10: UNWELCOME
//
12:51 P.M. // 10 - 13 - 2023 // Arc - Gym
Starring Gwen Olynn
Featuring Avil Daniase, Kali Lapuz, Ben Roswell, Aythe Siena, Regan Yglesias, and Cedrance Manamune
//
“Gwen,” Avil panted for breath, and I heard the thump of him falling onto the bench, “are we done—”
“Are we done?” I snapped at him without thinking, and pulled myself upwards on the bar, my arms screaming at me. Easing myself back down, I calmed myself and kicked Gwen out of the driver’s wheel. “Avil, we’re in the lower ranks right now, and our time here is going to be short if we aren’t doing this. I told you this before, but no, we’re not done.”
I was so sore and I knew this was not good for my body, but I simply didn’t have the skills to pass the exam and that wasn’t going to fly. The past exam recordings showed that much.
“After we rest, we’ll go to—
“The Training Center,” he interrupted me almost automatically. “I know. We’ve been doing this since last month.”
“And look how that’s been working out for us.” I pulled up again, grunting from the strain of effort.
“That’s nine,” he clapped slowly. “Nice job.”
“And how much did I start out with?”
“Seven.”
I grunted again and pulled with the last of my strength, and then held for three seconds. “Ten.”
I dropped on my feet in complete exhaustion, and then clumsily dragged myself beside Avil. I sat down hard and leaned my back against the glass wall. A couple people were chilling outside under the shade of the trees that lined the center of the wide path, but otherwise Arc’s streets were mostly empty. The clicking and clacking noises of weights touching against each other, training machines in motion, the soft vrmming of the treadmills and the tapping of feet against them, and the struggling grunts and the smell of sweat permeated the whole gym even through the constant air conditioning.
Reaching beside me, I pulled out of my bag a bottle of water and a small towel which I wrapped around my sweaty neck. A big gulp of water later and I stood up.
Avil warily glanced at me. “That’s it?”
In truth my knees were on the verge of giving out. “Let’s go. Change out to your practical clothes, we—”
“Need to practice in it, yes I brought it, and my vest, and my shield, yada yada,” he dispassionately stood up and walked towards the locker room to the right.
“Just go.” Shaking my head I followed behind him.
“What does it look like I’m doing?” His eyes lazily glanced over two people at the bench press as we passed by. One gave steady words of encouragement and spotted the other who was as red as a plum, pushing upwards with shaky arms.
“Not going fast enough,” I paced by his side and sped ahead of him. “I bet you just rolled your eyes.”
“You looked back.”
“I didn’t.”
He sighed with exasperation as I entered the women's room.
Nobody was in there except for one person whom I politely greeted. The girl was quite toned, with a unique and eye-catching hairstyle: swept bangs, short hair, loose bun, she’d been coming here often too. She nodded her head in response, and smiling wordlessly she walked past me into the gym area.
I remembered her mostly as the person who caused my Synchronization.
Without much thought left I pulled myself into the tight-fitting uniform and zipped up the blue and white second protective layers.
As I exited the building I was beginning to get uncomfortably warm in the clothes. Two layers on such a hot day was a necessary evil for the sake of exercise.
Avil too walked out with an expression denoting tiredness and heat.
“Was that girl there again today?”
We began walking together. “Wow, you must either be really bored or not tired enough.”
“Bro, whatever,” he said nonchalantly, his face revealing otherwise.
“Yeah, she was there.”
A blaring screen appeared before me, and I stared past it as if it was empty air.
========================
‘Gwen Olynn’ has done the following actions:
[Supremely annoy ‘Avil Daniase’]
Reward: Guide (1)
Amount of Guide: 2 ⇒ 3
========================
That was also a necessary evil. Gwen knew how to press his buttons.
The Training Center was only a few steps away, and we were greeted by the open area under the hot sun almost completely full of people. It was much louder here, the air tasting of the classic blood sweat and tears along with much more violent metal gongs and shinks than in the gym, which now looked peaceful in comparison.
The seemingly indestructible training bots were in constant barrage by the students, and over on the other side were the sparring mats.
It looked like there were lots of like-minded people here. Training during the day was obviously the correct thing to do before a practical exam, and analyzing footage and studying for the written portion at night was the second best option. Sleeping and eating were the least and the quickest to accomplish on the schedule.
“Gwen, let’s spar today,” Avil suggested. It was the emptiest area as people were more determined to have a better swing or a better throw or shot or whatever on the bots. But we had been working on that for a while and neglecting our self-defense, so I agreed.
