Page 99 of GlitchBorn Heart

A pair of violet eyes, a figure pulled from the ink, unraveling and reforming like he’s stitched together from scraps of fabric. My chest caves as relief slams into me.

“Eli. I’m here. Are you okay? They’re not hurting you, are they?” So many questions, but right now this is all I can manage.

His head jerks up, looking at me with the intensity of a wild storm. His eyes, stars, those eyes, are still the same violet, but glazed over, almost haunted. His body flickers, half-there, as though the void can’t decide if it wants to keep him or spit him out. He’s still fighting with it internally.

“Lyra?” His voice cracks in disbelief. “No, no, you’re gone. You...they said you died.”

I shake my head fiercely, stepping toward him even though every instinct in me screams not to touch him. The black-gray void cords curl tighter around his ankles, as if jealous. “Not dead, at least not in that sense. I’m here...everywhere really. I don’t know how, but I’m here.” I move closer as the cords begin to wrap up his body extending to his chest. “Eli, look at me.”

He does, and I immediately see the fear in his face. I raise my arms to invite him in, but the void reacts angrily, snapping at me like a fierce beast protecting its territory. His fear morphs into something worse: guilt. “I didn’t know. I didn’t know you were alive. I thought maybe you were, I could feel you. Lyra, I didn’t mean to...” His words tumble into static, the void chewing through them. “I just—I wanted to find you. Together forever, remember?”

My heart breaks into tiny pieces. “You tore the city apart. You broke the system,” I whisper, sounding more severe than I mean to. “That surge, it was all you, Eli. You tore innocent people out of DreamNet, and you drained them of their magic. Who knows if they recovered. They could be magicless.”

His expression twists, panic rising from the inside. “I can’t stop it. Lyra. It’s in me, this thing, this black hole, it just keeps pulling. I can’t hold it back any longer.” He claws at his chest, as though he could rip the void out with his bare hands. “They have me. The Corporation. They’re trying to contain it, when they’re not trying to harvest it out of me. Vikktor tells me it’s for my own good, and he can get rid of what’s inside me. I’m beginning to think he’s right. I need it out.”

I recoil, taken back that he would even entertain the idea of Vikktor Vosse ever being right about anything. “I didn’t know it would hurt you, Sis, or anyone else.”

I try to reach out to him, drag him back, but my fingers close around static. The void lashes at me again for trying. I wasn’t expecting a piece of nothing to burn like acid.

Vikktor. The name is a gaping wound we all bleed from, even Kael. “Do not trust Vikktor. Kael says—”

Eli cuts me off, violet lightning flashing and flaring around him. “Stop, Lyra! Kael? That evil doctor?” His lip curls into a vicious snarl. “He’s no different than Vikktor. You think he’s your savior? That he’s going to help you? He hunted us for him. Lured us in. Baited you. Cages dressed up as systems. They both want control, Lyra, and they’ll both kill us to get it.”

“No. That’s not true, Eli,” I plead with him. “Forget him! Look, you’re killing yourself.” My voice shakes uncontrollably. “If you keep doing this, you’ll erase everything. Me. You. The whole damned system. Kael is trying to save us. He will save us.”

I blink, my words digging deep because part of me fears he’s right. I have to believe Kael will fulfill his promise. I have to trust. I have no other choice. “You don’t know him like I do.”

“I know men like him. All those corporate elites, they’re all the same,” Eli hisses. “Cold. Unfeeling. Pretending they’re acting for your sake, when it’s really for theirs. I won’t let him fool you. I won’t let either of them get to us. Even if I have to destroy the Corporation to stop them.”

The void lashes around him, furious, as if feeding on his rage. Inky tendrils gather and strike at the surrounding air.

“Eli, stop!” My voice breaks. “You’ll destroy us all. That’s what will happen.”

His body convulses, static tearing through his outline. He looks at me once more, desperation filling his boyish face. “Dr. Ryudon is hunting you, looking for you in here. I don’t know where ‘here’ is, but I’ll find you before he does. Even if I have to tear the whole world apart to do it.”

Silence falls heavy. His gaze flickers. “I’d rather erase it all than let the corporate assholes use me or you.”

But before I can answer, his body jerks, racked with a convulsion that makes the void flare white-hot around him. He looks at me once more, like my little brother this time. So heartbreakingly familiar.

One second. That’s all it takes for the void to swallow him. I’m left in silence, my hand still outstretched toward the space where my brother stood. I stand there trembling, my heart caught in a vise between a man and a boy. Kael needs Eli to stop. Eli wants Kael destroyed. And me?

I’m the common denominator pulling them both into war. For the first time since this nightmare began, I don’t know if I want Kael to keep his promise.

Because if saving Eli means unleashing that void on the world, stripping U21s of their power, hollowing out humanity for the corporations to make them into obedient shells, then what kind of monster does that make me for saving him?

39

SoulReaver

Playlist: The Rebel Path - P.T Adamczyk

Lyra

There’s nothing normal about being trapped inside the grid of an AI.

Yet against all logic, the environment is beginning to knit itself back together, resembling the normal appearance I’m used to. Structure begins to fill in. Doors reappear where there was once only void. Threads of code scroll past my consciousness, data returning to its rightful places, moving along in neat lines. The system is finally stabilizing.

I can still feel it, though, the weight of it all pressing in. I’m strong, I know I am. I survived StarFell. I’ve survived loss, rage, and being erased piece by piece. But this void darkness, this endlessness, is all-consuming.