Chapter 89 The Man from Dimension Zero
ZARA’S POV
The service elevator descended with a groan that sounded like a dying whale.
It wasn't a smooth ride. It was a rattling, shaking descent into the bowels of the earth. The air inside the cage was hot, recycled, and thick with the scent of our similar panic.
Kai stood in the corner, leaning heavily against the rusted metal wall. His eyes were closed, his head tipped back, exposing the long, strong line of his throat. A bead of sweat traced a path from his jaw to his collarbone, and I caught myself watching it with a focus that was borderline obsessive.
He looked wrecked. Beautiful, but wrecked. You could notice a small stub of mustache growing beneath his chin. God!!! This guy was beautiful.
The silver circuitry under his skin was pulsing faster now, visible veins of light that throbbed in time with the flickering overhead bulb.
“You’re staring,” he murmured without opening his eyes.
“I’m monitoring,” I corrected, shifting my stance to block Mira’s view of him, though she was currently too busy hyperventilating into a paper bag she’d found in her pocket to notice.
Kai cracked one eye open. The iris was a swirling storm of mercury.
“You’re staring,” he repeated, a ghost of a smirk touching his lips.
“You like the scars.”
“I like the man attached to them,” I whispered, stepping closer.
"Stop feeling like a boss."
The elevator shuddered violently, throwing me forward. I didn't fight it. I let gravity do what it wanted and landed against his chest.
His hands came up instantly to steady me, gripping my waist. His thumbs dug into my hips, finding the space between my jeans and my shirt. The skin-on-skin contact sent a jolt through me that had nothing to do with the alien electricity and everything to do with him.
“Careful,” he rasped, his voice low and vibrating against my ear.
"Makes me wonder if you caused this gravity pull to happen."
“I’m running hot, Zara. I might burn you.”
I looked up at him.
“I’m fireproof.”
His gaze dropped to my lips. For a second, the elevator didn't exist. The war didn't exist. There was just the heat of his palms, the smell of rain and musk, and the desperate, hungry way he looked at me like I was the last drop of water in a desert.
He leaned in, his breath fanning across my cheek.
Ding.
The doors rattled open.
Kai flinched, pulling back, the soldier mask slamming back into place. I missed the warmth of him immediately.
“Welcome to the rabbit hole,” he muttered, unholstering his weapon.
We stepped out.
I expected a dungeon. I expected cold stone and dripping water.
What we walked into looked like a library had exploded inside a RadioShack.
The room was massive, carved out of the bedrock, but every inch of space was occupied. There were towering stacks of books that defied gravity, floating inches above the floor. There were chalkboards covered in equations that seemed to move when you looked at them peripherally.
There were beakers bubbling with liquids that glowed neon pink, and in the center of it all, a massive machine that looked like a brass lung was humming a low, B-flat note.
And sitting at a desk made of stacked tires and mahogany, eating a cup of instant noodles, was Professor Ajax.
He didn't look up.
“You’re late,” he said.
“I expected you seventeen minutes ago. The temporal drift must be worse than I calculated.”
“Professor?” I stepped forward, stepping over a coil of copper wire.
Ajax spun around in his chair. He was a small man, wiry, with hair that looked like he’d stuck a fork in an outlet, white and standing on end. He wore a tweed jacket with patches on the elbows and… bunny slippers.
“Zara Night!” He pointed a chopstick at me.
“The anomaly. The Devourer. The girl who thinks C-minus work on The Great Gatsby is acceptable. It wasn't, by the way. Your thesis was derivative.”
I blinked.
“We’re being hunted by time-traveling alien werewolves, and you’re grading my paper?”
“I’m an academic, Ms. Night. Standards must be maintained even during the apocalypse.”
He turned his gaze to Mira.
“And you. The Interface.”
Mira squeaked.
“Hi. I hacked your toaster. Sorry.”
“Fascinating,” Ajax muttered, standing up and shuffling toward us.
