Page 98 of GlitchBorn Heart

I stare back at the man who used to be the boy I dragged out of alleys. My mind flashes back, reticent. Ash and I at sixteen...

The fight had gone bad. We’d taken on men we shouldn’t have: older, armed, ruthless. He was on the ground, blood at the corner of his mouth, eye swollen shut, laughing like a fool even as his ribs rattled with pain.

“Stop moving,” I told him, pressing my hand down to feel if anything was broken.

“I don’t, ahh...think that’s how medicine works, Kael.”

Our buddy Jett came up behind me, touched my shoulder, but said nothing. I felt a scorching heat under my palm as the bruising faded. The purpled flesh lightened, bones knitting faster than they should have. Ash went still, eyes widening.

“What the hell was that?” he whispered.

I didn’t answer. I didn’t know. I just pulled him to his feet and told him to keep walking. We never spoke of it again. But he never forgot, and neither did I.

I come back to reality, just in time to tip back the whiskey. This must be how Lyra feels toward Eli.

I choose to fight. Not for him. For her.

“I’ve got to get this system back online. I’ll tell Ember to meet us in an hour at the lab.” My throat tightens at the thought of what lies ahead of us.

“Lyra’s gone again. I have to get to her first; that’s our priority. Then Eli.” My voice drops, frustration reshaping it. “And don’t keep shit from me again, Ash. Don’t make me regret trusting you.”

He laughs softly, a sound that’s half-relief, half-promise. “You never have, Kael. Even when you said you did.”

38

LostAgain

Playlist: Nowhere To Go - Bad Omens

Lyra

I wake up screaming into the void’s blackness. I’ve spent most of the time here curled into a ball in the corner of nothing. I’ve never felt a place so cold and empty. What I wouldn’t give for the warmth of the beach in DreamNet.

It’s not the clean chill of the lab or even the sterile bite of Kael’s penthouse. This is something deeper, hungrier. A void where the system has stripped away even its own architecture. No DreamNet, no GameNet, no rooms, no avatars. Just silence. Maddening silence.

I float, or maybe I stand. Maybe I don’t exist at all, in a black-and-purple lattice that stretches to infinity. Thin threads of code flash and vanish like fireflies, too far apart to stitch into anything that feels like a world. But it’s coming back. Little by little LINK is repairing herself, probably writing the final blow for me in her code as I speak. Every step I take dissolves behind me. No ground. No horizon. No place to go.

Twenty-four hours. Maybe longer. Time means nothing here, but I feel like it’s been an eternity without Kael’s voice, his touch, his presence to steady me even though I don’t want it to. I estimate that this time yesterday he had me pinned to the wall in his bedroom, showing me just how good his programming is.

I tell myself I don’t care. That a part of me still hates him. That his games are poison. But here in the dark, alone, the lie doesn’t stick.

This emptiness is Eli’s doing. I know it with the kind of certainty that stings like needles on skin. He pulled too hard, ripped the system apart, and I was one of the many casualties flung back into nowhere.

The sister in me knows he did it to reach me. He did it because he thought I might still be alive and that he could just find me and everything would return to the way it was.

He’s wrong. I’m not alive, and things can never go back to the way they were.

After StarFell, I spent many years hoping for the same, and look where it got me. Maybe I’m wrong too, and Kael’s not my salvation. Maybe I don’t need him. I practically raised Eli when my parents died. I provided for us, kept us safe. Why do I need a man when I can do this myself? I can find a way.

I know this...

My veins begin warming with energy, my magic bleeding into whatever piece of tech I can find in this hollow place. I yell my brother’s name once, hoping he’s scanning the system for me. “Eli.” It echoes like the word doesn’t belong here.

Something stirs. Just a slight ripple in the darkness.

“Eli?” I call to him again on the chance he may be able to hear me through the static. The edge of the void pulses, a low vibration that thrums deep in my bones. I step back cautiously, but the dark follows, stretching toward me. Where I normally see golden threads of code unspooling like veins, I now see angry violet bolts crashing down like lightning.

One moment it’s just me. The next, he’s there.