For some reason, I decided to enter Room 315 and was a little baffled with what I saw inside. The hotel I was in was about 15 minutes away from Barclay’s Center so I still had time left to make a decision. There were unopened bottles on the small table near one of the queen-size beds, empty bottles on the brown-stained carpet—some by the scratched window—and a few shattered ones. I heard the sound of alcohol dripping into a small, used trash bag and slid the half-empty bottle into it.

When I closed the door, I noticed that the doorknob from the inside bore a couple scars, its metal dented and warped as though it was repeatedly struck by something. I looked over to Rosey, seated at the edge of the bed with her head bowed, and noticed a small hammer in her hand. Her grip on it was loosening. Her grip on the knife wasn’t.

“Didn’t know they still had beer in here,” I said softly, crushing the bottles as I approached her. “Or is this wine…? I don’t really drink so I wouldn’t know.”

“Me…neither,” she said…well, she tried to say. I think she tried to. Her words slurred out of her mouth in a disjointed mess. “Master Corleone doesn’t…allow us to drink. It makes us confused and…think more.”

I paused, a little surprised she unintentionally admitted to who she was so casually. “I’m guessing your daughter’s a slave too?”

Rosey didn't answer. I guess it was pretty distasteful of me to ask that.

She began to sway unnaturally, giving me a fiery glare in between movements. “You think I'm stupid? My daughter's been suffering every day without me by her side and you two have the audacity to abandon her?”

“Your daughter's alive,” I assured. “But we ran into some trou-”

Rosey drunkenly attacked my chest with the knife she held onto so greatly. The knife didn’t pierce through me–she simply kept it nestled between my pecs as she mildly groaned.

I made a pretend sigh and grabbed the knife from her yielding hand. “I’m sorry,” I said, tossing the bottle to the other bed flooded by other bottles. “I understand the emotions you’re feeling right now. Your daughter’s in a scary place and you can’t help her righ-”

“You don’t understand anything!” Rosey shrieked, hurling the hammer at my face. “You’re a zombie! I heard Elias say it loud and clear.”

“Yeah, I know,” I responded, placing the hammer on the little space the table had left.

“You’re a zombie…you don’t have a brain to think or remember all the pain you’re about to cause.” Her eyelids began to droop over her eyes. “You don’t have a heart to…feel any sadness or regret about what’s about to happen to my Sun…to Victoria!”

I remained silent, absorbing all of her words. Her words didn’t sound like they were plagued with anger or hatred. Though, that could’ve just been the drinks manipulating her voice.

“You’re one to talk, you know,” she continued, slowly dragging herself to the other side of the bed. “Complaining about someone else's parenting…you basically sided with that zombie over my baby. At least I, her mommy, would’ve done something to stop that monster. But youuu…” She wagged her finger at me and scowled. “So bold to say ‘you’ll never be a true mother.’ What do you know about having a child!? You can’t have a child! You’ll never be a parent. And if you were one, you’d be shit at the job.”

Rosey opened her mouth, presumably to criticize me again, but she vomited instead. All over the bed sheet.

Ignoring this, I walked over to the other and sat on the unwashed bed. “Sunshine used to love syrup sandwiches.”

“Syrup…sandwiches?” asked Rosey, confusedly.

“Yeah. And I mean she could eat any sandwich I gave her as long as there was syrup between the breads. Ketchup? Mustard? Screw all that! Syrup was her true desire. And when I found out she liked syrup so much, you wanna know what I did?”

“You…ate it with her?”

“You damn right I did! I ate those syrup sandwiches everyday with her. But something strange happened after a couple days of doing that. She stopped eating it completely and changed her favorite food to pizza! Can you believe that? Not wanting to share her favorite meal with her own father?”

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

She sat up, seemingly interested in my story. “Well, that’s…just rude. Why would she do something like that?”

“I asked myself the same question, but then I realized the answer was pretty simple. I think a large part of me was forcing her to share that favorite food with me and by doing that, I was practically forcing her to eat it. I’m sure she noticed that…with how smart she is.”

“But you still ate the pizza with her, right?”

“Of course I didn’t,” I said, pulling her out the way before her vomit splashed on her face. “She didn’t want to do that so who am I to force her to do something I wanted for myself. That was something my own dad always did and I hated that so much. I never wanted to raise her like my own father raised me, and yet I was unknowingly.”

“I don’t really get the big deal though. It’s just food,” she remarked. “You don’t have to beat yourself up over that.”

“It’s…not just the food. A lot of things this past month made me realize that. Hell, a lot of things today made me realize that.”

Rosey’s eyes narrowed in suspicion, like her sober self had come back for a few moments. “What are you trying to tell me?”

