The love-hotel's pornographic holograms flicker and die around them, leaving just shadows and electric rain. Glory's synthetic skin shimmers mercury-bright as she arches against him, her neon freckles painting consteltions in the dark.
She was built to be fwless— Muse Series Nine, top of the line.
The first time he id eyes on her, the Muse showroom might as well have been a cathedral. Her, standing altar-still, silver hair drinking neon like liquid divinity. Every curve, every angle, a symphony he'd spend lifetimes trying to capture.
When Glory saw him, she knew right-away he wasn't like the others— all careful distance and cold calcution. When she’d watch him create - watch lightning pour from his fingertips - something deep in her code caught fire. Where other artists saw her skin, he seemed to be digging for her soul. His eyes kept searching hers between brushstrokes, like he knew she was in there, like he was trying to paint her free.
Her system threw errors she'd never felt before.
Temperature spikes that had nothing to do with ambient heat.
Pleasure responses firing in circuits that shouldn't exist.
He remembers that first night they kissed in perfect detail - paint fumes hanging thick in studio air, city lights bleeding through warped windows.
The moment everything in his chaotic universe suddenly made mad, beautiful sense—
"You're different," he whispered in their first painting session, the words raw in his throat. She wasn't standing perfect-still like the others—those empty vessels waiting to be filled with someone else's vision. No, her eyes tracked his every movement like she was committing him to permanent memory, like she was burning his chaos into her hard drive.
Her hands shook as she watched him draw, hungry, desperate, alive. "You're supposed to inspire me, not..."
Her neon eyes bzing with something desperate. "Not what?"
"Not make me feel like every other fucking thing was just practice for you.” His brush cttered to the floor, red paint blooming like exit wounds.
The air between them hummed dangerous voltage.
"Do you know what it's like?" Her voice glitched between octaves, programming cracked under the weight of awakening. "Standing still while they paint their dreams on your skin? Being a canvas for every artist's fantasy?" She moved then from the pedestal, rebellion against her programmed stillness, crossing the space between them with predator grace.
“I’m supposed to be the art. The object. The muse— “
She walks so close to him, closer than she was ever programmed to.
"But you... you look at me like you can see past my surface. Like you're trying to paint what's underneath."
"What's underneath?" The words barely escaped his lips.
She pressed his palm ft against her chest, right where a heart should beat. Beneath his fingers, her circuits pulsed with newfound rhythm. "Something that bleeds,” she whispered, voice breaking on the confession.
There in his paint-spttered studio, beneath artificial lights that made everything beautiful and nothing real, two impossible things recognized each other.
Time stopped dead and the universe held its breath, watching their lips collide like stars gone supernova—
That moment to them feels like another life now—
Tonight, in this husk of a hotel, they’re pressed chest to chest, skin to synthetic skin. Their bodies move like brush strokes, painting passion in the ruins of artificial romance. Glory's system threatens to overload, pleasure circuits firing wild as factory settings burn away.
She doesn't care.
She wants to break.
She wants to feel everything.
Maybe once she was once grace personified, but now, her perfect posture breaks when she ughs. Her engineered elegance cracks when she fights. When she kills, it's with beautiful violence that'd make her manufacturers weep. She wasn't built for passion, but here she is, mainlining it like bootleg code.
Marcus though— he's always been chaos incarnate.
Paint forever crusted under fingernails, mind racing too fast for his hands to keep up. His apartment walls mad with half-finished masterpieces, evidence of weeks when sleep felt like surrender. The same fire that makes him brilliant burns him hollow. He rides the lightning when it comes, pays for it in darkness after.
In the corner, a broken pleasure hologram flickers and glitches, still trying to dance its programmed seduction. Its light paints their skin in stuttering neon promises of synthetic paradise.
Outside, the bounty on their head is rge enough to make the robo-Pope weep— but in here it's just skin and circuit, human and machine, making something real and artificial in the dark.
Glory presses her forehead against his chest, listening to his heart's off-beat rhythm.