“Yeah.” We dropped and shoved our things in the nearest locker, and quickly locking it we found ourselves on opposite ends of a mat. Avil’s shield wouldn’t fit so he opted to bring it along with him, and I also brought my boots and buckler too. They laid in the open space behind him and I respectively.
“So… weapons or no weapons? Never mind,” he shook his head, “no weapons. We need to warm up.” He lowered his stance and brought his hands in front of his face, though not yet fists.
—BOOOM!
Just as I raised my own fists, a huge boom came from the right and startled me, and I covered my face and ducked as shards of shrapnel whooshed past my head and narrowly missed me. Luckily I heard no indications of anyone being hurt.
Looking up in surprise, there was a large cloud of dust billowing from where the explosion noise had come from, the sound of two slashes of steel slicing through air and the iconic clink of swords and metal. A shockwave emanated from it and had me stumbling back, and it completely dissolved the dust and revealed two tall figures in a crater, the larger one leaping backwards from the attack and landing near me far too close for safety. The ground cracked beneath his feat.
Adrenaline, instinct, I scrambled backwards. The suddenness of all the noise and spectacle was attracting lots of attention.
The one nearest me was a giant of a man, and the area around him was a tattered mess of what once was a practice mat from landing alone. I could only make out a few details of him, a close-shaved head on a body full of bulging muscles and bulk, fists equipped with two spiked knuckles, before he, though traceable with the bare eyes, rushed in again and slammed into the ground with his fist. The force blinded me again with the sheer and raw power and dust.
The sound of startled yelps came from around, including from myself.
I caught the sneering face of the second guy, brown curly hair tapped with gold sprinkles to complement a devastatingly handsome face and physique, who with an overconfident posture patiently waited for the giant to attack. Somehow this guy looked familiar. A total stranger, but I could swear I saw him before. The twin swords by his side lifted up a bit, poised to act. They both disappeared into the dust cloud.
A flash of purple from deep inside the cloud, and then an almost ghostlike silhouette of the second guy emerged, still poised towards the center as a second round of shrapnel flew straight through it. The ghost and shrapnel drifted and flew towards a stunned and horrified Avil, who quickly rushed backwards.
“Avil, shield!” I yelled, and ducked back for my buckler. His eyes reflected the scary purple of the ghost, and for a terrifying second I thought I didn’t hear me, but then he rolled into his shield and flung it protectively over his whole body and curled up, fitting snugly into his cover.
The giant, now fully clear of the smoke, smashed again and again, a purple wound on his forearm, but the damaged area had interestingly developed a grey and smooth steel-like glint and shine that followed the giant’s carved muscles.
Those two were definitely Awakened.
Small Avil under the shield was a funny sight at first until a bombardment of shrapnel rained upon the shield with a banging noise that awoke inside me a deep panic and fear for him.
“Avil!!”
My eyes glazed over for a moment, the world shook, Gwen [stood there, staring at the altar. The world was black and white. #e&*@&## sprawled across the floor in front of the two portraits. Tears filled—]
An overwhelming urge to throw up surged over me.
Not now!
I weakly lifted the buckler over my head, and the couple clanks against it scared the ever-living heck out of me. I was that close to being hurt badly.
Warm hands touched my back between my shoulder blades, and I swerved my head around. It was that girl from the gym, and she kindly but hurriedly reached for my hand and helped me up while assisting me in keeping my buckler over us. When our fingers made contact the urge to barf intensified, and just as it reached its peak it died down to both my confusion and gratefulness, enough for me to talk.
“Avil is still there!” Panic was in my every breath. “H-he’s going to—”
“We can’t do anything about it,” the girl hollered at me over the noise with a tone of distress, “look!” Now I could clearly make out the flurry of blades and fists, flying rocks and danger from their fight, all of it so close, and so so close, to Avil’s small form beneath his cover. Every time he raised his body another rock would be thrown his way, and he’d be knocked back down.
And he looked battered.
And it looked like everything was coming his way.
“Hahaha!” The giant roared in delight, smashing the ground again with a tremendous force, “Just one ability! It’s just one ability!” The earth shattered and shrapnel flew, and many people were standing and crowding near the front to get some blocking and deflecting practice in, and watch the fight of Awakeneds.
She ushered me gently into the crowd which had formed around the spectacle as I watched in horror.
