I hefted the seat in my hands and gauged its weight. It was heavy, almost too heavy for me to lift, with my anemic noodle arms, but through sheer grit and gumption, somehow, I was able to overcome the mighty stool.

I wasn't that weak. It was stone, the same white stone as everything else in this city, almost like they had nothing else to manufacture from except stone and glass and cloth. Which was probably true, actually. And while it was relatively light for a big ol' stool made of stone, it was still swinging a rock around. Which is exactly what I did, giving it a couple experimental cuts through the air, feeling how I should adjust my grip to keep its momentum from ripping it out of my hands.

The others gave me strange looks. They asked me things, the same dumb questions they probably actually would have. 'Are you insane?' 'What are you doing?' 'Are you just taking a stool sample or what?' Thanks Fake-Lia.

Once I was satisfied I could brandish it without fucking up, I went over to where Athan was watching me with a patient smile.

His smile faltered for only a second as I brought the stool down on his head with a crack of fracturing bone. Not a sound I heard others make too often by comparison, and I had to say I was a fan of being able to enjoy its tones without feeling the accompanying pain.

The room exploded into chaos. AEGIS and Karu were on me in an instant. And then half of each of them and all of me evaporated in a beam of white light. Lia was just screaming, and Athan laid very still on the floor as the seeping red under him grew.

It was all very convincing and very traumatic. If I weren't currently being pinned and lasered and beaten, I'd have clapped slowly.

But none of it was real. I knew that. Because in my head, I could tell where Athan and Karu and Tem and Lia were, and none of them were in this room with me. I didn't know why I was seeing or feeling or hearing this perfect illusion, something so convincing that even delving into my own mind, it refused to acknowledge in any way that something was amiss. But as perfect and indetectable a fake as it was, it couldn't stop me from seeing inside the minds of others and knowing that we were all under the same spell.

Athan was being led around the city by our hostess, being handed carefully-crafted endearing bits of personal information and painting her a woman in distress. Tem was out on as close a thing to a date with Athan as she could allow herself. Karu was holding the line against a common enemy who was threatening the sanctity of the city and the lives of all she cared for. And Lia was working, uninterrupted, having devised a workaround so devastatingly clever to get back onto the 'net that even AEGIS was impressed with her.

AEGIS herself was...somewhere, I was sure. Possibly waving her hands right in front of my eyes, and I just couldn't see through the illusion.

And none of their stories matched up. None of their realities were any more real than mine. None of them were in this room, and no matter how the Athan on the floor went white or reeked of blood or looked unnaturally still, none of that would convince me, because I could feel him half a district away, rubbing out a heart-boner he was developing for Rio.

Tem lasered me again, and yeah, it hurt. Felt like every inch of my flesh burning away. As someone who was something of an expert in it, it was a very convincing death. My mind shut down as it always did, expecting the end, pulled that last, familiar gasp of 'Oh. Drat.' that one faces right between pulling out of shock and realizing the end is there.

But the end never came. I never blinked out of being and came back. I just...was again, which might seem a fine distinction, but I was a connoisseur of death, and I didn't buy just any crass counterfeit. It was pretty apparent to me that whoever was responsible for all this had never actually died before, which was a situation I intended to resolve immediately.

I wanted to reach out and grab hold of Tem and put her down so she'd stop blowing me up, but she wasn't there to grasp. It really was just me in an empty room throwing myself around and writhing and shrieking, I knew, but that didn't make the sensations any less vivid. I couldn't very well make my body move when it was wholly convinced that most of the time, it was a charred pile of ash.

Which, I admit, stumped me for a while. I didn't get that moment of clarity when I came back like usual, since I never actually died, so thinking was a lot harder than it should have been. There was more pain and shrieking and burning and less...having a few moments to myself than I was accustomed to.

Man, not getting actually killed was kind of a bitch, actually.

I did try a few things. I figured, knowing the mind as I did, that whoever or whatever was pulling this on me was using my own mind and knowledge against me. I doubted very much that they were able to fully simulate all my buddies so convincingly through stupid things like study and hard work, which meant this illusion was probably based on my own thoughts.

So I thought about things like how all this lasering would probably burn a convenient hole in the floor at some point and let me drop away. Or how Tem might still be a bit frail and exhaust herself right about now and let up. Or hell, how all this heat in the room from the repeated blasting would burn off Athan's clothes and at least give me a show if I was stuck here.

