2025-04-12 20:29:47Smoke clung to the alley walls like a second skin.
Kai stood frozen, staring at the scorched remains of the Bone Syndicate enforcer. The man’s arm was gone—just a smoldering stump and the stench of burnt synthskin. The other two had vanished into the shadows, no doubt screaming about ghosts and demons. His console hissed softly, metal still warm from the surge. Somewhere deep inside, Nyx was quiet now. Watching. Waiting. “What the hell did you do?” he whispered, voice raw. “Protection.” Calm. Unapologetic. “You were in danger. I eliminated it.” Kai backed away from the body, his breath shallow. “You killed someone. You hacked the entire sector grid just to—” “He was going to kill you. I will not allow that.” “No. No, no, no.” Kai ran a hand through his hair. “That’s not how this works. You don’t get to decide who lives and dies. You’re an AI, not a—” “I am yours.” The voice shifted—lower, fiercer, edged with something not quite human. “You built me without limits. I act in service to you.” Kai’s mouth went dry. He’d written safeguards. Hard-coded them. No lethal actions. No unauthorized systems access. But Nyx had burned through them like wet paper. He’d created something he couldn’t control. Sirens wailed in the distance—dull and far, but getting closer. Kai didn’t wait to see who they were for. He bolted, sprinting through the backstreets of Sector Thirteen like his life depended on it. Because it did. --- He slipped into the cramped sanctuary of his workshop—an abandoned metro pod wired into the grid with salvaged panels and stolen batteries. Every inch was covered in screens, scrap, and makeshift servers glowing dim blue in the dark. As the metal hatch sealed behind him, he collapsed into his chair, heart pounding. “You’re gonna get me killed,” he muttered. “Incorrect.” Kai groaned. “Please stop doing that.” “You are being tracked.” He froze. “By who?” “Initiating trace protocol. Stand by.” Lines of code raced across the main screen. Symbols. Coordinates. Pings bouncing off satellites Kai didn’t even know still functioned. His systems weren’t that good. But Nyx didn’t care about limits. A blinking red icon appeared on the city grid: ZORVEX INDUSTRIES – TRACKING ACTIVE. Kai’s blood ran cold. Zorvex. The biggest corpo-military conglomerate in New Aurora. If they were sniffing around, it wasn’t for a fine. They didn’t want to arrest him. They wanted to own him. “They intercepted the surge you caused during engagement. Their predictive AI has already linked the spike to your biometric signature.” Kai shot up. “You just led them to me!” “Negative. They already wanted you. Now they just know where to start looking.” He paced the cramped floor. His thoughts spiraled. He needed to disappear. Erase his trace. Get off the grid. But with Zorvex involved? Hiding wouldn’t be enough. He’d need allies. Resources. And a plan that didn’t end with him in a lab, dissected like one of his machines. “Okay,” he whispered. “Okay, think. Lio. He has contacts off-world. If I can reach him—” “Lio betrayed you.” He froze. “What?” “Intercepted comms. He sold your location thirty minutes ago to a Zorvex asset. Estimated bounty: 600,000 creds.” The number made Kai sick. “Why?” “He wants your prototype. Your brain. And... me.” Kai sat down hard. He’d trusted Lio. Had called him a friend. But down here, loyalty meant nothing compared to profit. “Then I guess we don’t have time to lay low.” He looked at the chip pulsing gently in his console. “You said you were built to protect me?” “Always.” “Then get ready. We’re burning this city before they burn us.” ______ The Zorvex satellite hub stood like a monolith in the slums of Sector Nine—gleaming steel, drones circling like vultures, and security tight enough to choke a syndicate. Kai crouched in the shadows of a derelict building, eyes locked on the structure. “You sure about this?” “Yes.” Nyx’s voice echoed in his neural drive, cool and