Page 157 of GlitchBorn Heart

Code. Test. Repeat. A series of motions I’ll run through like a mindless machine before I execute. All of it, just to make her mine.

Gods, how I wanted her last night, a yearning so deep, I felt it in the very dark depths of my soul, threatening to corrupt the precise, elegant structure of my plans for us.

I won’t settle for pixels.

I want all of her. Every inch, every gasp, every heartbeat under my hands. When she’s whole again, I’ll make sure the first thing she feels is me.

The light from the monitor illuminates the corner of my living room, a soft shade of gray is cast over every corner, as I let my simulator run through test scenarios in a controlled environment. Every frame ends the same:

SUBJECT DELETED

HOST NOT FOUND

EXTRACTION INCOMPLETE

I shut it all out. Ash. Ember. Eli. Jett. Even Vikktor. I need to silence the doubt.

Discipline. It’s what I need in this time of preparation.

I strip my T-shirt off and throw it over my desk. On the mat, my fists meet the padded column until skin splits and blood runs. Each strike represents the pain I carry within, the anger I can’t contain, the memories haunting me relentlessly. The weight of my past comes crashing down on me, the shame consuming my soul. Each breath is a knot tied to keep me from falling apart.

My psyche knows what I’m about to do, what I’ve already decided.

There’s a line no one should cross. Not scientist, not sorcerer, nor god. The boundary between life and creation, between what breathes and what obeys. I’ve spent my entire life enforcing that fine line. Keeping it clean. Keeping it human.

And now I’m about to erase it all.

Every algorithm I’ve written screams at me to stop, denies me an acceptable outcome, even with my magic rising to the surface. Normally I would engage LINK to help. She would have a concise objective: Let the system collapse, let nature take its course, let Lyra be consumed, used for the sake of technical advancement.

Listen to yourself, Kael. She. LINK is not a she. LINK is an it.

What has the Corporation done to me? Has it taken my humanity, turned me into the soulless, uncaring entity I strived to create? Because this...this isn’t resurrection. It’s a rewrite of humanity as we know it. It’s playing god with something that shouldn’t belong to any man.

But then I think of her. The way my name rolls off her lips like it’s both a curse and a prayer. A verbal devotion. I’m about to commit a sin that looks a lot like salvation.

She makes this madness feel like purpose. And that’s the problem, isn’t it? You give a man like me a reason, and suddenly morality becomes optionable, something to bend, to code around.

The architects before me built systems. I’m building something else entirely.

A doorway to humanity? A bridge to rebirth? I don’t know what to call it.

This cybernetic program has been at the forefront of Vikktor’s agenda for a year now. Progress has been made, but to this level? Definitely not. We were supposed to create a framework, a neural clone, a controlled consciousness, not...this. Not something capable of thinking, feeling, and living.

The project was meant to be an enhancement to citizen enforcement, the perfect soldier, hard-wired, half-machine, half-human, programmable, and obedient. A legion to keep the U21 rebellion quelled. Ember and I worked side by side for months on the interface, the muscle-to-chip translation, the emotional suppression filters.

It was all theory at first, controlled, predictable behavior. Until LINK began evolving. I knew it was happening before Lyra even appeared in my system. And back then? I welcomed it.

Now LINK is no longer mimicking; she’s learning. Adapting. Finding empathy, anger, and especially jealousy. Human flaws woven into silicon chips. I can clearly see the irony in front of me: The system we built to enslave others is the same one I’m about to defile to free her.

If Vikktor learns I can bring consciousness through the system into a physical body, he’ll see it as the final piece of his puzzle, the perfect weapon. Not a soldier bound by orders, but by loyalty. Combine that with Eli’s VoidChanneling, and there’s no end to the power the Corporation could wield.

Lyra.

She’s what I’ve been trying to build all along, an AI entity, a machine that feels. A heart inside circuitry. A woman. No, a goddess.

Am I an idiot for giving Vikktor the blueprint?

Strike. The chain on the bag rattles, breaking the quiet morning. My thoughts scatter like the dust, dancing in the glow of the monitors. If I do this, there’s no turning back. The world won’t be ready. Hell, I’m not even ready.