“The dormant gene activation. I theorized it, but seeing it… marvelous.”
Finally, he looked at Kai.
The playful eccentricity vanished from Ajax’s face. He stopped cold. He looked at Kai not with warmth, but with a clinical, detached curiosity that made my hackles rise.
“And the Prototype,” Ajax whispered.
Kai stiffened.
“Don’t call me that.”
“Strip,” Ajax ordered.
“Excuse me?” I snapped, stepping in front of Kai.
“I need to see the hardware, Ms. Night. The external interface is glitching. If I don't stabilize his core processor, his brain is going to melt out of his ears within the hour. Shirt. Off. Now.”
Kai hesitated, his jaw working. Then, with a resigned sigh, he holstered his gun and reached for the hem of his tactical shirt.
He pulled it over his head.
I had seen Kai shirtless before. I had touched him. But under the harsh, fluorescent lights of the lab, he looked… devastating.
His torso was a map of violence. Scars crossed his chest and abdomen, silvery lines against his tan skin. But the alien corruption was worse. The metal Voss had spoken of was visible now patches of shimmering, liquid chrome that seemed to be replacing his skin along his ribs and spine.
It was beautiful in a terrifying way.
Ajax walked around him, poking and prodding with a cold metal instrument.
“Fascinating,” Ajax mumbled.
“The integration is nearly 80%. The biological rejection should have killed you years ago. Why are you still standing?”
“Spite,” Kai gritted out.
Ajax hummed. He pressed the metal probe against a patch of silver on Kai’s lower back, right above the waistband of his pants.
Kai hissed, his back arching, his hands gripping the edge of a table so hard the wood splintered.
“Stop!” I lunged forward, grabbing Ajax’s wrist.
“You’re hurting him.”
Ajax looked at me, unimpressed.
“Do you think that you need to be outside the room Ms. Night?“
“I am calibrating him. He is a machine, Ms. Night. Pain is just a signal.”
“He is not a machine.”
I released Ajax and moved to Kai. I placed my hands on his chest, right over the scars, my palms flat against his skin. He was burning up, shaking with the effort to stay still.
“Look at me,” I commanded softly.
Kai’s eyes were squeezed shut, sweat dripping from his lashes. He opened them slowly. The silver was swirling violently, threatening to swallow the black pupils.
“It hurts,” he whispered, the admission tearing out of him.
“I know.” I slid my hands up his neck, threading my fingers into the hair at the nape of his neck. I pulled his head down until our foreheads touched.
“Focus on me. Focus on my hands.”
“Your hands are cold,” he murmured, a faint smile ghosting his lips.
“And you’re a furnace.”
I kept my body flush against his, ignoring Ajax, ignoring Mira. I needed him to feel the difference between the cold metal probe and a human touch. I needed him to know that he was flesh and blood to me.
I ran my thumbs along his jawline, soothing the tension there.
“You’re here,” I whispered.
“You’re Kai Storm. You hate peanut butter. You snore when you’re really tired. You’re real.”
He let out a long, shaky breath, his body sagging against mine. He buried his face in my neck, his arms coming around me to lock me in place.
“I don’t snore,” he mumbled against my skin.
“You absolutely do.”
Ajax cleared his throat loudly.
“Touching display. Hormones are a powerful drug. However, if you are quite finished fondling the nuclear weapon, I need to explain why we are all about to die.”
Kai pulled back slowly, though he kept one hand on my lower back, his thumb rubbing circles into the fabric of my shirt. It was a possessive, unconscious gesture that made my knees weak.
“Talk, Ajax,” Kai said, his voice stronger now. The silver in his eyes had receded slightly.
Ajax walked to a chalkboard and erased a formula that looked like gibberish. He drew a single straight line.
“This,” he said, tapping the line.
"Is the timeline. The Arrow of Time. Cause leads to Effect. You are born, you live, you die.”
He drew a circle that looped back on itself, eating its own tail.
