Page 12 of GlitchBorn Heart

She hugs a younger guy, tousles his hair, plants a kiss on his cheek. Really? One of those nerdy-brainy-glasses types?

Lucky bastard.

“She’s trouble.” I readjust in my seat, trying to convince myself as much as Ash. I say nothing else, but jealousy fills me, raw and unspoken.

“Probably...but we like trouble.” Ash lifts his brows a couple of times. “You like trouble.”

My jaw sets as I try to shut out the memories of Ash and I running through the streets after girls in the wee hours of the neon-lit dawn after drinking and stealing. “I don’t have time for...distractions.”

Ash studies me, half-smirk, knowing from that power of his that I remember just how much I do like trouble. “Funny. Destiny doesn’t care about your schedule, brother.” He smacks me on the back and stands.

“Sorry, bro, but I don’t think you’re in the greatest position to tell me how to manage this mess that’s my life. You’re straddling the line between loyalty and the rebellion, and your bridges are about to burn.” I lean further back into my familiar shadows, looking through my glass at him like it owes me answers. “Hope she’s not the one holding the match.”

“Maybe...but I’m someone who sees the way the world bends when certain people walk in”—he glances between Lyra and myself—“and you’re about to collide with someone who’ll change everything for you.”

I glance down at the lines of code still filling my DataLINK. What the hell could be going on this late at night? I curse.

Ember, my assistant, is in the lab tonight. She’s got this. I can’t take care of everything. Besides, I want to be stupidly drunk by midnight and in a RedRoom in DreamNet by curfew. I guzzle the last of my liquid courage and pull down my hood emerging like a butterfly from a cocoon.

The music shifts. The DJ’s tribal beat thumping lower now, the bass pounding like a pulse through the floorboards. Ash went gods know where with gods know who, so this is my chance. My feet are like lead. I feel like gravity works differently for me at this moment, slower, heavier. A conversation won’t hurt, nothing more, I tell myself.

She leans casually on the bar, raindrops still clinging to her leather-clad shoulders. I stop just short of her and lock eyes again, my dark smothering her light. She looks at me like she’s caught in crosshairs.

Screens behind her glitch red, then violet, then a flicker of code streams like water running backward. This must be the universe calling me into her orbit.

Strange symbols flicker across every wall screen behind her head, jagged and bleeding. Images pop behind her, and in between I notice flashes of words, blurry and shaking.

THE WORLD IS A CAGE

WE ARE CAGED BIRDS BEATING OUR WINGS AGAINST ITS BARS

ONE DAY THE BARS WILL BREAK

Perplexing. I slant my head as if trying to decipher a foreign language or a coded virus. Must be an anomaly in the area. For once, I couldn’t care less.

The crowd roars, and I look away to see what the commotion is but quickly look back to make sure she hasn’t disappeared, a mere figment of my imagination.

“Sorry about Ash...he can be a bit much at first.” I flash an actual-fucking-smile and it feels so foreign to me I almost melt into the floor. “You’re new here?”

She forces herself to break the spell between us and faces the bartender.

“Sort of. I’m just in a lot of places I shouldn’t be.” She turns back with drink in hand and almost spills the contents down the front of my hoodie, because now, she too can’t look away. She finally breaks our gaze, her eyes shifting up to the screens above her head. She blushes nervously. Unease fills the room between us like fog.

“Lyra, right? Ash told me.” I try to coax her into engaging.

Please, please don’t let her recognize me.

“That’s right.” She half-smirks, her vibrant eyes traveling up and down, scanning me. “And you are?”

Now we’re getting somewhere.

I set my glass down next to her, the faint clink swallowed by the music. “Just call me Kael.” I move in a bit closer, inhaling her scent: salt air, warm golden breezes, and something so satisfyingly sweet I can’t bring it to the top of my mind. But I want it...to taste it.

We stand there in the blue-pink glow for a beat too long. I notice the screens above her shift again. This time bursting into strange, wild colors and pictures: a dragon breathing fire soaring through static snow, the sun cracking open into intense light over a purple ocean. Lyra tenses.

She whispers softly to herself, a tinge of nervousness “Calm. I know this...” She begins counting backward.

So strange but so intriguing. It’s almost like being around all this tech is making her nervous. Perhaps she’s one of those hackers Ash raves about.