Page 118 of Neon Flux

“Cy! STOP!” But it was useless. He couldn’t hear me.

The screen flashed red, and his heart flatlined.

Fuck, fuck! What had I done?

I put both hands on his chest, and his Flux leapt to me.

“Don’t you die on me now, corpo!”

There.Resonance.

I felt it now, the thrum beneath his skin—wild and erratic, but familiar. A storm searching for something to ground it. Searching for me.

His body jolted again, another violent crackle of energy arcing between us—but this time, instead of flinching away, I leaned in. The power surged toward me, coiling around my fingers, my wrists, threading into my pulse like a second heartbeat. It should’ve hurt. Should’ve destroyed me. But the energy between us didn’t care.

I pressed harder against his chest, feeling the static shiver across my skin. I shocked him.

The line stayed flat.

I shocked him again, with everything I could summon.

There—a blip. But it faded.

“Don’t you fucking dare, Cy!”

I shocked him and held it, searching for that resonance only we shared. It wasn’t just that I was syncing with him—he was syncing with me. His current tangled with mine, adjusting, aligning, like he recognized me even in the chaos. He wasn’t fighting me anymore.

For a moment, everything slowed. His power pulsed through me, an extension of my own, like two waves crashing and merging into something greater. It was terrifying. It was intoxicating. It was what I’d been dreaming about for months. His heart started again, and this time, it kept beating. He groaned, and I felt his Flux curl around the pain that permeated his whole body.

I reached for his implant and ignored the diagnostic readout. Instead, I let my Flux—ourFlux—guide me. I had more power than I did at the Den. So much more. I rode the current through Cy’s body like I did in cyberspace. I let it guide me, let the circuits of his implants speak.

Cy’s pain was their pain, where silicon and copper had etched away, patinaed to a point of almost no conduction from a shoddy install thirteen years ago. My Flux understood, I understood. It was like the chip I’d help Dev fix, but less refined. I rewrotethe circuits and fused the broken connections. I found rhythm, found the pulse of his blood as it flowed through the implant until the pain melted away.

The sparks dimmed, the arcs of lightning snapping back into his skin, settling. His body relaxed beneath my hands, his breath returning in shallow gasps. I felt his heartbeat slow to match mine, the storm inside him finally calmed.

I exhaled, forehead resting against his. “You’re okay,” I murmured, voice barely audible over the ringing silence.

His lashes fluttered, eyes flickering open just enough to meet mine. His hand wrapped around mine over his chest. We were both panting like we’d run ten miles, sweat dripping down our foreheads. He held my gaze, then squeezed my fingers in his. His breath mingled with mine, and memories I’d pushed away surfaced—memories of him looking at me just like that.

“You’re okay,” I repeated, my voice hoarser than I wanted.

“Yeah. Feeling like a billion creds.” His fingers squeezed mine tighter. “You saved me.”

“I couldn’t let you die.”

“You don’t have to lie to me, doll. Of all people, I would understand.”

“Do you think I’m lying?”

We were connected in a way I’d never felt before, and he knew it was the truth. I couldn’t let him go because therewassomething between us. Something that spoke to the parts of us that were the same. Not just the Flux—but our shared pain, our shared subjugation to people who saw us as tools for their use.

His breath mingled with mine. We were so close, and his eyes were so beautiful, filled with electricity and stars.

A notification popped up on my Vysor, and I jerked my hands away.

“Hiromi says he got the translation done.”

Cy’s face fell. “Well, I guess you’ve got a date then, doll.”