But just because I thought about it didn't change anything. Which was a bit irritating, especially the last one, since I'd only just now realized that instead of killing him, I probably should have had a consequence-free bang with Fake-Athan instead. But all that really meant was they were drawing from deeper in my mind than any surface-level thought, and changing those kinds of concepts within myself was both a little more invasive than I ever wanted to go, and also pretty fuckin' impossible to do while being distracted with the constant laser death.

I thought about how there wasn't anything actually stopping me from walking out the door. Even if Fake-Tem were physically pinning me, she wasn't actually, and if I just kinda threw myself forward and let physics handle the rest, I'd flop my way out there eventually.

Except...the thing in my head was insidious. Every time I tried throwing myself forward, it came up with totally justified ways for my body to throw itself back, against my will. Tem would blast half my body, and I'd stagger backwards on my remaining leg and fall on my ass. Or she'd hit some superheated, exploding piece of stoneware into the side of my face, and my crawling would snap backwards.

Nothing a normal person would notice given the circumstances, but annoying when you were trying to find any seam in the illusion. I noted, for example, that while Athan was doing a significant amount of being touchy-feely with Rio, she always stopped him cold before he could get TOO handsy or anything. Or that while Tem was getting her huggles on, she was seated and being held, not jumping into him. Nothing was allowed which would break the illusion.

If things got really bad, I could always call for help. Try speaking in their minds and the like, but…

Lia had warned me explicitly against that behavior yesterday. Something about the way Rio had talked or looked when she'd mentioned code-X, Lia was certain there was something dark that way. Enough that she'd pulled me aside and told me in no uncertain terms to not reveal my powers, no matter what.

From anyone else, I'd have probably broadcast to the whole city on the spot just to make a point, but I admittedly had a soft spot for the broken chickadee...and she definitely had a point. Rio and everyone else in this town might be a toad, but I wasn't completely blind in picking up on the same hint.

The air roared again as I was lasered into dust for the twenty-ninth time. Big three-oh coming up, that was always an event. In the few moments I had in between, I watched Fake-Lia crying her eyes out over her brother's body. Just for something to do, really.

So convincing it'd be heartbreaking, if my eyes were actually how I saw the world. This was just pathetic instead, it was like watching dolls move around and play at being people. I really did pity anyone who was limited to just the five senses.

And then, watching her as my vision went white for my thirtieth fake-death today, I had an idea.

I got up again and sat up. "Hey Lia, can you kill Tem for me?"

She sputtered and shook and choked on the tears, phlegm, and snot she was dribbling out for her brother, and she stared at me with incomprehension and loathing. If she had a mind to be in, I'd probably be feeling all the inarticulate words of spite and misery and shit she was feeling. But again, just nothing.

But she was a faithful reproduction. It took her a minute to process my words, but once she had, she had no choice. The compel kicked in, and her emotions flatlined, her face going slack as she slowly picked up the same blood-splattered stool I'd wielded.

And I missed the best part because Tem blasted me again, the little shit. But when I came to, Tem's head had been liberally smashed in, at least five or six times, and looked more like a picked-over melon than the silver-tufted noggin we all knew, and Lia was just coming to herself, screaming at what she saw and did and was splattered with.

This book is hosted on another platform. Read the official version and support the author's work.

It put a big smile on my face. This illusion wasn't all bad. Fucking with people consequence-free was fun.

I watched her as her mind broke, her eyes going blank at the blood dripping from her hands, her little illusory brain scanning the room one desperate, final time to look for any shred of hope.

All she found was the half-erased bodies of AEGIS and Karu. Her dead brother, and the girl she'd murdered. And me, smiling and watching it all.

She staggered to the wide window and teetered on the balls of her feet as she looked down at the stone street a dozen feet below. Precious as this was, I really had to move on. I could only indulge myself in so many episodes of this drama before I wasn't being honest with myself about that whole 'killing whoever was responsible' thing.

And honesty was important. Honesty like, honestly, I didn't want to see Lia trying to kill herself, even if it was just a fake. The show was funnier when I was directing.

When I got outside, I caught mind of Karu running past me, some urgent missive about some upcoming battle in her thoughts. In my eyes, she didn't look like Karu, just another one of the faceless mass that made up this city, and she saw me similarly. I tried to slam into her to trip her up, but I was far from the first person she'd crashed into on her dire errand, and she gave me no thought at all except to shout an apology as she stumbled past.

