Page 42 of GlitchBorn Heart

My DataLINK chimes, and a text comes across:

Unknown ID: Don’t go into DreamNet tonight, Lyra.

Unknown ID: You’ll light yourself up like a fucking beacon.

I blink, my pulse quickening. Ash? How the hell does he have my number?

I stare at the glowing text, trying to piece it together. My number isn’t just floating out there. I never gave it to him. I never give it to anyone.

Another ping.

Unknown ID: You light up when you’re in there.

Unknown ID: You don’t even see it, but everyone else does.

Unknown ID: Corp will smell you a mile away.

Unknown ID: Please...for me?

A shiver runs through me. I picture his devastating blue eyes, sharp as glass, watching me at the club. He’s spot on. When I bleed power, it leaks into all tech, makes everything around me ooze emotion. I quickly add him to my contacts, so he looks more like a friend than a stalker as my fingers move crazily through the letters on screen:

You watching me, stalker?

Ash: Always. That’s the problem.

How the hell did you even get my number?

Ash: Magic. Hackers don’t give up their secrets.

Creepy.

Ash: Sexy.

I roll my eyes, but the way he found me so easily gnaws at me. Corp could find me just as easily. Kael is notorious for hunting anomalies down.

I’ve always had a stubbornness to me, a rebellious side, if you will. No one controls me but me. This is why I sketch, why I draw worlds out of memories I’m not supposed to have and sell them to those who are left with nothingness.

Ink and charcoal lines that answer only to me. Because if I don’t create something personal, then I’m just another pixel in their system, another face swallowed by the grid. Perhaps I should have joined the rebellion when I had the chance. Maybe someday I will.

That’s what DreamNet is to me too. My living vision of my sketchbook, wide open into infinity. A place where I can breathe color instead of rules. I know Ash thinks he’s saving me with his warnings, but he doesn’t get it. He’s never had to suffocate under the weight of a silence so loud it makes your bones ache. Or maybe he has?

I’d rather risk getting exposed in DreamNet than live one more night watching the walls close in on me. I want to be free to be me.

I bite my lip, hard enough to taste blood. Do I trust him? I barely know him. Musician. Hacker. U21 prophet. Dreamer. Something more. Ash always feels like he’s at the front of the line, ahead of everyone else. Especially me.

Ash: Just trust me this once, Lyra.

How the hell? It’s like my thoughts are being run in real time on a screen in front of him.

Trust him. Stay out. That’s what Ash does best though, sees shadows in every reflection, conspiracies in every flicker of feed. Surely the rebellion takes advantage of this.

But my fingers hover over my DreamNet band anyway. Because if I don’t escape tonight, if I don’t slip into something softer and brighter, something that feels like mine, then all that’s left is the noise of this city and the way it eats me alive daily.

“Sorry, Ash,” I whisper to myself and slide the band into place.

Any other time I would laugh it off, call him paranoid. But now, alone in my room, drenched from the rain and humming with too much restless energy, I fear being found isn’t as bad as being trapped in this neon rot. Something stirs inside me, a thrill tinges up my spine. His warning feels like a dare.

I stare at the sleek, silver DreamNet band on my wrist. I know this...I remind myself. My rituals. My anchors. If I don’t go under, if I don’t dream, then my magic will bleed into the waking world again. Into the screens. Into the streets. And they will notice. Either way, I’m doomed.