“This is what Dr. Voss created. An Ouroboros. A loop. The future werewolves, the ones who became machines to survive, realized they were dying out. No souls. No reproduction. So they traveled back to harvest the essence of their ancestors.”
“We know this,” I said impatient.
“Voss told us.”
“Did she tell you about the anchor?” Ajax asked.
He turned to Kai.
“Time doesn't like loops, boy. Nature abhors a paradox. The universe is trying to snap this loop shut, which would erase everything, past, present, and future. To keep the loop open, to keep the bridge between the future and the present stable, they needed a physical anchor. Someone who exists in both worlds.”
Ajax pointed the chalk at Kai’s chest.
“You.”
The room went silent.
“Me?” Kai asked.
“You are the hybrid,” Ajax explained.
“Half ancient werewolf, half future-tech. You are the literal bridge. As long as you are alive, the portal remains open. As long as you breathe, Voss and her army can come through.”
Kai went pale. His hand fell from my back.
He looked down at his own hands, horror dawning on his face.
“I’m the door,” he whispered.
“I’m not just a soldier. I’m the door.”
“Correct,” Ajax said cheerfully.
“And if you die? The door slams shut. The future timeline collapses. Voss and her entire fleet vanish from existence.”
I felt the blood drain from my face.
“So,” Kai said, his voice hollow.
“To save the world… I just have to die.”
“No!” I shouted.
The word ripped out of me before I could think.
“It’s the logical solution,” Ajax shrugged.
“Utilitarian ethics. One life for billions.”
“I don’t care about the billions!” I snapped, stepping between Kai and Ajax again.
My Devourer power flared, purple light crackling around my fingers.
“I care about him.”
Kai looked at me, his expression unreadable.
“Zara…”
“Don’t,” I warned him, turning to face him.
I grabbed his face again, forcing him to look at me.
“Don’t you dare do that math in your head. Don’t you dare calculate that your life is worth less.”
“It’s just math, Zara,” he said softly, sad resignation in his eyes.
“Screw the math.”
I pulled him down and kissed him.
It was angry. It was terrified. It was a claim.
I bit his lip, tasting blood, demanding he stay in the present. I pressed my body against his bare chest, uncaring of the scars or the metal or the sweat. I wanted to brand him. I wanted to remind him that his body belonged to me, not to the timeline.
He froze for a second, stunned by the ferocity, and then he broke.
He groaned, a low, guttural sound, and kissed me back with equal force. His hands tangled in my hair, tilting my head back to deepen the angle. It was messy and hot and full of teeth and tongue.
“I’m not letting you go,” I murmured against his mouth.
“I will eat the entire timeline if I have to. But you are not dying.”
He rested his forehead against mine, breathing hard. His eyes were wide, blown dark with lust and shock.
“You’re terrifying,” he whispered admiringly.
“Get used to it.”
“Ahem,” Ajax interrupted again.
“As stimulating as this melodrama is, I have an alternative to suicide. It involves the tech-witch over there.”
He pointed at Mira.
Mira looked up from a microscope she had been hiding behind.
“Me?”
“Yes, you. The Interface,” Ajax said.
“If we can’t destroy the door… maybe we can re-key the lock.”
He looked at Kai, then at me.
“But we have to be fast. Because according to my sensors…”
The lights in the lab turned red.
“…Dr. Voss just bypassed the firewall. She’s in the system.”
A mechanical voice echoed through the room, coming from every speaker, every computer, every device.
“Prototype 0-1. Return to base for disassembly.”
Kai flinched, clutching his heHi, is it okay to mark the story "The last hunt" complete even tho I'd not reach the estimated word count ad.
“She’s here,” he gasped.
I grabbed his hand, interlacing our fingers. The ring he gave me dug into my skin.
“Let’s break some stuff,” I said.
Kai looked at me, the silver in his eyes fading, replaced by the warm, human gray I loved. He squeezed my hand.
“Lead the way, trouble.”