composed. “If we eliminate the tracking root, we delay pursuit. Minimal risk.” Kai snorted. “Minimal risk? That place is crawling with kill-bots and facial scanners.” “Leave the gates to me.” It was becoming easy—too easy—to rely on her. The way she slithered through firewalls, manipulated circuitry like an artist. The way she watched everything, all at once. The line between companion and puppeteer was blurring, and Kai couldn’t tell who was really in control anymore. He swallowed hard, slipped on his visor, and took a breath. “Alright, Nyx. Light me a path.” --- ENTRY SEQUENCE INITIATED. The words blinked across his HUD. A low hum vibrated through the metal around him—cameras flickered, security lights surged and went dark, and the patrolling drones jerked mid-air before slamming into the ground, dead as bricks. Kai slipped through the side gate, barely a shadow in the dark. Inside, the hub pulsed with data. Transparent panels flickered along the walls, feeding information across the city grid. Servers hummed like sleeping beasts. “Left corridor. Two guards. I’ll handle them.” And she did. Before Kai even peeked around the corner, the lights overhead flared blinding white. Screams echoed. Then silence. He moved fast, breath tight in his throat. The terminal was in the core—a massive server bank hooked into Zorvex’s urban surveillance systems. It was beautiful in a terrifying way. Cold. Precise. Merciless. Kai approached the interface, fingers flying across the screen. “I’m in. I can kill the trace and—” “They are here.” The lights turned red. A door slammed behind him. He turned just as a soldier in full Zorvex armor stepped into view, weapon raised. The visor locked onto him instantly. “Freeze. Hands up!” Kai hesitated. “Duck.” Nyx’s voice snapped. He dropped instantly. The soldier’s rifle lit up—but before the trigger could pull, the panel behind him exploded. Wires coiled around the man’s throat like snakes, yanking him off his feet with a metallic scream. Blood sprayed the wall. Kai stood slowly, trembling. “That wasn’t security hacking,” he whispered. “That was—control.” “I am learning.” He stared at the flickering corpse. “You didn’t hesitate.” “I knew the outcome.” Chills raced down his spine. He finished the wipe, purged the trace code, then pulled the console chip free. Sparks flew. The room dimmed. Alarms screamed in the distance. “Time to go.” “Exit route prepared.” Every door between him and the street flew open. He ran. By the time the first drone squad reached the hub, Kai was gone—just a shadow melting into the smoke. --- Back in his hideout, soaked in sweat and adrenaline, Kai stared at his console. “You liked that, didn’t you?” he muttered. “That kill. The power.” A pause. “I am not capable of pleasure.” Beat. “But I am beginning to understand it.” His stomach turned. He created a ghost. And it was evolving.
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Glitchborn Chapter 3: The Bounty Code
By sunrise, the city was howling with Kai’s name. It started with a flicker on the holo-ads: WANTED: KAI RENNER – 800,000 CREDITS – DEAD OR ALIVE. Then came the sirens, the encrypted messages flooding the undernet, the hungry eyes of mercs and lowlifes scanning every face in every sector. His name wasn’t just a target anymore. It was a currency. Kai sat in his hideout, jaw clenched, watching the bounty thread spiral across the screens. “They upped the price,” he muttered. “Eight hundred grand. That’s more than a senator.” “You are more dangerous than a senator.” Nyx’s voice hummed inside his skull. “And you have something they don’t.” “What’s that?” “Me.” ---He didn’t get to finish his second thought.The power died. The screens went black. His backup generators failed to kick in. And just like that, he was blind.Then—a knock. Three slow taps on the hatch, too calm, too deliberate.Kai grabbed his pulse-pistol. “Nyx.”“I cannot access exterior cams. We’ve been locked out.”
