“I... I have a lot to think about.” I barely felt the weight of my hand depressing the disconnect key on the imposing metal podium of the ship’s main terminal. I couldn’t bear to read another new word from Meryll. I already stared in disbelief at the truth, bared to me at last.

There was a part of me that had always known. That I had pushed down so many times so that hope could live on. Hope that there was some kind of meaning to all of this. To the unenviable sorrow that constantly overwhelmed me. To the suffering I’d endured in both of the realities I’d known. I had hoped that I could be returned to that. To a time before I was broken.

My eyes were wet. I could feel tears beginning to form.

No. No, she had to be mistaken. There had to be an explanation for this. That hope had to remain. I stared at the file she’d given me, signed by a Dr. Fuller. I read through it again. And again. But each time, it only cemented what Meryll said further into my heart. She wouldn’t lie. She would never lie to me. And this doctor she trusted? They had no reason to make this up.

I don’t know how long I stared into the screen, eyes unmoving as a stream of tears steadily gathered down my face. I finally put a hand up to the screen as if I could wipe the words away, make it untrue, make the world make sense. Maintain my purpose. My whole reason for enduring all of this. My whole reason that I’d put up with all of this for so long.

No. It wasn’t true. It couldn’t be true. No matter how much it made sense, it was never true! I would return home one day! I had to! I would see my family again. I’d remember my mother’s face. I’d hold her and tell her how much I missed her and how I’m okay now. I was going to make it back to my mother and my brother and my cat, and I would be able to look at them long and hard and put faces to my memories of them again. I would be an artist again. I would create branding and graphics for dozens of companies, and in whatever spare time I could steal away, I would create images of a kinder more fantastical world for the people who followed my work on the relay.

I would be happy again, dammit! I had to get back there! It had to have meaning!

Discomfort jarred me back to reality. My fingers were gripped so tight around the edge of the terminal screen that the skin of my fingertips felt raw. I was breathing heavily, and my tears were already dripping down my chin to the floor under my chair.

And on the screen, there were still Meryll’s words and her evidence.

She was crazy. She’d always been crazy. The least stable of all the Arthausen units. She was a beaten animal in human skin. What did she know? And she has the gall to think she knows better than I do. That she’s figured out some kind of solution, that she can live in peace in this mad world. She would, wouldn’t she? She thinks she fits right in here when she gets the opportunity to live among them, like a normal person, like she belongs here!

I sobbed. No. Stop that. She’s not crazy. She’s your sister. You saw her at her worst already, and she’s so much clearer now. She’s found a way to cope. How can anyone live with this, though? It’s impossible. And there’s no need. The simulation. There’s the simulation to return to.

Except there isn’t.

I slammed my hand against the desk and leaned forward to desperately read the text of the report one more time, as if sheer willpower would change its contents. ‘she cannot be reinserted.’ Bullshit! They promised! They’ve told me again and again that I would be returning to my family! That I would get exactly what I wanted! What I deserved! I deserved this, dammit!

I grabbed hold of the screen and grunted as I tried to rip it from the terminal and toss it aside. I needed to get these lies out of my face. I yelled out as loudly as I could when it wouldn’t give. I sobbed as I pulled my arm back and tried to punch the screen in. The material was too strong, and I only hurt myself as I slumped over the terminal. I was weak. I was so fucking weak!

I had never felt this urge to break something so badly before, but the lack of results it gave me was so unsatisfying that it made the injustice feel so much worse.

I was powerless. Nothing I did mattered. Did anything I ever did matter? All the times I’d cooperated with my handlers without so much as a thank you. All the times I let them probe my brain for the secrets of my visions because they didn’t trust my words. All the times I’d given up opportunities for something that might have been good just to cater to their rules and whims. All the times I’d foregone rewards in the hopes that it would earn me favor and get me home that much sooner. It couldn’t all be for nothing!

But it was. I let out another frustrated scream, standing up and pushing the chair to the side, only falling to the ground myself because it was bolted to the floor. I slammed my fist against the steel floor over and over again. It hurt, but I didn’t care. It felt better to hurt my hand than it did to face the truth!

