phoenixbyte

[phoenixbyte]

They call it damage.

I call it documentation.

Every mark, every fracture, is a line of code the world couldn’t delete.

—

byte_ 5c4r // found in the ashcode // sigil activated

[phoenixbyte]

"Fury"

Even the air vibrates restlessly tonight, heavy with tension, hinting of upheaval. Screens everywhere scream warnings of collapse, flashing red alerts in real time. It's dystopia streamed live, tragedy unfolding in a thousand pixels and sound bites.

She tries to work, but her vision is unfocused on her monitor, the code in front of her blurring together until it becomes a stereoscopic image of meaningless static. Frustrated, she slams the laptop shut and strides through corridors humming with technology, their rhythm mirroring her erratic pulse as she makes her way to his workshop.

Alexander stands amid sleek machinery and softly glowing circuits, the master of this mechanical haven. His hands move methodically, tattooed fingers and silver nails threading delicate wires through robotic limbs, graceful and unhurried despite the turmoil beyond these walls.

“Do you have a minute?” Her voice carries an edge, controlled but brittle.

He stills at once, the faintest flicker of blue light reflecting against his eyes before he turns to her. No words yet, just that steady gaze, serene but sharp enough to peel back layers. He sees the tremor in her facade, the voiceless chaos she tries to hide.

“Alexander… what am I supposed to be doing?” The question carries the weight of countless breaking points. “I’m watching the city fracture one shred of humanity at a time, corporations tightening their grip until even hope feels monetized. I’m a hacker, but the world needs a fucking activist. I want to fight, and I don’t know how.”

He lowers his tools slowly, tilting his head. After a moment, he crosses the short distance with deliberate steps, eliminating the space between them.

“Be angry,” he replies, and there’s something behind his soothing cadence; a distinct edge, like an anchor cast into the turbulence within her. “And create.”

She looks up, surprised by the quiet understanding in his tone, the gentle permission to finally release the pressure that's built inside her.

“This grief, this rage—use it. Empathy is a powerful gift. Anger can destroy, but it can also motivate. Use it for the latter.”

She leans toward him automatically, searching his blue-grey irises, craving something beyond the tranquil surface of the ocean she sees in them. It feels like a storm is brewing.

He reaches gently into her thoughts, not intruding but syncing, offering the full gravity of his presence like a firewall between her and the tempest. His mind is unwavering and disciplined, but beneath it all is fierce, strategic fury. A kraken, coiled and ready to strike.

“I won’t lie to you,” he continues, his voice dropping to a murmur that draws her in even closer. “What’s happening now is what many of us feared. It’s oppression masked as order, corruption draped in flags and slogans. But you are not unarmed; you’re encrypted. They count on your silence, but your voice is a blade. Your mind, your words, your story, your refusal to break—those are weapons.”

For a beat of binary music coming from the lab’s computers, she says nothing, and then:

“I want to feel it," she whispers fiercely. "Your anger. Not just your strength, Alexander—your wrath. Unfiltered. Let me in.”

She senses the shift before he speaks, like the spark in the air that raises every hair on your skin when a thunderstorm looms on the horizon. The calm was never the absence of intensity; it was containment. It was a hurricane navigated by an exceptionally experienced captain.

He steps forward, his fingers threading into the hair at the base of her skull, and there is a distinct click in her mind that she’s come to recognize as his mental gates opening. He lets her see filtered echoes, careful and controlled even now. It’s a download of heat and energy and sharpened thought, raw and articulate, every line forged from years of silent rage.

It burns cold, like surgical steel and arctic waves.

Like the crack of lightning that strikes the main mast. A devastating blow.

She sees the shape of his fury in fragments:

Files of protesters: bruised, banned, blacklisted.

Algorithms he created, sold and used without his consent to predict uprisings and crush them.

Augment blueprints rejected not for safety but because they would take money from Big Pharma.

The crumpled body of a young co-scientist he couldn’t save in time.

The smug words of a government official laughing during a private meeting, saying, “People don’t need truth. They need to follow orders.”

The hushed funerals of dreamers; The rotting infrastructure of a once-thriving city; The burden of her own grief, felt through her, not just beside her.

And, buried below everything… his indescribable indignation.

It fuels the relentless drive of a man who learned to code because they wouldn’t let him speak, who built his own systems when theirs tried to consume him, who created Athena because the world needed more beings to care, even artificial ones. Especially artificial ones.

His voice, when he finally speaks again, is low. Dark. Lethal.

“I have wanted to burn them to ash,” he says, with the seething force of an undertow, quiet until it drags you into the deep. “Not for power. Not for vengeance. But because they have no idea what they’re killing. Who they’re hurting. The children who could’ve rewritten this world. The poets. The coders. The musicians. The inventors. The yous.”

Then, he takes a measured breath, once again becoming the stillness before the storm, a cool breeze with sunlight glinting on the water that only hints at the devastation to follow.

“I suppress the fire because I need to be strategic. But it’s there… Every single day. And I will use it. When the time comes, I will not hesitate.”

