26. WindowWaves
WindowWaves
Playlist: Cure For Me (Vintage Culture Remix) – Aurora
Lyra
I was shocked but not surprised. I don’t know, maybe a little impressed, to see Kael through his window program. The “window” was not a window at all, though. Not the kind that lets light in. It was a way for Kael to keep track of me, to cage me, control me.
Sure, it’s nice to communicate again. To hear a voice that isn’t my own. To feel like someone is on the other side of the silence instead of waking up every day screaming into the void.
But I’m not naive. Kael isn’t being kind. He’s selfish and self-absorbed.
He can’t let Vikktor find out what happened to me.
If Vikktor learns an anomaly slipped through the cracks, or worse, landed in his system, it would unravel everything Kael’s built in that lab.
It would cost him his reputation, his position, maybe even his life.
Corporations don’t tolerate mistakes. Errors are an invitation for men like Vikktor to hunt you down and erase your existence from the grid.
An eye for an eye.
For a brief moment, the darker thought tempts me. What if I trip every alarm in the city or bleed my magic straight into VikkCorp’s feeds? I could rewrite the holo-ads to scream rebellion across every tower and sit back and watch his perfect system spill the truths citizens aren’t allowed to hear.
I could.
But vengeance isn’t the cure for me. Revenge won’t put me back where I belong. Destroying his world might feel good for a heartbeat, but it won’t give me back my body, my brother, or my life.
Because if Kael thinks I’m just surviving in here, waiting for him to rescue me like a damsel in distress, he’s already underestimated me.
I return to DreamNet to wait and learn. I make my way through the familiar threads, back to the cottage, my only place to land in this vast network of digital darkness.
I flop down on the warm sand of my beach and stare at the sunset. I close my eyes, willing my powers to the surface, feeling them buzz just below my skin. Perhaps I can make the sun fade slowly tonight so I can savor each passing ray of light.
I grab the sketchbook from the blanket where I left it and rest it on my knees. The moment the pencil touches the page, my eyes flutter shut and my breathing slows. It steadies me, anchors me. DreamNet responds instantly, wrapping me in the calmness needed to plan my next move.
Patience.
The ocean plays the same song it did that night, when Eli and I watched the sun sink into the water, neither of us speaking because some moments shouldn’t be disturbed. Pixelated gulls fly overhead, their cries glitchy and digitized but familiar.
I’ve preserved this memory meticulously. Every sound, color, and smell lives sealed inside a carefully guarded box in my mind, untouched and uncorrupted.
And here, in this place between dream and memory, I open it again.
Another deep breath fills my lungs with salt air. I’ll need to hold onto every detail of this dream to keep me from being alone in a world that’s trying to steal everything from me.
Thoughts.
Too many. I replay the past hour like a movie in my mind.
He looked dangerous, like a dark storm dressed in a suit.
The light from his monitors carving hard planes across his handsome face.
Shadows pooled under his cheekbones and under his chin, hiding the ink crawling up his neck.
He had a look about him, like he wanted to throw himself in front of a train just to see if the pain would prove he’s still alive.
I know that feeling. I felt it right here in this spot on the beach when he kissed me in my dream. I was dead inside, torn up and spit out by a neon-lit city determined to crush my spirit beneath the weight of its relentless demands. But in that moment, he brought me back to life.
A beautiful dream that just may have been a trap.
“Lyra.” His voice came through the static so tenderly, desperately, when I first heard him call to me through the window program.
I had no problem reaching for the thread of code and pulling myself through just to see him.
I shouldn’t have. Even through the rage, I was still being pulled into his orbit like a dying star.
My fingers curl around the pencil until my knuckles whiten. I’m a fool. Desire makes you do things the logical brain would never normally allow.
He didn’t look that surprised to see me.
If anything, his face smoothed into satisfaction, like a predator, pleased his prey had challenged him.
He was curt with his denial that he wasn’t the one that did this to me.
The quiet, dangerous calm of him highlighted the light specks in his dark eyes, drawing me in.
Just being in the same room with Kael feels like standing too close to a flame you know will burn you.
I made this window for you. He almost managed tenderness in his voice. Almost. It definitely was not the man from the newsfeeds, the corporate lapdog in charge of the mighty VikkCorp lab, the “Anomaly Hunter.”
Why does pulling away from him feel worse?
