44. CodeCorridor
CodeCorridor
Playlist: Dark Prince – ELFL
Lyra
I can feel Eli pulling the walls in around me, threads of code already disappearing and reappearing. I’m pulled violently out of GameNet and into a black grid.
I have to get out.
More importantly—I have to get to Eli.
I begin running through the flashes of code, shoving glitches and data streams aside, looking for the window or holo-program. I find the holo tucked in the back corridors of the system, buried under collapsing code. I need to act quickly. My pulse spikes as I force it open.
I abruptly appear in the lab, my image filling in gradually as I’m already launching myself forward. Kael, Ash, and Ember move like puppets, hands on keyboards, fingers furiously typing commands.
Kael looks up, relief melting over his expression. “Lyra!” He moves to join me by the center console.
“I’m going with Jett!” I start for the doors of the lab.
Kael is much faster. One step, then another, and he’s in front of me, a hard wall. His hand shoots out, pressing flat to the door panel, locking it down with a hiss. The green light on the console snaps red.
His eyes cut to mine, unbothered by my fury. “No.” His voice crawls over my skin. “You’re not leaving the lab. Running the halls of VikkCorp will just get us caught. You’ve trained for this—use your power, EchoWeaver. Find Eli in my system, go to him that way.” His voice is encouraging.
He’s actually giving me permission to run through his system, to get to my brother and Jett without leaving this room. One of the very things he said he’d never do.
I shove at his chest, but he doesn’t move. The calm in his eyes only makes me burn hotter. “We don’t have time for your games! Move,” I demand. My veins begin to fill with golden light. He isn’t just blocking me. He’s daring me.
His hands feel hot on my shoulders. “You’re not hearing me, Little Taiyō. Go back in, get up there. Bleed into my feed.”
I blink at him. “You’re...what? Giving me permission to...”
His mouth curves into a faint smile. “Not permission. An opportunity. Show me how powerful you are.” He leans in slightly, enough for his breath to brush my ear. “I built this place. If anyone can slip through it without tripping alarms, it’s you. Prove me right. Don’t break my code.”
His hands drop from my shoulders but stay near, fingers grazing my wrist, just enough to feel the spark there. “Go to your brother, EchoWeaver, but do it from here. Do it with me watching so I can help you, so I can protect you.” He turns me toward the wall of screens and smacks my ass playfully.
Time feels like a speeding train. Kael’s simultaneously frustrating me and empowering me. I don’t care about his system. I’m going to get my brother.
My magic hums at my fingertips, restless, and the word EchoWeaver leaving his lips, beats in my head like a drum. The name doesn’t sound foreign anymore. It sounds like...Me.
I hate him for this. But I also respect him. That’s the worst part.
The man who will not allow himself to yield even an ounce of control, is empowering me to discover my own inner strength and resilience.
There’s a heat coiled inside me, the kind that makes my breath uneven when he looks at me like that.
My stupid heart reacts with missed beats when he says so I can protect you. He means it.
I push my magic forward, fueled by anxiety. I snap the tether to the holo-program, slamming me back into the system. The lab fades, replaced by corridors spun from neon light in perfect symmetry. I grit my teeth, close my eyes, and reach into the grid. His world.
The pathways burst open around me, glittering veins of data and neon-lined corridors. I don’t know if I want to tear them apart or master them, but either way, I feel a presence there, like someone standing at my shoulder even though I know I’m alone.
Watching. Waiting.
“LINK,” I whisper under my breath, “no. Not now.”
She’s here, not attacking yet, just lingering in the shadows of Kael’s programs. A jealous ghost in his machine, circling me like a predator, deciding when to pounce.
I can’t fight her right now. There’s no time. But a quake under my feet tells me I have no choice. I brace myself. “Go ahead!” I yell, my voice shaking with fear. “Come at me, bitch! You’ll see what I can do.”
Kael’s AI is no longer impassive—it’s alive, a living machine with its own rhythm, trying to gain its own soul.
I run my fingers along the nearest wall.
The surface ripples, shifting under my touch like water over glass.
I release everything I have, concentrating on bending, hacking every piece of data around me.
The system shudders, another low vibration running through the floor beneath my feet.
I draw in a deep breath as the air shifts.
I can see the threads of the top floor feeds.
I pull. I have no idea how or why, but I’m suddenly in the holo-tracks of the cold corporate lab in the upper levels of VikkCorp’s containment sector.
It’s even worse than I suspected. It looks more like a digital prison of glass.
My holo-form erupts, and I lunge toward Jett. He stands just outside the glass, his palm against it, speaking slowly to Eli. His SoulReaver aura chills the air around him.
I can see the hacked harness around Eli’s wrist barely glowing. Jett must have put it on him in the speakeasy, during the void commotion.
Deep pulses fill my ears, causing me to cover them with my hands. My eardrums tickle as they shake.
It’s Eli, and he’s resisting.
“Lyra, stay there!” Jett warns, not looking back. “You’ll want to see this.”
Every fiber in me wants to scream, to run, but I stay. Because Eli is here.
The containment chamber is a glass coffin humming with tech layers meant to snuff out magic.
Eli sits inside, hunched over, his body limp.
His eyes are void-lit, his pupils pulsing violet then obsidian with each rapid breath he takes.
He looks up at me with such innocence, like a gentle soul navigating a harsh world.
“Lyra?” His voice glitches through the glass, fragmented, as if every word costs him a piece of himself. “You’re not real. You’re just another trap.” He sounds shattered.
