25. TheWindow
TheWindow
Playlist: Dangerous - Sleep Token
Kael
The gray static of TheKast washes over me, a digital snow that turns the lab into a monochrome cell.
Time crawls as my impatience scrapes from within.
As soon as it ends, I’ll upload the program I’ve been working on for the past twenty-four hours.
It’s a simple bridge that will allow me to communicate with Lyra, to see her, to talk to her again, to figure out how this all happened.
Something stirs inside me, an unwelcome pull that heightens my senses and makes my heart race.
Excitement. Yearning. Both.
I hide it away instantly, stomping the feeling down where it belongs. Attachment is a liability. I refuse to let it rewrite me the way she’s rewriting my system.
I continue to convince myself this is simply about control. In the lab, my authority is a clean, brutal thing. It moves in keystrokes and protocols. It patches this chaotic world into something predictable.
Tonight, I’m using every twisted corner of my craft to do one selfish, ridiculous thing: to build a window from the inside to the outside.
The code isn’t elegant. It never is when you execute for the first time under pressure.
It’s a three-layer proxy wrapped in encryption, with a translator to render any incoming visual vector into something the monitors can project.
In layman’s terms, a translator meant to normalize corrupted data into an image my eyes can see.
It started as a joke, an academic exercise in the middle of my sleepless night. Capture the anomaly noise, translate the signal, output a human visual copy. A ghost in the machine, nothing more.
But somewhere along the way, the joke stopped being funny.
My notes began to reorganize themselves on the page, equations sliding into alignment without conscious thought, margins filling in before I reached for my stylus.
The code followed, command lines flowing with an ease that felt less like coding and more like instinct.
I didn’t question it. I never do when something works.
What emerged wasn’t just a simple tool. It was a window.
A two-way window program that would allow her to see through, and to communicate back to me and for me to do the same.
TheKast stutters a few minutes too soon for my liking. Violent images slash across the monitors, dripping with color and rage. The kind of wild, uncontrolled emotion no machine could simulate.
The kind that feels human.
I’m already moving. I lean toward the console, fingers hovering, ready to force an emergency shutdown. I don’t get the chance to.
TheKast hiccups, then fades into black. Words explode onto the screen in angry shades of red:
RISE. RESIST. REVOLT.
Two seconds.
That’s all it takes for me to cross the lab and slam my palm down on TheKast server’s kill switch. Too late. The system rights itself back to the usual gray fog that consumes the entire city at curfew.
Silence.
I exhale as my screens light up with program errors, LINK’s logs screaming my name for action. I begin to type, but my cursor slips, and I’m no longer able to do anything but read.
>: WOW—THAT TOOK YOU LONGER THAN I THOUGHT
It continues blinking at me defiantly.
My feed is hers. She’s inside my system, and she’s breaking it. Her defiance being shown to the public on every screen, every kiosk, for all to see. Violent bursts of light, images of StarFell, faces of the non-citizens living in squalor. I see her fury, and she wants the entire city to see it too.
Dangerous game, Lyra. Vikktor could be seeing this unfold right before his eyes.
“Fuck!” My curse is filled with dread. LINK will be throwing alarms left, right, center any minute, possibly notifying the jerks upstairs.
I slam my palms into the keyboard, then begin to type furiously.
>: YOU HIJACKED A CITYWIDE brOADCAST
The keyboard freezes, and the cursor skips with her response.
>: YOU HIJACKED MY LIFE. CALL IT EVEN?
I roll my eyes. Gods help me, she’s learning my system faster than anyone ever has, even faster than I did. I continue typing.
>: YOU’RE ATTRACTING ATTENTION. DON’T DO THIS AGAIN, TAIYō. TOO DANGEROUS
Three infuriating words appear on all the monitors in the lab.
MAKE ME STOP
I begin hurriedly flipping through error logs and surge files, but I’m not seeing anything but small flares. The usual noise that sometimes comes through TheKast when we push out a sequence. I’m confused. I have a deep need to fix this, to hide this, and it has to be now.