“You said before that I would be a shitty parent. Well, you’re right—I am shit. I sheltered her from the world and from other people. That made her weak. I was so desperate to get rid of this disease that she has that I kept giving her these useless drugs and I only made it worse. I never even apologized to her for that…”

She stayed silent.

“I was actually planning on going back there with Elias. Not to save your daughter but to gather up these things that Sunshine could really use right now. But…” I covered my face and gripped the ooze. “A thought came into my head. If I did that, then I would be responsible for the death of your daughter. That shouldn't have mattered to me though. Sunshine is the most important person in my life and I shouldn't be so concerned about the life of some other random child. And yet, I still am.”

“You feel…regret,” she said, her attitude calmer.

“Possibly. I hate that there’s a part of me that doesn’t want to go through with it tonight. I know as a father, especially with her situation, I should be doing everything it takes to ensure a good future for her. But to do it at the expense of another kid’s life…” I hesitated to continue for a bit. “If that is something that she would prefer me to do, I don’t think I can go through with that.”

“I think you’re going about this the wrong way,” she suggested, sitting on the bed. “You said before that you hated when your dad forced you to do things you didn’t want to do and that he controlled you. Don’t you think your relationship with your daughter is the same way?”

“Yeah, I already said that I had a tendency to-”

“I’m not talking about the control you had over her,” she cut off. “I’m talking about the control she has over you. You think that’s what she would want, but you’ve never talked to her about any of this before. Look deep inside of that undead body of yours and ask yourself this; would the expense of someone’s life for your daughter’s happiness really make her happy?”

I scoured through every nook and cranny of the brain I had lost, all in an effort to find that one memory that could help me answer that question. Then, I remembered.

Sunshine and I were scavenging for resources in the wilderness when we came across an unfortunate situation. Not for us but for someone else. It was a boy, looked to be around twelve or thirteen, and he was being cornered by a pack of radioactive dogs. My daughter wanted to save her. But what was she gonna do? She was just a weak little girl.

I didn’t say that with any malice in my voice. I just wanted to protect her. But she wasn’t weak back then. I was. Fear struck my heart seeing those hungry beasts and I didn’t want to fight them. Bravery was written all over my daughter’s face.

She was only seven at the time.

“Alright, I get what you’re trying to say here but I still need to help her,” I said, standing up.

Rosey sighed, sinking into the bed’s stale embrace.“I didn’t say you shouldn’t help her. I said that you’re trying to achieve this goal in a way that isn’t true to what you want. You’re only thinking of one path and that’s breaking into that arena and getting Victoria killed so you can gather up some plants. Then, there’s the second path of not going at all and staying here. But you’re forgetting about the third path.”

“A third one?” I asked, anxious to know what this mysterious option was.

“Yeah, and that’s doing both. Saving my baby girl and getting those plants. Is it really that hard to find a way to do both?”

Both!? Is there really a way for me to do…No! Stop thinking so negatively, Jerome! Of course there’s a way!

That resolve and determination I had when I defied the Radius back in the Underground City…Find it, grab onto it, and absorb it into my system. The option to do both…if I realized that back then with Johnny, then I could’ve saved him from that masked maniac.

Are you really gonna make that same mistake again, Jerome Hunter!

Something began to beat in my chest–a similar feeling that I had right before I defeated Dante. It was telling me something. A sentence that I needed to hear.

“Have so much strength that a infinite number of options are available to you!”

I hardened my fist, bones near my mouth cracking with each passing second. I looked in the mirror across the two beds and noticed a difference. A thin smile from ear to ear was now etched on my face. A permanent toothy smile.

“Thank you, Rosey,” I said sincerely. “I have to go now.”

“Ahhh, my stomach,” she moaned. “I might just…vomit here again.”

A quiet laugh came out of me as I prepared to leave the room when I was stopped by one final question from Rosey.

“Did Sunshine…ever go back to eating those…syrup sandwiches?”

I turned to her and said “Nope. But now that I think about it, I think she just likes the actual syrup more. After all, every time she went off to eat her lunch, her breath still smelled like syrup.”

“Hmm, is that so?” I think I saw her mouth form a smile but I wasn’t sure. “I was wrong about what I said before. You’re not a bad parent.”

I don’t exactly know why I told her all of those things. I knew there was this feeling that my body was giving me. The feeling that I needed to talk or bond with this person. Perhaps it was that need to connect with another parent in a forsaken world like ours. Although, I felt the same thing when I talked to that Type Two Radion before. What was this? Now that I remember it, Rosey told me things that she would only know if she was outside with Elias and I. How did she know some of that?

Maybe her drunken ramblings made her say things randomly. So I pushed that thought aside and made my way out of Room 315.

It was time to create that third option.