THE GLASS GOD: Heir of the living Grid

CHAPTER 4: THE GIRL FROM THE ALLEY

The heavy boots of the tactical squad thundered against the tiles, but the world was spinning. My chest felt like an empty hollow where a star had just gone out. I tried to lift my head, but the weight of nine months of atrophy slammed me back down onto the cold metal.

"Grab him! Move, move!" the lead soldier shouted, his rifle light blinding me.

"Wait! He’s unstable!" a frantic voice cut through the chaos. "If you jostle the core while it’s resetting, you’ll level the entire wing!"

A small figure in a tattered, oversized nurse’s smock pushed past the front line of soldiers. She looked older, her face smudged with grease and her hair shorn short, but I’d know those eyes anywhere.

"Lyra?" I wheezed.

She froze, her hand hovering over a tray of sedatives. She didn’t look relieved. She looked like she had seen a demon crawl out of the sewer. She stared at my face, her pupils dilating in sheer terror.

"Your eyes," she whispered, her voice trembling. "Elion, your eyes... they’re still gold."

"Get back, girl," the squad leader growled, shoving her aside. "Specimen 402 is Crown property now."

"He’s not a specimen!" Lyra snapped, stumbling back but finding her footing. She turned to me, her eyes darting to the soldiers and then back to my face. "Don't move, Elion. Please. They think you're a Signal-Ghost. They think the frequency has completely replaced your soul."

"I'm... still here," I managed, my hand twitching. I wanted to reach for her, to tell her I was sorry for the alleyway, but the words felt like broken glass.

"Quiet!" the leader barked. He stepped over the wreckage of the security droid I had just inhabited. "He just toasted a Mark-IV with his mind. Secure the dampeners on his neck. Do it now!"

Two soldiers lunged forward, snapping a heavy, lead-lined collar around my throat. The moment the metal clicked shut, the low hum in my head turned into a piercing shriek. My vision fractured into a thousand shards of static.

"Stop! You're hurting him!" Lyra yelled. She grabbed a heavy glass IV bottle from a rack and smashed it over the head of the nearest soldier.

The "faceslap" of the glass shattering was deafening. The soldier didn't even fall; he just slowly turned his helmeted head toward her.

"Scavenger scum," he hissed, backhanding her across the room. Lyra hit the wall and slumped down, blood trickling from her lip.

"Lyra!" I roared. The anger hit the dampener collar like a physical wave. The golden light flared behind my eyelids, fighting the tech.

"See?" the soldier laughed, wiping glass dust from his shoulder. "The girl’s got spirit. Too bad she’s been playing nurse for a corpse. You’ve been working for us for six months just to stay in this room, haven't you, Lyra?"

"Six months?" I looked at her, my heart—the golden hum—aching. "You’ve been here all this time?"

Lyra wiped the blood from her mouth, her gaze defiant. "I couldn't leave you. Not after what happened. Not after Vane took everything."

"Vane," I spat the name. "Where is he? I'll kill him."

The soldiers laughed. It was a cold, mocking sound that made my skin crawl.

"Kill him?" the leader leaned down, his visor inches from mine. "Vane isn't a debt collector anymore, kid. While you were sleeping, the Syndicate made a deal with the Crown. Vane is the Chief Peacekeeper of District 4 now. He runs the streets you used to hide in."

"The men who attacked us..." I whispered, the horror sinking in. "They’re the law now?"

"The law is whoever has the loudest frequency," the leader said. He grabbed my arm, his grip bruising. "And right now, the Crown wants to know how a gutter-rat like you survived a Caster-Cell meltdown. You’re going to tell us everything, or we’re going to peel you back layer by layer until we find the answer."

"I don't know anything!" I shouted.

"Then we'll start with the girl," the leader said, gesturing to Lyra. "Take her to the processing block. If he won't talk, maybe her screams will tune his frequency."

"No!" I struggled, the collar sparking as it suppressed my surge. "Lyra, run!"

"I'm not leaving you again, Elion!" she cried out, reaching for a scalpel on the floor.

"Secure them both!" the leader ordered.

Before the soldiers could move, the entire building groaned. The lights turned a violent, flashing crimson. A siren began to wail—a deep, guttural sound that seemed to vibrate the very air out of my lungs.

*BEE-OOP. BEE-OOP.*

A computerized voice, cold and devoid of emotion, echoed through the intercoms.

"WARNING. BIO-ORGANIC BREACH IN SECTOR 4. OPERATOR FREQUENCY DETECTED. INITIATING FULL FACILITY PURGE."

The soldiers froze. The leader looked at his wrist-unit, his face turning pale beneath his visor. "The Purge? But we're still inside!"

"The Crown doesn't care," Lyra said, a hysterical laugh bubbling in her throat. "They saw him wake up. They know what he is. They’d rather burn this entire hospital to the ground than let an Operator walk free."

"Move! Get him to the transport!" the leader screamed, but the doors to the ward began to hiss shut, heavy blast shields sliding into place.

"We're locked in," a soldier shouted, firing his rifle at the door. The bullets flattened against the reinforced steel. "The vents are closing! They're going to gas us!"

I looked at Lyra. She was staring at me, her eyes wide with the realization that we were trapped in a tomb. The golden glow in my chest began to pulse again, faster this time, reacting to the facility's panic.

"Elion," she whispered, crawling toward me as the first wisps of green gas began to hiss from the ceiling. "Do something. Use the light."

"I... I can't feel it," I groaned, the collar choking my power.

"You have to!" she screamed, grabbing my hand. Her touch felt like a lightning bolt. "The Crown is coming, Elion! If we don't get out now, there won't be anything left of us to save!"

The floor beneath us shuddered as a massive explosion rocked the lower levels. The facility was self-destructing.

"Target identified," a new voice boomed, but it wasn't the intercom. It was coming from the hallway outside the blast door. A heavy, metallic *thud* hit the steel door, denting it inward. *Thud. Thud.*

Something was trying to get in. Something much bigger than a security droid.

"They're not gassing us," I whispered, the golden code beginning to scroll across my vision again, bypassing the collar's dampeners through sheer proximity to Lyra. "They're clearing the way for something else."

The blast door groaned as a massive hydraulic claw tore through the center of the steel like paper.

"Lyra, get behind me," I commanded, my voice shimmering with power.

The door was ripped off its hinges, revealing a towering silhouette draped in the black and gold banners of the Circuit Crown.

The alarm intensified, the voice now screaming a single directive.

"SUBJECT 402 TERMINATION AUTHORIZED. COMMENCE HARVEST."