The cold at the quarry wasn't just in the air; it had settled deep into my bones, a hollow ache that no amount of skin-to-skin contact could ever warm. I stared down at the churning black water, my mind a fractured mirror of memories and self-loathing.
The railing felt slick beneath my palms. My thoughts were a chaotic blur—Rishie's disgust, the $110 that felt like a fortune lost, the faces of women I couldn't even name, and Kit. Always Kit. Her presence behind me felt like a haunting, a ghost of a life I had once believed in.
Is this all I am? I wondered. A plumber who fixes leaks while his own soul is a flooded basement? A "conqueror" who is actually a slave to the gaze of others?
"Lucas, get down from there," Kit's voice was softer now, devoid of its usual jagged edge.
I didn't answer. I leaned out further, trying to see the boy I used to be in the dark ripples below. I wanted to see the Lucas who believed in love, the one who didn't view every woman as a target or a "whore." But the more I looked, the dizzier I became. The world began to tilt. The hunger, the exhaustion from the morning run, and the sheer mental weight of the day combined into a sudden, sickening wave of vertigo.
My boot skidded on a patch of wet moss on the rusted beam.
"Wait—!" I gasped, my hands clawing at the empty air.
There was a sickening lurch, a momentary sensation of weightlessness, and then the world vanished into a violent, freezing roar.
The impact was like hitting concrete. The air was punched out of my lungs in a plume of silver bubbles. I plummeted into the dark, the current of the quarry pool dragging me down into its silt-heavy depths.
I panicked. The bravado, the arrogance, the "I-don't-care" attitude—it all stripped away in a second. I thrashed, my limbs heavy and useless in the freezing pressure. I tried to kick toward the surface, but I couldn't tell which way was up. My lungs burned, a searing, white-hot agony that demanded I open my mouth.
I don't want to die, I thought, the plea echoing in the silence of my skull. I'm not ready. I haven't... I haven't fixed anything.
My vision began to darken at the edges, the black water turning into a soft, velvet grey. My movements slowed. The thrashing became a dull drift. As the last of my consciousness flickered, a strange warmth began to radiate from the center of my chest, clashing with the icy water.
In the dimness of the deep, a light appeared. It wasn't the sun, and it wasn't the police lights of my childhood. It was a shimmering, iridescent violet that seemed to bleed into the water around me. It was blindingly beautiful and terrifyingly cold.
Across the surface of my failing vision, translucent words began to scroll, pulsing with the rhythm of my dying heartbeat:
[ CRISIS DETECTED: VITAL SIGNS CRITICAL ]
[ COMPATIBILITY CHECK: 100% ]
[ AWAKENING LUST FIEND SYSTEM... ]
I couldn't understand the words. They were just shapes made of light. Through the violet haze, I saw shadows breaking the surface of the water above—dark, distorted shapes reaching down, their arms stretching through the bubbles toward me. They looked like Kit, like Lin, like every woman I had ever used, their hands grasping for my shirt.
The light flared, turning the entire underwater world into a brilliant, screaming purple. A strange, humming vibration filled my ears, drowning out the roar of the water. It felt as if something was being stitched into my very soul—something ancient, hungry, and powerful.
The last thing I felt before the darkness claimed me entirely was a firm grip on my collar and a cold, mechanical whisper that vibrated through my bones.
The system was awake, but it wasn't finished with me yet.