TheKast completes another nightly run. I promptly slam the Enter key and hurriedly upload the window program. A bar appears showing me the completion rate with painful slowness. I become stiff, as my pulse races so fast I can hear blood rushing into my ears.
The screen blinks, and the grid flares. For a second, I expect to only see the familiar cascade of diagnostic warnings, maybe even an error or two. But that’s not the case.
A form begins to appear on the wall of monitors. A shadow of a human, grainy and pixelated, begins to render in full view. “Little Taiyō,” I whisper to myself, a grin easing itself across my tired face.
It was not yet the Lyra I kissed so deeply on the beach, not even the body Ember said they’d found.
The interface had taken what it could of her signal, combined with the raw vibrations of her magic, and translated it through a library of visuals.
It sharpens and eventually snaps into place. The result is startling.
An accurate, painfully intimate, cartoon-soft version of her unfolds. Huge luminous golden eyes, magenta neon streaks in her hair, and cheekbones carved from light.
Exquisite.
She blinks slowly, like an actual person would, and my chest contracts so hard I think it might burst. “Lyra.” I take a step toward the wall. “I can see you.”
Everything around me in the lab evaporates into background noise. For a moment it’s only me and her on the wall of screens. My obsession in its cyber form.
I built the window because I couldn’t stand the idea of not knowing she was safe. I did not expect the sight of her to punch a hole in me like a giant fist.
She speaks to me slowly, the system still adapting to her voice.
Its sound reminds me of the vintage vinyl records that play in the LoFiCafes, a bit too slow and wobbly.
“Kael?” She’s confused, squinting at me like she can’t believe her eyes.
“What is this? I can see you too...and I really don’t want to. ”
The question wasn’t innocent. It was exact and furious and, underneath it, scared.
I should answer with technical terms, “sandbox,” “proxy,” “interface.” Instead, my voice comes out soft and personal.
“I made this window for you.” I pause for her reaction.
“I wanted to know if you were...if you could communicate with me from inside.” I lock down any emotion after the stunt she just pulled.
Her big cartoon eyes narrow. The avatar’s pupils dilate until they become black holes instead of golden suns. “From inside? You mean inside your system, your prison? You put me here, you should know.”
“No.” My denial is immediate and honest. My rational brain wants to list the facts: Vikktor’s virus, the DreamNet collapse, Eli’s part in surging the entire system, but I refrain. I definitely don’t think she’s ready to hear that her brother was partially to blame for this.
“There were several factors that lead to the moment we’re in.” I try to explain the logic, but fuck me, she’s just as beautiful on screen as in person. I force myself to look away. “I didn’t plan this.” My eyes shut.
She scoffs. “But you did.” Her animated mouth twists into something like contempt. “You built this for the Corporation, because you’re loyal to VikkCorp through and through, ‘Anomaly Hunter.’ ”
Ah...there it is, the rebellion nickname.
Guilt is an ugly thing. It sits in the sternum like a stone.
I feel it now as heavy as anything Vikktor has ever inflicted.
“I didn’t know.” I still look away, unable to meet her gaze.
I reach for the softer version of the truth.
“I didn’t know this could happen. I did not do this on purpose. If I had just—”
“If you had just what?!” She interrupts me, her brow furrowing.
“I’ll tell you what, Doctor! You would have tracked down Eli and I and eliminated the anomalies yourself.
As you normally do. Killing swiftly and cleanly, nothing but a report and a signature, then slept easy in your fancy bed while the world forgets us. ”
Ouch.
The lab’s silence becomes a pressure in my ears. Nothing about this is easy. I’ve tied a line from my machine to a person on screen. She still feels, still hurts, still rages.
Yes, my curiosity to explore this, to dissect her as an experiment, is a strong motivator, but it’s her pull that is dangerous in a way data never is.
Ash was spot on. We’re two people being dragged into the same orbit, gravity folding us toward one another until the point of contact promises to destroy everything in between. I feel this to the depths of my dark soul.
“Little Taiyō.” I try to flatten her anger with protection and control. It’s what I do. “You’re not lost. The virus, the void, whatever, it didn’t finish you. I can keep you safe here. I can keep you...”