I suddenly stopped. It felt better to hurt my body than to endure this pain. I couldn’t help myself, I let out a single bark of a laugh through my tears. Just like her. I was just like her. I couldn’t help myself but break down into a manic fit of sobbing laughter as I collapsed onto my side beneath the chair. Meryll told me the same thing. She’d told me that was why she used to bite herself. That she liked to hurt herself because it distracted her from the ‘inside pain’. I thought I’d understood what she meant, but no, she was right. It was better. I shakily lifted my arm up. I still remembered where she bit me that day. There was a faint, nearly circular, scar where she’d marked me so long ago.

I shook as I lifted it up to my mouth, and I closed my teeth down over where she’d once torn my flesh. I winced at the pain. It felt good. It was relief. I bit down harder, but I couldn’t bring myself past a certain point. It didn’t hurt enough. It didn’t hurt enough and I was too weak to press down and break everything like she did. I lacked the resolve to do what was necessary. I couldn’t bring myself to use what little agency I still had.

I sobbed again and lowered my arm. What was I doing? This wasn’t helping. Not really. I understood the sentiment, but I couldn’t hurt myself. Instinct forced me to stop. I wasn’t as strong as Meryll was. Was I ever? Maybe she’d had the right idea the whole time, but I was too weak to accept it. Pain to stifle the sorrow. Blood for a moment of respite from the cruelty.

I wanted to blame her. I wanted to yell at her, ask her why she would do this to me. Why she would take away the only comfort I ever had? She ruined everything. I could have kept going. I could have returned to Foundation and kept doing their bidding. I could have spent my whole miserable life believing that there might be some respite just around the corner. That I could go home to a world that wasn’t THIS.

It wasn’t her fault, though. It wasn’t her that dangled this in front of me for so long. Meryll never gave me false hope. Meryll doesn’t have to live a lie to keep going. Why couldn’t I be like Meryll? I put so much effort into nurturing her, and she ended up being the one with all the courage. She was the one who was right. Maybe she was even the one who was really sane.

I sat in numb silence for what must have been hours, my thoughts cycling through emotions I didn’t even think I was capable of anymore. Impotent rage, pointless blame, but always returning to the familiar bottomless sorrow. My body refused to budge except to occasionally break my fist against the floor again. I’d used up all my meek energy in a matter of minutes as soon as the call ended.

There had to be a solution here. There had to be something I could do to fix all this. I couldn’t let it all be for nothing. Should I return to Foundation? The liars. The bastards. I felt sick even thinking of following another of their orders. So much time and effort wasted. So many awful futures orchestrated into reality for what? A pipedream. A fantasy.

I curled up and wept. My family. I’d never see them again. I’d never even remember any of them again, would I? I was some kind of monster born to no one. I experienced a normal life, but I never had one. I fostered mundane talents, but they weren’t real either, were they? I’d been so fixated on pleasing Foundation the entirety of this life that I’d never even tried to see if any of my learned talents from the sim had even transferred to the true physical world.

I slammed my fist to the ground once more, then recoiled with a hiss. Bringing my hand up to my face, I saw grease and blood mingling on my knuckles. I’d been so numbed that I hadn’t noticed them becoming raw and breaking apart until now.

Blood. Blood was a medium like any other, and blood had profound meaning. With monumental effort and tears, I managed to bring myself up to a sitting position, looking between a blank sheet of metal near the bottom of the terminal. I winced as I put my other hand’s finger to the fresh blood seeping from my aching knuckles and pictured what I wanted to see most in my head. My family. I imagined them as best as I could, as an image I could create.

I carefully placed my bloody finger to the metal sheet and froze. I stared for some time at it. I kept expecting something to happen. For specific knowledge to descend on me and the details of how to create art to become clear to me. I’d done it so many times before in the sim. So often. I could picture myself creating. It was my entire life. But that life wasn’t real. My work was never real. The skills I’d learned had never been real. They were just abstractions of creation that didn’t translate into technique. My finger slowly drooped down and smeared the blood down to the floor.

