Page 54 of GlitchBorn Heart

Something inside me pushes like a hand on my chest, heavy, unrelenting, a familiar instinct older than logic. It happens a lot in times of stress. Instead of burying it, this time, I welcome it.

Lyra’s face keeps intruding on my thoughts like a script I didn’t authorize access to.

Not the anomaly signature or the magic spike. Her.

She didn’t move like a weapon of the rebellion. She didn’t burn hot with a hunger for chaos the way the reports always describe U21s. She worried about her brother. She laughed, teased, and lived like she wasn’t struggling to survive in this city. Whatever power lived inside her, it wasn’t aimed toward destruction. It was something warm and human.

That realization throws everything I know to be into a tailspin.

U21s are supposed to be volatile and unpredictable. They’re supposed to be walking disasters waiting for a trigger like Ash. I chuckle to myself.

That’s the narrative I’ve built my corporate life around, the logic I’ve trusted to justify everything I’ve built. Lyra never tried to hurt anyone. She probably didn’t want to be seen, especially not by the “anomaly hunter.” I know for a fact she wanted to disappear, to exist without being hunted, and that’s why I could so easily find her in her dreams.

She’s dangerous in a way the others aren’t because she makes me question the world order, makes me question everything I believe.

I can’t afford to have these thoughts. Empathy is a liability, but so is attraction and obsession. One anomaly doesn’t invalidate an entire generation. I refuse to let myself romanticize about one that could be the exception. It’s just not logical.

I don’t have magic. I don’t feel the world the way they do. U21s talk about vibrations and currents and instincts, things I can’t sense, can’t verify, can’t control. Trusting that kind of power feels like stepping into darkness without a map. It feels like weakness.

My entire career has been built on eliminating anomalies, so I compartmentalize. I file Lyra away as an outlier, one good apple in the whole rotten bunch. If I let myself believe U21s aren’t a threat, then I have to look at what I’ve become and what I’ve done. That paints me with the same brush as Vikktor, and even though I work for him, I refuse to become him.

I’m not ready for that...yet.

Her golden eyes flash through my head again—not the newsfeed’s still image of her broken body. No, it’s the way she looked the night I first saw her at STATIK, red light spilling across her beautiful face, stubborn and bright, like she’d never allow herself to be owned by anyone.

This virus, combined with the void, brought on the collapse of the entire DreamNet, surged GameNet, and spilled recklessly into other vital networks. If I eliminate all parts of this code, how will I find her, if she is indeed alive? She could be suspended in DreamNet permanently, like an induced coma. Or she could just be gone, her magic signature left flaring until it dissipates into the universe.

My obsession to know more begins to spin out like a whirlwind, threatening to pull everything else down. Curiosity usually leads me down paths never meant to be taken. I tell myself I’m insane, sleep-deprived, chasing ghosts in the machine.

But ghosts don’t resist deletion. Ghosts don’t laugh at you through the white noise.

The system waits for my input. The blinking cursor mocks me as it pulses in time with my heart.

AWAITING RESPONSE DR. RYUDON

Even LINK senses my insanity. I drag my hand back from the console, shoving it through my hair instead. “Not tonight,” I mutter under my breath. My voice sounds raw, shredded. “Not this one. Not yet.”

I kill the command window that would scrub the entire network during TheKast tonight. The anomaly flickers again, and then disappears for a brief moment, as if aware it survived.

I drag the feed into a locked partition, rerouting the code away from the DreamNet mainframe, hidden from every other eye in VikkCorp, including Ember. I lean back in my chair, staring up at the cold LED lights of the lab’s ceiling. Every bone in my body tells me I’ve just made the biggest mistake of my life. And yet, I feel something I haven’t in years.

Excitement.

I startle when my DataLINK rings, spilling a cold cup of coffee onto my desk. It drips onto the floor, soaking my shoe. Ash’s ID blips across the screen. Of course. He never sleeps either.

I swipe to connect, still staring at the empty screen in front of me.

“Kael.” Ash’s voice is low and serious. “Tell me you’ve got something. I felt another surge in GameNet a few minutes ago. It tore a hole in the game and crashed the server briefly. People are pissed. What the hell’s going on now?”

I swallow, suddenly aware of how tight my throat is. “Everything is almost back to normal,” I lie.

“Have you seen the news feeds?” I lower my voice to a whisper, despite being alone. One can never be too careful inside VikkCorp. “You were right. Eli was the powerful anomaly, and Vikktor has him in custody. Lyra was too, and they’re painting her as a casualty of the CIC raid.” My voice cracks unexpectedly.

Ash goes silent. Too silent for him. “No, that can’t be.” He sounds certain. “I’ve been bombarded with vibrations all night, and the surge effects are still banging on my brain. I haven’t had a headache like this since I wrecked into that holo projection tower.”

I force myself to say it. “Lyra was with me tonight. We both dropped out of DreamNet, but now they’re painting it like she was eliminated by the CIC.” I suck in a desperate breath. “I’m still seeing two anomalies surging. Have you felt anything from her? Her signature, anything?”

A breath explodes through the call, like Ash was sucker punched. “No. Don’t fuck with me, Kael. Say that again.”