Chapter 22: Zero (Part 2)
As Tumblr doesn't let me upload long parts, this is part 2 after the CatNap Scene.
---
The entire corridor explodes forward.
Concrete tears free from the walls, twisted metal supports rip from their anchors, and shards of glass, lamps, and shattered doors are seized by your telekinesis and hurled down the hallway with such force that the shock wave itself splits the smoke apart.
For one moment, Zero disappears completely behind an impenetrable mass of debris. Everything collides where he had been standing, crushes together, and drives several yards into the opposite wall.
That should have hit him...?! No, his body should not even have remained recognizable beneath all that metal and concrete...
But before the thought fully forms, something changes in the smoke behind you. No voice. No heavy footstep. Only a nearly imperceptible shift in the air just beyond your field of vision.
Too late.
Zero's fist strikes your side just below the chest.
At the instant of impact, the first thing you hear is a deep metallic boom, as though a massive block of steel had slammed into a wall right beside your head.
Then comes the cracking inside your body.
Several short, dry sounds in rapid succession before pain floods your entire right side.
Your body is ripped from the floor and thrown across the corridor. Your shoulder slams into an overturned cabinet, breaks through its thin metal wall, and you land among shattered shelves and file folders.
For a moment, you cannot breathe.
Your mouth opens, but your lungs refuse to draw air. You instinctively curl inward, press one hand against your ribs, and know from the slightest touch that at least two of them are no longer where they belong. Perhaps three.
The pain is not sharp, but deep, heavy, and crushing, as though Zero left part of his own weight inside your chest.
"Initial attack evaluated," his voice sounds from beyond the smoke. Calm. Even. Without the slightest trace of effort. "Force output: high. Target acquisition: visually dependent. Preparatory indicators: pupil dilation, finger contraction, change in respiratory rate."
You force air into your lungs. More pain immediately tears through your side, but at least you can breathe again.
Gasping, you lift your head and see Zero standing several meters away as though nothing happened. Only the hem of his clothing is torn in one place, and several strands of his long black hair now hang loose in front of the white mask.
He did not evade after you attacked.
He had already moved when you decided to attack.
"Holy fucking shit..." you force out.
The red eye in the horizontal viewing slit focuses on you.
You jerk your hand upward.
This time, you do not reach for the debris. You reach directly for him. Invisible pressure closes around his entire body, seizing shoulders, neck, arms, and legs at once, then constricts with a single thought.
For a fraction of a second, you feel resistance. Something solid. Something heavy.
You tighten your grip and hurl Zero against the left wall.
But before his back touches the concrete, his silhouette falls apart.
Several plates detach from his torso, his right arm separates just below the shoulder, and two thin metal spikes fire from his legs into the floor and wall.
Your telekinesis catches the discarded pieces and crushes them with such force that the metal collapses into itself with a shriek. Zero's actual body, however, rotates around the three anchor points, folds itself unnaturally narrow, and shoots beneath your attack.
An artificial arm remains trapped in your telekinetic grip.
The real Zero has already disappeared again.
Your gaze snaps left, then right. Smoke. Debris. Flickering red emergency light. Nothing.
"Direct full-body acquisition confirmed," his voice suddenly says from above. "Countermeasure successful."
You look up.
Zero is hanging from the ceiling by his feet.
His severed shoulder has already sealed. Small mechanical components shift beneath the black hair while a new, narrower arm unfolds from his back and reaches forward. It is not identical to the previous one. Longer. Lighter. Instead of a hand, it ends in several thin blades.
He drops.
You try to seize him in midair, but Zero has already pushed off a floating chunk of concrete that you lifted yourself.
He uses your own debris as steppingstones, changes direction three times within a second, and vanishes from your direct line of sight each time before you can fully focus your power on him.
The first blade misses your throat because you instinctively throw your upper body backward. The second slices through your sleeve and leaves a deep line along your forearm. You do not see the third at all.
You only feel something cold pass along the side of your head.
Then the burning begins.
You stumble backward, reach for the left side of your head, and at first feel only warmth. When you bring your hand back in front of your face, it is covered in blood. Something small and fleshy lies among the shards on the floor.
A piece of your left ear.
It takes a moment for the sight to register. Then a piercing ringing begins, so loud that it nearly drowns out the fire alarm.
You press your hand against the open wound as Zero lands directly in front of you and straightens his body again.
