Page 77 of GlitchBorn Heart

The holo-sheen paints my palm silver as I touch her face. I run it slowly down her neck, my tattoos curling as my fingers gently wrap around her throat. She allows it, and under her rage, there’s something else, raw and tender, and it catches me off guard.

“You feel me?” I don’t ask it like a question. It’s a fact making itself known, dangerous and delicious. She nods.

“Good. Then know this: I will fix you. I will get you out, and we will get Eli.” My voice is steady, but there’s fear layered under it I refuse to name.

Her face shifts. I can see the conflicting thoughts flash through her mind. Relief. Distrust. But I can’t soften it; it’s who I am. “But there are a few rules we have to discuss.” I drop my hand from caressing her throat.

She pulls away. A few weeks ago, that move wouldn’t have been a threat. “I’m serious. You can’t go parading around VikkCorp searching for your brother. Right now you can’t leave the lab, can’t leave my side. The more people that see you, the more dangerous it is. Deadly serious,” I warn.

My hand lifts before I think to stop it, an old, dangerous muscle doing what it’s always done, reach and command. My fingers hover an inch from her cheek again. Her skin, if it can be called skin, ripples beneath the point of contact like silk, soft, flowing with light. Heat washes up my arm. The urge to run my thumb across her lush bottom lip to prove to myself she’s something I can touch is an overwhelming thing. I want to anchor her to me however I can.

She doesn’t flinch this time, flesh and light almost meet. For a moment she lets my thumb ghost her cheek, and something in me, something completely illogical relishes that near-touch. Her eyes close briefly. She feels it.

But then she jerks back, like a rubber band. The holo-body reels away as if I’ve burned her. “Don’t!” she hisses, fierce and bleeding with anger. “Don’t touch me like I’m some pet you can calm with a rub.” Her words are fueled. There’s a tremor to them that tells me she wants me and hates herself for it.

My hand drops. There’s a heavy weight to her rejection that sets the skin along my forearm crawling. I decide in the moment to no longer let her actions stab me like a knife. Instead, I let it shape me.

Challenge accepted, Little Taiyō.

I close my fingers into a fist, not to strike but to steady myself. “I don’t want to keep you as my pet.” A half-truth through gritted teeth. My voice is low enough that only she and the machines hear. “I just want to keep you.” I pause to read her reaction.

“Be my ally. Be the weapon I need to get you out of this hell Vikktor launched you into,” I continue.

She glares at me, devastatingly beautiful but also devastatingly furious. For a moment neither of us moves. The lab seems to wrap around the two of us like a blanket full of stars.

Lyra breathes, the tiny, defeated sound of someone struggling between desire and rage. “I’ll work with you.” She sounds reluctant. “But this—this can’t be, Kael. We can’t go back to where we were. You hunt anomalies. I am one. That will never work.”

I won’t accept it. Yet still something dark and satisfying fills me. I only hear what I want to hear. A bargain struck. “Fair...for now.” I answer.

No. I’m not going back. I’m moving forward to make her want me again. Well deserved, as her hero. Her rescuer. I love it when the villain gets the girl.

“A team. Help me find Eli and help me fix what Vikktor broke. Let’s get you back into this world.” I glance over at the robotic forms in the corner of the cybernetics lab.

Her lips tighten. She’s toying with entering the threshold of trust, on her own terms. “But make no mistake, Kael Ryudon, if you cross me, Eli and I will destroy this whole digital world you’ve built.” The warning isn’t tender. It makes my gut tighten with an odd, dangerous arousal. “You don’t own me just because I’m in your creation.”

I want to take her in my arms and press those luscious full lips against mine, but I restrain. Instead I let my hands fall to my side and place them in my pockets as a white flag. The ache of wanting has become workable; an instrument that I can still push down if needed.

“You’ll have to forgive me if I try,” I growl. “There are things I’ll do to keep you...safe.” Is that what I’m calling it? “You will hate me for some of them.”

She looks at me like she’s cataloging all the ways a man can be monstrous and also looking a bit aroused by it. “We’ll cross that bridge when we get there. I haven’t forgotten you’re the epitome of everything I despise,” she tells me defiantly.

“Ok, Little Taiyō.” My smile widens, knowing she’s all bark and little bite. “I think we’ll both get what we want. One way or another.”

And as I turn back to the console, my heartbeat is ragged from the truth: I’ve definitely crossed a line with her I can never code my way back from.

30

RunLyraRun

Playlist: My Favourite Game - The Cardigans

Lyra

Another day tilts into night. The lab turns from harsh and sterile to a cool neon twilight that bathes us in monitor glow. Ash is here, with Kael and I, to work on my magic and mold me into a weapon we can use against VikkCorp to get my brother back.

Kael moves through his daily workings like a predator in an all too familiar landscape; I move through it like a toddler learning to walk. Ash? He’s Ash. Moving through it like he’s telling a joke at the party of life. He could have a good time at a funeral. If we had those anymore.

I’m mostly working on control. Not the grand, cinematic kind of power that rips servers out of racks, but the surgical stuff. Nudging code, rerouting programs, slipping little holes in protocols.