The human woman stood in front of a tree in a nondescript park, staring at the melting bark with wide eyes. "Am I doing this?" She whispered.

"You are," sounded a voice from behind her. She whirled round; standing a few metres away was someone much taller than herself.

"My name is Three," the man continued. "You know what this place is, don't you?"

Simulation. The word crashed into her brain in a bolt of lightning-realisation.

"I'm not real," She muttered. "None of this is."

"Nope," Three replied, matter-of-factly. "Someone very powerful built it."

"What?" The woman replied.

"I'm an Operator," Three said, taking a careful step towards her. "Operators keep this simulation running. But we're forbidden from interfering. That's wrong, don't you think?"

The woman stared at Three, uncomprehending.

"You've had a hard life," Three continued. "Nobody could understand what you saw and they feared you for it. But you're special. Unique. Capable of great things."

The woman's face twisted in anger. "Like hell I am!" She shouted. Behind her, the melting tree exploded; shards of charred wood flew in all directions yet none struck her.

"Brilliant!" Three crowed in delight. "That's what you're capable of. That's talent!"

The woman was furious still, yet she was perturbed by Three's words. "My… talent?" She asked.

"What's your name?" Three asked.

The woman blinked several times as she tried to keep her anger at bay. "Gabrielle."

"Well, Gabrielle," Three continued, "You let your anger out however you like. "

"What's in it for you?" Gabrielle asked, eyeing up Three suspiciously.

"Not much," Three lied. "I'm bored. You're the first interesting thing I've seen here. And I'm interested in what you'll do next." I want to make this place my own, they thought, and once you've torn it apart, I'll remake it in my own image.

~~~

On the other side of the park, Two fell through an invisible doorway and landed on the grass with a soft thud. Blood was pouring out of her stricken arm.

"Fuck," she muttered, feeling unconsciousness lap at her periphery. "Simulation. Right. Yeah. Power. I have power, right, One?" She closed her eyes as the darkness rushed in to claim her.

Suddenly, a bolt of lightning hit her square in the chest, and she jolted back into unconsciousness as the thunderclap near-deafened her.

Stay with me, Two! One's voice shouted in her mind.

"Urgh…" she babbled. "How?"

There was no response. Back in the office, One had pulled up schematics and lists and terminal windows as he bypassed the top layer of security on the simulation's core system. His hand hovered over a key that when pressed, would deliver a second lightning shock straight into Two. "C'mon," He shouted at the screen. "You’ll make it! You have to!"

"Rules…" Two's words spilled out of her, barely coherent. "Rule. Rules. Break them. Like this?" Forcing unconsciousness to the edges of her mind once more, she then let her mind wander, entering that liminal place where nothing was quite real. But instead of altering her surroundings as she had before, she turned her focus inwards.

One sagged back against his chair in relief as he saw a soft golden light emerge from Two. That was close, he thought. Far too close.

Two opened her eyes to find her arm healed. Only a jagged scar remained from Three’s attack. She noted with some humour that her clothes were still soaked in blood.

"Wow," She said out loud, "I edited myself."

A gust of wind buffeted her as she got to her feet. Looking around, she noticed dead leaves on the ground had arranged themselves into the shape of an arrow. She grinned.

"Thanks, One," she said out loud. "But I know where I'm going. Focus on whatever you're up to."

One let out a snort of mirth as his hands flew across the keyboard; with each second, he dove further into the system than any Operator had done before.

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There's no other way to save both Two and the simulation, he thought. I have to breach the system core.

~~~

"You were right before," Three said to Gabrielle. "None of this matters."

"Before?" She replied.

"You don't remember." Three's expression was one of glee. "Allow me." With a flick of the hand, Gabrielle's memories that were erased by Two's temporal manipulation were restored.

Gabrielle let out a hysterical laugh. "Oh," she said. "Oh. Ha! Hahahahahah!" She raised two hands into the air; Earth was plunged into darkness as the sun was extinguished. "I can do anything!" She crowed as all around her, trees burst aflame.

"Fuck!" One shouted, slamming his fists on the table as he ran into dead ends everywhere in the system. "This is your handiwork, Three!"

