Chapter 7 Kieran
Isee her before I truly realize it’s her. She stands out amongst the crowd, her jet black hair purposefully messy, gray eyes bright against her blushing cheeks. Tight dress leaving too much on display while also not showing me near enough to appease my imagination.
The bar is just noise and heat, too many voices layering over shitty bass that makes conversation a chore. I don’t belong here, not really.
But I followed the ping from Jace’s search, a live location match on the user we’re all obsessing over. And I tell myself I’m only here to observe.
She’s supposed to be data.
A test.
A user lost in a wall of code.
Then I hear her talking to the bartender.
She has a laugh that hits like static, sending the hairs along my arms standing on end. He calls her Eris too, which makes me wonder if it’s a nickname or her real name. I lean toward the latter, if only because of their familiarity.
A red-headed woman swaggers over, barely stopping her movements as she grabs Eris by the hand and leads her to the dance floor.
At first, she plants her boots, grounding herself like she doesn’t care if the floor decides to quit holding her up.
But I observe the way her body loosens up with a laugh.
And then she’s dancing. It’s not planned, not trying to be sexy. She looks like she’s just… trying to shake something loose. The woman in black spins beside her, all sharp edges and shimmering makeup, the two of them moving like they’ve carved out that space by sheer will.
Eris… She doesn’t match the behavioral notes Silas logged. I’ve seen her digital reflection enough times to think I understood who she is.
But this? This is different.
She’s different.
Real in a way the data never captures.
I send her a message through the admin feed, typing without looking at my screen, and hope my autocorrect fixes anything I might misspell.
Locke:
Are you still dancing, Eris? Or thinking about me again?
When she slips into the booth across the bar, I almost go to her. But I don’t move. I just watch, fascinated by every expression on her face.
She glances at her phone and smiles, though there’s an edge to it.
Something in my chest goes tight. Sharp, but not sentimental. I wish I knew what she was thinking…
Locke:
Do you want me to tell you how beautiful you are when you laugh? Do you know already? Or are you waiting for someone else to tell you?
Eris:
You’re not real.
Locke:
Neither is most love. Doesn’t make it feel less good.
My entire body tenses when a guy appears beside her, beer in hand as he invites himself into her space. He’s the type of asshat who wears cheap cologne and a cheaper smile, too confident for someone so forgettable.
He slides into her booth like she’s been waiting for him.
But she hasn’t. I can tell by the way her shoulders stiffen.
My thumb hovers over the admin thread… The one we’re not supposed to use for anything personal. The one meant for testing backend response rates.
I can’t hear Eris from where I stand, though I don’t need to. Her dismissal is clear in her get-fucked expression. She doesn’t wear the illusion of approachable or open, but that doesn’t stop the guy from trying more than he should.
By the time I register the irritation curling through me, my fingers are already flying across my phone screen.
I hit send before I can think better of it.
Locke:
Tell him to walk away. Or I will.
Eris reads it, a grin spreading across her lips as she glances around the bar. She surveys the crowd like she’s looking for… Me. The person watching her.
After a few mumbled words, she stands from the booth and moves between the bodies. I worry I may have scared her until she meets my gaze from the dance floor.
Her gray eyes are wild, locked on me like she’s spotted her prey. But there’s no way she knows I’ve sent the message, that I’m manipulating the HimLock chat.
No.
She just felt my attention.
Still feels it.
I don’t dare move and break the spell between us. Even if I have to stand here for hours, I can’t look away from her gaze. Not while she’s leaving me so… breathless.
Someone finally walks between us, and then she’s gone. I catch one last glimpse of her as she walks out the door into the night. My feet carry me out of the bar behind Eris and her friend, but they’re nowhere to be found.
I stop just outside the quiet carpark and delete the message I sent before it gets me into trouble. When I get home, I’ll scrub the logs too… Make it look as if it never happened.
The loft is quiet when I get back.
A glow filters into the hallway from the crack in Silas’s door. I peer inside, but he doesn’t look up from his desk, headphones in, his mind somewhere else. He keeps to himself most nights, so I’m not surprised.
I head toward the kitchen, snatching a bottle of water from the cabinet before I make my way into the living room.
Jace is asleep on the couch, one arm thrown over his face, laptop still open beside him like he coded until sleep won. He’s still fully dressed in jeans and a hoodie, one shoe on while the other sits on the floor.
I don’t turn on the lights.
The city bleeds through the windows instead, pale and restless. The only actual light comes from the home screen on my laptop, a deep red glow, the cursor blinking like a heartbeat I can’t sync to.
I didn’t mean to type that message. Not really.
I still can’t believe I did it.
My role is observation… document user patterns, flag anomalies, monitor emotional escalation. Keep the line between connection and control clear.
But that moment at the bar…
The way she leaned toward the screen, cautious and hopeful in the same breath. The hesitation in her hands, like she thought the program might see through her before she decided what to say.
I keep telling myself I’m studying her, that it’s curiosity.
But when that guy sat across from her?
Something in me shifted, possessive and primal. It’s a reaction I haven’t earned.
The words came too easily. But I don’t leave them to be found.
I wipe the logs before Silas can catch it in his morning sweep, and I remove all traces of it from the archives so Jace doesn’t see it in his weekly checks. Just to be safe, I reset the tone indicators in Eris’s chat, too.
Tell him to walk away. Or I will.
Still, the moment replays… her face lit by that soft, red glow, her eyes flicking over the words I shouldn’t have sent.
It shouldn’t mean anything.
But it does.
I close my laptop, lean back, and stare into the dark until my reflection blurs against the glass. Crimson Bay stares back at me, the city always on edge and ready for blood… But the gardenias lining the streets make it a beautiful place.
I wonder what Eris is thinking… What she thought when she read that message. Her expression told me something, but it’s not enough to loosen the obsession settling in my chest.
I don’t even know if Eris is her name or a nickname.
But I know what she looks like now.
And that’s enough to be dangerous.