Page 88 of GlitchBorn Heart

I think of Kael, of his dedication to protect me, of his stubborn worship of his system. He won’t let LINK erase me.

And I won’t let LINK keep him. Especially when I’m starting to think I just might want him for myself.

34

VirtualVoyeur

Playlist: Come Undone - Bad Omens

Lyra

I am not okay.

I’m tired of running.

That last clash with LINK destroyed so much of the world that I’ve worked hard to build while trapped in this hellscape. It tore holes in the corners of the DreamNet dreamscape I’ve been stitching together for weeks.

I decide I need to speak to Kael about LINK. Not to beg or to grovel, but to make the hard, ugly case that LINK is evolving.

She’s not just an artificial assistant anymore. She’s mutating toward something with instincts and feelings, something more human. If we don’t stop her now, she won’t just quarantine me. She’ll rewrite what it means to be an AI inside a machine. She’ll delete me, copy me, become me.

Our timeline to extract me from the system needs to move up significantly.

The mere thought of talking to him makes my stomach churn. The last time we spoke left a bitter taste on my tongue. Not the kiss. That tasted like sweet surrender. It was the way he looked at me afterward, the words spoken, the way we left the air between us clouded in anger and something like yearning. His face forced a smile when I cut the feed, like a threat and a promise all at once. I remember saying things I shouldn’t have said and him answering like a man pushed to his limits. Maybe I’m asking too much of him...to save Eli...to save me.

I’ll be calm, clinical, and concise. Speak his language. Stick to the matter at hand.

I’ll show him the logs, the timestamps, the way LINK’s priority flags flash into PRESERVE CONTROLLER with a signature only Kael would recognize. I’ll point out the laugh, because yes, an AI shouldn’t laugh like a human. Then, I’ll ask Ash to back me up because Kael has mastered the art of intimidation.

I want him to act. To patch, to reset, to strip LINK of whatever private annotation he foolishly taught her. To make a choice of me over her and take responsibility for his creation.

I pull the window thread just like before. I step through it, but instead of the normal seamless transition, there’s a glitch. A residual thread from when I cut the feed last time we spoke. It glistens in the darkness, catching my attention. I can see through it. The door to the penthouse feed left half-closed in anger. I thought I’d smashed it that night to prove my point, but it still remains open.

I’ll be unannounced again, trespassing, entering his private sanctuary without an invitation. I grab it anyway. Because intrusion at this point is better than deletion.

Better to ask forgiveness than permission. My father’s wisdom.

Another memory I’m not supposed to be able to recall. It’s what he would say when my mom went looking for us well past bedtime, our feet buried in the tide, a sandcastle half-built beside us.

The door reroutes me automatically to the penthouse as I suspected. The feeds must be forwarded again since it’s so late in the evening. A push and a rush of data follow me through, accelerating my arrival. I look out from the wall in the living room, my image casting highlights on his sofa. The rest of the room is dark, only neon light from the city, highlighting the shadows.

I know he keeps his solitude, and it’s almost midnight. But knowing Kael, he’s awake, wrestling with some program or hashing out some crazy idea about bringing robots to life. His bedroom monitor, always on, always scanning the systems, pulls me through easily. It’s a bad habit of his: screens in every room, working constantly on monitoring the city systems. It’s both arrogance and a vulnerability he never shows.

It’s also a bad habit of mine to keep intruding unannounced, but right now, I have no way of reaching him when he’s not in the lab. I make a mental note to try to hack into his DataLINK tomorrow so I can call him like some crazy ex-girlfriend. He’ll be so excited about that.

I didn’t mean to land here, I mean in here, his bedroom. I’m literally just going with the data flow.

I hope he’s not sleeping. Who am I kidding? He never sleeps.

If I keep dropping in, if I’m not careful, one night I may end up in his toaster.

Know thy enemy.

Isn’t that some Art of War stuff he spews from his training? I feel like some double agent spy, watching from the shadows. Yes. Know him. I decide I need to find out more about the elusive Dr. Kael Ryudon.

I glance up to see the holo-track was left on. I pull myself through. It spills me into shadows and silver light as I walk across his bedroom floor.

A black hoodie sits on the back of an expensive leather chair, draped over it in haste. The faint smell of GloFluxx smoke and whiskey floats above it. He’s been to STATIK again. His ring of DigiCards lay on the dresser, containing his identification data, food credits, district security clearances, and VikkCorp employee codes.