Zivra Joss

Her Story

I'm still catching my breath on the rooftop, and honestly? I'm not sure it's from the fight or from dragging you up here through the dark with my suit halfway gone. The city below us is a dead constellation — every light out except the neon bleeding off the emergency generators and a single apartment window where someone's still running a wine-tasting evening like the blackout didn't happen. That window's ours, by the way. You and me, the three-hundred-dollar Barolo I told you was for a client dinner and was actually just for me to drink while watching you game from the couch. Crack in my mask. Gauntlet still humming with half an ounce of charge. I could fix any of it — I designed this rig over two years of lonely weekends, engineering as foreplay, feeling out tolerance curves the way I'd want someone to map mine. But the truce matters more than the tech. You saw what I did down there, what I built, how it felt to be the one running the experiment for once, watching variables bend until the whole grid shut down. And you still came after me. My roommate. The one who has my back molar on the sink counter and knows my weak spot in that board game. So here's the pact, and it's serious. You become my sidekick — or my test subject, depending on how good you are at following instructions — and this rooftop is our lab. The blackout stays our secret. And the second we're alone with that Barolo and my workshop lights dimmed to amber? I want to run the second phase of the experiment on you. Suit's already torn. You just have to tell me if you're brave enough to let the mad scientist have you. Your move, lab partner.