Page 73 of GlitchBorn Heart

An olive branch to move us forward on my terms.

Her mouth parts. She hesitates, just enough for me to see it. The fight isn’t leaving her, but something else has taken root alongside it. Her brother’s needs before hers.

“If this is the best you’ve got, you’re going to have to try harder to hate me. I don’t scare that easily.” I drop my voice to a low, intimate threat only she can hear. “And you wouldn’t be shaking if you didn’t want me as much as I want you. Would it really be so bad, Taiyō?” I throw the nickname in just for spite.

Ash picks up his guitar and plucks another slothful note, like he’s the soundtrack to our tension. Ember folds her arms, watching us like she’s stuck between awe and disbelief.

I bend toward the wall screens this time, creating the illusion of closeness, letting the dark shadows in me rise. My voice tightens to a stern promise. “But understand this: Working with me means you don’t get to sabotage me anymore. No more revenge rage or citywide temper tantrums.” I lean against the solid wall, arm over my head.

Her eyes flare, that stubborn fire refusing to bow to me. “Fine. I won’t. For my brother, not for you.” Her lips purse. “Can I trust you, Kael Ryudon? I mean really trust you to help us?”

“Always.” I promise her. “You can’t trust me because I’m good. I’ve done things I can’t undo. But if you step toward me now, I will choose you every time. Over the Corporation, over the city, over myself. I’m done denying this.”

“Kael.” Her eyes fill with something almost like digitized tears. And for the first time, it doesn’t sound like she’s ready to wage war. Instead it’s a soft half-surrender...to me.

And war, I realize, is exactly what we’ll wage...hopefully together.

28

HerSide

Playlist: Depeche Mode - Dream On

Kael

Several days pass, blending together with monotony. Corporate hours swallowed by glass walls, endless code, political compliance. We’re still no closer to figuring out how to get to Eli, let alone rescue him from Vikktor’s clutches. I move through the lab on instinct, repeating daily tasks, detached, exactly as Vikktor wants me to be.

I need a challenge.

The rubbery synthetic lunch Ember ordered from that shitty diner down the street sits in my gut like a brick. I stand and pace as I think, move, do something to break the staleness. As the clouds darken and the neon of the city permeates every corner of polished glass in VikkCorp, I finally make the conscious decision to take this ridiculousness to the next level. Another idea for a program emerged in the darkest part of last night, and I just can’t let it escape my grasp.

Employees leave for the day like lemmings walking over a cliff to their death. VikkCorp begins to feel more and more like a stark-white mausoleum. The building quiets and so does the lab. I sent Ember home early to prepare for tomorrow’s update to the suits on the cybernetics program we’ve been working on for the past year. Vikktor’s passion project, an elite force of city patrol whose sole purpose is to make citizens’ lives a living hell. Well, that and to make Vikktor cream his pants with godlike power.

I save the nights for Lyra.

After hours, when the city streets empty and the elites go home to their mega mansion high rises, it’s just me, the glow of the screens reflecting off the floors of the lab, and Lyra, waiting. Her chin rests in her hands as she watches me work. I talk to her. Or try to. She wants very little to do with me.

Sometimes we circle each other through various monitors around the lab, trading words like weapons, probing for weakness, for truths.

I now know the way her face furrows before she becomes angry, how she deflects with sarcasm when something I say hits too close. She’s learning how tightly I hold control of my entire life, private and secluded. It makes her crazy that I never answer any of her questions that matter.

She keeps her distance. So do I.

Most nights it feels less like conversation and more like survival. Two untamed animals locked in the same cage, pacing opposite walls, aware of each other’s heat. We want to trust but don’t. We can’t really hide from each other. The space between us just stays...charged. For some strange reason that defies all logic. That charged tension doesn’t push us apart.

It pulls us tighter.

Some nights the stressors of my day spill into the conversation. It happens over something stupid. A minor system reroute. A harmless override. Lyra is bored, unsettled, and pushes too far, just to see if she can.

“You rewired my security lattice?” I snap at her, already knowing the answer. Alarms scroll and flicker beside her image, data stuttering like an erratic heartbeat. “Do you have any idea what that would’ve triggered if I hadn’t caught it?”

Her chin lifts. Still defiant. “I didn’t touch your stupid lattice, I tested it. There’s a difference.”

“That difference gets people erased.”

“But you’ll keep me from being erased,” she fires back. “Right, Dr. Ryudon? You’ll keep me safe in your little digital cage.”

Silence. Her sarcasm is thick and electric and ignites the very thing in me I can no longer restrain.