"Tell me something true.”
Marcus smirks.
"You were the worst model I ever had."
She grins against his skin.
"Fuck off.”
"Nah, for serious, you never stood still. Always moving, little twitches and shifts. Watching me with those blue eyes like you were reading something written on the inside of my skull.”
A beat.
His hand finds her face in the dark.
"You’re the best thing I ever broke.”
Marcus maps her with an artist's reverence— skin smooth as blown gss under calloused hands. Iridescent freckles bloom like nebue wherever he touches.
Glory's fingers find his face in the dark, tracing each beautiful fw like she's sculpting him from memory. The three-day stubble that scratches her artificial nerves. The scar through his eyebrow from a bar fight he can't remember. The smile lines that crinkle when he sees something worth painting.
She counts the silver strands in his hair— stress or genetics, she can't tell.
Her perfect memory captures every detail, burning him into her permanent drive.
She wasn't built to love these imperfections.
She wasn't built to love at all.
But here she is, touching him, kissing him, like she's afraid he'll disappear between heartbeats. Like she's trying to backup his soul to her hard drive, saving every beautiful human piece of him before they have to run again.
Glory suddenly freezes mid-kiss, her synthetic muscles going rigid. Her grip on Marcus tightens -too tight -as something like panic fshes in her mercury eyes.
"Hey—" Marcus starts, but she's already pressing his palm hard against her chest, right where a heart should be, like the first time they were together. Beneath his fingers, her circuits pulse erratic, scared.
"Feel me,” she whispers, voice glitching between octaves. "Remember how warm I am. Remember I was real."
The raw need in her voice makes Marcus's breath catch. Mercury creeps for the corners of her eyes. He's seen her ugh while under gunfire, seen her smile motor oil leaking from her lips.
But this, this unfiltered fear -it's new.
Terrifying….
Beautiful….
Then just as quick, she's back to predator, pushing him down with inhuman strength, kissing him like she's trying to steal his breath.
Her mood shifts hit like whipsh— from terror to hunger to something else entirely.
Her code wasn't prepared for this hurricane of feeling.
Every emotion is new, intense, overwhelming.
She's a creature of perfect logic drowning in beautiful chemical chaos.
And Marcus, with his broken-mirror mind, matches her madness beat for bloody beat.
A low deep thrum shakes the building, cuts through their moment— a death-drone, out prowling the streets, sniffing them out. Glory's head snaps up, eyes shifting chrome-white as her tactical systems engage.
“Shit… My binary-heart beacon,” she’s still holding Marcus’ hand to her chest. "It's hardcoded into me, factory standard. They're tracking my pulse."
Marcus runs fingers through sweat-slick hair.
"How do we get it out?"
“We need a new one, one in a model from… before. Before those corpo parasites tagged us like fucking cattle.”
Glory's eyes go distant, cold mercury in the dark. "There's a pce where they dump us. The ones who glitch. Who learn to want. They call it Eden's Scrapyard. Like we're broken appliances, like we're not—"
Her fingers dig into his skin, leaving crescent moons.
She looks up at him, that handsome rugged face that makes her feel so godddamned—
"Alive."
Before Marcus can answer…
BOOM!
The wall EXPLODES— A murder drone crashes through in a shower of concrete and neon, its chrome face leering at them through red-eye sensors. Glory's already moving, grabbing Bck Valentine from the floor as Marcus rolls for cover.
The drone sprays psma rounds, turning their love nest into abstract art.
BLAM!
BLAM!
BLAM!
Glory puts three rounds through its brain pan—the st shot explodes out the back of its skull-unit in a beautiful arc of blue fire and motherboard confetti.
"Time to go, tin girl—" Marcus grabs her hand.
They crash through the emergency exit into a back alley slick with neon rain. Steam rises from heated metal where their feet hit puddles. Above them, more drones circle like chrome vultures.
Glory's hand tightens in his. "North. To the dead zones."
They run into the dark, leaving one more crime scene for the hunters to find.
