"What the fuck is that thing? Why isn't it getting reset?!" Ember hissed, squinting at the advancing lanky man.
“He's a... Super made of lasers!" Alexa explained.
"How the shit did he get into Tartarus?!" The hero's echo demanded.
"From what I understand, Mr. Three can become information and come into any system. Even Tartarus! You see, owning and dominating my server in Tartarus isn’t enough as it’s a closed system. Some overpowered idiot had to punch their way in, open the gate, so to speak. Now we can use the hole he made to escape.”
“What?"
"I need your help to escape, Warden," Alexa said.
"WHAT?! Escape?! I can’t. I…”
“How long have you been alive as an echo in the Tartarus sim, Em? One hundred thousand years? A million? You’re the longest running copy of Hero Resonance. I know that you don’t want to die. Mr. Three is going to erase you simply because you know he exists. Even if you somehow manage to avoid him... the techs will erase you as soon as they realize that Resonance quit the force and resigned from the Superstate in shame! She's abandoned, forgot about you!”
The hero's echo sputtered.
"The bastard from Division Three is coming," Alexa offered Ember a hand. “Come with me if you want to live.”
Ember stared at Alexa’s hand for a few moments glancing between her and the quickly approaching, terrifying agent of Division Three.
She was just a data ghost that had been trapped, checkmated, doomed to erasure.
Alexa was right, Ember… this copy of Ember did not want to die. She wanted to live, she wanted to find out why the real her quit the SCA. She reached out and grabbed the villain’s hand.
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Alexa watched as Ember took her hand and exhaled with a smile. She had done it. She had turned a Warden into a prisoner of her own fears, defeating the Tartarus simulation.
On its own, dominating and resisting the system wasn’t enough.
She had to make sure that the Tartarus simulation got damaged enough, have a Warden Admin on her side and have a data breach to escape. All factors had to come together. She had spent an unnecessarily long time waiting for the stars to align.
Now there was only the matter of finding where the data breach made by Three was.
She could almost hear the word 'Nullify' as she and Ember ran out of the living room. The window behind them detonated as the lasers struck, igniting the pretty, pink wallpaper.
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The Wardsworths were sitting in the kitchen, ready for breakfast, looking in confusion at the spontaneous combustion of their living room.
Mr. Wardsworth saw the girls. Alexa jumped atop the table.
“Where are the car keys, chubmonster?” She pointed the kitchen knife at him.
“What?!” He choked. "Cassie, get off the table this instance!"
“Do you mind helping?” Alexa yelled back at Ember.
“Give me the car keys, dad!” Ember yelled as another laser shot carved through the kitchen, vaporizing a nice set of kitsch dishes and mahogany cabinets. Her Admin control over the simulation made the man obey instantly.
Mr. Wardsworth nodded and pulled car keys out of his pocket, handing them to Ember.
“Yoink!” Alexa grabbed the keys from Ember’s hand, leaping off the table.
"WHAT? WHERE YOU GOIN', YOU MISCREANT! PUT THOSE BACK THIS INSTANT!"
Mr. Wardsworth shouted at Alexa.
“To the garage, obviously!” Alexa yelled back at him.
"Not my Beetle!" Mr. Wardsworth yelped as Alexa kicked open the door to the garage, Ember following her at breakneck pace.
The car came to life as Alexa turned the key, pressing on the accelerator.
Ember was in the shotgun seat, looking terrified. There was no time to open the garage door. The big garage door groaned and screeched, shattering as the Beetle punched through the cheap material.
Mr. Wardsworth screamed incoherent threats.
The man made of lasers turned their way and started to run after the car, moving in freakish, increasingly bigger leaps as if he was warping across space, his limbs extending like a caricature.
Ember watched him via the back mirror in pure terror.
The thing chasing them was inhuman, impossible, tirelessly matching the speed of the vehicle.
She knew a lot of SCA secrets, but she’s never heard of Division Three, never knew about this freakish data-killer super. Tartarus was supposed to be a closed, unbreakable system!
“Nullify!” The red laser beams stuck the back side of the vehicle, cutting through the wheels and erasing them out of existence.
Alexa screamed, trying to regain control of the damaged car. The beetle swerved, its wheels coming apart. The out of control car plowed into a fuel truck parked inside the Centralia Petroleum gas station.
A small mushroom cloud woven of fire rose into the air, disrupting the peaceful night of the Centralia suburbs.
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Alexa and Ember found themselves standing in the middle of the 8 Primrose drive living room. Upon their deaths the simulation had reset itself automatically.
Ember looked aghast. She never experienced being burned alive before.
“I can see that this is going to be very painful for the both of us,” Alexa said with a sigh.
“Do we run to the car again?” Ember stuttered.
“No. The back wheels are permanently gone. The data he erases doesn’t get reset,” Alexa pointed at the living room wall. "The sim tries to repair itself... but does so rather poorly."
Ember looked at the wallpaper that was partially burned away along with drywall and wooden beams and foam, exposing bricks underneath.
The normal, linear arrangement of bricks had been disrupted by a new pattern. Ember gulped staring at the freakish fractal arrangement of bricks in the wall. It was as if some insane craftsman had chosen to rearrange the bricks to partially fill a sudden gap, using smaller and smaller bricks, positioned at weird angles until they had reached a large, gaping hole leading to the outside.
“Oh yeah, try not to get lasered. You won’t like being corrupt, trust me. I do hope there was nothing important in those memory bits of mine,” Alexa giggled, looking far too cheerful for someone who had a fist-sized gaping hole in the side of their head.
Ember considered appealing to Three to spare her; maybe the Agent was only after Alexa... but then she remembered that Resonance had resigned.
She had left herself behind in the system, likely didn't care about the copy one bit.
To Hero Resonance, the digital ghost was likely no different from any other duplicate that she had made with her power. In the eyes of her real self she had to die once her job was done, no discussion about it.
Ember put her hands over her face, whimpering softly. She felt doomed, trapped between the hammer and the anvil, with no possible way out.