“You can keep me.” She cuts me off with a laugh. “Keep me like I’m a pet? You think trapping me in your ‘beautiful’ system is safety?” The program renders one of her breaths as exasperation. “And stop calling me that! I’m not your Little Taiyō or little anything.”
A pause so long the air feels thick and unbreathable. It allows me the time to choke on all the terrible things I’ve done for the Corporation.
“I don’t belong to you, Kael, and I sure don’t belong here!” She cuts me in a way I’ve never experienced, but half-expected.
This corporate world is messy and ruthless, but I’ve mastered it.
I cut through its rules and people like Master Kenji trained me to cut with my sword—precise.
When I set my mind on something, the universe rearranges itself until resistance is only background noise.
It always falls into place. I don’t know how. Blind luck, perhaps?
Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity, a philosopher once said. It rings true.
I decide to take her fury and return it to her in understanding. “No, Lyra, you don’t belong here. None of us do. We didn’t deserve what StarFell did to us, but I promise you, I won’t let Vikktor get to you,” I reassure her. “And I would never hurt you.”
Did I really just say that? Who is this person I’m becoming?
I’m the one that keeps the city streets orderly, the hand that redirects money and technology. I will not let some engineered virus or corporate monster steal her from whatever part of me foolishly aches for her.
“I will pull you out of that machine myself,” I say with a calmness that only comes before a threat of violence. “Not to hand you over to Vikktor, or to catalog you, or study you. I won’t reduce you to a data point.”
I step closer to the screen, close enough that her projection fills my focus. The rest of the lab disappears.
In the moment, I make a rash decision, one that comes out of nowhere and yet everywhere. A promise I have no idea how I will keep.
“I’ll put you back into a body,” I continue, voice rough. “Into a world where you can breathe real air. Where you can feel again and exist outside of anyone’s system.”
She’s taken back. Her golden eyes widen and blink only once. My eyes lock onto hers; I don’t dare blink, though. The memory of feeling her body on mine, my hands all over her, her mouth so delicate but so aggressive on mine, just fuels my impulsiveness.
This isn’t a promise. It’s a claim.
“And I will protect you,” I add. “From him, from the Corporation, from yourself.”
A pause.
“But don’t mistake that for mercy. I will make you mine, Lyra. I’ll make you want me again, if I have to break you to get there,” I finish, softer, but no less dangerous. “You’re not a challenge, Lyra. You’re a line I’ve already crossed.”
It’s not a lie. The corner of my mouth twitches, not quite a smile. “I will break every firewall that stands between us. I will lie to the suits who think they own me, rewrite programs, and corrupt my own creation if that’s what it takes.”
It’s easier to be an asshole than to answer to the things that are trying to claw their way out of my chest. I remind myself I’m supposed to resist my desire to make her mine, but I know it’s fruitless.
I’ve trained myself to tame systems by dominating them. But I haven’t trained myself for wanting someone so badly it unravels every rule I swore I’d never break.
I know my demons. Right now I need to disengage, or my obsession will lead to losing myself completely. I try to avoid it by being direct. “I...” I swallow hard. “I’ll get you out.” And with that I kill the feed.
I will make her need me.
Not by stealing her choice, but by becoming the only certainty in a world that keeps trying to erase her, by being the heat when her world goes cold.
I will be the storm that terrifies her, and the safe harbor she can’t help but run to. And when she finally looks at me and wants me, I’ll have earned it. Not with promises but with the dark, deliberate work of taking everything that I’ve built and risking all of it to rescue her.
A lifetime of dedication, discipline, and self-regulation, demolished in a matter of seconds.
She will not be a file on my console. She’ll be mine, and the price anyone pays for touching her will be something catastrophic only I decide.
Lyra’s avatar suddenly appears back on the wall, despite my kill command. The powerful magic Ash told me about, her magic from StarFell. She’s already mastering it and using it to turn my system against me.
“You have no way of rescuing me. You don’t even know how this happened. I don’t want anything from you,” she threatens. Golden flames erupt on every screen in the lab. “And if you’re lying to me, Kael, I will set your whole world on fire, and you with it. You’re a monster.”
And back to blackness.