The moment the swarm of drones shattered the stained glass of the cathedral, Lin Xia’s wedding gown morphed into liquid metal and coiled protectively around her body. Gu Chuan’s wedding ring emitted a pulse of light, blasting the falling crucifix into dust. The guests in the pews tore off their human disguises in perfect unison, revealing cold mechanical skeletons beneath.

  “Happy wedding day,” said Dr. Z, his holographic projection rising from the altar. His single glowing eye pulsed crimson with malicious glee. “Do you like my gift?”

  Lin Xia’s cat tail swept through a pile of shattered limbs. Her claws hooked the blood-soaked veil, lifting it casually. “Old man, your sense of timing is even worse than Gu Chuan’s proposal speech.” She licked the coolant from Gu Chuan’s neck, tasting that telltale metallic tang of temporal paradox. “Just curious—how many times have you crashed our wedding now?”

  Gu Chuan’s pupils flickered with flowing data. “One thousand, four hundred and twenty-seven.” He wrapped an arm around her waist and dodged a particle blast. “Every time he attacks right after we exchange rings—”

  His sentence was swallowed by an explosion. Lin Xia spun through the heatwave and caught a glimpse of herself from three seconds ago slipping a ring on Gu Chuan’s finger, and another version five seconds ahead aiming a gun at his temple. Above them, a time fissure cracked open in the cathedral dome. Dozens of overlapping wedding scenes from parallel timelines unfolded like a shattered kaleidoscope.

  “Side effect of the quantum embryo,” Gu Chuan said, his cybernetic spine coiling protectively around her waist as they ducked into a rift between timelines. “Every reboot tears a new hole in space-time.”

  The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

  Lin Xia bit through his bloodied shirt, watching as old scars shimmered and twitched in quantum flux. “You knew this would happen.” Her claws sank into his chest—only to pull out a beating human heart. “Nine hundred and ninety-nine cycles to make me fall for you, and another four hundred and twenty-eight to test time-loop stability. You’re nothing if not romantic, Mr. Gu.”

  Blood trickled across the metal floor in a slow spiral, forming the shape of a double-helix. Gu Chuan took her bloodied hand and pressed it to his chest. “This time is different,” he said, his heartbeat vibrating through her palm. “The embryo’s fully formed.”

  The cathedral floor suddenly gave way, dropping them into a chaotic stream of time. As they plummeted, Lin Xia saw a brutal truth—each world’s ruins held their corpses, hands still clasped, veins tangled with glowing data cables. And at the end of every timeline, Dr. Z stood with tubes buried in his skull, neural impulses fused to a towering quantum mainframe.

  “Welcome to the real world,” he sneered, peeling off his synthetic face to reveal a younger version of Gu Chuan. “My dear… Subject 1427.”

  A piercing alarm split Lin Xia’s eardrums. In that instant, she understood all the unspoken things Gu Chuan had said during those sleepless nights. Why he always listened so closely to her heartbeat. Their “coincidental” meeting had been calibrated to the nanosecond—every flutter of emotion, pre-programmed.

  “Want to place a bet?” Gu Chuan pressed a shattered reactor core fragment against her abdomen. The quantum embryo lit up, glowing with strange symbols. “This time, I’ve wiped myself clean—turned into a blank chip.” He kissed the gold-tinged tear from her eye. “You decide. Creator… or executioner.”

  The time nexus thundered overhead. Lin Xia’s fangs sank into his throat, tasting the bitter essence of Generation One mech blood. Then, in a single defiant motion, she pushed the reset button—burning the wedding ring into his mechanical heart.

  When morning light pierced the stained glass again, Dr. Z’s body lay broken before the altar. Lin Xia stood with her wedding dress stitched from reactor shards, Gu Chuan unconscious in her arms. The clone army knelt in a perfect grid, their eyes glowing with newborn violet light.

  “The wedding continues,” she declared, guiding Gu Chuan’s cybernetic hand to her gently rounded belly. “Tell the officiant to change the question.”

  The quantum embryo pulsed, resonating with the whole universe.

  “Will you take your place… as the Eve of humanity and AI?”

  The blaring alarms were drowned out by the wedding march. Lin Xia chuckled softly as the entire church of defecting machines erupted into celebration.

  Turns out, the cleverest trap… is the one your prey volunteers to enter.