Page 49 of GlitchBorn Heart

“Yes.” Ember clarifies, “Entropy manipulation, decay, collapse; he doesn’t just break things, he accelerates their unraveling. Technology shorts out, structures rot, even other people’s magic destabilizes when he’s near. He is a walking system failure, Doctor.”

I bury myself in deep thought:

A wall of code? Corrupted.

A living body? Cells age or wither.

A network of AI? Toppled like dominos.

A virus? Stopped in its tracks. That thought excites me.

He’s able to fracture reality. His magic bends probability and causes machines to misfire, bullets to miss, outcomes to twist. It’s not “luck,” it’s entropy forcing order into the chaos around him. Oh, what Vikktor could do with this. Hell, what I could do with this! Around him, history itself frays, data corrupts, records vanish, even people forget.

Wow. This could destroy the rebellion, make their planning fail, their movement disjointed. He could unravel their knowledge as much as their weapons. That’s why Vikktor wants him, that’s why he’s being brought here. A bolt of panic runs up my spine, just being in the building could destroy my system if he’s not contained properly.

“Where is he now?” I turn to Ember, plans already locking into place in my mind.

“CIC has him, and they’re bringing him here to my father.” She blinks once.

“And the casualty?” Fear floods my system, I really don’t want to ask, but force the words out of my throat, almost choking on them. It only makes sense if Eli is one anomaly then the other must be...

“A young woman. His sister we think. Lyra Vaille?” Her words hit like a bullet. “She’s a DataScribe here, at VikkCorp. They found her body in the bedroom, it seems like some sort of accident while in DreamNet when the surge happened. The virus maybe? We aren’t sure how.” Ember pales, her usual sharpness dulled, like the words she just said are chewing on her from the inside. Non-citizens and now one of our own from VikkCorp; she feels the impact.

I feel a gut-punch.

I’ve spent most of my life being the calculated, cold architect of systems, but hearing her say Lyra is dead hits differently. I don’t let myself understand why just yet, but the grief and fury leak through.

My facade cracks for a tick. I replay hearing Ember say her name.

Dead.

The word skims the surface of me and slides off the armor I’ve spent a lifetime building. I’ve watched hundreds of anomalies like this disappear into system logs, erased. Human lives reduced to data.

This one shouldn’t be any different.

My hands freeze on the console. The screens are still spitting data, but all I can see is blackness. It cuts like a blade sliding between my ribs. I refuse to let the ache rise into something worse. I only just got to know her, to maybe actually feel something besides darkness.

For a long, unnatural moment, I can’t move. I just sit perfectly still, while something foreign arises inside me. Did I just breathe? I have no idea. I haven’t felt this feeling since the death of my parents, well, my mother for sure.

Grief. I shove it down immediately. Grief is a luxury. Grief makes you careless. Grief makes you human, Kael.

Grief for someone I barely knew but wanted to get closer to. Correction—had to get closer to. I still have no idea why. It goes against the grain of the polished image I’ve constructed. Dr. Kael Ryudon: Composed, untouchable, exactly as I should be.

I straighten, returning to neutral, reminding myself of my mantra. I cling to the one consistent thing I’ve created to keep my life from spinning out of control:

This is why you don’t feel. This is why you don’t want. This is why you stay alone.

An embittered laugh escapes before I can stop it. If the virus or surge hadn’t taken her, I would have. Not with malice, never that, but with proximity. I know very well what I am; I pull things into my orbit and never let them go. I possess, consume...obsess. I’m not much better than the VoidChanneler, just a stripped down, magicless version.

She was already too close.

She was an anomaly, an unfortunate variable in the data grid, a casualty of necessary corporate progress.

I repeat it so I believe it. For once in my life, I fail.

My fingers hesitate over the console, hovering, wanting to check once more to see if the amber blip reappears.

I actually wanted to feel something, and now I never will.