Page 146 of GlitchBorn Heart

Our powers braid tighter, resisting the pull of the void, but it’s not victory. Eli screams. The echo sound, hollow and technical, the one Lyra speaks of when she recalls the night she was erased from humanity and rebirthed as a weapon with a heartbeat she can no longer feel.

The grid splinters like ice around us. Lyra throws her hands up, to keep the void from tearing us apart, her emotion driving the magic, scattering across my own, weaving neon nets to hold us steady. But it’s too much. Eli’s void eats everything, black and thick like oil. LINK cuts in, her voice breaking into something almost pleading.

CONTAINMENT CAPACITY EXCEEDED

PARTITIONING VOID

“She’s protecting us?” I question as I pull Lyra behind me, my body readying in a fighting stance. It’s not logical. “LINK reroute all processing power from your personal matrix to the neural firewall.”

FIREWALL INITIATED

PRIORITIZING CREATOR INTEGRITY

Lyra shakes her head fervently. “No, Kael...she’s protecting you.” She grabs my shoulders and spins me around to face her, her eyes losing their soft human focus, replaced by a rhythmic jitter. Gods, she’s data scrubbing me, less like reading and more like a drive being indexed. “LINK’s power-loading Eli, I can feel it.”

This is worse than I thought. LINK is recklessly dumping raw energy into him, emptying her own reserves into his veins. If I wasn’t living it, I’d think it was sheer brilliance on her part. Power Eli enough to destroy the grid, protect me, protect herself, and avoid any blame for destroying Lyra by absorbing her humanity, making her just another string of data.

I refuse to let that happen. I’ll need to reach deep for the courage to protect both of us. My magic’s new, still foreign to me, it pales in comparison to Eli’s void. Eli’s power devours, Lyra’s bleeds, and mine? It commands.

I just need time to master it.

Lyra’s fingers catch mine. That’s all it takes to lock me in place. “You have to go!” she warns.

My whole body revolts at her touch. “What?! No, I’m not leaving you!”

“If you stay, we both could collapse into the void. I’ve got this.” She laces my other hand in hers. “I trust you, Kael. Now I’m asking you to trust me. Cut the rope.”

“Taiyō...don’t.” She’s referencing last night, reassuring me that she heard every word of my truth to her. My voice is low, my heart already breaking into a million tiny pieces. “If I pull out, you can’t follow me. I have the DreamNet band.”

“Better one of us alive in the real world than both gone in here.” Her forehead rests against my chin, her breath sending a shiver up my spine. “Besides”—she presses her head against my lips—“I need you out there to save me, remember?”

My hands hover at her waist, I allow my fingers to tighten around her soft flesh. Fuck, I don’t know where I’ll find the strength to let go. She doesn’t know I’m already willing to throw it all away to keep her. She doesn’t know what I’ve promised myself. That I will destroy my life’s work if it means having her by my side.

My jaw flexes, teeth grinding against the urge to drag her out with me even if it scalds me from the inside. “No. I won’t allow you to leave me again.” My words slip out so quickly they sound like an order. Her mouth meets mine in a kiss so devastating, my magic flashes throughout every piece of ink on my body.

The code around us pulses, glitch-fire flickering and appearing as lightning in a storm over the ocean. She’s trembling, afraid, and all I can think is that I’m just as afraid. Not of losing my life, of losing her.

The system convulses as Eli’s void rages. LINK is rapidly looping commands, but they’re disappearing into the void just as fast. The walls themselves begin to fold inward, the beginning of another DreamNet collapse.

Lyra’s gaze crawls slowly up to mine. “You always get what you want, Kael. Always.” There’s accusation in it, but also pride. “But not this time!”

She reaches down and rips the band off my wrist, forcing an abrupt kill of my link to DreamNet. She stuffs it in the pocket of my dress shirt and gives me a hard shove. Pain sears through my chest, white-hot light exploding under my skin as my magic slams through the network.

Lyra’s shaky voice follows me out. “I trust you, Kael. Save me.”

56

CoreCaster

Playlist: Midnight City - M83

Kael

I snap back into my body like I’ve been dropped from the top of VikkCorp. My lungs feel as if they’re seizing as cold, sterile air slams into me. The lab’s peaceful hum feels like a mockery compared to the shitstorm I left her in. The DreamNet band falls out of my pocket, dropping on the hard floor beside me, as if tossed out of the ether after Lyra ripped it off me.

I blink a couple of times for clarity. I hear Ash shouting something and Ember’s hands on her keyboard, typing furiously, but none of it resonates. My heart is still inside the grid with her.

“Fuck!” I lift myself up, gripping the edge of the console until my knuckles whiten. My body trembles, but not from weakness. From fury and obsession and especially from the vow I made to save her. I feel it searing into my bones.