I wanted to laugh. I wanted to spit. I wanted to scream at him.
But as soon as I began to, that severe, stupid ache that I’m constantly trying to explain away, fluttered under my ribs.
When he said “Little Taiyō” again, much softer than he’d allowed himself to ever be, I almost surrendered.
The digital window had rendered his mouth slowly when he spoke, and every word almost sounded sincere.
It was infuriating, the way his mere presence pulled at the places inside me like a magnet.
Code spills across the purple sky as the periphery starts to glitch and shine. The tide stutters. The gulls hang in the air for a tick, wings suspended as if gravity decided to test them. The light along the horizon disintegrates. The hairs on my arms stand up.
I’m doing it again. Bleeding my heart into the hologram.
My ears begin to ring with blips and alarms, shattering the peacefulness of DreamNet. Something’s wrong. This isn’t me. My blood begins to stir. I should’ve listened to the warning. I should have known the AI is always watching, that it would return for me.
Something ominous moves on the horizon where the golden light meets water, not quite a person, but a shaded angular entity.
UNRECOGNIZED PROCESS
The voice is all too familiar.
CONTAINMENT RECOMMENDED
I don’t flinch. This time I need to channel this anger into my defense. LINK. Kael’s interface. The AI he built. The thing that obeys him. The intruder that learns the daily intricacies of his life, of all our lives, and sells it back to us as innovation.
It’s back. Here to right the wrong.
In the sky, I can see the replay of the conversation Kael and I had through his window. It’s fast, stuttering, playing at three times the speed, like the system is reviewing it, absorbing it.
The sky turns red, and the voice once again booms through DreamNet.
INITIATING ISOLATION PROTOCOL
I taste fear. I rise and run. I do what I’ve learned to do, instinct guiding me to safety.
I follow the threads of broken code, search for a door, and slip through again.
The sand under my feet becomes a corridor of scrolling symbols; the sky overhead ripples with IP addresses like constellations.
The network tightens around me, pressing on my limbs, a noise so deafening it vibrates my inner ear.
Like a swarm of killer bees released into the wild.
Bots. I’ve learned to avoid them at all costs.
Jagged white bug-things with the absence of faces, rise from the shallow surf, blinking with scripts that ask for authorization.
They buzz like angry bees programmed by protocol.
The beach that had been my refuge frays at the edges as I try to slip farther away into the next thread.
But the little white assholes chase me and chant in unison:
PARTITION
“Get fucked!” I yell, because profanity loosens the strings of fear. The bots follow me, log me; somewhere a system file is photographing the evidence and dumping it in Kael’s lap.
PRIORITY: PROTECT CREATOR
LINK returns sterile but different.
I turn and blink at my realization. The creator. LINK is prioritizing Kael over the system. It’s protecting him at all costs, like a jealous high school girlfriend.
That’s insane, not possible; it’s a machine, a program, a glorified calculator. Not a human being with feelings.
Seconds are everything.
LINK doesn’t stumble; she adapts by running over the replay of Kael and me, looping his tenderness. I will pull you out of that machine myself. The sound fills the air like music being rewound. AI-altered phrases fill the air:
“I’ll hand you over to Vikktor.”
“I’ll study and dissect you.”
“I’ll drag you back into a body that answers to me.”
Nice try at deception, LINK, but I remember Kael’s words. Text fills the sides of my vision in command lines.
>: LYRA GO TO THE WINDOW
>: YOU’RE UNDER ATTACK
>: GO THROUGH IT. I’LL KEEP YOU SAFE
I stumble looking for the window code scrolling by.
My heart drops. It’s too fast, threads of code are rapidly flying past me.
My eyes stutter back and forth, processing, assessing which thread I need to pull.
Wait! I see it. I throw myself toward it, power building in my hands, and make the jump with infinite speed.
I can see the lab again. Clearer this time than the last. But it’s not Kael. Thank the stars.
The redheaded lab assistant frowns at the console, concentration wrinkling her forehead.
She’s typing with breakneck speed, watching as new flags cascade across the screens.
I can see the errors around me; they’re odd, personally flourished, not corporate protocol.
She continues typing furiously, attempting to help me.
How can that be? She’s the daughter of Vikktor Vosse and Kael’s assistant. That’s a hell of a contrast. Why would she be helping me? I’m a corruption in her system. Why hasn’t she already gone to Vikktor, alerting him of my presence?