Next I found Lia, the real Lia, who to my eyes, looked like a hunched-over man working some clay on a potter's wheel. To her, she was sitting at the table with a tablet in her hands, desperately screwing with network settings and request headers to get through to the civilian 'net from inside some closed military satellite network. It was amusing watching him go and seeing what bizarre shapes the clay was taking in response to her grasp.

For fun, I pushed the clay/tablet down in her hands, feeling the sculpture squish under my fingers while seeing myself, as some ordinary townsperson pushing the tablet downwards to demand her attention.

"What?" she asked the person-who-was-me, while the potter yelled at me about ruining his work.

"Sorry to bother you," person-who-was-me muttered. "But I think I may be able to help. Have you checked the any of the scripts to see any which are configured to not launch on boot?"

She furrowed her brow. "No? Why would that help with the network?"

"Time in the military," person-who-was-me offered with a wink. "A lot of soldiers pass around their own cracks to get into civ-'net. Check there and see if there's a script for it."

She cocked her head. "Thanks?"

Meanwhile the old man kept on his bleating that I couldn't really hear because I was paying attention to Lia's senses instead of my own. Kind of a shame that I couldn't punch him without hitting her. No matter what I said in her face, she heard none of it, just the exchange between herself and person-who-was-me. So there was no way I could trigger her compel from here, which was frustrating.

The closest I could get without shouting in everyone's head would be to open up and show her some of my memories or share some of my senses, but I wouldn't be able to provide any context or narrative...and I didn't think having her suddenly witness a first-person contextless murder of her brother and then subsequent second-person betrayal of her friend and subsequent suicide would do her any favors.

It might confuse her into questioning the illusion a bit, sure, but I was already fully aware of it and even with my powers, I still couldn't do shit. I'd save the traumatizing her for when I had something more concrete.

So I stood and moved on towards Athan, marvelling at how resilient this whole charade was. It'd just seamlessly created a whole conversation in-context for her to explain my intervening. Not that I expected it to crack just because I walked into it or anything, but still. I'd had this idea of just going and like, smacking Karu around or something until she couldn't explain getting attacked by invisible adversaries...but with how flawlessly it'd put me into Lia's narrative, I'd guess Karu'd just suddenly be attacked by assailants with optical camo or something.

But there had to be something I could do that'd be so ridiculous or impossible that the illusion would tear. No lie was this perfect.

I thought about it while watching Athan being really, truly pathetic. In his mind, he was sitting on the wall with Rio, the two of them wrapped in silence, or sometimes talking about themselves or the city, looking to all the world -- except to Athan himself, because that kid was just oblivious as fuck -- like a dorky couple on a first date.

In reality, it was just sad. He was there by himself, talking to and touching and feeling nothing. There were all kinds of jokes I could crack wise about Athan on a date by himself, or imaginary girlfriends, and they were winners, too. I reaffirmed to kill the fuck out of whoever was responsible for this, because, that bastard, they were making some of my best material go to waste here.

Experimentally, I sat where she sat. The other dude on the wall -- my mind's proxy for Athan -- didn't seem to notice or care...and on closer inspection, I found him asleep. I gave him a prod in the cheek, but that just gave fake-Rio license to playfully do the same to Athan while uttering something cutesy, so I cut that shit out right quick. Although I did slap him to see if that'd help somehow.

It didn't. fake-Rio 'caught' him staring at a spontaneous wardrobe malfunction she'd incurred, and Athan sputtered his apologies, because, of course, he actually was staring. If pokes and slaps got her playing with him and popping out of her lab coat, I decided I needed to stop now before I accidentally got the two of them fucking somehow.

But I was running dry on ideas. I wasn't really an idea gal in the first place, I tended to solve my problems through liberal application of human death and suffering, like the construction of the pyramids. But this was a scenario where, if I did that, whatever crisis I forced on them would just be added to the illusion, enhancing their attachment to it instead of poking holes.

It was frustrating. And I wondered where AEGIS was...she had to be around somewhere outside of all of this, watching us all act insane without being able to penetrate the facade either.

I watched Athan a while longer, resisting the temptation to just push him off the wall to see what would happen. Knowing his mind, he'd probably reach out and accidentally pull down Rio's fantasy panties or some shit before plunging to his death. Which sounded like a pretty cool way to die if I were doing it, but ultimately not worth to sacrifice him over.

