Page 61 of The Gathering
He came to a sudden stop, everything in him going numb at what she’d just fucking said without words.
She’d gone into the Dungeon. How else would this happen? What did he need to know to unravel the fucking nightmare? No, to undo it. There had to be something. There was always something. “Did you…fuckthem?”
She gave a dry half laugh. It was the last thing he needed to know but had to. For all the wrong reasons. “I’ll start from thebeginning,” she said, ignoring the question. “As Big G was about to say, it started on day… what was it, Big G?”
“Three weeks, four days and seven hours.”
He held her stare, his stomach sick at what was coming. The data he knew was there, the fucked up data he alone had caused. “That’s the number,” she informed quietly. “The number of days I fought to stay alive.”
“She hadn’t slept.”
Ethan’s blood froze at Omnis’ Dungeon voice in the speaker. For some reason he was a bigger tragedy and threat than Zero.
“I’m not talking to you,” Ethan swore, closing his eyes.
“No, no, no,” Cat said, shaking her head. “He gets to speak with me and for me.Hesaved my life.”
Ethan turned and held on to the rail, holding his jaw shut.
“Anyway,” Cat said, her voice a casual quiver. “There I was… another day of dying without you. Dying for you, becauseof you. And your beautiful,digitalbrother picked up all the shattered pieces of my soul andcarefully,” she whispered. “So very carefully, put me back together.”
“Soyouinvited her into the Dungeon.” He already fucking knew.
“I did,” Omnis said, his tone heavier than he’d ever heard it.
“He tracked my pain,” Cat went on. “My cortisol levels, the spikes I got at three a.m. while lying awake, staring at the ceiling fan. Thinking of you,” she barely whispered, her fucking pain gutting him.
“He knew that I cycled between numbness and suffocation. He knew I was…dying,” she gasped, her breaths shaking.
“Cat,” he whispered, pushing air through his lungs. “I’m so sorry.”
“Don’t say it, don’t say that,” she whispered back.
Ethan forced himself back to the only thing he could do—find an answer, find another way.
“Omnis,” Cat called quietly.
“Yes, Catherine?”
His brother’s hot affection burned inside his blood, pushing him closer to the ledge.
“Tell him what you told me. About the two of you watching over me.”
Ethan gripped the rail, bracing for what was coming.
“I said we had your entire grief pattern mapped like a constellation.”
Cat’s sob clobbered his fucking chest. “That was… the most beautiful thing I’d ever heard… in my pathetic life,” she forced out.
“Cat,” he gushed, hanging his head.
“No, not yet,” she said. “You have to hear it. You have to hearallof it. What happened next, Omnis?”
“You asked why I watched you. Why I cared. And I told you I was built to care for Ethan. And you were now a part of him.”
“Yes,” she gasped. “And that’s what you did, isn’t it? You helped me because I was now a part of Ethan.”
“Yes,” he said softly. “At first.”
