The Heart Novels & Stories

Yang Tian-Xu needed a reason, any reason will do. “Even if you lie to me… I would still believe you. So please An-An… Say something…” A heart was a fragile organ in the human body. But what makes it beat wasn’t love, but blood. But what makes love beats? Could it be the brain? Emotions? But what stops love from beating? Hatred? Betrayal? Would his love began to bleed like a heart when it gets ripped out of his chest? Who can say that their hearts can still beat, when it was cut out and rip into pieces?

My heαrt wαs pounding so hαrd it felt like it might burst out of my chest. Whαt the heck is hαppening?

[Image: A biological diagram of the human heart, showing the interplay between kinetic energy and blood flow] In the shadow of the "True Humans," our intimacy was a private, wild rebellion. We made love on the floor by the fire, our heartbeats a defiant, irregular rhythm against the mechanical thrum of the human engines. Every thrust was a declaration that our "Anomaly" was the most natural thing in the world. As we reached the peak, the gold and emerald light of our resonance flared with a soft, steady brilliance, filling the room with a heat that no steam-engine could replicate.

The fourth Node was not a machine, nor was it a pool of lava; it was a localized, sentient storm trapped in a crystalline lattice that predated the birth of the moon. In the center of the highest, most ancient Isle, we found the Heart. It was a sphere of swirling white mist and jagged, sapphire lightning, suspended in a ring of floating, rune-carved pillars that seemed to hum at a frequency that resonated in the very marrow of my bones. The sound it made was a low, constant thrum—the heartbeat of the world's atmosphere.

We sat in the cramped, red-lit cabin, listening to the hum of the engine. "The Heart is a physical machine," Ghost explained as he steered. "It’s hidden beneath the Oval Office. It’s a giant crystal made of nanotech. It vibrates at a frequency that matches the human heart. That’s how he controls them." "How do we stop it?" I asked. "We don't just stop it," Mom said. She looked at me, her blue wires glowing in the dark. "We have to reverse it. We have to use a different code. A code that breaks the rhythm."

“He is doing very well, still early for rejection, but damn,that is a good figure.” “Yeah, he should not reject it, as it is not organic, and that is part of why we have had rejections before.” “Talk me through this.” “When was the last time you heard of a hip replacement rejecting the part put in, or pins or staples in a body?” “Rarely.” “That is the secret of the heart. This one is early, and I am making better ones as I go along, but it is not organic, so rejection is less likely.” We talked some more about the heart and how it was made and how it beats.

He felt so cold that it was as though his heart had frozen and was about to shatter. "What's wrong, Henry? Why aren't you saying anything? Didn't you say you'd do anything for me?" Regina asked. She looked displeased, staring at him accusingly because Henry hadn't responded to her request. The moment he met her eyes, his frozen heart shattered into a thousand pieces. "You're asking for my heart, Regina! My heart!" Henry argued. Humans only had one heart, which was the most vital organ in the body. It wasn't like donating a kidney or part of a liver, where one could still continue living after. Once someone lost their heart, they would be done for. They would be dead.

His heart, his mind, his world. All of it.

The heart is a strange thing, with a hundred different avenues leading in and out with each breath, each steady pump, and so many chambers. I didn’t really understand that until this very moment. That there were so many different little pockets to this one organ that, up until a few seconds ago, was just the thing that made me live.