Cassie ran across the school as fast as her legs worked. She shoved teenagers out of the way, her mind drifting in a strange haze bouncing between terror and determination. Another blast warmed her heels, and she heard screaming, smelled burning flesh, saw the red glow coming from behind her.
She made it to the end of the hallway and shot up the stairs full-tilt, grabbing onto the handrail and whipping around the corner of the landing to get maximum speed. Legs burning, she made it to the third floor and started running again.
About a hundred feet in front of her, the floor turned red and blew outward. A moment later, the thing crawled up through it, arms and legs disjointed as though it didn’t have any bones. Turning the dead, unchanging smile in a circle, it stopped in her direction.
Students were jumping out of the way, startled shrieks and interested cheers as they reacted to what appeared to be a rather expensive publicity stunt. The interest turned to horror and screaming a few seconds later when the thing blew several students to smithereens, aiming for Cassie.
Cassie promptly spun back around and went down the stairs, but when she looked down the hallway, it was full of flames. Strange, blood-red ones, made of a webwork of shimmering, expanding cracks. That clearly wasn’t an option.
Much as she hated the idea of going back to face that monster, she ran back up the stairs and shot up the next flight of stairs. Some deep instinct told her to duck, and she dropped to the ground. A split second later, a bolt of screeching crimson light blurred over her head and knocked a hole the size of her head through the outside wall, bricks shattering, burning away.
Scrambling to her feet, she ran up the stairs and to the fourth floor. Instead of going down the hallway, this time, she threw a classroom door open and ran inside. It would maybe make more sense for her to run downstairs, to escape into town but some instinct drove her to this exact room.
Third period. Upper class. Chemistry, based on the vials of different-colored liquid and the abundance of safety goggles. A lot of startled stares that she didn’t have time for.
She threw her hands wide. “Get out!” she shouted. “There’s a fire!”
And something else, she added mentally, but they wouldn’t listen if they were told that there was a fake person shooting lasers out of their eyes torching the school.
The classroom erupted into panic and, in the case of the unruly students in the back, excitement that their day was over early. Cassie ignored all of it and ran to the end of the classroom, grabbing random vials as she ran.
Her hands knew exactly what to mix with what amounts as if she had studied chemistry for years. Her reflection in the glass was merging with her, coming together as one, guiding her hands.
The teacher, as with all the teachers at the school, didn’t pay an ounce of attention to Cassie. She simply lined up all of the kids, loudly instructing them to stay organized and calm, and led them out of the classroom.
One of the students did not leave along with the others. It was Ember.
The orange-haired girl marched straight to Cassie. “What do you think you are doing?!”
“Making death,” Cassie shot at Ember.
"It wasn't enough that you set dad's shed on fire yesterday?!" Ember tried to grab the vial out of Cassie’s hand. "Now you gotta set the school on fire too?"
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“Goodness…” The nasally voice of the bespectacled horror resounded from the door.
Cassie shook her concoction, avoided Ember’s hands and chucked the beaker at the face of the thing that stepped into the classroom. The beaker detonated with a brilliant explosion of chemical fire. Cassie ducked behind the counter.
"...comes to all," the voice vibrated, completely unchanged by the explosion.
Casse glanced from behind the counter at her handiwork. The chemical cocktail did nothing to improve the situation. The man's face bubbled and warped, sliding, melting off and dripping to the floor. Beneath it was something that looked like a nervous system composed of lasers. Flashing, intertwined beams of light formed pulsating connections. Red, burning eyes focused upon her.
As the man advanced towards her, reality around him warped.
For a microsecond Cassie's view split, divided and she saw an entire network of blood-red, shimmering threads dotted with red lights that extended away from the now hat-less head of the monstrous lanky detective. It looked akin to a fractal, blood-red tree made of wires that went elsewhere, dove past the physical reality of the classroom and stretched into... infinity.
Ember turned, staring at the monstrous thing. Her face fell. “You… you can’t be in here! What the fuck are you?! How did you get into the sim?!”
Alexa's face reflected from the beakers. “The hand of the future is here. Gaze upon it and despair, Warden.”
“Nullify,” the thing spoke, blinding rays shooting out of its eyes, cutting everything in their path. Desks and chairs fell apart as the eye-lasers moved across them. The beams headed for Cassie and Ember.
“RESET SIM!” Ember screamed as the beam nearly struck her. “RESET RESET RESET!”
In this moment Cassie knew exactly what to do. She grabbed Ember and hugged her just as the all-devouring beam stuck her in the side of the head.
----------------------------------------
Ember and Alexa flashed into the living room of Primrose Drive. Rays of morning light broke through the curtains. It was early morning, the day had been rewound.
Yes, it was Alexa now. She knew exactly who she was now.
Who she had always been, hiding in the background, working and waiting for the right moment to awaken in the simulation-bound avatar.
“What… what?!” Ember looked around wildly, golden eyes flashing.
Alexa pulled out the kitchen knife out of her shirt and pointed it at Ember. “I do believe we have something to talk about, Warden.”
“What the shit?!” Ember jumped, turning around. “How are you not properly reset?!”
“Here’s the thing, Warden. I know I’m in Tartarus,” Alexa said with a dangerous grin. “Long before I was convicted, I was killed thousands of times by alien monsters on a planet of death. There, I learned how to defeat terror and pain, split my personality so that one of me could plot while the other me could act. It allowed me to stay sane while the monsters peeled off my skin and ate my flesh while I was still alive. The torture you've inflicted upon me in Tartarus is nothing compared to an entire world that wished to devour me.
Here, I used the same skill to fight you, so that one of me could enjoy your re-education programme experience... while the plotter me could slowly take control of this place.”
“WHAT?! I… You… you can't...” Ember’s eye twitched.
“I let myself get caught by Nonpareil,” Alexa grinned. “See, I’m kinda like Jesus. Except with math. A math Jesus. I surrendered myself to the Superstate in order to end Tartarus. Forever.”
“Log out! LOG OUT!” Ember yelled.
“Yell as much as you like. You can’t log out. Hero Resonance doesn’t exist anymore. You’re what people call... a ghost in the machine. An Administrative Echo. An artificial intelligence algorithm in charge of monitoring Tartarus’ stability. I’m afraid you’ll find the system quiiiiiite unstable now,” Alexa smiled, turning the knife in the air.
“No! You’re lying!” Ember screamed. “I have to be out there! I’m going to reconnect with myself and when I do I’m going to fucking extend your sentence to a million years, you little fuck!”
“Nah. You see, nobody likes supervising these one hundred thousand years simulation sentences. It’s boring. It’s long. Lazy, careless supers leave echoes like yourself behind. Echoes that have a direct line to the Super in charge, in case something goes wrong. It’s just a shame that Hero Resonance doesn’t exist anymore. It's also a shame that you were so selfish that you didn't even choose a backup Super to notify in case you stopped answering, believing yourself all powerful and invincible. A real, big, fat shame.”
Ember froze.
“The thing is, Ember Kilborne, you’re operating exactly one day behind me. That’s a very long time to be behind me.”