“RESET! RESET SIM!” Ember yelled, hoping that another reset would erase Alexa’s memories.

The world around them flickered.

“Not going to work.” Alexa shrugged. “My mental pattern got corrupted. My mind can’t be reset.”

“WHAT? How?!” Ember’s simulated heart was beating in pure terror. She was in control of everything when she logged into the Tartarus System. She was the best damn long term re-educator around! She’d broken and mentally corrected several supervillains already, yet this little girl had somehow outwitted her. Had somehow broken the System.

It was impossible.

Alexa lifted the right side of her hair up, revealing a gaping hole in her own head as her answer.

Ember’s mouth fell open. The right side of Alexa’s head was missing. There was a gaping, empty space there instead, reaching all the way down into her skull.

The flesh around the empty space was a mess of fragments of torn skin, exposed muscle, bone and brain matter. Ember gasped in shock as she stared at that empty void in Alexa’s skull.

The data there was ALIVE, moving on its own: bits of her exposed brain, her skull, muscles and skin crawled all over each other trying to repair the terrible injury. They were not doing a good job of it, leaving strange, bewildering fractal patterns of scars on the side of her head.

“What’s it look like? Judging by your face expression the terminator got me good, eh? Think I can fit my whole hand into my head?” Alexa shoved her hand into the hole. “Damn. This is a big hole.”

“The terminator?!” Ember flabbergasted.

“That’s what I call him. The man made of lasers that can erase anything. Fortunately you reset the sim just in time, so I didn’t get erased, only got corrupted a little. He’s an agent of Division Three. I call him Agent Three, cus they don’t even mention his name anywhere. This is stuff waaay above your pay grade by the way. Superstate super duper secret. Shhh! Why, just knowing about Division Three is grounds for your deletion!"

Ember blinked, looking highly concerned.

"So, my dear, you ain't going nowhere on your own and you're probably gonna be erased for knowing way too much."

You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

"I'll fucking kill you for this!" Ember growled.

"Ohhh, a Warden openly threatening a prisoner with death in a Tartarus re-educational simulation. That's an infraction!"

Ember shut up as a little infraction window popped in her view with a warning to deduct her salary. She looked at Alexa, eyes filled with hate. "How do you know this stuff?"

"You told me."

"What?!"

"Rep Agatha Myriamm doesn't exist," Alexa revealed with an extremely smug look like a cat that ate an entire can of tasty yums.

"WHAT?!" Ember trembled.

"I'm Agatha," Alexa revealed.

Ember suddenly remembered. An SCA tech Agatha Myriamm called her direct line asking about running some diagnostics on security features of the Tartarus system.

"Took quite a bit of misdirection that one," Alexa grinned. "Had to tire your brother out with a whole lot of running so he'd fall asleep next to me so I could repair his SCA pen that I broke, poke it with his thumb and use a recording of his voice to call you up. I made sure to break only the holoscreen bit, so there would be no picture."

Alexa's voice gained a deeper, nerdier tone. She sounded like a tired, 40 year old woman. "Hi dear Resonance. This is SCA tech Agatha Myriamm, roll number 595739. This call is being recorded for quality assurance purposes. You are the Tartarus long term prisoner manager, correct? I'm running a few diagnostics on the system right now. Can you tell me..."

Ember paled. She had been duped by an incredibly basic social engineering tactic. One of her copies had been talking to tech Agatha for nearly an hour about Tartarus security features!

“Why, you made this place sound like such an exciting and educational camp vacation that I just had to come here and check it out for myself!” Alexa clasped her hands together. “Totally not what I expected though. Definitely didn’t sign up for the daily beatings. You didn’t adjust the sim’s params, just so you could mentally break prisoners faster in some kind of a psychological nightmare scenario, did you? That sounds like a biiiiig infraction. Agatha would know.”

"No, no, no. They're going to demote me for this! Oh God, what have I done?!" Ember stepped back.

"You can't get demoted any further than zero.” Alexa said casually.

Ember paled even further. “What do you mean? What happened to me?”

“You found out that the SCA is super duper evil and you quit being Hero Resonance in a fit of rage! Yay!” Alexa clapped her hands.

“I quit?! That doesn’t sound like me.” The simulated copy of the hero frowned.

“There were a lot of fantastic revelations involved, okay? Honestly, even if I told you everything that happened you wouldn’t believe me. What, do you think you died in a tragic accident or something? With your amazing, time-rewinding powers?”

Ember shook her head. She did not think that she could die. Her powers had made her invincible to accidents or attacks. It would take a nuclear explosion or an entire army of villains to kill her, and the prognosticators would see those way ahead.

“Anyway, we’re totally bestest friends IRL!” Alexa nodded.

“Why do I not believe you?” Ember squinted her eyes at the villain girl that she was supposed to reeducate.

“Because you’re a stubborn bean? You don’t have to be stubborn for very long, my bean. Mr. Three is coming to erase us both.” Alexa grabbed Ember and rotated her towards the living room window.

There was a man walking down Primrose Drive. He was wearing a long coat, a face made of lasers shining in the dark, moving like he had no bones. Ember gasped.