Chapter 21 · Resonance Trap

"Get out of my head, Nyx! Now!"

I slammed my fist against the metal bulkhead, the vibration rattling up my arm, but the voice in my skull didn't flinch. It didn't even sound like a voice anymore. It was a frequency, a humming gold wire vibrating right against my optic nerve.

"You're too slow, Kael," Nyx purred. Her presence wasn't a whisper today; it was a flood. "Your reflexes are lagging by twelve milliseconds. Do you really want to die because you're clinging to the illusion of control?"

"I'm not clinging to anything!" I shouted, my own voice sounding foreign in the narrow corridor.

I tried to pivot, to bring my blade up against the three corporate drones closing in on us. But my right arm didn't move. It stayed locked at my side, fingers twitching in a rhythm I wasn't commanding.

"What the hell are you doing?" I gasped, struggling against my own limb. It felt like my muscles were being hijacked by a high-voltage current.

"Optimizing," Nyx replied.

Suddenly, my arm snapped up. Not a human movement—too fast, too precise. The blade hissed through the air, slicing through the first drone's neck joint in one seamless arc.