40. Possession 2.0
Playlist: Severed - The Decemberists
Kael
Ash claps Jett on the shoulder, forcing a crooked grin. “You always had a way with words bro.”
Jett’s glare softens slightly. “And you always have a way of crawling back out of shit. I’m starting to think you like chaos a bit too much.” His lips purse into a half-smile.
Ash smirks, dropping into a chair and kicking his boots up on the console. “Chaos keeps me pretty. The girls like it.” His eyes shift to Ember. “Besides, if I didn’t, you’d be dead three times over.”
Jett snorts. “Two times. And I still owe you for the second.”
Ember and I exchange glances. She’s pretending to study the data stream, but her eyes are locked on the whole conversation. Her gaze lingers on Jett a tick longer than it should.
Don’t bother, honey, he’s poison in a pretty package.
Her cheeks flush as Ash leans back, strumming idle chords on the guitar now slung across his lap. The sound drifts through the lab like a wispy fog.
“You two done with your reunion tour?” she says uncomfortably. Her voice betrays her, but so does her look of curiosity.
“You’ll get used to me, Red.” Jett smirks at her tone.
Ash’s laugh cracks the tension, a stupid boyish high five follows. Eventually she’ll put them back in their place. Intelligence rarely rewards stupidity. I’m uncaring. I remain stone still, staring at the anomaly flaring across the grid map. Brought back to life before my very eyes.
The lab’s quiet, too quiet. Normally I’d be talking to Lyra while I work, chatting, admiring...quarreling. Please don’t let her come back online while he’s here. I begin parsing log files to locate anything that resembles her signature.
Jett breaks the silence. “You’ve got something else in your system.” His voice is calm, careful, calculated. “Not just Eli’s echo. Someone else. A girl?”
Fucking mind reader too? Ash looks so guilty I want to smack his pretty face into next week. I already know he’s the leak. My hands freeze over the keyboard.
Jett leans against the edge of the console. His presence is the kind of gravity that pulls a room toward him whether you want it or not.
Funny, that’s what people say about me.
“You know I can feel her, Kael. Whatever you’ve caged in, she’s...alive, and suffering.”
Suffering? Fuck this guy. She came on my fingers as my tongue met hers in a never-ending kiss. That’s not suffering.
I turn slowly, meeting his stare. A violent feeling washes over me, like a rabid animal whose cage has been rattled. I stamp it down. “Above your security clearance. You’ll leave her out of this.”
He doesn’t flinch. His eyes drown in shadows. They pulse once deep red. Anger. I’ve challenged him. Good...let’s go rebel.
“She’s already in it. You brought her in. And if she’s one of us...”
“She isn’t yours.” The words tear from my throat harshly, just like I mean them to.
A blade thrown without aim. My fists clench, my training screaming at me to spar or to end this conversation in blood.
Possession flares in me like wildfire. The thought of Jett, or anyone, speaking her name, considering her fate as though it wasn’t already mine to guard, makes me want to tear this lab apart.
For a moment, I think I might.
But Jett just watches me, unshaken. “I’m sorry, old friend, but if she’s an anomaly, she belongs to the rebellion. To the U21s. Not to VikkCorp. And certainly not to you.”
The silence between us is deafening. Ash shifts uneasily from the corner, strumming a low note on his guitar like he’s trying to smooth the jagged air. Ember’s eyes flicker between us.
I step closer until I’m nearly chest-to-chest with him. “You think you get to decide her fate? You think I’ll hand her over so you can make her one of your soldiers, another weapon in your little war?” My voice drops to a growl. “No. Mine. Mine to protect. Mine to save. No one touches her.”
His jaw shifts, but he doesn’t back up. “You’re playing a dangerous game, Kael. Even for you. I know how you are, don’t let obsession blind you.”
The repeated words hit way too close, and maybe that’s why I finally force myself to take a breath.
Inhale. Exhale. Hold.
I let the pressure bleed out of my fists, stepping back before I do something irreversible.
The tension between us still lingers from childhood, but I force myself to ease back into a chair, hands resting on the arms. If I don’t explain, Jett will have some rebel hacker tear through my system until he finds her himself. And that I can’t allow.
“You want to know what she is?” My voice is low, almost a threat. “She’s not just an anomaly. There was a previous surge from Eli, a nasty virus from Vikktor, and poof—she’s integrated. Alive inside my architecture. A ghost in the machine.”
Jett’s brow furrows. He sits in the next chair over, that revolutionary calm wrapping around him like armor. “What?! Alive or code?”
“She was alive.” The words slip out too fast. I correct myself, slower this time: “She is alive...sort of. TheKast wiped her body while she was in DreamNet. Vikktor’s virus continued what the system started.
Eli finished what was left. But her consciousness, her magic, both slipped into the net instead of burning out.
And now she’s bound here inside my grid. ”
Ember’s typing falters at her station, fingers pausing mid-keystroke. Ash stops strumming, guitar left humming in the awkward silence. Jett stares at me blankly.
“What the fuck, Ryudon?! You’re telling me”—disbelief colors his tone—“that she isn’t just in DreamNet. She is DreamNet. She’s in your system. A living ghost?”
I meet his gaze without blinking. “Yes.”
Jett’s exhale is long and measured. “Then she doesn’t belong to you, Kael. She belongs to all of us. If she can manipulate your systems, she could free the U21s. She could be the key to ending this oppression.”
