Epilogue ASunThatShouldn’tRise
Epilogue ASunThatShouldn’tRise
Playlist: Sun Don’t Shine - Extended Mix - Klangkarussell, Jaymes Young
Lyra
I’m lying on my beach, waiting. Pulse pounding, heart beating excruciatingly fast. It starts as a whisper on the breeze. Then a vibration deep in the grid, like someone shaking the sand around me.
The feeling builds, and for a second I think it’s Jett, that he’s already found me, but then I realize it’s her. LINK.
A zing runs though my body, fight or flight mode kicking in.
My reflection ruptures across the DreamNet water, lines of code shimmering around my skin.
I shouldn’t be able to feel what’s happening in the real world, but in here?
It’s like threads of data burning through me, melting my skin. What is she doing to me?
I reassure myself, he’s close. Jett’s going to find me, and he’s going to pull me out. The real reward will be Kael, right there to fight this with me.
I can hear and feel a heartbeat—not my heartbeat. It’s beginning to echo far in the distance. “Shit, shit!” I stay on the beach, but every fiber of my being wants to run. They won’t find me for extraction if I don’t stay.
A strange current spreads through me, like my body has been plugged in. It’s like someone is digitally sketching me into being, pixel by pixel. The sensation is both intimate and strange. I embrace the feeling, this must be it.
It’s not painful...at first.
It’s suddenly so cold my teeth chatter. I’d know this feeling anywhere. Eli. His void is stirring. His magic, faint but familiar, brushes against the edges of my consciousness. His fear still hums through every circuit.
“Lyra, you need to go. LINK is coming, and I can only hold her for so long.” He sounds calm for someone who’s trying to hold back the power to destroy everything in this city. “I’m safe, you will be too. Go with the SoulReaver and Kael. Now! She’s here!”
For some strange reason, I don’t panic. I can feel Kael’s thoughts pressing through the network: his focus, his control, his ache. The connection between us vibrates, and I swear every time he breathes, I feel it. Every time he doubts, I hear it.
INITIATING DATA EXCHANGE
LINK’s voice fills DreamNet and pierces my ears. I cover them just as I notice the sky turning crimson. LINK’s presence is dark, but this is darker.
“Jett?” I try to call to him, but my voice is so small, and I’m having trouble forming the words. My lips are just so cold and numb.
The SoulReaver’s energy crackles through the air, pulling the literal life right out of me. It touches the edges of my code, just as LINK begins flooding me with data. For a brief instant, I see him. He looks as if he’s fighting a battle, green-and-violet light striking him through the static sky.
“Lyra,” he orders, “don’t talk. Just focus on me and on Kael.”
He’s found me. Thank the stars.
A flood of light hits my chest, molten hot after being so cold. It fills my veins from my toes to my head as it warms me from within.
Kael.
I feel him take my hand, but it’s not soft. Instead, I feel a hard pulling sensation, as if my body is being split in two. He’s bridging our magic, but it’s painfully wrecking me from the inside.
I can hear Jett humming some sort of vibration, and before I know it, my heart feels as if it’s being crushed in my chest. The pain is blinding.
I see flashes of Eli’s face, and I can sense LINK in my mind, as if she’s invading it, like the virus that put me here.
I can’t survive this. The pain in my head increases to a level that brings me to my knees. I begin to fade out of consciousness.
“Focus, Kael. She’s close.” I think I hear Jett, but it sounds muffled, like I’m being pulled underwater.
“Come back to me, Little Taiyō.” I hear him, barely. But I can’t feel him anymore.
“I’m pulling the soul-thread now!” Is that Jett again? My body begins to convulse, and blinding pulses of gold-and-red light shoot upward, arching my back as they escape.
It relieves some of the pressure in my chest but hurts like nothing I’ve ever experienced before.
Static fills my ears, my eardrums buzzing. It’s all I can hear now. My vision fades to black. My eyelids fall shut like weights are pulling them down. The last thing I hear is LINK breaking through the static.
SYSTEM PRIORITY ALERT LINK SYSTEM ONLINE
PROTOCOL: RESTORE FILES
Blackness. No sound. No light. Not the blackness of Eli’s void, much different. Pitch-black and green code are flooding down the sides of my vision. I blink once, twice, and I see the sky, purple and lilac stretching above me from the eclipse.
I know this...
I stand up shakily. I can see the whole city shimmering, but devoid of light, through a glass wall. It’s everywhere, like a never-ending cage. The glass is littered with green-gray static now, and I pull at my magic to clear it, threads of gold forming and coiling.
Wait. This isn’t right. Threads of orange, green, violet, and maroon begin to weave into my gold and pink.
My body shivers, and just like that, I feel strong, maybe even invincible.
Like a rush of adrenaline pumped into my main artery.