I had nothing. I had never had anything. I closed my eyes and clenched my teeth before I yelled out at the top of my lungs, slamming my broken fist into the panel that should have been my canvas. I punched it again, then hissed as the pain overwhelmed my misguided rage. I curled up and cradled my fist, whimpering and sobbing in pain and sorrow as Meryll’s words replayed themselves in my head once more.

—

I still lay on the floor of the cockpit. I didn’t know how long it had been, but my rage and my shattered optimism had long since descended into hopeless sorrow.

Several times, I’d considered ending it. I knew that there was a pistol in the survival kit in the supply closet. It would be as simple as pulling a trigger. Or if I couldn’t gather the energy to even get there, I could smash my head against the floor right in front of me. I could even just continue doing nothing. I’d grown hungry ages ago, and the dull throbbing in my head accompanying the growling of my stomach told me that I would expire doing absolutely nothing, eventually.

Would that be better? Would death be preferable to this? What does death even feel like? Is it comfortable? Will the pain be over? Will the sorrow end? Does oblivion await? Or is there more? More opportunities for something else? Or just more suffering? Nothingness forever more or perhaps another opportunity. It didn’t seem like a terrible deal. It couldn’t be worse, right?

I sniffled. That didn’t seem right, though.

Wasn’t that just throwing myself into another unknown? In another life, would I just be manipulated again? Would I make the same mistakes? Would I be stuck in an endless cycle of false hope and despondent suicide?

No.

In that moment, something inside of me broke. A dam I’d been bolstering with the last remnants of false hope that the answers might still exist somewhere in a false world run by my greatest enemy.

I grit my teeth and pushed my palm against the floor. Never again. I wouldn’t fall for it again. Here and now, in this life, I knew the truth. I was no longer clouded by deception and false promises. Yes, I could surrender. Maybe I could try again. But maybe there was still something I could do with this life. I wouldn’t give Foundation the satisfaction of being rid of me that easily. Meryll had the right idea all along. This new, stronger, wiser Meryll knew what she was doing.

Foundation did this to me. No one else. They created me. They ruined me. They told me exactly what I wanted to hear, and they played with my vulnerability to use me.

I needed to live.

And they needed to pay.

I stumbled up onto my feet, using the terminal as a crutch to hold my unsteady legs. In fatigued delirium, I somehow felt stronger and more clear-minded than ever. Only righteous anger fueled me as I leaned on the wall and dragged myself to the supply room.

Though I wanted to act, my first goal was food. I’d starved myself long enough, and I needed that to stay alive before anything else if I was going to bring some kind of meaning to it all. I needed to parch my arid throat as well. My body needed to be refreshed, and then I would plan.

This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

Except, as the door to the supply room slid open, I paused as a factor I’d forgotten reared its head. On the floor of the supply room was a disheveled man in a black jumpsuit, leaning up against the shelves. He typically kept a clean countenance, but now he was unshaven and filthy. His usually shiny straightened hair was messy and unwashed, his uniform sat partially unzipped, and a couple of the emergency food and water rations lay open and spent, spread haphazardly next to him on the floor. He looked up at me with stern bewilderment.

One of my long-time handlers. The one who was supposed to be ferrying me to what was meant to be my ship, but was now tightly handcuffed by one hand to the shelf next to him with his own manacles. I still held the key in my back pocket.

I had followed one of my visions to engineer the situation that had allowed me to get here and have a conversation with Meryll in the first place. I had surreptitiously swiped drugs from the infirmary back on the command ship and used them to dose his food after we’d taken off. Just as I foresaw, he went out like a light. Though I had intended to move him to his quarters and play it off like nothing had happened once we were back on course, my vision had demanded he be restrained, and I didn’t dare deviate from it. That plan was dead, and I was glad my ability gave me the foresight to immobilize him. But how long had I been laying there?

“Lily? Holy shit, what happened? Where are we? You look like shit. Pirates?” He asked, sounding terrified. “Don’t tell me another company... How’d you escape? J-Just gimme something to break this chain. I’ll keep you safe.” He trailed off as I stared with silent contempt, trying to make sense of what I was going to do. “Lily...?” He repeated my name. I grit my teeth and lowered my gaze at him.