Each time the giant went in to attack, the curly haired guy would wait, with Avil just behind him. An explosion, a flash of purple, the ghost, and rocks flew straight through it and bombarded Avil on the ground. And I noticed that each time, each painful time the curly hair and Avil made eye contact, the bastard smirked.
The sun glared down on me.
This was intentional.
My blood boiled but there was nothing I could do. It was too dangerous to intervene.
“When are the goddamn authorities coming?!” The girl yelled in frustration. “I alerted them after I heard the noise, it’s been too long!”
“I bet that it’s because of guilds,” another girl taller than the one still holding my hand beside her said, almost mesmerized at the terrifying scene in front of her.
“Are you ******* excited, Regan?!”
Ignoring her, the tall girl went on, “Kali, Angels of Justice is five ranks above Holimont.”
The—Kali cursed loudly again. “And they’re in cooperation. S***!! I forgot!”
“What does this have to do with anything?” I screamed, almost drowned out by another explosion. There were so many craters in the floor now, “Avil’s still under that shield, still being attacked, still no authorities—”
“It means that we have to save him ourselves!” Kali interrupted me impatiently. “Do you get it now?!”
The shock rooted me for a second, and the dawn of understanding made me even more afraid.
I knew what that inkling of recognition was now.
“That’s Aythe Siena, isn’t it?” I already knew the answer.
“He’s an *******,” Regan confirmed. “You, what’s-your-name, do you know why they’re targeting him—sorry, Avil?”
I shook my head, “Gwen.”
Kali nodded. “Gwen, I have an idea—!” She seemed to pause in the middle of what she was about to say, her eyes looking past me.
I was confused, and almost desperate now. “What? Hey, Kali—”
“Oh, yeah, we’re good now.” All of a sudden Kali’s face was washed with a relaxation, an almost admiration and a deep-seeded joy, one that made Gwen revolt with an all-too-familiar sight, and leaving me completely baffled.
Gwen?
“He’ll be fine now that—”
“Yeah, I get it now.” I tried to keep my face as neutral as possible, though with Gwen in the front of my mind I couldn’t stop her from pinching her brows together. She only got disgusted by one thing in all her memories, and she only dreaded a few things.
“Hmm?”
“Rank 1 is here, right?” I sighed with a sudden pivot of tunneled emotions.
Gwen hated the look of dreaminess on a girl’s face. It was what took two lives and ruined two others.
Regan clapped her hands excitedly. I noticed that she had never shown any apprehension or any other worried expression the entire time. “I mean, Kali’s just always wanted to analyze Cedrance’s fighting style and the other top rankers’ styles in person.”
Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.
Wait, huh?
“And you know, she’s totally on to something when she says that his name, Cedrance, even kind of sounds like a fighting style, if ya’know what I mean~.”
Kali took one look at my face and rolled her eyes, and then smiled, “You think I like him? Hell no, I’m not trying to take someone’s boyfriend! Aaand, the way he fights is so unique, like— wooooooahhh there it is!” She yelled as a particularly loud clash of metal resonated from the scene, making me mortified for Avil’s well-being as I turned to watch.
My eyes transfixed straight to the sword.
Holding off against the vicious double strike of the two maniacs was Cedrance Manamune in the flesh, his sword awash and veiled in a luminous sheen of water and much longer if not double the length of an average sword. It seemed as if even though Aythe and the giant had just teamed up to fight Cedrance, they were already having a difficult time.
“What are you doing here, Waterboy?” Aythe smiled grimly as leaped back from the giant’s collateral smash, “I don’t think I invited you here to spar with me—”
“Spar?” Cedrance growled, twirling around another stab, and as Aythe feinted in he swept his sword up and caught the giant’s fist, and then ducked beneath the slice, his water sword creating after-images that seemed to parry it. He moved in and then forcefully kicked Aythe in the stomach, making him cough and pushing him back, “All I see is you and Ben disrupting everyone else and attacking Avil, Goldilocks!”
He dodged another attack from the giant, Ben, and imitated Aythe’s feint from earlier to get in close again, the after-images of his sword protecting him from the recovered Aythe from behind as he also kicked Ben hard in the stomach.
Pummel and slice after attack and attack, his water-covered sword rippled against the force of Aythe’s two swords and the giant’s fist combined, each attack trying to force him to step back, but in an almost elegant flourishing way he dodged and deflected each flash of steel in the agile dance of swords.
So fast, with Aythe’s frowning brow visibly gleaming and the smoke cleared away each time it appeared with forceful swing of weapons the two looked almost powerless against Cedrance’s spectacular defense.