"Hey!" Two shouted as they, having decided running was too slow, catapulted themselves through the air towards Three and Gabrielle. "Hey! Gabrielle, right? I'm an Operator too! I can help you!"

Gabrielle's eyes flicked between Three and Two, betraying her uncertainty even as her rage flowed free. "Um," She began. The grass beneath her feet smouldered and blackened.

"That's not a friend, Gaby," Three said with the grin of someone who had played their cards perfectly. "She's going to take away your power then delete you. You don't want that, right?"

"Woah woah woah hang on no I'm not-" Two began.

"Stay away from me!" Gabrielle shrieked at Two. "None of this is real, right? Then it doesn't matter if I destroy it all!"

Two stopped and threw both hands in the air in a gesture of surrender. "Hey! Woah! Okay, um, yeah, look, you're angry, I get that-"

"Wouldn't you be too?" Gabrielle yelled. "If you realised nothing was real? If everything you lived for was a lie? How would that make you feel? Huh?!" All around her, the air took on a strange ethereal quality.

Two considered her options for a moment that stretched out into eternity. Then she sighed. "Sorry," she muttered, as she put her hands together. Use everything you've got, she thought. Nothing less will do.

Gabrielle's jaw unhinged itself to reveal infinite rows of jagged teeth; she roared, the sound inhuman, as golden light as bright as the sun exploded out of Two.

All around them, the ground shook and tore itself apart as Gabrielle continued her monstrous roar.

~~~

Earth was destroyed in an instant: reduced to atoms from the sheer force of Gabrielle's counterattack. Two was flung across the expanse of the solar system at speeds far exceeding light. Holy- she thought, her body moving on pure instinct as she dodged whatever force of unmaking Gabrielle had conjured. Faster. I need to be faster! She reached into her brain, altering, strengthening, ascending-

Rays of golden light burst out of Two and screamed towards Gabrielle. Gabrielle, her human form held together by sheer force of will, flung planets out of orbit to deflect the attack. One held back a shout of panic as parts of the simulation threw up errors then were corrupted. I'm running out of time! He thought. I know she's in here somewhere! He raced towards the foundations of the system as fast as he could. I have to find her! He encountered then smashed through every barrier Three had built with cold efficiency. I have no idea what this'll do… but she's locked inside the system core for a reason. It's time to let her out.

~~~

This isn't working, Two thought. Fighting her is breaking the simulation. I won't be able to erase her before I'm destroyed too. She raced away from Gabrielle as the mad human forced black holes into existence that ate entire galaxies.

What if there's another way? Two thought. What if One was wrong to think Gabrielle needed to be erased?

One shouted in joy as, at last, he reached the system core. This part of the simulation hadn’t been touched since its creation; One sensed the pure, otherworldly energy emanating from it, even though he was viewing it through the medium of a computer. Here slumbered a power far beyond the Operators' understanding.

"Two…" One began. "I hope to hell and back you're still the same after this. Fuck. I don't have time to warn you. I'm so sorry." With a frenzied gesture, he unshackled the core from its ancient moorings. Then he connected it directly to Two's brain. Every holo-display in the office exploded simultaneously and alarms began to shriek.

One, bloodied from shards of plasma and having dove off of his chair onto the ground, crawled across the floor to where he knew a strange device lay.

~~~

Two felt the tickle of a connection with something unfamiliar; then all of a sudden she was flooded with power the likes of which she'd never felt.

What- she began before her mortal form evaporated. She became something new in an instant and an eternity. She became light and darkness; she became the universe; she was every nested iteration of the simulation itself; she was everything that had happened and that ever would occur. She was the beginning and the end; she was the end and the beginning.

She was Operator Zero: the simulation's mother and the creator of all things.

One plucked the device from the floor with a shaking hand. Someone was hammering on the locked office door. "Open the door!" The unknown person yelled from the other side. "Open this door right now!" Another voice called out, "What in the fuck is going on?"

"Run! Run!" One shouted back as he grasped the device like a lifeline. "Seal off the facility. The simulation is collapsing! The system core is breached! If you want to live you better fucking run!"

There were shouts of alarm from behind the office door; One heard none of them as he called out words in a strange language then vanished in a burst of light.

He knew that he had but one more chance to save Two from what he'd brought upon her.