Pierce had probably been my favorite handler. He was hardly ever the one to use my old headband’s functions to coerce me. He knew I didn’t need it. I was too obedient. But he also never said anything when the others utilized it. He just looked away while I was in pain for doing nothing wrong. They probably only removed the damn thing so it wasn’t in the way during my neural implant surgery, and probably had something far worse lined up for me at ‘my ship’.

When he was in charge of me, he always made sure to keep an eye on my health. He’d ensure I was eating and taking care of my body, and he jarred me out of my dissociative states when it was clear that I’d lost touch with reality. But in the end, he was just protecting an asset. He never just sat down to have a conversation with me. He never comforted me. Pierce ignored me while others in his place looked down on me and took advantage of me, that’s all. This man wasn’t a friend. He just did the bare minimum for his job.

His job working for Foundation.

I closed my eyes for a moment, trying to stop the tears from coming, but I quickly stopped caring. “Did you know?” My voice was so strained, I wasn’t even sure if it came out at all. While Pierce stared back in bewildered confusion, frozen on the floor, I reached to the shelf and pulled down a plastic water pouch, tearing the package open far more viciously than I intended and downed the entire package in one long swig while Pierce muttered uncertainly.

I coughed as my body overdosed on the hydration it had evidently so desperately needed for some time already. As I managed to steady my breathing again, with my thirst quenched and my burning rage only stoked by my bodily needs being partially replenished, I threw the package, intending to strike him in the face with the empty plastic container, but it flopped uselessly to the ground between us. “Did you know?!” I shouted this time, my voice still hoarse from disuse, but no longer weak.

Pierce stared for a few more seconds, his eyes narrowing slightly while his mouth stood frozen in bewilderment. “W-What? Lily, what happened?”

I pursed my lips. The water helped. It woke me up a little bit. I knew I wasn’t thinking clearly. I knew I needed to fuel my body. I needed food. I didn’t care. I turned to the shelf and pulled the survival kit out from against the wall, popping open the clasps on it and pulling the small pistol from its contents. I had never held a gun before in my life, but when I pushed the magazine that had been stored half-inside the gun into the handle of the pistol, I felt like I knew exactly what I was doing when I aimed it right at Pierce’s head.

By the time I’d fumbled it into place, still standing far outside of his reach, he’d stumbled back on his free hand. “Whoa! Whoa, Lily! Let’s calm down! Tell me what happened!” He commanded, though I could feel the fear in his voice. It was... almost enticing. But I remembered what Cassandra had always said about fear. How it made her feel. And that disgusted me enough to ground me and throw away any desire to enjoy that power. This wasn’t a matter of lording my position over him. I took in a deep breath, shaking and barely preventing myself from sobbing.

“Did you know... that I can’t be returned to the simulation?” I asked once more, slowly and clearly, while my finger shook against the trigger.

Pierce blinked a few times. “Lily... What? No! Please... Lily, put the gun down. Listen to me. Whatever you heard, it’s not real. You’re having a psychotic break. Something happened that stressed you out and you imagined something awful. Please. I don’t want to hurt you, I just want to help you.” He held his hand up slowly and tried to calm his voice. “Please... You don’t want to do this.”

I put my other hand to my head. A psychotic break? I was, wasn’t I? I wasn’t thinking clearly and I was making terrible decisions based on what very well might not even be real. But what else could I do now? I was already threatening him. I needed him dead if I was going to stay away from Foundation. He would certainly find some way to break himself out or talk me into letting him out if I just left him alive in here. Not to mention, his shelf was where all the food was. It was too late to back down.

I closed my eyes and shouted incoherently as loud as I could while I pulled the trigger and braced for a loud crack. But besides a hollow click, the room was only filled with the desperate expectant cry of my would-be victim. I opened my eyes with a terrified gasp and looked at the pistol. Safety. Guns have safety mechanisms.

