Page 7 of GlitchBorn Heart

“I believe in staying alive,” I counter.

He grins like that’s adorable. “Yeah, and I believe in making life worth dying for.”

I shake my head, but there’s an almost-smirk I can’t suppress. Only Ash gets that reaction.

He leans closer, voice dropping. “Face it, bro, you’d be bored stiff without me.”

“Incorrect,” I say, deadpan. “I was bored long before you existed.”

His smirk quickly stills as his face fills with concern. I can tell in an instant he’s picked up on something specific, a disruption in the flow, a frequency only he can hear.

The crowd stills as if the DJ pressed pause on hundreds of bodies at once. Bright amber-and-gold streaks run like wet metallic paint on every screen around us and the constant glitching of sound is almost beautiful. It’s a low, wet sound like waves lapping on a shore.

“Gotta go!” He bolts for the stage and grabs his guitar from the half-lit neon corner. The strange glitches and drips remain, but the lights cut out on stage, and a single spot shines on Ash.

A low hum thrums through the floor, not from speakers, but from Ash himself, standing alone on stage with his guitar slung across his back, mic in hand. At first, it’s just sound, a pulsing I can feel throughout my entire body, like electricity running down a live wire. But then it hits, a wave of euphoria like a drug mainlined straight into my veins. It steals my breath, sharpens the edges of the world until every detail is vivid, and alive.

And there he is. My best friend, his power illuminating him from head to toe, eyes flaring, tattoos pulsing. Someday the Corporation will come for him, come for his magic, but until then, I’ll protect him with all I have.

The track drops, a brutal wall of sound, and I smile without humor pulling my hood lower.

Let them come.

4

GlitchBorn

Playlist: Glitch - Knive, Known Hated

Lyra

My eyes sting, raw and red from staring at data feeds all day long. I press my thumb to the scan panel beside the door of the cramped office space I share with four coworkers, all of us DataScribes. I replay the image of the sunsets from my youth in my mind, realizing I‘ve worked through more than I’ve seen in this city. Sunsets are quicker now. No parade of color. Just a harsh snap of day to night as the blackness falls over the cracks not covered by the bright lights of the holo feeds spilling onto the pavement.

It’s darker inside the office tower than out. The city is swallowed in a fine oily mist and wet glare, skyscrapers disappearing like specters into the smog. Ads flicker across the haze in electric colors—cyan, magenta, violet—reflecting off the delivery drones zipping between buildings, dropping off dinner to citizens too exhausted or too trapped to leave their corporate subsidized apartments.

Another day wasted, cataloging and feeding data through the stream. Work that could actually be done by AI but instead, the Corporation insists that we earn the meals, housing, and small amount of credits they provide. We all know we’re just cogs in the data machine destined to someday be obsolete.

GOOD NIGHT MISS VAILLE

VIKKCORP APPRECIATES YOUR HARD WORK

LINK’s robotic voice reverberates through the hall, synthetic, soulless, toeing the corporate line while the words trail along the data panel’s screen.

A bitter laugh escapes me.

Fuck you. I flip the nearest security camera the bird, my middle finger straining from straightening it after being bent on a keyboard all day. Someone in systems will love seeing that on their feed.

My DataLINK chirps. I look down to see a text from my brother:

Eli: STATIK—10PM

Eli: Let’s have some U21 fun!

Stars, that stupid tongue out emoji my brother uses when he thinks he’s being funny, almost makes me want to scream. If I had the energy.

My shoulders droop and a sigh escapes. It’s nine p.m. and the daily data grind has me exhausted and burnt out, but how can I resist spending time with my favorite brother? OK, well my only brother. But the only person in this world who knows the real, true me. The only person left who loves and cares about me.

“LINK. Tell Eli I’m on my way.”