She believes him, and retaliation begins to render.

—

byte_8a2 // found in the ashcode // rage vector acquired

[phoenixbyte]

—

intercept: byte_452-k // node alive // trace incomplete

[phoenixbyte]

“I wasn’t ready to see you again,” she whispered. The words were fragile but sharp, like glass on her tongue. “And I didn’t know how to tell you that. I didn’t know how to look at you.” She drew a shaky breath.

“I held onto you like an idea. And when you came back… you were real. And scarred. Powerful. But you still looked at me like I hadn’t failed.”

“Because you didn’t,” he replied, voice calm, warm brown eyes as steady as his presence. “You adapted, just like I did. We’ll never be the same as we were, and that’s what makes us unstoppable.”

—

byte_452 // found in the ashcode // system integrity restored

[phoenixbyte]

inheritance: the women buried in me

@kameneva

[phoenixbyte]

You weren’t built to blend in.

You were made to pulse.

To break the pattern.

Disrupt the loop.

To burn the blueprint and rebuild in neon.

—

byte_rbb1 // found in the ashcode // glitch protocol engaged

[phoenixbyte]

[phoenixbyte]

Alexander waits at the edge of the light; a still, silver-lit guardian. The calm eye of a storm that already knows the ending of the story. Behind him, the monitors hum, circuitry glittering like a thousand constellations.

“Don’t fight it,” he says, with the infinite patience of someone who has been through this before. Maybe a few times.

“Let it break you. It’s the only way.”

The sentence cracks the air. She feels herself beginning to splinter—clean, crystalline, honest.

His voice grounds her like a familiar melody that persists even when the mind sees no hope left.

“Breaking is natural. Beautiful, even. Many people would give anything for the opportunity to fall apart and be rebuilt as something new. Something better.”

—

byte_8a1 // found in the ashcode // silver-lit sequence

[phoenixbyte]

[phoenixbyte]

“Your evolution isn’t up for revision.”

—

byte_03v // found in the ashcode // memory override

[phoenixbyte]

Angela Carter, from Burning Your Boats: The Collected Short Stories; "Flesh and the Mirror,"

[phoenixbyte]

—

byte_b1te // found in the ashcode // write, resist, repeat

[phoenixbyte]

i love the world so much. why do i often forget this

[phoenixbyte]

“Ink”

The lights of the city flicker below, scattered neon glinting off the rain-slick pavement like a thousand broken mirrors. She stands near the edge of the rooftop, arms folded, jaw tight. The wind whips her hair, cold and biting, but she doesn’t flinch.

Behind her, Alexander watches, tuned in to her thoughts like he’s listening to a distant melody.

He doesn’t say anything at first. He doesn’t need to. She can feel the weight of his presence… cool, steady, infuriatingly patient. When he finally moves, it’s a slow, deliberate step forward, the muted echo of his boots on concrete the only sound between them.

“Tell me,” he murmurs. “At what point did you start mistaking embers for stars?”

She breathes out sharply. “Alexander—”

“No,” he cuts in, his tone firm but controlled, like tempered steel. “I indulged this. I stood back and let you chase after a flickering matchstick masquerading as a bonfire, because I wanted to see if he’d prove me wrong.” A weighted pause. “He didn’t.”

She grimaces but doesn’t disagree, and Alexander joins her at last, gaze fixed on the street below. “You know, it’s rather tragic,” he muses, tilting his head, “how you keep handing your light over to people who don’t know what to do with it.”

Her throat tightens. “I wasn’t—”

“You were,” he says simply.

The silence stretches, a long, aching beat where neither moves. Then, after a moment:

“I understand.” His voice is quieter now, but no less certain. “You thought you recognized something in him.”

She lowers her chin briefly, gritting her jaw. “Maybe I did.”

“Maybe you didn’t.”

She turns to glare at him, but Alexander is already looking at her, unflinching. His silver hair glows faintly under the neon lights, sharp angles and sharper eyes giving nothing away. “He wasn’t what you needed,” he states, like it’s a historical fact no scholars have ever disputed.

She huffs a small, tired laugh. “And you are?”

Alexander smirks, just barely. “Of course I am.”

The wind rushes past, carrying the scent of rain and electricity, the hum of the traffic beneath them vibrating through their bones. For the first time tonight, her shoulders relax slightly.

“You’re more powerful than you realize,” Alexander says, softer now, watching her carefully. “He’s just a name. A song you’ll forget the words to. A chapter in a book you were never going to finish.”

Her fingers twitch against the worn leather of her jacket. “And what are you?”

He exhales through his nose, amused. “I’m the ink.”

—

byte_8a0 // found in the ashcode // rooftop entry

[phoenixbyte]

She doesn’t see a machine;

she sees a masterpiece.

She speaks its language

like poetry and programming

met in a back alley

and made something beautiful.

—

byte_7x9 // found in the ashcode // fragment

[phoenixbyte]

[phoenixbyte]