54. DragonFire
DragonFire
Playlist: Bring Me to Life – Evanescence
Kael
I stagger back, my pulse throbbing in my throat.
Neon orange light bleeds from my tattoos, moving angrily.
No longer static ink, but alive, crawling, reshaping like their feeding on the system itself.
My eyes catch the light of the monitors, and I can see them flare fiery, orange-gold, burning like two small flames.
I can’t catch my breath, my vision’s blurry, and my chest is swirling with a ball of intense heat that feels almost paralyzing.
“Kael!” Ember gasps, placing both hands over her mouth. Her voice drowns under the roar of collapsing code.
The DreamBand I slipped around my wrist self-activates with a neon flash against my fiery skin.
Something’s not right; I didn’t twist it.
This is no ordinary DreamBand. Where a standard band flickers with a soft blue glow, this one flares bright orange and white.
I can see lines of code thrumming beneath the surface of my skin like veins, moving toward the band, in sync with my breathing.
Ash. He gave me this band a few days ago, told me to try it out, give it a spin. I’ll be damned. Hacked by the best, with mods only he could design.
The air in the lab shifts when it comes online. Monitors blink, lights dim, and the very walls seem to lean toward me, as if the system knows who its owner is. I’ve worn DreamBands before, every U21 has, but this feels unprecedented.
I lift my wrist, and the tattoos along my forearms ripple, the ink almost glowing in response, syncing with the band as though the two are paired. I look over my shoulder. Lyra’s still half on the holo-pad, her lips folded under, afraid to speak.
All this time Ash let me believe I was just a man with a knack for taming machines.
No spark. No magic. No power except the one I built.
He stood next to me while I hacked my way through secure systems, raised an empire from stolen laptops, thinking I was clever.
Just a normal, boring prodigy hiding in a world of exceptional anomalies.
Every flash of neon I’ve ever seen in my own skin, every strange occurrence that I wrote off as stress or bad lighting, it was all an omen. Every split second where code bent for me without command, errors resolving neatly, ideas forming exactly when needed. It was all power. My power.
And if Ash knew, it means he’s been quietly shaping me as long as I’ve been shaping this system. He’s been an architect behind the architect.
I flex my hand. The band glows brighter, orange veins continuing to spread under my skin. For the first time, I can feel the system respond to me, not as a server, but as an entity that recognizes me. Like it’s been waiting for me to awaken.
The band is a key. Ash’s key, crafted quietly, hidden in plain sight.
I know his signature code; it’s messy genius.
A layer of chaos braided into order. This is a key to open my system wide.
He knew, and he built me a way into it in case of catastrophic failure.
He left it buried deep in my infrastructure like a gift for a future version of me I didn’t even know I’d become.
But this, this thing around my wrist, it’s also a door. I can tell instinctively. And if my assumption is correct, he made me the only one who could open it.
I know this is the point of no return. Lyra will be degraded into an archive by LINK.
She’ll take every bit of humanity left inside her unless I act quickly.
If I push, it won’t just let me watch the system; it will drag me through.
And once I’m inside, if LINK resists, I may have to destroy my own creation.
If that happens, there may not be a way back out for me or for Lyra.
I envision dragging Lyra back in. Binary numbers visually appear, forming 3D objects and floating data streams that shimmer with intense, neon hues. The code isn’t silent. It drones with a low, electric frequency that vibrates in the teeth. A symphony of man and machine in tandem.
She’s no longer on the holo-pad, but I can hear her voice crackle through the feed, small and strained: “Kael...don’t. Don’t you dare...”
Too late, baby. I shut her out. My hand tightens on the DreamBand. “I’m coming in after you, Taiyō!”
The lab explodes into white noise. My body jerks back, but my mind slams forward, ripped from flesh and bone. It feels like every nerve is on fire, demolished and rebuilt into lines of code. My tattoos blaze neon orange, bleeding light into the data stream as I collide with the system itself.
And then I’m there. With her.
The hum hits me first. Not in the ears, but deeper, like it’s felt in my bones.
I don’t know how she withstood this for so long.
The corridors of the system react instantly.
Walls that were flat, lifeless lines, ripple as though they’re bowing to me.
The colors seep from cool blues into heated amber, a glow that pulses in time with my breath.
And through it all, I feel her so deeply it’s jarring.
The system’s drum shifts, reacting like a living thing without commands. The entire grid seems to warp, like it knows its master has finally stepped inside. LINK stutters, her voice glitching between code and static.
