"You okay, Princess?"
Jude pulled her and wrapped his arms around Lucy, feeling her body quiver against him, her earlier sobs still shaking her shoulders. She sank into his hug, her face pressing briefly against his chest. She sniffled softly, a few stray tears dampening his shirt.
She pulled back just enough to show her eyes red but bright, the faintest smile tugging at the corner of her lips. Then, almost suddenly, a laugh bubbled up.
“Yeah,” she whispered, wiping at her nose with the back of her hand, a grin breaking through. “I’m fine. I’m… I’m ready. I’m fucking ready.”
"Now, there you go."
Jude pulled away from Lucy, casting her a reassuring nod before approaching the device. He raised his hand, fingers hovering just above the screen, ready to press down. But as he looked closer, his hand froze mid-air.
The screen was black.
He turned to Fatima. “I think… the machine’s off.”
Fatima’s brow furrowed as she stepped up beside him, squinting at the screen. Without hesitation, she started tapping randomly with her fingers. After a moment, she stopped, letting out an exasperated sigh.
“It just... went off! It’s… off!”
Jude's hand hovered uselessly over the lifeless screen as he replied, “That’s... exactly what I said.”
He stared at the landmark scanner. He hadn’t done anything to warrant this, hadn’t broken a rule, and yet here he was, facing a black screen.
The landmark scanner had welcomed Lucy and guided her through her final level, but now, for him, it sat cold and apathetic. He had done nothing wrong, but he felt he was being punished. For what?
Fatima tilted her head, almost oblivious to Jude's predicament, as she stroked her chin. “Thiago will look into it, no problem. Anyway… have you eaten? It’s past noon!”
Jude, Teresa, and Lucy stared at her without any motion.
She blinked back at them, an innocent smile stretching across her face as if she hadn’t just ignored Jude's chance to move forward.
“Not hungry?” she asked.
“This is serious. I can’t level up—this Landmarker is dead.” Jude tried to explain.
Fatima, already halfway through a careless turn on her heel, gave a quick wave over her shoulder. “Thiago will handle it, no worries!” she chirped as if they’d just reported a slight power outage. “Helicopter’s parked upstairs, by the way.”
Jude blinked, momentarily thrown off track. “Helicopter?”
“Yep. I'm not going to walk the whole maze. No need to go through it if you don’t want to. Didn’t I mention?”
Jude’s brow furrowed as he exchanged a look with Teresa. “You mean we could’ve flown over this whole mess?”
"I never saw a helicopter," Lucy said, awestruck.
Teresa gestured for them to catch up, a smirk on her face as she trailed behind the friend with a casual stride. “Come on, guys,” she said.
“Wait—you’re telling me we could’ve avoided the entire maze?” Jude repeated.
Teresa’s smirk grew. “Well, sure. But where’s the fun in that?”
Jude’s shoulders slumped in exaggerated disbelief as he trudged after her, muttering under his breath, “Fun? I didn’t realize terror and exhaustion qualified as fun.”
Lucy stifled a laugh as Teresa shot Jude a sly grin, clearly pleased by the irony.
"Lazaro is right, you're a nutjob."
----------------------------------------
Jude’s eyes wandered over the bizarre scene, a strange mix of familiarity and absurdity. The table was a lavish spread—roast beef piled high, steamed vegetables, wine glistening in the glass, and fresh-squeezed orange juice.
But something felt wrong, disorienting, as if this reality were twisting around him, fading in and out of focus like an acid-trip daydream.
He glanced down at his own hand just as he was about to lift a forkful of beef to his mouth. He froze, heart pounding. Where his pinkie should’ve been, there was only empty space, the skin smooth as if the finger had never existed at all. It wasn't a dream.
Jude snapped back to the table. Teresa chatted with Fatima, their banter echoing around him in a blur. Lucy sipped on her juice, eyes glued to a cartoon flashing across the TV, entirely absorbed. Across from him sat Thiago, a massive figure, bald-headed with scales peeking out from the collar of his shirt, each one shifting as he swallowed a mountain of food.
Without warning, Thiago’s eyes were pinning Jude with an upsetting stare. “You aren’t hungry? You don’t like the food?”
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Jude didn’t know how to react, glancing back down at his hand, still clutching the fork, his missing pinkie unmistakably gone. He flexed the fingers he had left, half-expecting the sensation to jolt him awake from some twisted dream. But no—the scene was stubbornly real.
Right across from him sat Thiago with his muscled arms stretched, his sleeves taut, and his rough, scaly skin rippled slightly as he moved. Jude's brain stalled, trying to reconcile the imposing figure with the person he’d vaguely expected—a human, maybe someone above a healthy BMI.
Instead, Thiago looked like he belonged more to a different species altogether, his pointed chin sharp, a thick tail curling by his side, and a few scales glinting around his neck like an odd, misplaced armour.
Why had he ever assumed Thiago would look like... a fat human?
“Not hungry?” Thiago asked, pausing mid-bite.
Jude shifted uncomfortably, setting down his fork. “Guess my appetite’s… elsewhere,” he replied, eyes wandering around the room. It was like nothing he’d ever seen—green vines and thick-leafed plants spilt from pots and tangled around metal beams, mingling with thick bundles of wires snaking along the floor.
The walls, lined with screens, flickered with various displays, casting a glow that mixed strangely with the warmth of natural light filtering through patches of greenery.
