Architects of the Cataclysm

Threat

It's so quiet.

Dominic strolled through the halls at a leisurely pace, his body aching from the day's events and his muscles begging for the soft embrace of his mattress. His head, however, raced with questions. Where does he go from here? What does he do with Mir? How does he solve the issues between them when all he can think about is how she ground herself into his leg, her heat radiating through their clothes?

He shook his head and quickened his pace, not paying attention to the corner he turned in the hallway.

Maybe I should go talk to Walt again. My conversation with Mir wasn't nearly as productive as I had hoped it would be, though she gave some clarity to her motivations — given she was telling the truth...

He sighed and stopped at the next junction in the corridor.

Maybe I should just go to bed. I'm clearly walking in circles — I swear I passed this same hallway five minutes ago.

He took a breath and aimed himself down the hall that would lead him to the stairs up to the basement that was "publicly" accessible to guests, unlike the network of webbed underground corridors that composed most of his estate.

Like she said, talking about these things while tired isn't a great idea. I mean, since the last time I've slept, I've prepared for a gala, attended the gala, argued with Shockwave, saw a ghost, fainted, saw a hell beast disrupting my gala, somehow didn't faint, learned the woman I murdered wasn't dead, toted the very pissed off woman back to my house, debriefed with Walt, and then nearly fucked the woman I thought was dead only a few hours ago.

"Fuck," he groaned as he turned his head up to the ceiling. "What I really need is a scotch and a bed. It's been a long fucking day."

He rubbed his eyes and looked around with intent to reorient himself.

Where are those damn stairs?

Heading off in a different direction, he thought back to how he left Mir and how his semi-hard dick made it uncomfortable to walk.

I wonder if she was infecting me with desire or if that was all me. I would have thought it would need to be the other way around. That I would have to convince her to let me in, to let me seek forgiveness on my knees. Not that I ever expected I would get to taste her skin again — not after what I've done, but I can still feel where her teeth tugged at my ear and where her mouth latched onto my finger. What I would give to feel her lips wrapped around something else...

He shivered. This is not helping my blue balls, he thought to himself.

Shaking himself free of the memory, he instead turned his attention to his surroundings.

Where am I?

He paused, swinging around as he gathered his bearings. His house was large, that he knew, but that didn't mean he had dark corners gathering dust. He made use of the space, whether it be to house his staff, to facilitate his at-home experimentations on his vigilante technology, or to soak in a hot tub after a grueling skirmish with a Fortress punk. He didn't use every room every day, but that didn't mean there were spaces he hadn't seen before. And though the hallway looked like any other corridor in his underground facility, something seemed off.

Maybe it was the way the lighting hit the walls. How some of the white panels lining the hall failed to bounce the light back onto the ground in the way he expected it to. Shadows flickered on the floor as if the niche of a doorway stood where there was only paneling.

"What's going on?" He murmured the words and for a moment, panic crashed into him like a tidal wave and his chest clenched with fear. His hand rose to pull at the buttons of his shirt, but as quickly as the anxiety came, it retreated.

"Sir, is that you?" called a voice from a doorway he didn't remember being to the left of him. "Sir, can you hear me?"

"Rococo?" He approached the door with tentative steps and measured breaths.

"I am glad to hear your voice, sir," replied the uniform monotone of his intelligence officer. "Please get into a secure location immediately."

He leaned forward, unwilling to expose the entirety of his body to the open doorway. When he realized it was one of his server rooms, he breathed a sigh of relief. The large computers, as well as the various cooling units and power supplies that supported them, provided little space for a menace to hide.

"I'm in one of the server rooms, Rococo." He sent his reply out into the emptiness, knowing that all the rooms had sensors of various sorts. He then lifted his wrist to assess his exact location on his watch, only to find his skin bare of any accessory. "What the fuck?"

"Sir, you need to lock down the room manually! Fortress has broken into the estate and they've compromised our security system. Please lock down while we sweep the building and remove the threat."

"Shit," he cursed beneath his breath before approaching the security panel by the doorway. "Why are they here? Did they link us with what happened tonight?"

Silence met his questions, but he was too busy punching in his code to command Rococo to provide a followup. With his clearance submitted, he overrode whatever malicious virus the Fortress might have unleashed upon their network. The door sealed shut, and he breathed easier, though his pulse still raced.

If they've compromised our security, then they're steps away from accessing our entire network. I should shut down the servers while I'm here.

It was a task that would set his team back for days, if not weeks, but it would be necessary to protect years of work. With a groan and a desperate desire to just go to bed, he turned around to face the unfortunate next step in guarding his team. However, when he looked back into the room, it wasn't the blinking lights of the server that caught his eye. Instead, it was Mir's malevolent grin, her lips stained red by the tears of blood dripping down from her wide eyes.