"The only things Lyra Ellison believed in were physics, equations, and the certainty that love was just an overrated chemical reaction."
The rain tapped gently against the laboratory's high glass windows, soft but steady, like the rhythm of a world too focused on logic to bother with poetry.
Inside, Lyra hunched over a blinking console, her fingers stained with ink and oil. She wore her oversized hoodie like armor, the sleeves tugged halfway over her palms as if the cloth could protect her from everything that wasn't code.
The machine before her hummed. Wires sprawled out like tangled nerves. Lights flickered—green, yellow, one orange. That one always glitched. Professor Hale had warned her not to touch it. And yet…
She sighed and leaned back, eyes tracing the towering coils, the suspended core — a silver ring of condensed energy that pulsed like a heartbeat. She didn't understand it completely. Not yet. The professor had always handled the last layer of encryption. She was only meant to monitor it while he dealt with his family problems.
Family.
Lyra scoffed at the word.
Somewhere outside this lab, her stepmother was probably preparing another charity brunch to show the world what a generous parent she was. Her stepfather would be pretending she didn't exist — unless it was to scold her for coming home late or "wasting time in that basement of wires."
She pressed a palm to the machine, warm against cold steel.
"Not like you're any different," she whispered. "You break when you want. Like people."
She turned away just in time to miss the brief flicker of crimson through the machine's core.
---
Half an hour later, as she typed out her logs and watched old simulations of energy transfer, the console beeped.
Then it shrieked.
The lights dimmed. The room trembled.
Lyra froze. "No, no, no—"
She scrambled toward the control board. Every override she tried was rejected. The circular core above began to spin, light turning from silver to blue, then to a brilliant gold that filled the entire lab with warmth.
Wind burst from the machine like a living thing. Papers scattered. Her hair flew wildly around her face.
And then—something fell.
Something — someone.
The light burst once more, then died.
And there he was.
A boy.
Or no, not a boy — a man. Maybe her age. Dressed in strange robes of layered dark fabric and silver-lined embroidery, like something from an ancient painting. His long dark hair was tied back, slightly messy from the fall. His chest heaved.
Lyra backed away. "What the hell—"
He lifted his gaze, eyes wide, gleaming gold like molten metal.
And then he smiled.
"Found you."
---