The best part was that the entire time Cedrance stood unflinchingly in front of Avil, who was still under his shield. My heart pounded even though I wasn’t in much danger.
“Look,” Kali’s eyes were filled with stars and numbers, “Cedrance never attacked them even once with his ability. All of his strokes are fluid like water, just like his sword. Anyways, because Aythe’s swords can’t make contact with Cedrance,—”
“Then Aythe is basically unawakened,” I nodded my head, my eyes still on Avil. My heart pounded. Aythe’s active power seemed to derive from damaging the opponent first, but he hadn’t, he couldn’t land any attacks on Cedrance, so he was powerless.
“I doubt any of them are Fully Awakened, or else we’d be seeing more ability usage, and Cedrance’s defense would be less effective,” Regan pointed out, unfazed by the rocks flying in her direction and narrowly parried by an ecstatic guy in front of her. “Big guy said so earlier.”
Fully Awakened?
“Yeah,” Kali nodded her head as another loud clash rang out, and then turned to me, still completely focused on the fight ahead and Avil on the ground. “Gwen? Are you okay?—You look so…”
“Intense,” Regan finished.
I strained to watch each bare drop of sweat from the three, all now very visibly tired. Just not tired enough… Ben leaped in for another attempt at a strike, and both Cedrance and him slammed into each other with faltered breaths, the waves of shimmering after-images now thinning as Cedrance reached his breaking point.
Aythe, panting hard, dashed in for another attack, and summoning all of my courage I took it as my cue as both Kali and Regan yelled out in shock, reaching forward to catch be as I pushed through the crowd with all my strength.
“Gwen, no!”
Bursting out into the warring zone, I circled the edge as fast as I could, around the craters, my buckler over my head to block the incoming rocks from Ben’s obnoxious smashing and attacking.
Now that I was at the end of what used to be the sparring mat, I was in the danger zone. I was getting a very, very personal close up of the fight, and ducked my head with a stifled scream as Aythe swung out his blade to attack Cedrance, who parried swiftly and then flourished again to block Ben. The thinning after-image of his blade was seriously concerning now, as Ben broke through and pushed Cedrance backwards as he narrowly caught it in time.
Falling to my knees, I lifted the edge of Avil’s shield, and reached my hand in to receive a sweaty hand from a shaking Avil.
“Let’s go, Avil! Move!”
He was obviously extremely shaken up, his eyes and body having lost all of the strength that he normally had. As best as I could I lifted his shield with him and allowed him to lean against me, and we stumbled forward towards the crowd.
And that’s when I saw Aythe’s eyes on me. He smiled, and a shiver traveled through my whole body.
Dammit.
I was an easy target to activate his ability, wasn’t I?
//
10:40 A.M. // 10 - 16 - 2023 // Arc - Practical Testing Block, Site B
Starring Kali Lapuz
//
At the sound of the examiner’s voice, the door to the stage opened, and I gasped for fresh air as I burst onto my stage. I took a moment to indulge in the relief from the musty smell coming from the pervert who wouldn’t stop sniffing my hair in the waiting room.
I first noticed the floor around was simply the barren, unchanged stage. In front of me was a large and cozy townhouse with a front door slightly opened agape. A gate surrounded it along with trimmed bushes and a small garden out in the front, and there seemed to be no way to get inside other than to climb the gate.
But I knew that was a trap.
The backyard, which connected out to the front, well, I couldn’t see it but I knew it had a pool and a garden terrace.
I didn’t pause for long. From watching the screens earlier as well as my prior video analysis on exams that came before me from a year ago, I was confident that I could complete the exam. The intended way was to enter the house, avoid all the traps, and kill all of the bots, or at least that was the most popular way.
That, fighting head first, was my weak point. I would win without ever needing to fight the house.
It seemed very ordinary, and yet for an exam like this, very extraordinary. It was unpopular, but it definitely wasn’t not picked.
The goal was simple: eliminate all the bots inside the house. Why was it unpopular?
Because the bots couldn’t fight back.
But the house could.
My katana hung by my side. Counter-intuitive to bring such a long weapon indoors, but my plan would work. So far I hadn’t seen anyone do it, nor in any of the past exam footage.
Slowly pacing towards the gate, I steeled my resolve. The mana-theory book was still fresh in my mind, Theory of Mana.
