Page 106 of GlitchBorn Heart

And when she finally steps across it, back into the real world, back to me, I’ll make her see that it was all worth it.

I draft the reality everyone else is forced to inhabit.

Some would call it a god complex, but me? I call it deciding where the sun stops and where the neon begins.

If I can dictate the trajectory of a million souls inside this city, why shouldn’t I be the one to return one single source from the void?

The gods are no longer present in the hearts and minds of our people. So, I justify bringing Lyra back to humanity with one simple string of logic: I’m not competing with the gods. I’m filling the vacancy.

The mist and steam funnel out of the shower, lying on the mirror like a veil, hiding my inner secrets. They must never be uncovered. No one can know what has happened in the lab or what I’m about to do.

Birth of a human from artificial intelligence.

I rub a spot on the mirror to see the toll all this has taken on me—tired, weary eyes stare back. The words of my master echo in my head: Nana korobi ya oki: Fall down seven times, stand up eight.

Resilience.

I was only a teen when Master Kenji hauled Ash and me into his dojo by the ears. We had stolen half a crate of sake bottles from a street vendor and thought we were clever, kings of the streets.

Kenji didn’t shout. He didn’t even raise his voice. He didn’t need to. The man’s silence weighed more than Vikktor’s whole boardroom. He threw us both onto the mats and said, “If you’ve got the hands of thieves, then I’ll train them to be the hands of warriors.”

Ash laughed, of course. He said the old man was bluffing. An hour later, he was bleeding from the nose, grinning through it like he’d just found a new religion. I wasn’t grinning. I was watching, memorizing every strike, every pivot, absorbing the discipline. That’s what separated us, even then. Ash wanted the thrill. I wanted mastery, and somehow, that made us brothers for life.

Master Kenji handed me a wooden sword at first. Heavy for my arms at fifteen, but perfectly balanced. He placed it in my grip with deliberate precision, folding my fingers around the hilt the way he wanted.

“Control,” he said. “Control of body, control of breath, control of self.”

Then he turned to Ash and tossed him a sword like it was scrap wood. Ash caught it by the blade, nearly dropped it, then laughed so hard he doubled over.

Kenji’s face didn’t twitch. “Discipline, wild one,” he told Ash. “You will learn it.”

Ash twirled the sword backward, grinning like a fool. What followed wasn’t a lesson. It was a slaughter. Kenji moved like a dragon, and within seconds Ash was flat on the mats with a bruised ass and a look of disbelief.

“Get up,” Kenji said.

Ash did. Again and again. And every time he went down laughing, bloodier, but no less wild. I didn’t laugh. By the end of the night, my arms shook from the weight of the sword, but I hadn’t let it go once.

Kenji bowed his head at me, the faintest nod of approval. “Kael-san, no matter how many times you are knocked down by life, you must always rise again. True strength is not in avoiding failure, but in refusing to be defeated by it.”

I whisper to my mirror image: “Today’s mantra: Find him. Contain him. Don’t kill him.”

In the lab, Ash and Jett are waiting for me at the center console to debrief and stage the op in detail. Ember is occupied, rigging a quiet node server into the GameNet gateway, so we aren’t bogged down with players.

Ash and Lyra are my two wildcards: Lyra will slip into the game as a holo-actor tied to my architecture. Ash will carry a low-frequency tone that will stabilize her presence inside the simulation so she doesn’t EchoWeave too much but will still give Eli a calm baseline.

I just need to get a hold of Lyra and explain everything to her. It’s been two days since she was dropped, and I need to update her.

I walk to the monitor wall and call out her name. “Lyra...if you’re there, all programs should be running. If you can hear me, use the window. It’s urgent. We have a plan to get Eli.” Jett watches the wall like a master evaluating a chessboard.

Nothing.

Shit. Worriedly, I walk to the holo-projector pad and swipe the keycard, just in case she prefers to appear to us in holo-form. A few tense moments pass, so I decide to force the connection. “LINK—open the window program to the network.”

YES DR. RYUDON

“Lyra!” I waste no words. “The system is stable again. I need to know you’re safe and still here with me. We’ve recalibrated GameNet. We’re going in to get Eli.”

My heart feels as if it may stop at any given moment in the cruel silence. Finally, the black glass ripples to life, and Lyra’s face appears on the wall, ghostlit by static. Her holo-form flickers faintly as though she isn’t fully choosing to be here. Her eyes narrow.