GLITCH IN BLOODLINE

CHAPTER 2 :- SILICON AND SINEW

My lungs felt like they’d been scrubbed with sandpaper. You ever have that dream where you’re running but your legs feel like they’re made of lead? Yeah, this was the opposite. My legs were moving fine, but the floor—that stupid, glowing glass floor—felt like it was treadmill-ing beneath me.

"Subject 7, please remain stationary," the voice in my head droned. It was calm. Way too calm. Like a GPS telling you to turn left while you’re driving off a cliff. "Calibration is incomplete."

"Calibration my eye!" I yelled, though it came out as more of a wheeze.

Behind me, the wall of light hissed. Those two suits—the ones from the alley—stepped through. They didn't even look winded. Their sunglasses were still perfectly straight, which honestly pissed me off more than the fact that they were trying to kidnap me. The guy on the right raised his hand, and the air around his fingers started to ripple, like heat rising off asphalt in July.

I didn't wait to see what he was going to throw. I dove behind a massive, metallic pillar that looked like a giant's ribcage. It was warm to the touch and hummed with a low-frequency vibration that made my fingernails itch.

Zap.

A bolt of blue energy slammed into the pillar right above my head. The smell hit me instantly—ozonated air and burnt sugar. If that had hit my skull, I’d be nothing but a smudge on the glass.

"Okay, Leo, think," I muttered, pressing my back against the metal. "You’ve got a magic pen and a branded hand. Use 'em."

I looked at the silver cylinder—the "pen." It was still pulsing that angry, deep red. My palm felt like it was on fire, the interlocking circles glowing through the skin. I didn't know how to "code" or "magic" or whatever this was, but I knew how to break stuff.

I leaned out and chucked the cylinder as hard as I could toward a cluster of those floating gold screens.

"Hey! Don't—!" one of the suits shouted.

CRACK.

The cylinder didn't just hit the screens; it went through them. The moment it made contact, the gold script turned bright purple and started leaking off the screens like digital ink. The whole room let out a low, mournful groan. The glass floor beneath the suits began to fracture, spider-webbing out in a dozen directions.

"System error," the voice in my head whispered, sounding slightly distorted now. "Unrecognized input. Logic loop detected."

The suits stumbled. The floor wasn't just breaking; it was disappearing. Little squares of reality were just... deleting themselves, leaving behind a bottomless white static.

"Kid, stop!" the lead suit yelled, his cool mask finally slipping. He looked terrified. "You don't know what you're unzipping! This whole sector will collapse!"

"Better collapsed than captured," I snapped.

I saw a vent near the ceiling—standard metal grating, totally out of place in this high-tech wizard den. It looked like an old-school HVAC duct. It was a glitch. A beautiful, dusty, human glitch.

I scrambled up the ribcage pillar, my sneakers slipping on the smooth metal. My fingers caught the edge of the vent. I pulled myself up, my muscles screaming, and kicked the grating in. It fell into the white static below with a silent "poof."

I rolled into the duct just as another blue bolt scorched the air where my legs had been. The space was tight, smelling of dust and old copper, but it felt safe. It felt real.

I crawled as fast as I could, the metal echoing my every move. Clang. Clang. Clang. After a few minutes, the sounds of the lab faded, replaced by the distant thrum of the city. I found another grating and peeked through.

I was back outside, but not in the alley. I was looking down into a high-end subway station—The Grand Central of the "Other" Side. People were walking below, but they weren't normal. One woman was leading a leashed creature that looked like a fox with wings. A businessman was reading a newspaper where the pictures were literally screaming at each other.

I wiped the sweat from my forehead, leaving a smear of grease. I looked at my palm. The brand wasn't glowing anymore, but it was still there—a permanent scar.

I wasn't at St. Jude’s anymore. I wasn't even sure I was on Earth.

"Welcome home, Leo," I whispered to myself, mocking the voice. "Whatever that means."

I pushed the grating open and dropped onto the roof of a departing train. It was time to find out what "Project Horizon" really was, and more importantly, why my DNA looked like a computer crash.

My hands wouldn't stop shaking. It wasn’t just the "I almost died" shakes, either; it was like the vibrations from that silver cylinder had crawled under my skin and set up shop. I sat there in the dark of the vent for a second, my forehead pressed against the cold, dusty metal. I could hear my own heart echoing in the cramped space, sounding like a muffled drum.

I thought about Sister Margaret. Right now, she was probably walking through the halls of St. Jude’s, ringing that obnoxious brass bell for evening chores. She’d be looking for me. She’d find my empty bed, the window pushed open, and she’d probably just sigh and cross my name off a list. Just another orphan lost to the streets. She had no idea I was currently crouched in a vent above a subway station full of winged foxes and sentient newspapers.

The weirdest part? I didn't miss it. Not even a little. The "real" world—the gray streets, the mystery stew, the feeling of being a ghost in your own life—it felt like a movie I’d watched a long time ago. This, the smells of ozone and the glowing runes, felt terrifying, but it felt loud. For the first time, I wasn't just fading into the background.

I looked at the brand on my hand again. It looked like it had been there for years, settled deep into the layers of my skin. Subject 7. I hated it. I wasn't a "subject." I was Leo. But as I watched the trains pull into the station below, I realized I didn't know who "Leo" actually was anymore. If my DNA was half-static, was I even a person? Or was I just some line of code that had gained a conscience and a bad attitude?

I saw a train with "Sector 4 - The Void" blinking on its side in neon violet. It looked fast. It looked like it was going somewhere far away from those suits. I didn't have a ticket, and I definitely didn't have a plan, but I had a pretty good grip.

"One way or another," I muttered, wiping a bit of lab-dust off my hoodie, "I’m crashing this system."

I eased my body out of the vent, hanging by my fingertips for a heartbeat before letting go. The wind whipped past my ears, and for a second, I was flying. Then, my boots slammed into the hard, curved roof of the train.

The train lurched forward, a screech of metal on metal that sounded like a dying dragon. I flattened myself against the roof, my fingers digging into a narrow ridge for dear life. As we cleared the station and plunged into a tunnel, the world turned into a blur of streaking lights—blue, violet, and a sick, neon green. The air was colder here, biting through my hoodie and smelling of ozone and wet electricity. I looked back one last time, but the station—and the suits—had already vanished into the dark. I was alone, hurtling toward a part of the city I didn’t know, carrying a secret I didn’t understand. I closed my eyes for a second, the rhythm of the tracks thumping in my bones. I wasn’t the kid from St. Jude’s anymore. That kid was gone, left behind in an alleyway with a half-eaten bag of chips. Whoever I was now, I was moving too fast to stop, and honestly? I think I liked the speed.