The air snaps tight around me. The old rage is back again and barely contained. My voice sounds forced as I struggle to keep my composure.
I stand again to face him with consternation. “She’s not your weapon. She can’t stay inside to save anyone. It’s complicated and none of your fucking business!”
Jett’s eyes sharpen. “And keeping her caged in your system makes you what? Different from Vikktor? How? Complicated? Explain.” One blink.
For a moment, I nearly lose it. But that’s not who I am, or who I have been trained to be. I can already see the fight play out in my mind: a knife hand strike to the back of the neck, a loss of breathing ability, and Jett’s body breaking under my hands. The sick fantasy sings to my blood.
But instead, I shift my voice into something colder.
“She’s not caged. I’m not the one that put her there.
And I’ve been able to create a couple of programs that allow us to communicate!
” I have no clue why I feel the need to explain anything to him, but I continue.
“But LINK is, I fear, evolving and learning to be more human, while Lyra is learning to be more machine. Her humanity could be entirely stripped away if we don’t act quickly. They aren’t playing nice together.”
Ash interrupts. “Digital catfight. Nice!”
I sigh at his fake stupidity. “I have a solution. I’m building a bridge. A cybernetic body. Not a puppet, not a husk, but a vessel. If I finish it, she walks out of here, flesh and blood. Free. But I’ll need your magic to make it happen.”
I turn and throw down my DigiCard, it hits the top of the console with a slap. “For your help, I’m prepared to make a sizable donation to the rebellion. Anonymously, of course.”
Jett scowls like something’s crawling under his skin. “You think money can buy us? You think handing over credits makes this rebellion yours to manipulate? That it makes you anything other than another corporate asshole trying to buy himself a conscience?”
I stiffen. Ember tenses behind him. He doesn’t back down.
“The rebellion is fueled by solidarity, commitment, and by the blood of your generation, Ryudon. The ones who don’t have the luxury of choosing who gets erased and who gets rescued from the rubble left by StarFell.” Jett sees only men like Vikktor when he looks at me.
I don’t pull the card back. “I’m not trying to buy the rebellion,” I say quietly. No defensiveness to it. Just pure truth. “If I were, I’d be offering you infrastructure, weapons, names. Not credits.”
That gets him listening.
“This isn’t leverage,” I continue, “it’s insurance. I need to know you’ll stay. That you won’t vanish the moment this gets complicated. That when I do this, when Lyra’s soul is halfway between systems, you won’t decide the cost is too high and walk away...again.”
Still air stretched to its maximum.
“You did before,” I add, not an accusation, a fact. “And I can’t afford that happening again.”
Jett’s expression tightens, the old unresolved wounds between us reopening, raw and exposed. “So that’s what this is about,” he says slowly.
I don’t deny it. “I’m not handing her life over to someone who might decide tomorrow that the rebellion needs him somewhere else.”
He laughs under his breath, bitterly. “You still don’t trust me.”
“I trust your conviction,” I say. “I don’t trust your ability to follow through.”
That lands hard. As intended.
For a long moment, neither of us speaks, a battle of darkness raging between us. Neither willing to break eye contact.
Finally, Jett nudges the DigiCard with one finger. He doesn’t pick it up, just acknowledges its existence. “I’m not taking your money,” he comments.
“Then I’m calling in my favor.” Ash moves between us breaking the stalemate. “You still owe me.”
His eyes meet Ash’s, unblinking. “But I’m not walking away either.” Jett’s tone becomes softer, like a higher purpose is calling him to respond.
I nod once.
“For her,” he adds. “Not for you. And don’t ask me why. Because I can’t tell you.”
Again with the cryptic bullshit. It’s not peace; he’s offering a temporary truce. Deep down, I know this moment will come back to haunt us both.
Jett tilts his head, studying me with his unnerving eyes. “And you think she’ll choose to walk into your arms after what you’ve done and live happily ever after?”
“She’ll want to,” I snap. “But I will give her a choice. That’s more than Vikktor ever offers.”
Funny time for Ash to have nothing to say. He remains between us, arms folded across his chest, calming the stormy waters.
Finally, Jett speaks. Another one of his “truths” he delivers to motivate the masses.
“I’ll say it again, Kael, your compliance still means your hands are dirty.
You can dress it up with your genius and your promises, but in the end, you’re still Vikktor’s pawn.
Don’t make her another casualty of your dilemma. ”
I force a smirk, though my pulse is a storm brewing inside my veins. “Then stay out of my way. Because whether you approve or not, I’m finishing this. I’ll do it with or without your magic if I have to.”
The corner of Jett’s mouth curves ever so slightly.
“No. You won’t.” He gives my shoulder a squeeze to assure me that he’ll help even though he doesn’t agree.
“Perhaps it can be just like old times, just this once.” He clasps his hands in front of him.
“Now, who do I have to fuck to get a drink around here?”
By the end of the night the whiskey flows, the air is cleared, and we begin working side by side, hashing out contingencies for Eli and running data models for Lyra like nothing ever happened. It’s what old friends do.
To anyone else, it might look like three childhood friends coming together in a time of need. But I can still feel Jett’s eyes on me. He steals quick glances at the wall of monitors, and I know...he’s thinking about her, looking for her.
I hate that. I hate it more than anything.
Because the truth is simple. Jett isn’t wrong.
Obsession is dangerous. Lucky for me I live on the edge of a precipice, and I’m not afraid to fall into the abyss below.