The number one rule was to not get attached. The moment that happened, I’d be in trouble. I could already feel it and it was starting to freak me out, the little ways in which I found myself trying to get more time with them. Even when I wasn’t fulfilling my “duties” as their toy, I still felt this pull to be around them.

I had to be careful. I had my own plans and I couldn’t allow them to be spoiled now.

Jason hadn’t told me what time he would be arriving, but when I stepped out of the bathroom, I could hear someone downstairs. My bedroom door was wide up and I walked out to peer over the railing into the entryway.

“Y’all really don’t like to knock, do you?”

Jason looked up at me. He was seated in the open doorway with a laptop on his outstretched legs, his shaggy blue hair contained under a black baseball cap.

“Knocking feels like asking permission,” he said. “And I wasn’t asking.”

Rolling my eyes, I turned away before he could see me smile. After hurriedly getting dressed, I came downstairs to find he was still sitting in the same spot, forehead creased with concentration as he stared at long lines of text on his screen.

“Do you want some coffee?” I said, peering at him through the doorway from the kitchen.

“I’m good,” he said, holding up a neon green and black energy drink can.

“Ah, I see, you prefer to fuel yourself with straight battery acid.” The coffee machine groaned and that delicious bitter bean juice began to drip. I added some sweet cream to my mug before I walked back to the entryway and sat down beside him. He was so focused on his screen it wasn’t until I bumped against his shoulder that he flinched in surprise and looked over at me.

“I thought your screen would look like The Matrix or something,” I said.

He chuckled, shaking his head. “There’s a lot less floating neon symbols and a lot more math.”

A minute in silence as I watched him, sipping my coffee. Math was one of my strongest subjects, but whatever he was doing didn’t look like the math I was used to. He was speaking an entirely different language in those long lines of code.

“I’m almost done here. I just need to test one more time…”

He hit the Enter key and looked up at the alarm’s control panel. The screen blinked, its message changing from ERROR to READY TO ARM.

“Damn, that was fast,” I said. “What did you do?”

He cleared his throat awkwardly, getting to his feet. “I may have overengineered it a little.”

“Meaning…?”