Page 141 of GlitchBorn Heart

USER DR. KAEL RYUDON UNAUTHORIZED

I hear Kael’s voice boom throughout the lab. “User? Unauthorized? I fucking built you.” His fingers fly across the keys, unspooling lines of code that spill onto the screens. I can see them fly by: backdoors, kill switches, forgotten roots. He’s accessing code I’ve never seen before.

LINK chimes in, her voice all too human, too conversational.

CORRUPTION

DR. RYUDON YOU ARE CORRUPTING MY BIOS

“I told you not to fuck with her, LINK. We had an agreement. Eli for Lyra,” Kael shouts across the lab.

The words slam into me like a physical blow. Wait, what? Eli for Lyra? He traded my brother for me? My breath stops, my body freezing in the current of code around me. The system flickers red as my heart pounds harder. This? This was why I was locked out of the system? Stuck in holo-form? Because she wanted my brother but didn’t want Kael to have me?

My head turns, and I let the code drop out of my sight. My holo-edges begin to fade. “Kael...” My voice cracks. I feel like crying into the code. “I trusted you. I only just found that trust, and you traded...”

He whips his head toward me, eyes lit like fiery embers. For a moment, I can’t tell if it’s fury at me, at LINK, or at himself. “No!” he snaps. “You don’t understand. Stop! Lyra—don’t!”

Lyra. He never calls me by name anymore.

The old angry rush of feelings comes flooding back. “Then make me understand!” I shout back. The grid swallows our words, the tension so thick it feels like another layer of data pressing against my skin.

Kael runs to me, his calm demeanor now a storm on the horizon. His voice is rough, demanding. “I said that to her, to LINK, because it’s the only language she understands. Deals. Control. Threats. I don’t have time to explain this to you right now. You don’t have time. Trust me.”

His gaze cuts to mine, panic-stricken but also full of boiling rage. “You think I’d ever trade you for anyone? Even your brother? If that’s what you think after last night, then I don’t even know why I’m fucking doing this!” His voice shifts to an octave lower. I don’t recognize it, a low, almost digitized growl. “Fuck!” He throws a LINKpad across the lab, narrowly missing Ember. It shatters under the sheer force of impact.

This isn’t like him. He never loses control. It’s written into his DNA.

The words cut. They hurt like a million tiny splinters, and he meant them. I soften my voice to convey the hurt, but I still have to ask the question pressing against the walls of my mind. “Then why does it sound like you already did?”

Kael turns his back on me. I see him crack his neck, loosening the tension there. I feel his anger building higher; it’s buzzing in my veins. The streams of code around me begin to move and align themselves into an organized system. Threads regroup, re-order, running past me slowly and less frantic. Doors begin to build and open, as if they were never destroyed by Eli’s void or locked by LINK. Autonomous.

LINK’s voice glitches through the grid, unstable and defeated. I did it. My magic is defeating her, setting her back to the simple interface she should be. I glance down at my hands, no light. I don’t understand. I still feel as if I’m not fully recharged.

I realize this isn’t me.

The walls of the system ripple, peeling back and rearranging themselves in flawless symmetry. The alarms shriek, then immediately fall silent, as if smothered beneath an instant kill command. But Kael’s hands aren’t even near the keyboard.

He exhales hard, like he’s holding back a roar. His hands grip the edge of the console, scraping for purchase. “LINK! This isn’t over until I say it is!” Sweat beads on his forehead.

What’s happening? Is she hurting him?

Neon orange flickers at his temples, streams of light begin crawling under his skin. The tattoos on his arms burst to life, raw and alive, orange mixing with black, shimmering like dragon scales, pushing through the ink covering his body. All those times I saw light in his veins, pulses in his eyes, flashes erupting in the dragon that climbs down his spine, it was all raw power.

He turns to me like a bomb about to detonate. His eyes are no longer dark. Now they’re a warning, the color of hot molten metal.

Oh, shit. The realization almost brings me to my knees.

Kael has magic.

He doesn’t even know. He doesn’t realize he’s doing this. He can’t see himself transforming.

His face is carved from fury. His focus is razor-sharp on the wall monitors. He thinks it’s just his discipline, his intellect. But I know better. I can feel it, like standing too close to a downed wire.

My heart claws at my ribs. The neon dragon on his back is alive, not painted ink but a cage of fire waiting to burst free. His eyes flare molten orange again, blazing like twin furnaces that could incinerate this whole damn building if he let them.

It’s magic. Real magic.

StarFell magic.