UNSTABLE
UNAUTHORIZED ACCESS
CONTROLLER brEACH
Pretty much sums it up. I can see Lyra in the corner. She shakes her head, already knowing what’s coming next. She’s not standing in my lab anymore; she’s here with me. Inside my machine that now recognizes us both.
“No, Kael!” She throws her hands up, signaling me to yield. A swipe of my hand and code forms in the air like vapor trails, dissolving her words. My hand comes down hard like a well-disciplined block, and I see it form a tether that wraps tightly around her. She doesn’t fight it.
I pull.
Not the way DreamNet drags you down like water. This is different. Violent. I yank her through the system as though she’s a puppet on a string and bring her to me. Ones and zeros scattering behind her.
The walls dissolve, neon corridors unfurling into a wide-open space.
My senses blur. Her proximity ignites my blood, her magic wrapping around mine, fire to ice, control to emotion.
The visual in front of us is spectacular, a blending of red, orange, gold, and magenta, swirling like coded DNA.
I can’t break away. Her body pixelates, light responding without thought, then reforms.
She looks around, taking in the sight of our magic intermixing. A devilish grin slides across her full lips.
Thrill.
She turns to me, wrapping her arms around me with emotion so intense, I feel my own power respond. I shudder because it isn’t just the system that’s reacting. My own magic joins in, threads of firelight sparking, reaching toward her like magnets clamping together.
“Kael, what are you?” She cups my face in her hands, fingertips brushing where flesh and power blur.
For a moment, I tense, reveling in her touch, my eyes locking on hers. My lips curve, not in humor, but as a warning.
I’ve realized just how dangerous I can be.
“Not what I thought I was.” My voice comes out rough. “Not what Vikktor thinks I am. And maybe not what you think either.”
The digital walls around us quake, doors shuddering as if my very admission rewrites the grid. I feel my magic stir toward hers again, golden threads weaving amongst flames.
“The code. It’s gathering, following you. You’re bending it to your will, writing it as you need it,” she whispers. “That isn’t your intelligence, Kael. It’s...”
“Magic.” I say it like it’s a sickness, like I’d rather cut it out of myself than admit it.
For years, U21 magic had been something I thought of as a curse, dangerous, unpredictable, and a threat to order.
My goal was always to contain, classify, or erase it before it consumed its host. A liability, an anomaly, not something that could live inside me.
Especially not something that could answer when I called for it.
Yet here it is, coiling through my veins, fusing with the system, awakening after being dormant all along.
My hand comes up, pressing over hers. “You were the spark, Taiyō. You ignited it, pulled it out of me.”
Yes, maybe that’s it. Maybe the magic is a mirror of her own.
I’m not gifted, just branded. For years, I’ve built my life on precision, on discipline, on the certainty that only control keeps the chaos at bay. Magic is chaos. Magic is untamable and burns anomalies from the inside out. Magic is the reason Vikktor puts them down and the reason Jett resists.
A sickness climbs up my throat. If I admit this, I become the very thing I’ve learned to despise. I’m the hunter not the hunted, I struggle to reconcile the logic.
Lyra watches me like she can see inside my thoughts; she probably can now. Her expression is worrisome, like she wants to name the thing I won’t. Her eyes catch the flicker of orange crawling across my tattoos, and for the first time in years I feel naked and exposed.
LINK’s voice fills the system, loud and boisterous.
CORRUPTION
DATA REPAIR INITIATED
ACCESS FILE: DR. KAEL RYUDON
Her tone wavers, still a machine...for now. A shadow slides in, a dark presence, like a curtain being pulled around us. She’s circling us.
Lyra feels it too. “Welcome to the shitshow.” She knows it all too well. “This is about the time I usually run like hell.”
I don’t flinch. I lean in until my forehead nearly brushes hers. “Let her come,” I growl. “I don’t kneel to LINK. I don’t kneel to Vikktor. I never have. I never will. The only one I kneel to is you...my queen.”
She turns back to me and kisses me with such force it knocks the breath from my lungs. The contact sets off a passion inside me. Not in the system, in me. Her soft, full lips press violently, the punishing kiss of a desperate woman trying to pull me into the deep with her.
My magic answers hers willingly. Threads of scorching light spark beneath my skin, reaching for her like they’ve always known where they belong. Fire kissing the sun. Heat recognizing heat. Power answering power.
Apart, we’re a force to be reckoned with, but together, we’re unstoppable.
She asked me what I am. I don’t have an answer. Not yet. But as her magic curls tighter around mine, I realize something irreversible has already happened.
Whatever I am...it woke up for her.
She pulls away, a newfound glory in her expression, “Let’s play another game, Dr. Kael Ryudon.” Her head tilts. “This one’s called king supports queen. God mode.”