‘Mana is a dense second air, and like plants and oxygen, all living creatures exude mana. Breathe in deeply, and feel the dizziness in your soul, the vessel of one’s mana. Focus, and you should notice another heartbeat in tandem with your own which you otherwise wouldn’t notice. That is mana entering your soul, the air of a realm besides the material realm, the mana realm, and air that infects the physical realm to the things around.’
I read the passage so many times I could recite it out loud. My bet was in the hopes that every single word was true.
‘Though all beings exist in both realms and have mana, only the Awakened phenomena, including monsters and demons, are fully immersed into the realm of mana and can manifest mana into existence, because mana does not collide with existence except through the Awakened.’
To me it made lots of sense. And I also distinctly remembered one piece of information from the instructor earlier, that the bots were mana-sensitive, but here on my chosen stage, they couldn’t fight back, so it was the house that was probably mana-sensitive.
My plan was to be as invisible as possible in the mana realm.
I exhaled, deeply, and more until I had no more breath. My whole body and mind suddenly felt a strange and uncomfortable feeling of indescribable one-dimensionality. But I was used to this now. I had trained so long for this.
And then I ran straight at the gate.
Even though all my instincts fought against me to halt before crashing into the obviously inevitable pain, I kept running.
And then I phased straight through the gate.
========================
Many people are surprised by your actions! Head Instructor ‘Penny Farthings’ and many more have taken notice of you.
Your popularity rises.
Your potential ebbs.
========================
The last part interested me, but I had no time to stop moving.
My theory was simple. If mana was a second, breathable air, then expel all the air. The world of mana can only collide against itself unless harnessed by an Awakened.
I wasn’t Awakened, and neither did I have mana.
According to the playback footage, if I had scaled the gate or entered the house normally, the house would have alerted the inhabitant bots and it also would have begun rapidly firing darts at me, and each dart that hit me would have been a point lost. Even if I never made contact with the gate and vaulted over it, if my feet touched the ground behind the gate the darts would start firing anyways.
One, the whole area behind the gate could detect any intruders. Two, science obviously wasn’t capable of doing that, especially because the stage had no electricity to power anything inside.
Therefore the house only existed in the realm of mana. It was a glorified metal-but-mana detector. Obviously this wasn’t the case, as the house was made out of mana, so most likely I guessed it detected additional or excess mana.
And therefore I and the house would not be able to interact with each other unless I breathed in.
Which I needed to do in about twenty seconds.
With this firmly in my mind, I sprinted straight into the house and through the door. My feet were phased inside the hardwood floor, and spotting a bot sitting on the toilet behind a slightly opened bathroom door near the entrance, I pulled out my katana and stabbed it, which thankfully pierced through its abdomen. Bots too were made to exist in both realms. Anything in both realms can interact with and be interacted with anything from either realm. Poor thing.
It only took a couple seconds of running through the walls for me to figure out that the other bots were probably upstairs, and now I was desperate for a breath. My body screamed for air.
I turned tail and ran as fast as I could back outside and straight through the gate again, and then gasped loudly for air, stumbling to the ground. Now I could feel both the dizziness of the newfound mana and the lack of oxygen in my system.
It took a minute for me to recuperate, and I put the second part of my plan into action.
My second theory: the house could only detect mana over its set threshold.
With another breath out, I dashed in and kicked all of my gears and strength into action. This was the part that counted, and no mistakes could be made.
Running straight through the gate again, I made a beeline straight for the bot on the toilet.
Already I was running out of breath. Not good.
I impaled the bot again with my sword and, with surprising ease, I pulled it off the toilet and yanked it. The bot slumped forward and fell to the ground, and impaling it again except straight down I ran forward with my katana-bot mop-like creation, and its head pushed open the door. Nearing my max, I dragged it across the floor at full speed, and its head flew off as it rammed into the door and made it swing wide open.
Now outside, I dragged the bot to the edge of the gate, where I knew I couldn’t get it out by just dragging it. It would be stopped against the gate.
My heart was smashing against my chest, but slower and slower each time, my lungs screamed, my brain panicked, and with every single last bit of strength I could muster I threw the skewered bot over the fence with my katana still stuck to it.
It flew up, up, up, and then reached the apex of its arc just over the fence, and then came down, landing on the top of the fence. My heart sunk deep into my chest as I saw about to slide back into the yard, but then my katana, still in momentum, leaned forward and landed over the fence, dragging the bot over with it.
As they both clattered on the other side I gasped for a long-awaited breath, a breath that felt like the best thing in the world, the nervous part of my barely-conscious brain waiting for the alarm to set off.
