JET

I sit on the rooftop ledge, cigarette burning low between my fingers, watching the city breathe beneath me. 

Akagane exhales in hisses and groans—vents coughing up steam, tram rails rattling like bones under skin. 

Down below, neon glints off stagnant puddles, fractured into a thousand colors that never quite blend.

I take one last drag, slow and mean, before flicking the butt over the ledge. 

It arcs through the dark, disappears.

A flicker of flame sparks beside me.

I jump a little—just enough to hate myself for it—and then Zeal drops down next to me like this is just another Tuesday. 

Legs out, cigarette lit, trying to look casual.

He's always trying to look casual. It's kind of annoying. 

I raise an eyebrow. 

"Since when do you smoke? I thought your lungs tapped out at age seven,"

He exhales dramatically, smoke curling out of his nose like he's doing a magic trick. 

"Since you disappeared in high school."

I snort. "Put that out before you make your mom sad."

He flicks the cig over the ledge with a sigh. "Too late for that."

We sit in silence for a bit. 

The good kind. 

The kind that hums under your skin like old wiring still holding a charge.

Below us, the streets do their thing. 

A dog barks, sharp and tired. 

A pot clatters in a window two floors down, followed by oil hissing like a warning and someone swearing in some native dialect. 

Probably old Mrs. Ko again—her tempura always sounds like it's trying to escape the pan.

Zeal shifts. 

Not dramatic. 

Just enough to mean something.

"Ace called," he says.

I cock an eyebrow. "Yeah? What'd he say?"

Zeal's mouth curls, slow. Barely a grin. "We're in."

A beat.

"If this keeps up, we're getting regular pit slots."

I try not to smile. 

I fail.

"Regulars, huh?" 

I say. 

"No more scraps. Damn. We might actually matter,"

"And get fans. Autographs. Scandals," Zeal deadpans.

"Only if you get shirtless," I shoot back, dry as ever.

Zeal doesn't miss a beat. "That's the stretch goal."

Then—

"There's a catch," he adds, quiet again.

"Of course there is," 

"We need a full squad before regionals. Can't register as just a duo," 

"How many?" 

"Four."

I blink. "Four?"

"Yeah." He exhales through his nose. 

"We've got until the end of the year to find a fourth. Which means Tessa's gonna have to fight. Eventually."

I glance out at the city again, heart already doing the math. 

Zeal and I just clawed our way through our first pit match. 

The new girl? Might be Mujan royalty. 

Might also be a walking death warrant. 

We met her again this afternoon. Next to a dumpster.

No pressure, though.

"I don't think she has pit-fighting experience," I mutter. "She almost got echoed at the ramen shop."

"She took a neural feedback spike and didn't flatline," 

Zeal snorts, voice dipping even lower. "She's got the wiring."

I glance at him. 

"That's not the same as holding your ground in a pit. One wrong move down there and you're breathing through a tube—if you're lucky."

"She's not ready yet," he admits. 

"But neither were we."

I scoff. "Speak for yourself."

He grins. "Please. You almost tore your shoulder clean out during our debut match."

"And still won."

"Exactly."

I lean back, eyes narrowing at the horizon, at the rotted-out skyline. 

"We need a miracle," 

I mutter. 

"Or at least mods that don't blow up."

"Then we get both," 

Zeal says, steady as concrete. 

"One boot in front of the other. Like always."

But there's that twist again—deep in my ribs. 

The slow, sour kind of dread that wears someone else's face until it doesn't.

"Since when are you the hopeful one?" I ask, eyeing him.

"I'm not," he says. "I'm just too tired to panic."

I look at him sideways. "Think she'll stay?"

Zeal's pause lasts a beat too long. "If she doesn't bolt tonight, she's in."

"And if she does?"

He flicks something off his knee. "Then we go back to being a two-man tragedy."

Silence again. Rooftop air. Rooftop weight.

Then I sigh. Flick ash. 

Speak the truth neither of us wanted to admit.

"Guess we're building a crew."

Zeal gave a faint grin, crooked and tired. 

"Yeah," he says, voice gravel-low. 

"Not like we have much of a choice."

TESSA 

RE-ALIGNMENT IN: 01:19

I stare at the numbers.

Every tick feels like a heartbeat that doesn't belong to me.

I bolt for the wall, grab the holopad, and slam it into the floorboards so hard it rattles my teeth.

It doesn't shatter.

Doesn't even flicker.

Of course it doesn't.

The countdown keeps pulsing in the corner of the screen.

01:10

I scramble, yank a cable from my bag, jack it into the auxiliary port. 

My fingers fly across the emergency debug screen.

> sudo break-sync –chiplink –manual

The chip fires back. A sharp crackle of heat behind my ear—like static and acid.

ACCESS DENIED
PRIORITY OVERRIDE LOCK
LYRAN_ROOT_ENCRYPTION: ACTIVE

Nausea coils in my gut.

I try again.

> ghost.kite/flush –temp

ERROR.
"YOU ARE NOT AUTHORIZED TO FORGET."

My hands are shaking. I don't stop.

> reroute/core-sync/nullfeed
> disable vocal loop
> trigger feedback coil

Nothing works.

Nothing sticks.

0:59

Then I hear it.

Not through the speakers.

Inside me.

"You are almost whole again, Lyran. Don't be afraid. You were made for this."

I take a step back. 