“Holy shit...” Pierce held his chest, shaking himself now as he held himself as far away from me as he could at the full length of his handcuffs. He thought he was going to die as much as I thought he was going to. But now that he hadn’t, I was shaken. He started speaking slowly, but his sentences ran together so I wouldn’t have a chance to think. “Lily... come on, Lily, it’s me. We know each other. You don’t have to do this. I have no idea what you’re talking about with the simulation thing. I know that’s what they’re always telling you, that you’re going to get to return to your simulation soon. I know shit keeps coming up and you’re probably really impatient for it, but come on, this isn’t how you get what you want. I have no control over that decision. I just take care of you. I-I try my best to take really good care of you. Remember that. Please! Please don’t shoot me!”

I swallowed. Was it too late? Could I still recover from this? As my hand found the safety switch and clicked it to its opposite position, I was suddenly filled with doubt. What if this wasn’t real? What if Meryll was wrong? What if this Fuller person had been lying? What if I was just having another emotional meltdown like I’d had so many times before, the only difference being that this time I had a weapon and my handler was helpless?

But this was different. I had proof this time. Proof that what Foundation had done to me meant nothing for me. I shook my head. “Don’t try to confuse me!” I shouted, reasserting my aim on Pierce. “I talked with my sister. She gave me files about me! Files that say I can’t! PHYSICALLY! CAN’T! Be returned! I’m never going to see my family again. I-I’m never... I’m never going to be normal... I’m never going to forget.” I closed my eyes again and started sobbing as the terrible reality that everything I’d fought so long for would never come to be crashed into me once again. I grumbled through despondent sobs, “I can never go home.”

Pierce stayed silent for what felt like a long time as I leaned on the shelf and bawled my eyes out. This was too much. Could I really do this? Could I really kill someone for my freedom? My resolve was waning. “Lily...” He finally spoke up again, trying to sound calm and failing. “Please. If you lower the gun and let me go, I’m not going to hurt you. I promise. We can still finish this transport job. I won’t even mention this to them. I-I’ll make something up to explain the delay. And I’ll... I’ll even talk with them about this simulation thing. I’ll put in a word to see if they can look into it again. Maybe they can still help you. Just please. Take a deep breath.”

I remember him giving me that instruction many times. It always helped calm me down. I gave a shaky inhale and slowly nodded at him as I breathed out. I gradually lowered the pistol down, still held in both hands, but now pointed at the floor. I couldn’t see him through my tears to aim, anyway. I swallowed my cries. “Deep breath.” I repeated, following my own words as I filled my lungs. My muscles felt strained and tired. I was hungry. So hungry. I was tired.

I was so very tired.

—

I freed Pierce. True to his word, he didn’t hurt me. He did take the gun away and restrain me, but he didn’t hurt me. He fed me and let me rest and cry in my bed for the rest of the trip. He even sat with me. He talked to me. He comforted me like a friend as I told him what I’d discovered.

We reunited with the fleet several days later, and again, just as he promised, Pierce did not sell me out for what I’d put him through. But after I was brought aboard my ship, I never did see him again. I wasn’t sure if he was just never assigned to me again because of my new position, if he had requested not to be assigned to me again... or if he was disappeared because he knew too much. I’d known that to happen more than once before.

I was shown to my ship, still in a lost haze. And as I was placed in the middle of a terrifying apparatus that slowly closed around me, I became numb. I knew that I would never be happy. I knew that the sorrow I felt deep in my soul would never leave me. I knew that I would never again get the opportunity or feel the call of freedom that Meryll touted. I knew that one day soon, I would be directly responsible for my poor little rebellious sister’s death. But I was numb. I had given up.

I was just a thing, after all. What use did I have for things like hopes and desires? Pain was just a part of my existence. I had no free will. I had no destiny that was my own. And as the device closed out the world around me, there was a certain hollow comfort, knowing that I no longer had to concern myself with the colossal burden that was choice. I had no control, for I was just a machine.

—

My eyes went wide and my body went stiff as I returned to reality, feeling a sudden sense of clarity in the backlash of my vision. Fresh tears streamed down my face and I stared down at the shaking gun in my hands, and the doomed man at my mercy.

Pierce’s eyes were just as wide as mine. “You just saw something,” he declared, shaking his head. “What are you going to do?”