But nothing happened, and everything was deadly still.
It worked.
I slumped to the floor to regain my energy and bearings.
Terrainers use a certain amount of mana to create, anything less was imperfect, a creation of something less, and anything more was too much, a creation of something else. Simply detecting a change in mana wouldn’t work, as mana was always being naturally depleted. If the balance of mana dipped below the threshold of perfection, then nothing should change under the assumption that the detector takes into account natural mana depletion, an imperfect and almost random factor. In that case, replacing mana, or even destroying the house was a solution to pass undetected.
And the bot was outside the house. I had successfully replaced the mana.
With another elated breath, I raised my hand in the air. Victory. “I’m so smart!”
A second later, I got up and dizzily stumbled into the house, completely weaponless. Now the third part of my plan, the easiest part.
I silently navigated my way to the kitchen which I had scouted out earlier, grabbing hold of the walls and chairs and other things to keep my balance. The kitchen was rather pleasant, nothing too fancy and yet with just the perfect amount of chaos and cleanliness. There was a smell coming from the candles like pumpkins and cherries, probably lit to mask the odor of something still cooking on the stove, and peering in it was some brown-ish murky sauce over a cut of pork, something with a delightfully warm and stinky smell that bubbled and simmered on the low heat.
The realism of everything unsettled me.
I looked around for something useful, and spotted on a little stand the knives ready for use. I grabbed the biggest knife there.
Passing through the dining room, there was a mirror on the close wall that divided the kitchen and table. In it, I could see the reflection of chicken bones on a plate, barbecue sauce, the photo frames around pictures of the bots, and my unsmiling face.
I really didn’t like this, no matter how prepared I came in.
Walking up the carpeted staircase, I noticed a bot at the top, and a light lullaby playing in the room to its right, and another room behind it that was dark. It was definitely made in the image of a kid playing video games, headphones on, and was staring at a computer completely oblivious to me behind it, watching it solemnly as it held down the mine button. The other monitor played a tutorial to build an automatic two-by-three piston door, and it glanced back and forth.
I absolutely despised this test.
“Nice world, dude,” I muttered. Before it could turn around to face me its head landed on the ground, clean off its body. The door ticked on and off in repetitive motion, still unfinished. I reached forward and clicked the button, turning it off.
This was another reason why people didn’t choose this map.
It was because the bots in the house acted just like people. We were the intruders, the psychopaths that murdered a happy family in cold blood.
I sadly looked at the monitor screen again, the nostalgia hurting my heart.
“I’ll… log on later. Haven’t played in a bit.”
A little noise behind me, and turning around there was a bot on the floor that had fallen back after seeing the child murdered. Its hand was over its chest, and in some sort of epiphanic moment I realized it was hyperventilating.
Oh, this was so cruel.
My head pounded.
“I’m… sorry…” I said as soothingly as possible, maybe to calm it or just myself, and approaching it shakily it trembled in place on the floor. “F-fast. I’ll do it fast. P-please look away.”
It didn’t understand me. Why did I say that?
Slowly, the bot turned its head away. My lungs couldn’t breathe.
I breathed anyway, and my arm swept forward.
—Thump
Closing my eyes, I walked into the room just around the corner, and then opened again to see a bot laying in the bed.
It was asleep, wasn’t it?
—Cshhk
My watch buzzed, and I looked down.
[Target(s) remaining: 1
Time remaining: 5 minutes]
I let out a shuddered breath, and followed the sounds of the lullaby, past the two corpses.
Corpses… they were bots…
No.
As I entered the room, thunder dropped.
No.
The walls were painted pink, and the room was decorated with all sorts of children’s toys.
No.
In the far back corner was a little cradle.
No. No.
In the cradle was the last target.
No, no, “No,” I said, and caught my breath.
The child rolled over in its little cradle towards me, and reached its arms out noiselessly. I stared at it.
I couldn’t move. The world had turned on me and was mocking me for the atrocities I had committed. A family, though even a simulation, was a family.
I could only think about my own family.
I could only imagine their faces on the decapitated heads of the bots.
Don’t think.
I walked forward.
Don’t think.
I raised the knife.
Please. Don’t think.
The knife reached its apex.
Please. Don’t think.
My arms fell down like death.
Please.
The watch buzzed again.
[Your exam is complete and is being evaluated. Please stand by.]
I fell to my knees and buried my head into my hands.
[Synchronized]
And then I wailed.