My hands are shaking so bad I can barely hold the tablet. 

My stomach's doing flips. 

My lungs forget how to pull air.

"Get out of my head," I whisper. 

It comes out cracked.

But the chip answers by pulsing again—hot and sharp behind my ear. 

A jolt. A warning. A promise.

The screen shifts.

The faces return.

All of them.

The other "Tessa Kites."

Rows and rows. Labeled like files. Not people.

T.Kite-023
T.Kite-046
T.Kite-067
T.Kite-082

Each one tagged with a death sentence:

Host rejected sync.
Override instability.
Neurological degradation.
Suicide.
RETRIEVAL FAILED.

One log is playing.

A woman's voice. Garbled by static, warbled at the edges like it's too tired to hold form:

"She's using me to remember... and the more she remembers, the less of me there is."

My breath shatters.

I slam my palms against the wall just to stay upright.

They died.

Every single one.

RE-ALIGNMENT IN: 00:38

The screen flickers. 

A new prompt appears:

OVERRIDE:
ACCEPT
REJECT
[ERROR—REJECTION DISABLED]

I don't care. 

I type it anyway. 

Anything.

reject.exe
ghost.kite/flush –temp

ERROR.

"YOU ARE NOT AUTHORIZED TO FORGET."

RE-ALIGNMENT IN: 00:22

Something tears inside me.

Memories glitch.

Names vanish.

The bus I rode this morning—gone.

The name of the chicken shop? Missing.

My own voice feels... warped. Filtered. Slipping.

But then—

Jet's voice from earlier echoes in my mind.

Low. Steady. A kind of calm that cuts deeper than panic.

"You can go. But you don't have to."

Hyun's laugh drifts up next, light and familiar—garden soil under his nails, that ridiculous plastic watering can he never let go of.

And then my father—

His hand pressed gently against my back, the breathless dark beneath the bed.

The boots in the hallway. The silence that screamed.

And his voice—

The only part of him that ever made it out.

"Don't let them make you forget who you are."

RE-ALIGNMENT IN: 00:10

I throw everything I have at the holopad.

disrupt.core.sync/nullfeed
disable vocal loop
reroute override through local feed
firewall inject: manual break-sync

Nothing.

The chip kicks back.

ACCESS DENIED.
SYNC LOCKED.
WELCOME BACK, LYRAN.

00:09
00:08—

No. No. NO.

I slam the console shut. 

Dig through my kit. 

Pull the oldest thing I've got—a mod-spike. 

The kind used by rig fighters to short their hardware mid-match.

It's reckless. 

Desperate. 

It could fry the whole chip.

Good.

I press the tip to the base of my neck, just under the implant.

One breath.

Then—BZZZZZZ

White light bursts behind my eyes. 

My spine arches. 

My mouth opens in a soundless scream. 

The floor vanishes beneath me.

The countdown stutters.

RE-ALIGNMENT IN: 0:07

"Come on, come on," I hiss.

I flip back to the main feed. 

The video's glitching—Lyran's face flickering like bad data. 

The hallway behind her starts melting. 

Reality unspools.

I dig back into the console.

This time, I don't bother with syntax.

I just type:

> Who are you?

The cursor blinks.

Then answers:

I am what was left.
You are what was needed.
Together, we are what comes next.

My blood turns to ice.

"No," I say. "I'm not your vessel."

Another jolt—sharp and fast—fires through my skull. 

My vision whites out. 

For a second, I'm not in my body. 

I'm falling, pulled down into the screen like it's a whirlpool.

Then I hear it.

My voice—but not mine. 

Colder. 

Older.

"You don't understand. This wasn't for you. It was meant for someone stronger."

I slam back into myself. 

My shoulder hits the wall. 

I grab the spike again.

0:05

"You picked the wrong host," 

I breathe. 

"I already died once for someone else's future."

I'm not doing it again.

I flip the spike's failsafe.

The jolt that hits me is nuclear.

The holopad convulses—not with sound, but with light. 

Blinding. 

Red-hot. 

Like it's bleeding code.

Files flash across the screen in rapid bursts—flickering, stuttering, collapsing into static. 

One by one, they vanish, like the system is trying to eat its own memory before I can see too much.

SYNC INTERRUPTED
CONNECTION UNSTABLE
LYRAN ROOT PATH: SEALED

The timer halts. 

0:01

And it stays there.

Silence.

I hit the floor. 

Knees first. 

Hands next. 

Everything's shaking.

My breath feels borrowed. Stolen from someone who was supposed to die instead.

But I'm here.

The voice is gone.

The chip is quiet.

For now.

The files are still open, flickering faintly. 

And at the top of the screen, the label hasn't changed:

Tessa Kite // Lyran 001A
STATUS: VESSEL INCOMPLETE

One final blink pulses across the display like a closing eye:

We will try again.

Then black.

The screen cuts out. 

The holopad drops beside me, dim and humming. 

I stay there. Collapsed.

Chest heaving. Skin clammy. My ribs feel like they're being pried apart from the inside.

My throat burns—like I had screamed, and only just forgot.

I stare at the floor. At nothing. And realize I'm still waiting for it to start again.

But it doesn't.

Not yet.

I don't cry.

I don't move.

I just breathe.

Then, hoarse. Low. Almost silent— I whisper the only thing that's mine. 

"Yoon Jong-Ri."