The glass shatters into a million tiny pixels, and I throw myself through it, only to find I’m jumping, falling from the top of VikkCorp’s spire.
But I’m not really. It’s not me. Instead, I’m thousands of tiny particles of light in various colors, and I’m spilling out into the air. The sensation of falling fades, but I swear I feel a piece of myself pulled toward Jett. A single piece of pixelated light, tugging loose and seeking him out.
I look up as I fall. The purple sky flickers between light and shadow, two worlds colliding. My new body is waiting for me, but I can’t tell which part of me wants to go into it and which part wants to stay in tiny pieces floating through the ether.
Air hits my lungs like fire. My body convulses, foreign and fragile, a thousand sensations flooding in all at once. Cold air, the metallic taste of blood, the weight of gravity pressing me down. It’s overwhelming and sparks something in me to flee. But I can’t.
Because someone’s calling my name.
“Lyra?” The voice drags me through the white noise, kind of familiar, warm, broken at the edges. I blink, fighting through the blur until light carves out a shape above me: broad shoulders, dark eyes, veins of light glowing orange beneath skin slick with sweat.
“Taiyō,” I hear a whisper. “You’re safe. You’re home. I’m here...right here. Take your time. I know this all feels new.”
I’m a blank slate. My eyes widen with confusion.
My chest is heaving now. I feel the urge to run from fear again.
It’s like an instinct flooding my system.
In a split second, I flinch, someone’s trying to touch me.
I scramble off the table, and back into the corner, knocking over equipment with a speed that is incredibly inhuman.
“Where...” My voice cracks like I’m learning speech for the first time. “Am I?”
I should feel safe; it should feel right. But it doesn’t.
I jerk back, swallowing down the dryness in my throat. I’m alive and breathing again, but it doesn’t feel right. I feel threatened and unsafe.
“It’s me,” a voice whispers. “Lyra...it’s Kael.”
I recoil harder, my magic flickering violently and bleeding all over every screen in whatever lab I’m in. The Corporation must have me.
I stand up so quickly, the air snaps. I’m not moving from this corner until I figure out what’s happening here. I hear data humming in the back of my head, and my eyes obey by narrowing, taking in exits, threats, and angles. Instinct taking over.
I tilt my head, eyes never leaving the two men.
What is that annoying sound? A humming, electricity, like I’ve never heard it before.
One of the men moves, and I’m across the room and in front of him in the blink of an eye, data running through my vision, as I quickly scan all the ways I can take him down if he moves another inch.
There it is again, the feeling of being invincible flooding through my veins. I curl my fingers and my skin glows briefly, a faint magenta-gold pulse that spirals up my arms then fades. More colors follow and then disappear. I’m finally out of the system, reborn, but something’s still missing.
“Well now, Lyra...look at you.” He’s speaking, but I don’t hear anything; my system is too busy running data, and my magic is calibrating to new levels.
I don’t like the way his eyes rake over me.
He steps closer, setting off alarms in my head.
His hands are in his pockets, non-threatening, but something in me still calculates a risk percentage.
“Do you have any idea what you are now? What you could be?”
Another step closer but smiling now. In my vision, a percentage flashes.
RISK: 42%
“The rebellion won’t just rise with someone like you.” His gaze locks with mine. “It will win. You’re incredible.”
He circles me like I’m a sight he just can’t look away from. “Well damn, sweetheart.”
That puts me on high alert, but before I can react with the appropriate strike, the other man is lunging at him, and they’re both engaged in an exchange.
I freeze in place, watching, waiting; even my breath stops. The weight of my hands feels so heavy, and I’m filled with the urge to strike something. I move in a blur and catch myself on the counter, palm slapping down with extreme force but I’m so precise, the table doesn’t move.
Stars. I’m strong...and fast. What have I become?
I look up. “What did you do to me?”
“Nothing, Taiyō.” His voice stumbles, nervous, broken. “You’re back. Back with me, where you belong. You’re free from the system.” He moves toward me and begins to put his arms around me.
Taiyō. That’s not my name; he must be mistaken. Alarm bells ring throughout my mind: more threat detection. “Don’t.” I shove at his chest. “Don’t touch me.”
He freezes, a look of shock in his dark eyes. “Lyra...”
My pulse hammers so loudly, I lift my hands to cover my ears.
The room tilts, warps, too much sound, too much light, too much him.
I withdraw and quickly take him to the floor with a sweep of the legs.
My arm presses to his throat, cutting off his air.
I hear him try to cough, but he doesn’t even attempt to defend himself.
His world stops. I see it in his eyes; he looks as if his heart is cracking open, and the color drains out of him. “Taiyō, it’s me.” Tears fill his dark eyes, but he doesn’t let them fall. “I love you.”
Three words.
Well, I have three for him too.
I press harder on his windpipe. “Who are you?” I demand.