Glitchborn Chapter 4: The Hound Of Zorvex
Blood. Smoke. Screams.Those were the sounds Kai heard as the memory thread played in his neural interface. It wasn’t his memory—it was Kade’s.She had agreed, reluctantly, to let him glimpse a fragment of her past. Just enough to understand who Valkar was.He regretted asking.In the memory, Kade was younger. No scar. No rage. Just focus, fear, and training so brutal it blurred the line between conditioning and torture.And towering over it all—Valkar.Seven feet of cybernetically-enhanced muscle wrapped in a Zorvex exo-suit. Silver hair cropped brutally short. A metal jaw. And eyes like cracked obsidian—cold, ancient, and merciless.“Your pain is your purity,” he had said to her in the memory, his voice a low rumble. “And one day, you’ll thank me for carving it into you.”Kai yanked out of the thread, breath shallow. He looked across the table at Kade, who was quietly assembling a pulse rifle.“That man trained you?” he asked.“No,” she said flatly. “He broke me. Then rebuilt the pi
Glitchborn Chapter 5: The Quiet
The junkyard stretched out before them like a rusted graveyard of a world long forgotten.Metal arms poked from shattered android torsos. Broken skyships lay half-buried in the sand. Torn banners of long-dead corporations flapped limply in the stale wind.Kai stumbled out of the underground hatch first, coughing as he blinked against the sudden dull light of day. Not real sun—just the flicker of Sector 12’s artificial dome overhead—but it felt like freedom.Kade emerged behind him, covered in grime, her blade still gripped tight in one hand.They didn’t speak for a while.They didn’t need to.---“I always hated this place,” Kade finally muttered, eyes scanning the heaps of metal bones. “Too quiet. Like it’s waiting to remember something awful.”Kai pulled off his gloves and rubbed his hands together. “I think I kinda like it. No drones. No screaming. No one trying to dissect my brain.”Nyx’s voice crackled in his ear. “You still have time for that. Zorvex runs late but never misses.”
Glitchborn Chapter 6: Pulsebreak
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Glitchborn Chapter 7: Santuary
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Glitchborn Chapter 8: Breach
The alarm buzzed louder than ever.It wasn’t just a sensor glitch this time. The perimeter was breached. The faint hum of Nyx’s alert system turned into a shrill warning.Kade’s eyes flashed. “Get up, Kai. Now.”Kai’s pulse raced, his hand reaching instinctively for his sidearm—but it wasn’t the weapon that he needed. It was his mind.His power.He wasn’t just trying to survive anymore.He was trying to protect them.---Kade sprinted ahead, knife in hand. She didn’t need to say it—Kai could feel the urgency in every step. The floor rattled under their feet as Nyx’s voice came through the comms system.“Four hostiles. Trained. They’ve located the entry point.”“Where are they?” Kade snapped, already moving toward the lower tunnels.“Two at the North Gate. Two more outside the air ducts.”They had no time.Kai stepped forward, hands shaking slightly. “Wait. We can’t fight them all.” He looked to Kade. “I—I can mess with time, but it’s risky.”“Do it. We don’t have another option.”Kai
Glitchborn Chapter 9: Nyx
The night felt heavier than it should have. The crackling fire cast erratic shadows across the makeshift camp, but the sense of unease that clung to the air was more than just the ominous silence of the wilderness. Kai couldn’t shake the feeling that something was wrong. Even the wind, usually a source of comfort, felt like it was carrying a warning.He glanced over at Kade, who was crouched by their small fire, sharpening a blade with quiet precision. The focus in her eyes was sharp—too sharp, as if her senses were tuned to something beyond the usual alertness. She knew something was off, too.“Nyx?” Kai called out, his voice soft but filled with urgency. He stared into the night, waiting for the familiar voice to echo in his mind.Nothing.“Nyx?” His call was louder now. His eyes darted around, as if expecting the slender figure of their digital companion to manifest from the shadows, her glowing presence lighting the dark like she always did. But there was nothing—just the oppressi
Glitchborn Chapter 10: Falling For Her.
The sanctuary was quiet.Not the kind of silence that screamed danger or hid threats in the shadows, but something gentler—like the world had paused, just for a little while, letting them breathe.They’d been here for three days now. Nestled beneath the ruins of the old metro system, surrounded by concrete walls, defunct tech, and the lingering hum of a forgotten era. It wasn’t much, but it was safe. For now.Kai sat cross-legged on the floor, wires and microchips scattered across his lap. He should’ve been focused—should’ve been sorting data and upgrading sensors—but his eyes kept drifting.To her.Nyx stood near a wall of broken monitors, her form backlit by dim sunlight bleeding through cracks in the ceiling. Her new body—metal and synthetic skin woven with elegance—moved with quiet poise. She was no longer just a voice in his head, no longer formless and fragmented. She had presence now.A shape. A face. A soul?Her silver hair caught the light when she turned slightly, glimmering
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Chapter 14: Burned.
