Page 76 of GlitchBorn Heart

Control, Kael-san...of breathing through your fear, of steadying the mind when the body wants to react.

His words always replay when I feel my seams begin to split.

Chaos is inevitable; mastery is not. It is earned, strike by strike, decision by decision.

I blink and adjust a couple of commands and hit the Enter key. The program compiles clean and completely error free. Perfect.

I smirk to myself, leaning back in the chair. “Of course. I always find a way.” I look up at Lyra’s image on the wall.

She watches me with a look I can’t read, head tilted, senses on alert. In the back of my mind, something speaks to me: Maybe it wasn’t just me. Maybe it was all her.

“Alright!” I stand and rub my palms together. “Ready?”

She straightens to full height and nods. “Ready as I’ll ever be. Can’t wait to become a sexbot!”

I shake my head at her joke, but I am a man, and somehow that statement still excites me. “You shouldn’t have to do anything but reach for the thread of code that says HOLO. Once you grab it, it will stay with you, like an install, unlike the window program.”

Her image follows me from one screen to the next, out of my office, down the hall and ending up in the corner of the lab. My nerves are bundled up in excitement as I insert a key card into the holo-projector. It stirs to life with a whoosh of light. The air in the lab thickens. A shimmer of particles, then light stretches into form.

And there she is.

Lyra. My Lyra. Not just pixels on a screen, but a phantom body, a living cluster of light, standing in my lab. Practically human, looking very real, and certainly close enough to touch.

Close enough to ruin me.

The shimmer steadies. She blinks, then looks down at her own hands, fingers flexing, moving, too fluid to be actual flesh but too real to dismiss.

Her head snaps up, eyes blazing at me. “What did you do? How?” Her smile stretches from ear to ear.

I can’t help smiling back. Even now, she’s breathtaking.

“Gave you more than a window,” I say smoothly, walking around her image. My shoes echo against the lab floor as I close the distance, stopping just shy of her. “You wanted out of my cage. Consider this step one.” My face is so close to her ear, I feel my breath bounce off her synthetic skin.

Her laugh is euphoric. A beautiful system crash of pure happiness. “I can go anywhere?” She continues checking out her body parts, doing a mental inventory.

“Well, anywhere there’s a holo-track. I’ll head down to the NightMarket tonight and see if Ash can hook me up with a pirated emulator. Then you should be pretty free to go where you please.” I lower my voice.

“No one has ever stood here like this. No one but you. I’ve only been able to do it in DreamNet or from the PleazureHolo custom-order program.” I move even closer. “You inspired me.” My hand lifts and hovers just shy of her cheek.

She flinches. “This is insane.” She backs up, denying my touch.

Maybe I am insane, but it’s crystal clear to me now. Clearer than ever. I don’t want to dominate just systems anymore. I want to dominate her. Worse still, I want her to want me for it.

I reach for her hand instead; it’s safer, less intimate. “Insane,” I murmur, allowing the corner of my mouth to twist into a smirk. “Or inevitable.”

Her light-fingers curl around mine. “Kael!” She gasps. “I can feel you! Your hand!” It sounds like a miracle and an accusation at the same time. She wraps her other hand around mine. “How is this possible?” Her eyes widen, forgetting the anger she normally saves for me. “You’re warm.” She’s giddy.

I let the silence hang. I step back just enough to break the spell before it consumes us both.

Control yourself, Kael.

“That’s how it works.” I laugh lightly. “Why do you think so many people have holos in the RedRooms with them? It’s a perfect simulation of a real-life partner. You should be able to feel me, and I definitely should be able to feel you.”

My thoughts start to go down that path of lust again. “Your magic is probably helping too.” I move back toward her to close the space she put between us. I can’t stand it any longer. “Try it.”

She pushes a bit of her magic out, and the holo-fog flickers, her form wavers, but the image holds. More refined now, any lasting blurs completely cleaned up. I build it, she perfects it. She should feel real now.

Just real enough to torture me.