19. VirtualAwakening
VirtualAwakening
Playlist: Alive - Rufus Du Soul
Lyra
The first thing I know is nothing; not blackness, not even silence.
Nothing.
My eyes shift, noticing a steady pulse. Thin, metallic, like a heartbeat throbbing through static, coming from a silent void.
My chest heaves, but there’s no air. My throat burns as if I’ve swallowed white-hot fire, and my body feels crushed, every muscle screaming in agony with each passing second.
I open my eyes, maybe? I’m not sure I even have eyes anymore.
The dark unfolds in jagged fragments, shapes flickering into existence like corrupted code: half a digital staircase leading nowhere, a corridor of glass that shatters when I blink.
Each digital shard suspends midair, refracting neon light that doesn’t seem to have a source.
It strikes like lightning, zapping my vision, then disappears, back to pitch black.
My reflection stares back from one broken pane remaining. It’s me...and it isn’t. My hair bleeds with iridescent magenta streaks brighter than they were before, my eyes now glow bright gold and amber, searing into the dark. My outline flickers, threatening to collapse into static.
“Hello?” My voice is hoarse, but it echoes, not in sound but in code, shattered, layered, glitching. It bounces back at me like an error message in the air. Sound visualizes instantly.
Fear surges up my spine and on impulse, I lift myself and run. My footsteps rupture the gridlines beneath me, sending ripples of static outward. The further I go, the more I can feel the darkness crowding me, pressing in like hands at my throat.
Somewhere deep inside my mind, buried DreamNet memories claw for purchase: the sunset beach, Kael, his lips on mine, the way he smelled, the warmth of his hard body against me. The thought is destroyed by Eli screaming for me, a promise broken. I was supposed to protect him, stick together forever.
I’m a liar.
This must be it. The thought settles inside me with a strange calm, like a conclusion I’ve finally reached after a lifetime of worry. They must have come for us while I was selfishly lost in DreamNet with Kael, pretending the world couldn’t touch me there.
So, this is death. Except...it doesn’t feel like I expected it to.
There’s no pain, no pleasure. Just a hollow stillness. My mind is sharp though. Too sharp. I’m fully aware of my thoughts and can hear myself talk into the endless dark.
I can’t be dead.
Dead people don’t think like this, don’t cling to unfulfilled promises. Dead people don’t feel that tight, aching pull in their chest when they think of someone else.
Eli.
If I’m here, wherever here is, then where is he? Did they take him too? Did he run? Did he...Die? I wince.
I can’t bring myself to think about it. Whatever happened to me, whatever this place is, I don’t have time to question it. I have to find him. I have to know he’s okay. Even if this is the afterlife.
My ears perk. I hear a voice, smooth and artificial. It’s not from outside, not coming from one centralized place. It’s coming from everywhere.
ANOMALY DETECTED
The grid I’m standing on convulses, folding inward.
My scream comes out as static tearing from my throat as I fall through the floor of neon lines.
I hit the ground, if it is ground, hard.
My knees scrape across the black surface.
My breath is ragged, though no fresh air fills my lungs.
A white noise grows louder, hissing from everywhere, threatening to drown me.
I come to an abrupt halt, my legs underneath me, the choking sensation ceasing as I rest on my hands.
The world stitches itself together as if nothing happened.
A vast chamber, endless walls of light etched with flowing code scroll in front of me, beckoning me to enter.
I stumble upright, staring at the cathedral of circuitry stretching in every direction.
The voice booms again, closer this time.
ANOMALY SEQUESTERED
WOULD YOU LIKE TO BEGIN DELETION DR. RYUDON?
My chest tightens. I spin, searching, but there’s no one. Deletion? Dr. Ryudon? “Kael?” I call out for him desperately. “Kael?! Can you hear me?”
A shadow appears between the columns of code, forming the suggestion of a man. Broad-shouldered, tall, and still. The outline flickers in and out like the system is trying to magnify him, reveal him to me.
The sound of his voice coils through me; he’s saying something about anomalies and viruses. My stomach flips with recognition.
Yep, that’s Kael.
Maybe I’m just unconscious? Coma? But it’s no use. I can’t respond. “No...” My whisper trembles. “No, it can’t be him.”
But it is. I know this...
The sound of static swells, swallowing the chamber, and for a second I feel his presence pressing against mine, almost close enough to touch.
I reach out to nothing, just empty space that flickers as I draw my hand back.
That’s strange. It’s as if the air is solid, and each time I reach out, I’m breaking through, damaging a wall.
The shadows breathe. That’s the only way I can describe it. The way the chamber warps around me feels suffocating, the air heavy with eyes unseen but watching. My body trembles as my mind screams to wake, to break free, to rip this blackness from my skull, and claw my way back to reality.
But reality is gone.
I hear him again speaking to the voice, everywhere and nowhere. I listen carefully and surmise he’s letting it track an anomaly...which is probably me. He’s giving it permission for deletion, as if I’m some virus injected into his perfectly architected city system.
A shudder runs down my spine, a presence, something watching me again, but I can’t quite grasp where it is in this nothingness. I startle when the voice echoes around me, now focused solely on me.