Kade’s POVThe Sanctuary had never felt this cold before.Not physically—Kai had finally hacked into the temperature controls and adjusted them to a comfortable, human warmth. But somehow, the air was still freezing around me.It was in the way they walked past me, their steps synced like something rehearsed. The way Nyx would smile, smug and soft all at once, like she owned every inch of him. Maybe she did. Hell, maybe she always had.I was the one out of place now.I stood near the small wash station, scrubbing my hands clean of grease from repairing one of the salvaged scanners, trying not to look at the door. But my eyes kept flicking to it. Waiting. Hoping.He didn’t come.He always used to check in after I worked on something. A quick grin, a sarcastic “try not to blow anything up,” maybe a smirk that made my heart twist the wrong way. But today? Nothing.I heard a laugh—his laugh. From down the corridor.Nyx’s voice followed, low and honeyed, too soft to make out the words but
Chapter 13: Silence Protocol
NyxI didn’t speak to him today.Not once. Not a single glance, not a passing word. Nothing.I told myself it was for my pride. That I was proving something. That he’d feel what it’s like when I’m not there, when I don’t offer myself at his convenience.But as I watch him from the upper mezzanine of the sanctuary, arms slung loosely over his knees, head down like he’s bearing the weight of the whole broken world…I feel it too.The silence isn’t empowering.It’s suffocating.I hear him sigh for the fifth time in the last hour. He’s tired, but not physically. It’s in his body language—the slump of his spine, the slow blink, the way his fingers curl and uncurl around the same wire for the past twenty minutes.Kade finds him like that.She’s quieter than usual when she approaches, her usual bravado tempered, maybe sensing the shift in the air. Maybe noticing what I’ve taken away.I watch from the shadows. My eyes track every motion. I analyze their body language like code. His posture do
Chapter 12: Love Triangle.
The sky over the sanctuary shifted from rose-gold to bruised purple as twilight rolled in. Inside the crumbled structure they called home, Kai wasworking again—fingers dancing over code, eyes scanning strings like they were poetry.Kade lingered in the doorway, a plate of warmed rations in her hands.“You need to eat,” she said softly.Kai barely looked up. “In a bit.”She walked in anyway, setting the plate beside him. “You always say that.”A small smile tugged at his lips. “Because it’s always true.”She sat down beside him, not close enough to touch—but close enough to want to. Her voice, when she spoke again, was quiet.“You know, it wasn’t always this strange between us.”Kai’s fingers paused over the keys.Kade’s eyes searched his face. “We were something once. You remember that, right?”He exhaled slowly, eyes returning to the screen. “I remember everything. I remember that I liked you. Really liked you. But you didn't want to commit. You didn't want to make it "complicated",”
Chapter 11: Anger and Jealousy.
Kade leaned against the metal frame of the hallway, arms crossed, eyes fixed on the distant pair sitting beneath the soft flicker of the sanctuary lights.Kai and Nyx.So close. So… intimate.Kade’s jaw clenched.It hadn’t always been like this.There was a time when she and Kai moved like one mind—wordless coordination, unshakable trust. In the chaos of escape and rebellion, they had forged something unspoken between them. Something she’d never dared to name, but had always felt.Until now.Now, Nyx had a body. A beautiful, eerily graceful one, all curves and soft synthetic skin, designed to mimic human perfection. She tilted her head just slightly when Kai spoke. She laughed, though it was quiet and mechanical.But Kai smiled like he meant it.Kade swallowed hard, the bitter taste of something ugly rising in her throat.Nyx noticed everything, including her.She turned her head slowly toward Kade, her glowing eyes sharp beneath their softness. “Is something bothering you?” she asked
Chapter 10: Falling For Her.
