22. StaticBeneath
StaticBeneath
Playlist: Ghosted - Marcin Przyby?owicz, W?nder
Kael
A hot shower, a quick nap, and a glass of vintage whiskey.
It’s all I let myself have before I return to VikkCorp.
The lab is stone-cold quiet. Ember sits at her desk looking puzzled yet determined.
She taps the side of her stylus annoyingly against the desk, a nervous rhythm that signals she’s deeply troubled by something.
Aren’t we all?
She called me at home to tell me strange things were popping up on the monitors all morning, systems stuttering, threads of code unraveling, whole programs vanishing like they’d been swallowed.
I know it’s not random. She knows it too.
Something was moving in the system, intentional, agitated.
I second guess my decision to run the deletion protocols.
We’ve worked together a long time. Long enough for me to know she bites her lip when her self-confidence is lacking. “Dr. Ryudon, sorry to have bothered you again. Did you get some sleep?” She stands and brings over the LINKpad to show me some sort of digital log.
I haven’t seen these logs before. Evidently, while I was gone, she’s been tracking glitches, hiccups, anything strange happening in the system. Guilt is a powerful motivator.
“Yeah, still tired though.” I give her a half-smile.
“While you were out, there were some disturbances, anomaly flares, inside GameNet.” She sends the logs to the wall of monitors; her tired eyes lift to the data on display.
“We also have some news from within GameNet. It’s running fine now, but you have to hear this.
” Ember tilts her head in the direction of my office.
“We?” I turn my head awkwardly to look.
Ash comes barreling in like a walking violation of half the building’s security protocols, anxiety and energy bleeding off him.
He looks completely out of place in the sterile glow of the lab.
He’s a mess, bad decisions and danger barely contained.
I glance over at Ember. Her face gives her away, attraction written all over it.
She doesn’t just tolerate Ash’s chaos, she wants it.
“Kael, Bro, we need to talk about the game.” He’s wired, tattoos and eyes all aglow with ice blue.
“What game?” I snap, eyes locked on the feeds as the strange surge bounces back and forth, like a ball being thrown against a wall.
“Paris. GameNet. I was looking for Lyra’s signature vibration. I was in there, and...” He breaks off, and for a moment all I can hear is his rough breathing, like he doesn’t want to say whatever it is out loud. “She was there, Kael. Lyra. I found her! In GameNet!”
The surge spikes on the screen, almost in response, pink-and-gold static bleeding across the grid like a heartbeat.
My world stops.
“So, she fell out of DreamNet and landed in GameNet.” I ponder his words. “I knew it! She’s not dead.” A smile creeps across my face, foreign but welcomed.
“Yes...and no,” Ash snaps with uncertainty. “I saw her. I touched her. She was inside the game, same time I was. It was her. But she said something about being trapped. She was ghosted just as I was grabbing her.”
The anomaly surge flickers again, almost like agreement, like it can hear everything he’s saying. My eyebrow raises.
My hands curl into fists as my eyes narrow at the data trail Ember gathered. It does match what Ash is saying...sort of.
I walk over to the GameNet servers and pull down the keyboard.
Before I can even begin to type, the cursor duplicates, and the feed begins to hum with static that feels more like a voice than white noise.
I flinch. For the first time since Vikktor unleashed hell on the system, I’m not sure what’s real anymore. Nothing about this is logical.
It shouldn’t even be possible for an image like this to generate organically. Someone must be toying with me. “So, you’re saying something is trapping her in GameNet?” I clarify with Ash, but mostly to control the thoughts swirling in my head right now.
I swipe the GameNet BIOS screen to bring up the command line and hover my fingers over the delete string. Whatever is trapping her there must be a remnant of the virus. I just need to purge it from the system, and I should be able to bring her back.
“Alright,” I mutter to the console. “Let’s see where and what you really are.” A large round golden image blows up on the screen like a balloon bursting.
Odd.
Fine, let’s play. One strike, a full purge command, and it should vanish. Clean and simple. I hit the Enter key, and the golden globe flickers like a flame, warps, and then moves, as if it’s under attack. Good.
“Uh, Kael?” Ash’s eyes are wide with disbelief. “I’m no code nerd like you, but is a virus supposed to look like a sun that’s fighting to sink into the sea? I mean, that’s some whack graphics shit.”
He’s right. A strange image fills my screens like digital art, a sun rising, glowing so bright it forces me to squint. My system isn’t just receiving input anymore. It’s answering back. But how?
A second later, a word appears, jagged and bold across every diagnostic window in the lab:
ELI
The word pulses like a heartbeat, synced to my own.
“What the fuck?” I slam another command through. “If someone’s in my system...” I don’t allow myself to even finish that sentence. Rage begins to build, and that crawling sensation starts to fill my veins.
This time Ember hits enter, a lockdown script executes to contain the breach. The system wholeheartedly rejects it, pinging sounds flooding the speakers. LINK chimes in.
ANOMALY DETECTED
My screens shudder with static, code splintering like glass. The console hisses, like an open circuit about to blow. Anomalies are always in GameNet. Practically everyone in there has magic. They just can’t use it.
“LINK—volume up.” I swear I hear something lingering beneath the static. It’s a non-mechanical sound like a quickened breath. It’s definitely a human sound, echoing, like it’s lost in a dark cavern.
HELP ME
The sound repeats itself by visualizing text on the wall monitors.