Everywhere he looked, cables and plants seemed woven together, tech and nature locked in a flat on the sixth floor of a building. The screens occasionally blinked, some flashing data he couldn’t decipher, while others displayed hazy landscapes from what he assumed were beyond the simulation’s boundaries. It felt like a glimpse into some hybrid world, part greenhouse, part control centre with a pink sky.
Earlier from his seat in the helicopter, Jude’s gaze drifted out the window, taking in the strange, quiet beauty of the landscape below. The town, or what was left of it, stretched out in a network of buildings and empty streets, each structure partially overtaken by green.
Ivy crawled up walls, trees rooted in cracked pavement stretched toward the sun, and shrubs sprouted from rooftops and balconies. Roads and plazas were softened by a blanket of moss and wildflowers, blurring the lines between the town’s concrete and its new life. Everything was livid.
Fatima, piloting the helicopter, caught his wandering gaze and offered a simple explanation over the hum of the blades. "It’s intentional, you know. Built to merge, to let nature reclaim. All part of the plan. We call it living organically—a reminder, really. So we don’t repeat… the same mistakes.”
Jude kept watching as they passed over rows of buildings half-buried in green, everything blending. It just looked perfect. Maybe too perfect.
Jude’s fork still paused mid-air as he looked over at Thiago, asking, “Something is wrong with the food?”
Jude shook his head, his lips curving into a thin smile. “It’s not the food. Just—things on my mind,” he replied, tracing his fingers absently over the rim of his plate. “The last scanner shut down on me. I missed my level up.”
Thiago tilted his head as though considering something. “Well, if levelling up is all you’re after, that’s easy enough.” Without hesitation, he called out, “Fatima! Where’s my tablet?”
Across the table, Fatima’s laughter cut short, and she gave him an exasperated look. “Exactly where you left it!”
Thiago huffed, setting his fork down with a clatter. “Woman! If I remembered where I left it, I wouldn’t be asking, would I?”
“I’m not your secretary or your personal psychic! You should know where you leave your shit!” she shot back.
Unfazed, Thiago merely crossed his arms. “Fatima, where is it?” he asked again. “Please.”
With a sigh that seemed to carry the weight of a thousand such requests, Fatima’s expression softened, her eyes rolling skyward before she muttered, “Side table in the bedroom.”
“Why didn’t you just say so!” Thiago rose, his chair scraping back. He strode out of the room, and each step he took seemed to resonate, shaking the floor as he vanished into the hallway.
Jude’s thoughts flickered to the other Friends he’d met. None had looked quite like Thiago. Some were lean and wiry, others delicate and lithe, but none shared the same imposing size or structure. It was like each Friend was cast from a different mould, their physical forms as varied as human ethnicities. Yet, the differences seemed deeper, more layered, and harder to pin down.
Thiago returned, the tablet balanced in his enormous grip. His fingers tapped deftly across the screen. He barely looked up as he asked, "Where do you need to go?"
Jude hesitated. "Uh… the Arena."
"And Len?"
Jude shrugged, rubbing the back of his neck. "I’ll probably need to track down more landmark scanners to level up before I can unlock those areas," he said, feeling the gap in his knowledge about Len's whereabouts.
Thiago didn’t even glance up from his tablet, fingers still gliding over the screen as he replied, "End of the Phantom Zone, near the outskirts. That’s where Len stays."
He tapped a few more times before adding, almost as an afterthought, "Paris wants us to get the kid there as soon as we can."
The words slipped out of Jude before he could stop himself. "Why?"
A small, loaded silence settled over the table. No one seemed willing to speak until Lucy spoke. Her gaze fixed on the cartoon characters bouncing across the TV screen.
"I think… if I’m going to… well, you know, die..." she hesitated, then continued with an odd steadiness, "it’s probably better if I do it with her around. You know, just… feels right."
Her tone was matter-of-fact, almost casual, as if she were talking about something as ordinary as her favourite cereal. Her eyes stayed glued to the TV, her fingers absentmindedly stirring the straw in her drink. Though the features of her face might have suggested a young teenager, her expression at that moment was unmistakably that of a child, focused and enchanted by the animated world on the screen.
Jude's shoulders slumped as he looked down. His hand found the edge of the table, fingers drumming a slow, uncertain rhythm. He had forgotten for a moment how frail Lucy's life was right now. A foot on Earth, another in this world.
For a brief second, he’d allowed himself to forget the ticking clock that haunted her every step, a lapse that now filled him with a quiet shame. He cleared his throat. "Right."
Thiago’s fingers moved methodically over the tablet screen, his gaze absorbed in whatever he was doing. Across the table, Teresa and Fatima leaned back into their own conversation, punctuated with the occasional laugh or knowing glance.
Jude sat there. His plate lay untouched, the steam from the vegetables thinning into the air as they cooled. He picked up his fork, pushed a piece of broccoli around, and then let it fall.
Thiago angled the tablet toward Jude, his finger tapping firmly on a bright square at the centre of the screen. An icon of a fingerprint blinked with the text: Please finalize the operation by authentication.
Without a word, Thiago’s eyes shifted to Jude, his expression expectant yet casual, as if this step was nothing more than routine.
Jude pressed his finger to the screen, the familiar feel of the glass cool beneath his touch. As soon as he did, an eerie stillness blanketed the room. Conversations cut short. Teresa’s fork, mid-air, paused. Even Fatima, who had been laughing moments before, fell silent.
Jude’s gaze darted around, the quiet pressing in on him. Only the cheerful chime of a victorious notification and the distant buzz of Lucy’s cartoon cut through this unreal new reality.