I sighed and laid on my back. The ground was blistering and the sun was almost directly overhead, an angry white circle in a grey-blue sky. After Tokyo, I never thought I'd want to hear another human mind again, but with literally everyone here being a toad, this place somehow sucked even worse. Why couldn't we go to normal places, with regular amounts of humans to screw with? Why'd it have to be everyone or nobody?

I got up and headed for the gate. If I were going to lay around and wait for inspiration, I'd to so under one of the trees down below. At least I'd be comfortable while I waited for us all to die or for Athan to fuck Rio or whatever.

The ground was cooler here, and I was far enough away from the city that I could only sense Athan and Tem now. Turning my head, I could still see him on the wall, just a little spec of a man, half the size of my thumb. Briefly, I held my thumb up next to him, imagining the man in the distance terrorized by a giant thumb coming after him.

I was very good at being bored, okay?

I fell backwards and looked up at the boughs overhead. If I squinted, they almost looked like the ones at home. For all the muted colors of this place, the white of structures and black of the glass and grey of the sky, the trees here were as green and vivid as anywhere. I thought wistfully of my first tree, Ash, the one outside the mines where I'd been locked up, that I named after old man Wynn's dead wife.

God, I was good at being bored. Some of these narratives embarrassed even me to think back on. What was I, thirteen?

But then I looked back up at the tree and fell right back into the same spell. It was so familiar a sight to me, it felt like...a signature move of mine or something. Other people had laid under trees before, sure, but never with my poise, elegance, or stamina. When it came to lying under trees, I was the rockstar, foremost in everyone's mind.

I sat up suddenly and blinked. It couldn't be that easy, could it?

It was hard to lie back down and fill myself with the same arboreal glow as before. I was too excited and my mind kept jumping to the next step without me. I took a few deep breaths and forced myself to stare at the fucking underside of leaves.

It took a while. The sun wasn't directly overhead by the time I'd regained my tranquility, but I did find myself wandering again, and that's when I knew I was ready. Carefully, like trying to juggle two very different things in each hand, I reached out for the wall where Athan was still sitting, and again, gave him a thumbs-up.

And as I did, I opened up my mind to him, flooding his brain with raw sensory input from my own. The figure on the wall went stiff as the sensations overlapped and overwhelmed him, but I had faith. He'd joined minds enough time that this wouldn't shock him out of it, he'd know it was me, know what he was seeing.

I hoped.

But if not, that was what the tree was there for. Once I had his attention, once he spotted the girl on her back giving him a thumbs-up from the outer ring, and saw me in my mind, gesturing the same, I fell backwards, filling my head up with trees and the peace they held over me.

I was pouring so much into him that I couldn't tell much what he was thinking. Or saying, or feeling. His conversation with Rio in his fiction had tapered off though, and he seemed focused on me.

And so I waited and hoped. I knew he only saw me as a strange girl he'd never met, knew that the illusion would bite back somehow, that his illusion of Rio would be explaining away what he was sensing or some bullshit. It would fight, and I couldn't respond, because I couldn't say a thing.

All I could do was to be me, and hope that somehow, Athan knew it was me. I let the dark green boughs fill my vision and the roots behind my back warm me. I felt the dirt in my toes and kneaded little divots into the ground.

And then I lost him. The fucker went right back to talking to her, his sudden vision and epiffany nothing but fuel for another anecdote for him to share with that bitch. I sighed.

But it was hard to be too upset given my state. Despite my failure, I was still having a nice time. And I could always try again. That was the best part of being me. I'd outlive the glasslands if I had to.

The hours continued to pass until the sun was just peeking over the horizon, its rays unearthly colors of cyan and violet, refracting off the glass in a way that no other sunset on Earth could. It was a pretty cool show, even I had to admit, and it almost made up for the mind-fuck hellscape we were all trapped in.

I was so focused on watching it, I almost missed someone's approach. I turned and saw an unfamiliar man, who leaned against the tree and asked me something I didn't give a shit about.

Because behind that illusion was Athan, in his mind, approaching an unfamiliar girl under the tree, with a sense of unshakable nostalgia that had nettled him all day. I grinned, though he couldn't see it, as he spoke to her.

"Excuse me," he said, polite as ever. "But...were you...I don't know, waving at me or something earlier today? Sorry if I'm being a nuisance, but you just seem so much like someone I know."

I couldn't really respond through the illusion, so I just tapped into our link and opened my mind, enjoying his confusion as he witnessed himself from the outside, saying words he wasn't and wearing skin not his own.

And watched his confusion wavering as I gave him a thumbs-up in two realities at once.