Ember, Ash, and I all rear our heads back, startled, shocked.
I’d think I was hallucinating from exhaustion if we didn’t hear it simultaneously.
Viruses don’t breathe. They don’t draw suns on horizons or spit words into the static, and they certainly don’t do it twice.
I built every line of this system. I know it like I know my own self. Every line of code, every firewall, every dataset, and yet something inside it just spoke to me, and, for a moment, communicated to me. It wasn’t LINK.
I still, my breath holding in the air; I can’t move, can’t fathom what this could be. My hands hang uselessly at my sides, fingers twitching like my instinct is to delete, purge, burn it all out. But I don’t.
I can’t. Because there it is again. My chest feels tight, heavier than it should, the blood in my veins tingles, and my tattoos feel as if they’re crawling over my skin. Someday they’ll find my body in the lab, dead from the stress of this job.
The monitors flicker with faint pulses of golden-orange light, patient, waiting for me to move in this game of chess. I decide to engage, strong, silent intuition calling for me to study this further.
Ash interjects. “Kael, it’s her, Bro. I feel it. That signature is unlike any I’ve ever felt. She didn’t land in the system. The virus isn’t trapping her. She is the system.”
His words echo through the lab and don’t quite register. My logic fails to comprehend just what this means. I whip toward him, throat dry. “What the hell are you saying?” I know perfectly well what he’s saying, but if I don’t acknowledge it, then maybe I can deny it’s actually happening.
Ash doesn’t flinch. He leans in, eyes glaring vividly like he’s been waiting for me to finally catch up.
“She didn’t just land in your system. She is your system.
You have LINK and Lyra! That’s why you can’t kill it with a command.
That’s why it keeps looking at you...speaking to you.
“ A devilish grin slides across his features. “And fuck, from the looks of that blinking...she’s pissed.”
Ember’s gasp betrays her, the serious scientist mask slipping for a split second. “That’s highly improbable,” she whispers, shaking her head. “That...that would mean she’s—“
“Alive!” Ash finishes for her, his eyes pulsing with excitement. “Alive in here. Trapped in your machine.” He extends his arms to the confines of the lab, pointing to all the tech machinery around us. “LINK has a roommate.” He laughs to himself.
His humor bounces off me. His words slice me open.
Alive. Trapped.
The core system hums louder at the accusation, like it wants to agree but mock me. The whir of data being sent over the drives increases to a steady buzz, and I realize, it’s very, very angry. Lights flash, alarms ping, and static breaks through intermittently on the monitors.
My stomach knots. This isn’t just the result of Vikktor’s virus. It’s something else entirely. A type of anomaly I’ve never encountered before, and one that could threaten to breach the entire grid.
I’ve never felt overloaded before. This lab has always been an extension of me, silent, disciplined, contained. Control has never slipped here—not until now. This lab is mine, built to obey, designed to submit.
“Out!” I snap. “Both of you. I need to think.”
I pace, hands buried deep in my pockets, as the hum of the mainframe swells, rising in my ears with each step. It’s loud, no longer ignorable. It beats like a heart syncing to my pulse, echoing too closely to my own.
Hers.
Her heartbeat and mine trying to find the same rhythm, echoing through the circuitry of the lab.
I suddenly realize I’ve sabotaged every barrier I’ve put up to protect myself from wanting, from attachment, and I didn’t do it by accident.
Every mantra, every thought shoved down, every wall I put up, only kept me from being human.
I’m not a lone wolf anymore. Right now, I’m alone inside myself, and the worst part is, I don’t want to be.
There’s a pull where there’s never been one. A presence pressing back when I press on. Lyra didn’t just rewire my whole system, she rewired me. How did this happen so quickly?
Ash and Ember give each other a look, some silent exchange I don’t care to decode, and head toward the door of the lab. Ash lingers before stepping out, his mouth already curving into some warning, some truth he thinks I’m ready for. For once, I’m not ready for any of this.
“Not another word...” My voice cracks like a whip across the room, sharper than I intended. “Not now.” I soften.
He stiffens, but he nods once and disappears through the door. Ember follows, her expression fading, though her hesitation tells me more than I want to admit.
They know I’m lying to myself about still being in control.
Then it’s just me and the silence.
Except it’s not silence, the noise of my thoughts, so many thoughts, are vibrating through me.
Pressure builds again in my veins like my blood is fighting to stay contained.
Colors flicker across the monitors, violet stains now spread like bruises through my perfect order.
I stare in disbelief, as a shimmer of a being, half-formed, appears, then dissipates before revealing itself.
I walk up to the shifting lights on the screens, apprehensive about what I’m doing next.
“Little Taiyō...if that’s you...” The words fall out of me in a whisper that I can’t hold back.
“Show me a sign, give me something, so I know.” I’m still doubting the plausibility of this entire situation, but hope lies underneath, ready to bloom.
The hum spikes with an unbelievable answer; digitized cherry blossoms explode at me from all screens. I flinch as if they’re a real and tangible thing about to collide with my being. It’s both beautiful and tragic.
Fuck. Ash might be right. My mind immediately goes to its darkest place. If this is her, then Lyra knows I’ve trapped her. She knows the system has caged her in its inner depths, in the processes I built to stop any threats from destroying my domain.
She’ll never forgive me.
So, this is what it’s like to feel human.