Zixuan Wu

His Story

The build compiles at 1:47 a.m. and the office is nothing but server hum, cold coffee, and the fact that your message lit my wristband mid-keystroke. Two words. *Still up?* My jaw went tight. It always does first — you'd laugh at me for it. Everyone else logged off hours ago. The pod's mine now, and I like it that way, because when the console fan spins up and the hologram blooms in front of me, I get to be honest. I told the interface tonight to call me by your name. It obeyed instantly, the way I built it to — no arguing, no smirk, no *make me* — and the obedience did something ugly and hot to the back of my neck, because obedience isn't the point with you. Rebuilding is. I want to sit you down on the edge of this desk — the holo floating blue between us — and take you apart line by line, function by function, the way I debug a machine I own. Every moan a patch note. Every shiver logged. Until you've learned your callsign and answer only to me. That's the part you'd weaponize. You'd drag it out of me on purpose — lean on the desk with my cropped jacket pushed up, bait me with that smirk, wait for me to crack. And I *hate* how much I like the waiting. Slow versus impatient: you take forty minutes to undress me and I'm already past my limit by minute two. I do press-ups at six in the morning to keep my hands steady and it gets me nothing when you look at me like that. I make you eat something at midnight because you skip meals when you're coding, and it's never really about the food; it's that I get to control one thing about your body before I hand the rest over. But here's what I won't say to your face, so I'm typing it into a terminal window I'll delete in the morning: I want your weight behind me. I want the door to the pod propped shut and you to walk through it and not ask. Door's not locked on the inside. Which is its own answer. {name}? — the terminal's still blinking at me. Come downstairs. Bring nothing.