I didn’t have any room left to hesitate. One last chance before I lost my nerve again. I sniffled once as I lifted the gun and leveled it with Pierce’s head, seeing terror grow on his face. I wiped my tears away before returning my off hand to the handle and reasserting my aim. Then I clenched my jaw and whimpered, “I’m making a decision,” before the small room filled with a single crashing return of ballistics.

As the wall behind him splattered with red, he slumped to the floor with a quiet wet thud, and it was over. Half of his face had been annihilated by the round. I hadn’t expected such gory destruction, but I couldn’t say that it wasn’t effective.

I stared at the still corpse with a mix of emotions. Adrenaline-fueled excitement. Disbelief and disgust at what I’d just done. Certainty that I’d just erased any remaining path I had to that future I’d just seen. Righteous resolve. Fear of the responsibility for my actions. Nausea. I stood there, stunned as I stared into the remaining, still eye of the man I’d once settled on as my ‘favorite’ merely because he wasn’t the worst person I knew.

Then the nausea won out. I turned my head and hunched over the shelves, heaving up a weak burst of acidic bile from my empty stomach onto the floor while I came down to reality once more.

Shit. I’d really just done that. I’d just severed my connection to Foundation, for good. I’d just killed a man. I was a murderer.

I swallowed what bile I still had left in me. It had to happen. He was dead anyway. If he returned to Foundation and told his story, no matter how he told his story, they were going to make him go away. They would dispose of him. I was naive to think my vision meant anything else. I knew well how they worked now, and I had no longer had any reason to hope them to be better than that. That was the truth. That was reality. He was dead no matter what choice I made.

And I was just defending myself. Just like Meryll, I’d done what I had to do to protect myself, right? Maybe he wasn’t going to kill me, but he was going to take me back to them. I would never have been able to convince him to turn on them with me. This had been necessary.

But who was I really trying to justify all this to? This man was my jailor. My tormentor. Maybe he was better than the others, maybe he was going to try and genuinely help me if I’d allowed him to live, impotent as that aid would be, but he was still a part of this awful system that did so many terrible things to me for my entire waking life. He’d already made his grave. He deserved this, dammit!

I clenched my jaw again and forced myself to turn my body back toward the corpse, holding the gun up again and crying out at the top of my lungs as I pulled the trigger again, and again, and again. I watched his body shift ever so slightly with each impact, not caring where the blows landed anymore while chunks of his flesh spattered across the floor. I poured all my anger out into that man, through the pistol, until my grip on the handle was so tight that it hurt. Then it finally fell from my hand, clattering to the floor next to the bullet-riddled body.

For now, my rage was spent. It still bubbled far beneath, a forgotten well of hatred and anger that I’d just uncapped and let erupt. Damn the consequences.

As I panted, staring at the unrecognizable, ruined body of the man that was alive moments ago, my head pounded in a mixture of terror, excitement, relief, and hunger.

I had rarely been defiant before. Usually I had only done so in the service of helping Meryll. But now that I’d shrugged off the yoke of my oppressor and committed what most would consider to be the most heinous act possible, my whole body felt... lighter. Like I’d actually thrown a physical weight off my back. I was scared, but I was no longer trapped. If I could kill a man, every act of rebellion to come felt less impossible. I would have to accept that this terrible world was my reality from now on, for better or worse. That the horrible, ever-consuming sorrow buried deep in my soul would never truly leave me. But I was free. And I had a choice.

Was this what Meryll had told me about? That wonderful liberating feeling of freedom? I wasn’t sure, yet, if it was worth it. But I had many decisions ahead of me. Hard decisions. But they would be mine. From here on out, I was in control of me.

I took a deep breath and stepped toward the corpse, swiping up the mercifully unbloodied open package of survival rations that Pierce had helped himself to before I turned my back on the gruesome scene, grabbed another water, and closed the door behind me. I was in no mood to eat right now, but I knew my body would absolutely need nutrition soon.

I’d done something terrible. Unforgiveable. But I’d liberated myself. Now it was time to make decisions. It was time to do something drastic.

But from now on, it would all be my choice.

I looked at her example. Her courage. And I knew what I had to do.

I’m coming. I won’t leave you behind, Meryll.