YOU DON’T BELONG HERE
That voice. It’s maddening because it’s all too familiar. It’s the voice on my DataLINK, my LINKpad, the voice of everyday life. LINK, the VikkCorp AI. It’s the sound coming from the panels at work, the elevators, the appliances. But that threat? It almost sounded human.
“Then let me out!” My voice crackles like fire across the grid. “Please, you’re right. I don’t belong here! Help me get out!”
Silence.
The clinical AI voice suddenly booms back, full of glitch-like distortions.
ANOMALY DETECTED
PROTOCOL: DELETION
REQUESTING ACCESS DR. RYUDON
I can hear Kael actively interacting with his system to scrub out any type of anomaly or virus. Is that me? I don’t understand.
I begin to panic, heart pounding in my ears so loud it’s deafening.
Deletion. That sounds like death. But aren’t I already dead?
My anxiety rises as my magic begins to become familiar to me again, like an old friend visiting after years apart.
It curls at the edges of my skin, humming in my blood, sparking.
The AI voice slashes through the darkness, metallic and unfeeling:
ANOMALY CONFIRMED
DELETION IN PROGRESS
Shards of white light fracture around me, forming into jagged crystalline structures, each one getting closer like a trap about to snap shut. Is this how the Corporation erases you? Does it destroy your being and your magic using a virus?
“No!” I whisper, my voice trembling but defiant. “Kael, it’s me!” I scream into the void, my power beginning to react in the walls around me as if I’m surrounded by tech.
With each wave of fear, my magic pushes harder. Images burst out of me, bleeding onto the grid: cherry blossoms, strokes of crimson-gold fire, a storm of glittering code swirling into the darkness.
The sterile walls close in, their edges pixelating as they move. I press my palms outward, bracing, pushing, but to no avail. I’m trapped, being contained like a bird in a cage.
Think, Lyra, think.
I stop, squeeze my eyes shut, and feel. My fear first, then the stubbornness beneath it, the part of me that has never learned how to obey anyone.
I dig deeper still, accessing the wild spark I’ve carried since childhood, the one that used to sketch perfect worlds in the margins of notebooks when reality was too oppressive.
I reach for that place.
Light erupts from my fingers, threads of magenta and gold scattering outward, racing into the darkness.
The space ruptures and rewrites itself, revealing the DreamNet lobby beyond.
Doors open like invitations, dozens of them, each leading somewhere else.
I spot people moving through the space, real people, but half-solid, half-static.
Some are dreaming, some are gaming. But they’re there and alive.
Relief falls over me. I try to run to them, try to shout, try to grab onto anyone. Help! Where are we? Please. Something’s wrong with me.
Nothing.
They pass through me like mist. Their eyes sliding right over me, unseeing, like I’m not real.
The truth slams into me hard enough to bring tears to my eyes. This isn’t death. This is something else, something colder. A hollow, digital imitation of life—just like the city that taught us how to survive without ever really living.
I pour every ounce of magic I have into whatever this is. I want out. I want my apartment, my bed, Eli sleeping in the next room. I want the life that was stolen from me back.
The space around me begins to crumble under the strain.
The digital cage shatters, and I fall, no, slide through cascading lines of data, through architecture made of logic and light.
Colors warp around me, faster than I can process.
My body stretches and unravels as I free fall through DreamNet, its doors disappearing into the ether.
Data continues to drop with me, as I notice various digital worlds neatly contained in folders passing by.
I land hard, stumbling onto what feels like solid ground.
A gamescape stretches around me. The sky is streaked with stars that pulse like rhythmic drumbeats. Music hums faintly through the air, and I can hear excited voices shouting commands and laughing.
That presence returns. I feel as if someone is watching my every move. The AI’s voice crackles somewhere in the distance.
UNAUTHORIZED NETWORK MOVEMENT
ESCALATION REQUIRED IN GAMENET
GameNet.
The pieces begin to lock into place as I look around. I’m not dead. But I’m not alive. I’m also no longer in DreamNet. I just used my raw power to force myself into GameNet, an entirely separate system.
I’m moving around inside systems. Dread floods my chest. I’m inside VikkCorp’s network. Whatever happened while I was in DreamNet held me there, trapped me. I didn’t escape; not even death spared me. Ash was right. They can keep you inside the system.
I was caught. By a hunter.
I press a hand to my chest, laughing through shaky breaths.
I don’t belong here, but at least I’m alive.
If my magic can bleed into systems on the outside, just think what I could do from within.
I’m trapped in the AI, the system I loathe, the whole reason I rebel, and the sole reason I escape to DreamNet every night.
The irony stings like salt in an open wound.
My prison is Kael’s passion, his system, his creation. That’s why I could hear him, see him, interacting with the AI voice.
The LINK AI may be able to track me in this space, but when I reach for my magic, I can move freely inside.
My power isn’t just magic in the real world, it’s root access to all the systems of imagination and indulgence that have been built for U21s.
A half-smile slides across my face. For the first time since my so-called death, since being trapped in this world Kael created, I actually feel alive.
Terrified, but alive. I blink as I take a hard look around.
I’ve just panicked my way into the GameNet, the VRNet gaming server. And here is where I’ll make my escape.