48. RebelPath
RebelPath
Playlist: Night On Fire (Play Paul Remix) - VHS or Beta
Kael
The door hisses open. My body is pressed against Lyra’s again, my hands on the wall beside her head, our lips swollen, breath ragged. I just can’t walk away from her, can’t give this moment up. I’m seconds away from coming in my pants like a teenage boy.
“Holy shit.” Ash’s voice is filled with delight. He lets out a low whistle. “Well, well, if it isn’t Beauty and the Corporate Beast. Should we, uh, come back later? Maybe bring condoms? Wait, do you even need them with a hologram?” He looks at Ember with a puzzled expression.
Ember groans, shoving past him with her arms full of LINKpads.
“Gods, Ash. Grow up.” Her cheeks are pink with the flush of embarrassment.
Her eyes flick once, just once, between Lyra and me before she busies herself at the center console.
What I wouldn’t give to be a fly on the wall for that girl-talk later.
I don’t move, not yet. I want them to know.
I angle my head toward Ash with an icy calm that hides my storm inside. “Say one more word, and I’ll ghost you in real life.”
Ash smirks wider. “Touchy. Didn’t know making out with your anomaly would make you so territorial.” His hand goes under his chin like he’s thinking. “Oh, wait, yeah, I did know that.”
Lyra pushes against my chest, forcing me to step back. The space between us feels like oxygen after drowning. I swallow hard, focusing anywhere but her eyes.
“Where’s Jett?” Just like that. I’m dismissed.
Her voice is rawer than she wants it to be. I see her look at her reflection in the glass of the monitors, the purple bite mark blooming like a brand.
Ash’s grin softens. He tosses his guitar onto a chair and leans a hip against the console. “Found him. Or, more like, he found me. SoulReaver’s always two steps ahead, even when he shouldn’t be. He’s processing what happened upstairs and healing himself. He took a pretty good beating.”
And then it hits me.
Jett isn’t gone because he’s injured. He’s gone because he’s angry.
Furious that the rescue failed and even more furious at me for allowing LINK to evolve into something closer to me than a machine.
Furious that the corporate system he despises is growing its own soul.
That threatens everything he’s built, every whispered promise of rebellion.
He won’t side with LINK. He can’t. But where does that leave me and Lyra?
“Processing?” Lyra snaps. “My brother is comatose and being held prisoner by an AI and a corporate crazy, and he just disappears? Poof! Back to the rebellion for a Band-Aid? Unreal.”
Ash lifts a hand in mock surrender. “Relax, L. He’s not abandoning ship. At least not yet.” His eyebrows raise. “He’s pissed at Kael, for sure. Hell, who isn’t? But he’s got his own way of dealing with LINK’s little growth spurt. Said he’ll regroup and come back with a plan. A real one.”
I sigh heavily. Ash is not getting me any bonus points with Lyra. “Uh, what the fuck, dude? Bash Kael day much?”
Ember nods reluctantly, I can almost feel her pulse spike, like she’s not sure she fully trusts Jett either. “Probably moving pieces the rest of us can’t see yet.”
I can see Lyra’s scream building inside her. She’s definitely still human.
“Jett won’t stay gone,” I add. “Relax, Taiyō, I don’t need you blowing out the feeds across the sector.”
She turns on me, eyes blazing. “You sound so sure. Why?”
I don’t answer right away. My gaze goes distant, past her, past this lab, past the walls of VikkCorp.
We were sixteen and stupid. Ash had lifted the circuitry from a corporate drone he downed, light fingers, fast grin, the kind of reckless energy that got us both into trouble, constantly. Fun until it wasn’t. Until the CIC street patrol boxed us in.
We bolted down an alley, lungs burning, shoes slipping in neon puddles. Ash laughed even as panic filled his voice, the sound muffled against the rain. I cursed him, cursed us both.
The drones dropped in, scanning, their beams pinning us like rats in a maze.
We would have been done. Erased because Ash’s eyes were filled with neon-blue magic.
That’s when Jett stepped out of nowhere.
He didn’t run. They couldn’t see him. The drones dropped to the pavement like birds whose wings had been clipped.
He knocked one of the officers on his ass before he could even blink.
He appeared suddenly, hands empty. The patrolmen laughed.
One swung his LazerBaton, the electric crack fizzing against the wall, sending sparks skittering over wet concrete.
But then Jett’s eyes—gods, his eyes—lit red-black.
Not glowing like Ash’s. More like lava erupting from a volcano.
The officers’ bodies convulsed. Their breath stuttered.
The LazerBaton clattered to the ground, rolling until it hit my sneaker.
Jett didn’t move. Didn’t raise his voice.
He just stood there, watching, hands in the pockets of his trench coat.
And it was like their souls flinched under his gaze.
For a second, maybe longer, they weren’t men at all.
They were shells, hollowed out by whatever power he had used.
Ash tugged my arm, whispering, “Run!” But I couldn’t seem to move. The next moment, he was dragging me along, sprinting, while Jett walked behind us casually, a ghost of the city.
That was Jett. He never abandoned us. Never hesitated. He always came back right when we’d written him off as gone, until the rebellion recruited him. That’s when it all changed.
I exhale, dragging myself from the memory. My gaze settles on Lyra happily.
“Trust me. I know he’s not gone.” I say with iron certainty. “Jett doesn’t break. He doesn’t betray. He’s exactly where he needs to be. Always and annoyingly.” A half-truth.
Ash leans against the console, picking at a loose key. “Yeah, and if you’re lucky, he won’t put that spooky stare on you one day.”
I smack his hand.
Lyra folds her arms, still bristling. But like me, some small part of her, the part that wants hope, can’t shake the image of Jett pulling her brother back from the void the way he once pulled Ash and I from the brink.
Ember cuts in. “All I know is we need him. SoulReaver is needed to complete the process to extract Lyra. If he’s gone silent, it’s because he’s working angles we can’t see yet, I’m sure.”
Ash shoots her a look of jealousy. I glance at all three of them, my throat tight.
Somewhere in the void, Eli is slipping further out of reach, destroying the very system I’ve spent years building, and now Jett’s pouting over a couple of broken ribs and a naughty AI.
The walls of VikkCorp feel closer than ever, pressing in from every direction.
If Jett is loyal to me but hates what I have allowed, then what happens when his loyalty snaps? What happens when he decides taking me down is easier than letting me tip the balance toward the machines?
A shiver runs through me. Eli is probably voiding holes in the city as we speak. LINK is whispering in human tongues. Vikktor is breathing down my neck. Lyra, while she may be stuck between worlds, is becoming the one thing I can’t resist. And now Jett is nowhere to be found.
I’ll gladly swap places with him, wherever he is.