Page 52 of GlitchBorn Heart

Shards of white light fracture around me, forming into jagged crystalline structures, each one getting closer like a trap about to snap shut. Is this how the Corporation erases you? Does it destroy your being and your magic using a virus?

“No!” I whisper, my voice trembling but defiant. “Kael, it’s me!” I scream into the void, my power beginning to react in the walls around me as if I’m surrounded by tech.

With each wave of fear, my magic pushes harder. Images burst out of me, bleeding onto the grid: cherry blossoms, strokes of crimson-gold fire, a storm of glittering code swirling into the darkness.

The sterile walls close in, their edges pixelating as they move. I press my palms outward, bracing, pushing, but to no avail. I’m trapped, being contained like a bird in a cage.

Think, Lyra, think.

I stop, squeeze my eyes shut, and feel. My fear first, then the stubbornness beneath it, the part of me that has never learned how to obey anyone. I dig deeper still, accessing the wild spark I’ve carried since childhood, the one that used to sketch perfect worlds in the margins of notebooks when reality was too oppressive.

I reach for that place.

Light erupts from my fingers, threads of magenta and gold scattering outward, racing into the darkness. The space ruptures and rewrites itself, revealing the DreamNet lobby beyond. Doors open like invitations, dozens of them, each leading somewhere else. I spot people moving through the space, real people, but half-solid, half-static. Some are dreaming, some are gaming. But they’re there and alive.

Relief falls over me. I try to run to them, try to shout, try to grab onto anyone. Help! Where are we? Please. Something’s wrong with me.

Nothing.

They pass through me like mist. Their eyes sliding right over me, unseeing, like I’m not real.

The truth slams into me hard enough to bring tears to my eyes. This isn’t death. This is something else, something colder. A hollow, digital imitation of life—just like the city that taught us how to survive without ever really living.

I pour every ounce of magic I have into whatever this is. I want out. I want my apartment, my bed, Eli sleeping in the next room. I want the life that was stolen from me back.

The space around me begins to crumble under the strain. The digital cage shatters, and I fall, no, slide through cascading lines of data, through architecture made of logic and light. Colors warp around me, faster than I can process. My body stretches and unravels as I free fall through DreamNet, its doors disappearing into the ether. Data continues to drop with me, as I notice various digital worlds neatly contained in folders passing by. I land hard, stumbling onto what feels like solid ground.

A gamescape stretches around me. The sky is streaked with stars that pulse like rhythmic drumbeats. Music hums faintly through the air, and I can hear excited voices shouting commands and laughing.

That presence returns. I feel as if someone is watching my every move. The AI’s voice crackles somewhere in the distance.

UNAUTHORIZED NETWORK MOVEMENT

ESCALATION REQUIRED IN GAMENET

GameNet.

The pieces begin to lock into place as I look around. I’m not dead. But I’m not alive. I’m also no longer in DreamNet. I just used my raw power to force myself into GameNet, an entirely separate system.

I’m moving around inside systems. Dread floods my chest. I’m inside VikkCorp’s network. Whatever happened while I was in DreamNet held me there, trapped me. I didn’t escape; not even death spared me. Ash was right. They can keep you inside the system.

I was caught. By a hunter.

I press a hand to my chest, laughing through shaky breaths. I don’t belong here, but at least I’m alive. If my magic can bleed into systems on the outside, just think what I could do from within. I’m trapped in the AI, the system I loathe, the whole reason I rebel, and the sole reason I escape to DreamNet every night. The irony stings like salt in an open wound.

My prison is Kael’s passion, his system, his creation. That’s why I could hear him, see him, interacting with the AI voice.

The LINK AI may be able to track me in this space, but when I reach for my magic, I can move freely inside. My power isn’t just magic in the real world, it’s root access to all the systems of imagination and indulgence that have been built for U21s. A half-smile slides across my face. For the first time since my so-called death, since being trapped in this world Kael created, I actually feel alive. Terrified, but alive. I blink as I take a hard look around.

I’ve just panicked my way into the GameNet, the VRNet gaming server. And here is where I’ll make my escape.

20

GhostTracer

Playlist: Ghost - Gunship, Power Glove

Kael