10. VoidChanneler
VoidChanneler
Playlist: Fallout - UNSECRET, Neoni
Lyra
It was a dream, yet it feels like my back was slammed into the mattress, like I’ve been dropped from one of the city’s towers, my breath knocked from my lungs.
The impact is real, too real, and it rattles my body as DreamNet spits me out without mercy.
Home , or whatever passes for home now. I’m back.
I don’t hesitate.
I bolt upright, feet hitting the floor hard, adrenaline flooding my veins. My pulse races as I rush toward my bedroom door.
Intense light bleeds from beneath it. A razor-thin line of neon violet stretches across the floor, slicing through the darkness of my room. It pulses so bright I shield my eyes.
I throw the door open to find the living room no longer resembling a room.
It’s an angry storm of strobing sigils, blinding light, and splitting code whipping in furious ribbons.
Data and code collide violently, filling the air before reforming and crashing again.
The walls shift between solid and transparent, reality buckling under his surging power.
Furniture flickers like it’s being shocked with electricity.
The floor splits open in particles of black, purple, and silver, cascading in a perfect line, straight into a lightless void beneath.
The sound is back too, that haunting metallic echo reverberating through everything.
And at the center of it is my brother.
Eli’s power is creating another void. It’s flooding my space, and I know, with deep certainty, that if I don’t reach him right now, if I don’t calm him, pull him back, then there may be nothing left to come home to.
He stands in front of the tall glass doors to the balcony, all ten fingers splayed stiff and facing downward. Tiny particles of purple light gather at the tips like fizzy bubbles in a glass of champagne. His body spasms in erratic jerks like a marionette.
His eyes glow white-hot as the echo-noise pours out of him. It shakes the whole apartment, a low frequency that’s both sound and feeling, crawling under my skin.
The violet storm spirals tighter with every pulse of his heartbeat, black void threads begin wrapping around his arms, engulfing him.
Reality flickers between DreamNet and the real world until I can’t tell where one ends and the other begins.
I know everyone inside is feeling it, probably being kicked out violently.
“Eli!” I shout, but my voice comes out garbled as the air is sucked into the void that’s beginning to spiral out of control.
He doesn’t hear me. He can’t.
His power is ripping through the system, through him, through everything. If it keeps going, the Corporation’s scanners will surely see him. See us. Alarms will sound; we’ll light up the anomaly grid like supernovas.
I feel it, despite my attempt to quell it, my own magic rising uninvited, bleeding into the chaos. Every screen in the room stutters with my emotions: Fear blooms in static, panic streaks in vicious red lines, until I shove all of it outward toward Eli.
I react instinctively, drawing in any technical energy from around me.
I throw up an illusion of bright sunlight, much like I did with the drones.
Next I attempt to create a barrier to hold back the unraveling of time and space.
For a moment, my light and Eli’s void clash like oil and water.
The air hums like static electricity making it difficult to breathe.
Beams of light continue flooding from my palms, threads of raw code wrapping around his glitching body, pulling him back before he can tear the entire DreamNet down. At this level he could be warping reality as we speak.
For a second, we’re both suspended, two anomalies burning like flares on the corporate grid, their sentinel drones probably on the way right now to sweep in and locate us.
“Eli!” I scream, my voice nearly shredded by the roar of colliding energies.
The air vibrates violently, pressure slamming against my skin as if the world itself is trying to tear free.
“Eli! Listen to me!” His eyes turn into two ink-black holes, as his head turns toward me.
“It takes exactly one hundred and sixty-four seconds for the sun to slide beneath the waves in September,” I shout, forcing the words through clenched teeth.
“You remember, count with me, just like we used to.”
I hold his gaze and begin counting.
“One.”
The void stills, a low metallic groan rippling through the apartment.
By fifty, the lights stutter, blinking in and out.
At seventy-five, he inhales sharply, his lips moving to count with me.
“Seventy...six...” He forces the words out, his eyes returning to the calm violet hue they normally are.
Relief fills me, my knees nearly giving out. His light, once blinding, dims to a low glow, the violent edge softening as he counts.
At one hundred and thirty, the universe falters. Reality itself cuts to black for half a second: no sound, no light, no air. It snaps back into place with a thunderous crack that can be heard across the city.
Eli collapses.
He drops to his knees, hands clamped to his skull like he’s trying to hold himself together—literally. Energy writhes off him in waves, calming the charged air until it settles on the floor of the room.
Every exhale he takes causes the lights to flare. Outside I can see the clouds crack full of thunder. A storm breaks, peppering the sky with lightning, pouring leftover energy in the form of acidic rain down on the city streets.
I move toward him calmly, joining him in counting again. “Eli...let me in,” I beg. “Stay with me. Just keep counting.”
Because if he stops, the void will spread.
I touch my fingertips to his, my magic bleeding through his warm skin. Light jumps to his fingers, and he watches it with the awe of the little boy on the beach. My memory of him on our beach.
Silence. I embrace him with both arms. He melts into me, the two of us glowing like fireflies in a jar, definitely bright enough for the corporate grid to notice. I begin to prepare myself for the worst.
Three beeps. TheKast.
The city fades, neon collapsing into gray-white static like freshly fallen snow. It blooms across every screen on every tower, on every corner.
I exhale, realizing I’ve been holding my breath until my chest burned. We made it. Barely. Seconds, maybe less, before TheKast hit and shut down the grid.
I prepare myself, holding him a little bit tighter, for the maddening hum of En4ce drones, and the inevitable banging and knocking down of the door. The Corporation answering the call sent out about anomalies popping in this sector. I wait for it all.
But there’s nothing.
I don’t understand.
Eli looks up at me slowly, his glasses crooked, hair plastered to his forehead with sweat. His voice is small now, devoid of power. “It happened again,” he says. “Are we safe?”
I swallow uneasily and gesture toward the windows.
Outside, the city is still bathed in gray, motionless and muted. “I think we’ll be okay.” I say, though I still can’t believe it myself. “I think TheKast masked your surge. You couldn’t have timed it better.”
He doesn’t answer. He just stares out the window.
Our hearts slow, after pounding so loudly I swear the whole city could hear us.
I know this feeling; it’s relief but also the aftermath.
I don’t think Eli will ever know peace again, will ever be silent.
This moment, this surge, has carved itself into our lives and will remain there forever.
He’ll always be fighting this as he grows older, we’ll always be expecting it, holding our breath until the Corporation comes for us to tear what’s left of our family apart.
Now I understand with terrifying clarity that nothing will ever be the same after this...for either of us.
Safety is fleeting.