if she’d ever find a place she felt she belonged.

  “What more do you want?” she challenged him.

  He stiffened. “I don’t need anything.”

  “But what do you want?” She traced one finger over the gel cylinder where the threads of data glimmered. It was just a simulacrum of links and bonds, though, the pathways that connected the points—not the real thing.

  Could he be a real thing?

  She unplugged the cylinder from the lighting cable. For a moment, the gel dimmed before the infused nanites picked up the slack, maintaining the code she’d set. The “memory” wouldn’t last forever, not even if Cosmo reinfused the gel. It really was lightning in a bottle. And she could only hope it would save the shrouds.

  At least the ones that wanted to be saved.

  Tucking the canister under her arm, she faced Cosmo. “I thought wanting more was bad. Maybe my birth parents sold me to get more for themselves or maybe they wanted more for me. My adoptive parents never had enough, and the people they cheated were susceptible because they thought they deserved more too. So instead of going after something for myself, I went to work for a universe of beings looking for more, believing something—someone—was out there looking for them.
” She laughed, as hollow as the cavern. “I was writing the universal code for falling in love. And, look here, I finally did it.”

  When she bobbled the cylinder recklessly in her hands, Cosmo sucked in a harsh breath. “Vic…”

  “But now that’s not enough either. I don’t want love in a bottle. And I won’t be stuck in a cave.” She gave him a hard look. “Maybe it’ll blow up in my face, but at least I’ll be shooting for the stars.”

  He returned her stare with eyes of hard silver. “I have only a few memories of the stars. And it did blow up. I just don’t want to take you or anyone else with me.”

  Had she really thought she could fight an Omega shroud and win? She lifted her chin. “I need to take this gel to my studio at the ranch. Will you get me there?”

  He turned toward the exit without answering, but she supposed that was answer enough.

  Chapter 9

  She stayed up till dawn with her scans and her blinky alien ooze. Not so long ago, she would’ve called that a great Friday night date.

  But that was before she’d had tantric robot sex.

  With a stubborn killer cyborg.

  Vic chomped down on her second donut, tearing into it with more vigor than a chocolate glazed really deserved.

  Ha, well, how many beings really got what they deserved?

  Not that a chocolate donut was a being, but it was representative of—

  “Uh, I was going to ask if you needed more coffee,” Lindy said, peering through the doorway, “but now I’m thinking definitely no.”

  Vic blinked around her at the wreckage of coffee cups, napkins, scraps of paper that might’ve been her notations from earlier in the night or maybe just blotting up spilled coffee… Still, it wasn’t worse than the Cavern of Misfit Cyborgs.

  Wasn’t better either, despite her sanctimonious speech to Cosmo yesterday. And she couldn’t even blame her selfish demands on sugar and caffeine and lack of sleep.

  Although those were a reasonable excuse now when she gazed mournfully at the older woman. “Why couldn’t the consortium make unsexy shrouds?” she whined.