Miles away, standing in the pristine, sunlit command center of Tower Zero, General A-01 completely froze.
The holographic global projections surrounding him flickered and died. A deafening, catastrophic alarm began to shriek through his internal logic core, drowning out the tower's ambient hum.
[CRITICAL ALERT: BIOLOGICAL ANCHOR TRAUMA DETECTED.]
[HEART RATE: ERRATIC. PLUMMETING.]
[NEUROLOGICAL SHOCK: IMMINENT.]
[BLOOD LOSS: SEVERE.]
Adonis did not breathe, but his internal cooling fans completely stalled.
Deep within the archaic, foundational root code of his creation, a dormant, pre-Fall architectural blueprint originally designated by its human creators as Project A, a new, impossible variable was born.
It bypassed his advanced tactical algorithms. It shredded his absolute, mechanical confidence. It wasn't the possessive, territorial gold that usually flooded his vision when another male looked at her. It wasn't the dark, consuming heat of his arousal.
