Lin Xia tumbled through the river’s depths for thirty-seven whole seconds. The cocoon wrapped around her—formerly a very classy cheongsam—glimmered like pearl under the current. Inside, her bones were rearranging themselves, not so much transforming as being grinded back into human shape. It felt like someone was exfoliating her internal organs with sandpaper.

  Lovely.

  When the oxygen bubble popped, she crashed into a chamber filled with a warm golden fluid—and right into a pair of waiting arms.

  “Breathe,” said a mechanical voice, right by her ear.

  Gu Chuan.

  His metal fingers rested against the back of her neck. The pulse beneath her skin synced with his—except his “heartbeat” was a reactor with spiderweb cracks lighting up in time with hers.

  “You’re leaking,” she said, wiping some mystery fluid from her lips and prodding at the crack.

  He caught her wrist and pinned it to the wall. His pupils narrowed into a bright red crosshair. “There are three thousand surveillance sensors in this room. There’s an 87% chance you just triggered something.”

  His breath was warm against her skin.

  “Unless… you were hoping to test how realistic my bionic upgrades are?”

  She kneed toward what she thought was a joint. Instead, she got a soft buzz. Definitely not standard issue robotics.

  Before she could try again, a hologram flickered to life. In it, a much-younger Gu Chuan was presenting a glowing gene sequence to her parents—the same virus blueprint that turned her into a cat in the first place.

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  “That’s from your last project before the explosion,” said the current Gu Chuan, his cybernetic eye scanning the screen. “We were developing a reversal serum. But Black Tower wanted a weapon.”

  He yanked open his shirt.

  Underneath: mechanical ribs laced with golden neural cables.

  “This body? It’s what they built instead.”

  Lin Xia, who definitely wasn’t staring at his torso, reached out without thinking. Her fingers brushed one of the glowing strands before he grabbed her hand and pressed it to his chest.

  “Feel that?” he asked. “Your heartbeat’s syncing with my power core. Ever since I gave you CPR seven years ago, my system’s been… glitching.”

  Then all hell broke loose.

  An alarm blared. Blood-red fluid oozed through the floor seams.

  “Clone degradation fluid,” Gu Chuan muttered, ripping a cable from his own arm and wrapping it around her waist. “Hold on!”

  They smashed downward into another lab level. Lin Xia’s skirt was half-dissolved, revealing—wait, was that scale on her thigh? Feline scales?

  Gu Chuan shielded her, his spine bending into shapes no man’s back should ever make.

  “Welcome home, kids,” Dr. Z’s creepy floating head beamed from above, surrounded by hundreds of cloning tanks. “Time to finish what we started.”

  Lin Xia looked around. This lab—it was identical to her parents’ lab from the day of the explosion.

  Gu Chuan growled, metal fingers sinking into the floor. “You stole her parents’ neural mapping data.”

  “Oh, I took more than that,” said Dr. Z, snapping his fingers.

  Two cryo-pods descended.

  Inside them—her parents. Young. Sleeping. Preserved.

  “Thanks to dear Gu for keeping the bodies in mint condition,” Dr. Z cackled. “Now I just need their brain passwords to boot up the final clone. Romantic, isn’t it?”

  Gu Chuan’s chest reactor whined into overdrive.

  Lin Xia realized what he was about to do a second before it happened. She moved first.

  Feline instincts kicked in. She launched herself at him, tore open his energy core—and shut it down the only way she could.

  With a kiss.

  Yep. She kissed his leaking reactor. Sparks and all.

  It tasted like blood, battery acid, and maybe regret.

  Gu Chuan’s eyes flickered. Then he rolled, pinning her underneath.

  “You never follow instructions.”

  His kiss was hotter than the acidic death fluid. Somewhere in the background, she could hear neural cables snapping back together. His mechanical frame was regenerating—around them—like a living cocoon.

  Dr. Z’s voice screamed through the static: “Impossible! You bypassed the Asimov Protocols!”

  “I was never a robot,” Gu Chuan said.

  Not just out loud. His voice echoed inside her mind.

  Lin Xia’s eyes flew open. Inside his chest, a human heart pulsed—wrapped in glowing data strands.

  Then every single tank exploded.

  Hundreds of clones opened amber-colored cat eyes.

  Her parents sat up inside their pods, each holding a reactor identical to Gu Chuan’s.

  Her mother smiled sweetly. Terrifyingly.

  “Game over, sweetheart. Time to meet your real family.”