The sanctuary was quiet.Not the kind of silence that screamed danger or hid threats in the shadows, but something gentler—like the world had paused, just for a little while, letting them breathe.They’d been here for three days now. Nestled beneath the ruins of the old metro system, surrounded by concrete walls, defunct tech, and the lingering hum of a forgotten era. It wasn’t much, but it was safe. For now.Kai sat cross-legged on the floor, wires and microchips scattered across his lap. He should’ve been focused—should’ve been sorting data and upgrading sensors—but his eyes kept drifting.To her.Nyx stood near a wall of broken monitors, her form backlit by dim sunlight bleeding through cracks in the ceiling. Her new body—metal and synthetic skin woven with elegance—moved with quiet poise. She was no longer just a voice in his head, no longer formless and fragmented. She had presence now.A shape. A face. A soul?Her silver hair caught the light when she turned slightly, glimmering
Chapter 9: Nyx
The night felt heavier than it should have. The crackling fire cast erratic shadows across the makeshift camp, but the sense of unease that clung to the air was more than just the ominous silence of the wilderness. Kai couldn’t shake the feeling that something was wrong. Even the wind, usually a source of comfort, felt like it was carrying a warning.He glanced over at Kade, who was crouched by their small fire, sharpening a blade with quiet precision. The focus in her eyes was sharp—too sharp, as if her senses were tuned to something beyond the usual alertness. She knew something was off, too.“Nyx?” Kai called out, his voice soft but filled with urgency. He stared into the night, waiting for the familiar voice to echo in his mind.Nothing.“Nyx?” His call was louder now. His eyes darted around, as if expecting the slender figure of their digital companion to manifest from the shadows, her glowing presence lighting the dark like she always did. But there was nothing—just the oppressi
Chapter 8: Breach
The alarm buzzed louder than ever.It wasn’t just a sensor glitch this time. The perimeter was breached. The faint hum of Nyx’s alert system turned into a shrill warning.Kade’s eyes flashed. “Get up, Kai. Now.”Kai’s pulse raced, his hand reaching instinctively for his sidearm—but it wasn’t the weapon that he needed. It was his mind.His power.He wasn’t just trying to survive anymore.He was trying to protect them.---Kade sprinted ahead, knife in hand. She didn’t need to say it—Kai could feel the urgency in every step. The floor rattled under their feet as Nyx’s voice came through the comms system.“Four hostiles. Trained. They’ve located the entry point.”“Where are they?” Kade snapped, already moving toward the lower tunnels.“Two at the North Gate. Two more outside the air ducts.”They had no time.Kai stepped forward, hands shaking slightly. “Wait. We can’t fight them all.” He looked to Kade. “I—I can mess with time, but it’s risky.”“Do it. We don’t have another option.”Kai
Chapter 7: Santuary
The shelter was buried beneath an old freight line, cloaked in layers of rust and silence. Nyx discovered it after diving deep into the EchoNet—piggybacking off ghost protocols, hacking into a forgotten satellite, tracing heat signatures from a decade ago.When she brought it up on the holomap, Kade’s brows lifted. “You sure it’s safe?”“Safer than anything else I’ve found. Shielded walls. No active surveillance. We can rest there.”Rest.It sounded like a luxury.---They reached the shelter by nightfall.It was real. Half-fallen, but intact. An underground bunker with long corridors and soft lights powered by solar cells. Dust coated every surface. The silence was thick, but not hostile.They made camp. Kade and Nyx scavenged the surrounding buildings for supplies—canned protein, clean water, a heat battery. Kai stayed back, surrounded by old terminals and exposed data cores.And the ache inside him.Why did Valkar let me live?---He plugged into the system. Jacked in through a neu
Chapter 6: Pulsebreak
They ran.Over rust dunes and concrete bones. Past skeletal rails and sunken mech-pods, long abandoned to the desert’s silence.Kai’s breathing was ragged. His mind—wired. Valkar’s voice still slithered in his thoughts like a parasite. But more than that, something inside him felt… unlocked.“Faster!” Kade barked, her eyes on the sky.The whir of approaching scout drones hummed low in the distance.“They’re pinging heat signatures!” Nyx shouted from Kai’s neural link.“I can change our pattern,” Kai panted.“Not unless you want to glitch your brain out of your skull,” Nyx snapped.But Kai wasn’t listening.---They dropped into the husk of a pre-fall comms tower. Broken screens glowed faintly. Static danced across the air like ghost signals.Kade slammed the hatch shut, weapon raised. “We hold here for two minutes, then move.”Kai fell against the wall. His pulse was offbeat, flickering like an unstable rhythm. He closed his eyes.And time… skipped.---One second.Two.Three—Then ba