“I’m real. I’m here.” I move forward, ignoring Jett’s command. I press my hands to the glass. “Eli, please. Hold on. For me.”
Jett moves quickly, fingers crackling with that unnatural reaping power. “We don’t have much time. Once I pull the void, and his body stabilizes, I’ll slip through and get him out.”
Jett’s tattoos flare dark red, his hands glowing eerily. Veins of lightning splinter down the glass and across the floor to Eli. “Eli, let me have it. Give me the darkness. Touch the glass. End your suffering.”
For a moment, hope blooms inside me. Eli’s void-flare dims, and his breathing steadies.
I’m thrown back from the glass as beams of energy cut through the room. Thin purple spiderwebs of light spread across the chamber walls. He jerks violently, spasms racking his body.
“No!” Eli screams, his voice echoing off every surface. “You don’t get to take my magic! This is who I am now!”
The harness band sparks vigorously, glitch-fire pouring from it. Arcs of purple lightning crawl up Eli’s arms as he tries to remove the harness.
Jett digs in, his voice a low growl. “No, Eli! I’m not taking your magic. I’m trying to anchor it. To keep it from ripping you apart.” He leans closer, eyes glowing faintly with his own SoulReaver power. “You think this is power? It’s a flame burning down to nothing.”
“I don’t care!” Eli’s scream splinters into a dozen voices. His skin shifts between human and shadow. “I don’t want your help! Lyra, help me!”
“No, Eli, please...I can’t do it alone!” I cry, banging on the glass. “Let Jett help. You’ll kill yourself, burn yourself out.”
Jett intervenes, “Or kill you. Eli, your next void could delete your sister from the network. Banish her from existence. You don’t want that, do you?”
The harness cracks again like a gunshot. Black haze leaks out, like arms, throwing Jett back into a stack of servers. Glass shatters. He stays down moaning in pain.
I can see the walls bleed neon and static in my periphery. My magic begins to dwindle, the flare beginning to dull. It hurts like a physical blow. Eli’s void-flare is ripping through the code, tugging me deeper into the system, into the endless void.
“Eli, stop!” I shout, reaching for him, but my hands pass through a wave of distortion. His void surge shreds the floor between me and the glass wall into a black chasm of nothing.
He looks directly at me, eyes wild, frightened, and filled with tears. “I’m sorry.” His voice is like a whisper in a vacuum. His energy explodes outward, the void shattering the harness on his wrist, sending fragments of Jett’s spell work scattering like marbles on the sterile tile floor.
It’s done. The plan is a failure.
My vision whites out. Kael’s voice cuts in, faint and broken through the comms in the ceiling. I’d forgotten he was there. “Lyra! Get out now!”
Jett stumbles to stand and grabs my arm, blood streaking from his nose. He grasps his ribs with his other hand. Eli flickers, one moment in front of us, the next unraveling into violet light, scattering across the chamber like he’s been deleted.
I choke back a sob. “No...no, no, no!”
Jett hauls me over the two CIC guards unconscious in front of the door, his voice is like gravel. “He’s not gone. Not yet. But he’s buried himself deeper. This...this wasn’t a rescue. It was an awakening.”
My knees buckle. A splitting pain slices through me, as if Eli’s void is slicing through my chest. LINK’s presence flares on the screens in the hallway as we run down it. Not a line of code. Not a notification. It’s a gasp, more human than machine.
I clutch the wall, breath ragged, helping Jett stay upright. The horror slams into me immediately. His void isn’t just breaking the system; it’s also doing something to us. To her.
My fingers leave scorch-marks of amber light where they press the wall.
The grid responds to me as if I belong to it, as if I am part of it now.
Jett stands, despite being pretty shaken himself.
The fear settles inside my chest. What if Eli’s void just affected LINK?
What if it’s fusing me to the system deeper as well, pulling me further from humanity?
And what if he’s unknowingly feeding it to her?
Across the corridor, LINK flickers into form for the first time, a jagged woman-shaped shadow stitched from the white noise.
Her edges don’t quite hold, flickering across the screens like bad code forcing its way through.
Her eyes flare bright green, an unnatural luminous green, that blink, almost sentient.
“You don’t belong here,” she hisses. But her voice is wrong. It’s not the sterile-coded tone I’m used to hearing. It’s softer, more like mine, almost like she’s practiced the sound of my voice and decided she likes it.
“I was built to protect the system and its creator,” she continues. “You are destabilizing it.”
I continue anchoring Jett as we walk the tightening corridor. The walls feel as if they’re warping inward, her presence weighing down upon us.
Jett swears under his breath and taps his comm. “Kael, are you seeing this?”
I say nothing. I can’t. How do you tell a man his artificial intelligence just became...well, intelligent. She’s adapting quickly.
Eli’s void didn’t just tear holes in the grid, it gave LINK room to grow. I suddenly realize she’s changing too. Eli’s void is reshaping both of us.
I’m not the only anomaly anymore.
Now Kael must admit the one task he’s focused on for years of his life, hunting and erasing anomalies, is now the product of his own overzealousness.
His voice crackles faintly over the lab feed: “Yes, I’m on it. Abort. Get out of there. NOW.”
I look back at the shattered containment cell, at the shards of glass littering the floor, at the emptiness where my brother had been. Eli sits in the corner, a shell of who he is, lost, broken. No movement, no sound, almost catatonic.
For the very first time, in my brother’s life, I think I understand him perfectly. Peace for him isn’t the real world. It isn’t fighting the magic under your skin for constant control. It’s the comfort of being part of the system that controls you.
He doesn’t want to be saved.
.