"Evasive movement during attack on throat: adequate," he analyzes. "Perception beyond central field of view: deficient. Pain response: controlled above average."
"Fuck you," you gasp.
Zero does not respond. His red eye shifts past you.
Toward Bubba.
He is still sitting on the floor several meters away, his back pressed against the wall.
His eyes follow every movement, but his body seems to have forgotten how to stand. All the fascination with which he had watched your ability moments ago is gone.
Now he looks at you as though, for the first time, he understands that possessing a supernatural power does not automatically make someone invulnerable.
Zero's left forearm opens.
A narrow metal bolt fires from it.
Not at you.
At Bubba's head.
You react before you can think. The bolt stops in the air inches from Bubba's face, trembling between your telekinesis and the mechanical force driving it forward.
Bubba makes a strangled sound and throws his head aside, even though the tip continues tracking his temple.
Then Zero is on you again.
His heavy fist strikes directly against your already broken ribs.
This time, you hear the crack clearly.
Your body practically folds around his arm before you are thrown backward. Your back slams into the wall, and for a moment everything goes black. Not completely. Only around the edges.
Your eyes remain fixed on Zero, but his white face blurs before you as a warm taste fills your mouth.
Blood runs across your tongue.
You spit it onto the floor.
At the same time, the metal bolt drops in front of Bubba.
"Reaction time when attacked directly: 0.34 seconds," Zero explains. "Reaction time when a known third party is endangered: 0.07 seconds. Prioritization confirmed."
You try to straighten, but the right side of your body refuses almost every movement. Each breath feels as though sharp edges are grinding together inside your chest. Zero could have struck your head. His fist was fast enough. Heavy enough.
A single blow like that to your temple probably would have been enough.
Instead, he chose your ribs again.
Why? He obviously does not want to kill me, but why doesn't he simply end this as quickly as possible?
For a fraction of a second, your eyes drop to his open forearm. A second bolt is being loaded inside it. Then to his stance.
His feet are positioned so he can vanish from your field of vision at any moment, but he keeps enough distance to remain beyond the immediate reach of your power.
He could have killed you already.
At least twice.
"Y/N!" Bubba's voice sounds hoarse. "He isn't aiming for your head!"
Zero turns the red eye toward him.
Bubba falls silent instantly.
But the sentence remains.
He isn't aiming for my head...?
Ah.
Ah.
Of course not.
He does not want you dead. He wants data. He wants your body. Your brain. Your ability. Every attack is meant to weaken you, but not destroy you. Ribs, arms, legs, ears–anything that causes pain, interrupts your concentration, and makes you easier to control without rendering the actual test subject unusable.
Zero surges forward.
You rip the entire wall between you outward. Concrete and pipes tear free from the masonry and race toward him like a broad wave.
But at that same instant, Zero increases his weight. His feet crash through the tiles into the foundation, several stabilizers drill from his calves into the concrete, and the shock wave splits around his body. Debris strikes his mask and chest, shattering against them or being deflected to either side.
He moves more slowly when he becomes heavy–only a little...
But enough!
You collapse the floor beneath him.
Zero's red eye flares brighter.
He tries to reduce his weight, but the change takes a fraction of a second.
The already damaged concrete gives way beneath him, and his right leg sinks to the knee into the floor below.
You close your hand and force the fractured floor slabs sideways against the joint.
Metal screams.
For the first time, his posture changes.
Not from pain. He probably feels none at all. But for one moment, his movement loses its perfect symmetry.
His right knee twists between two slabs of concrete, the outer armor tears open, and several cables whip free.
You use the opening and hurl a sharpened metal support directly at his red eye.
Zero sacrifices his leg.
The joint separates with a dry mechanical snap. His body pushes off with the remaining leg, twists sideways out of the projectile's path, and lands several meters away on one hand.
The metal support grazes his mask, carving a thin line through the white material before burying itself deep in the wall.
You did not hit him.
Yet your gaze remains fixed on the mark.
He did not protect the shoulder plates. Not the arm he lost. Not even the leg now crushed between the concrete slabs.
But to protect the red eye, he sacrificed part of his own body.
The eye is important... Perhaps it isn't only a sensor. Perhaps something behind it cannot be replaced?
Zero straightens on his remaining leg. Two thin supports unfold from his back and replace the missing limb within seconds. Not perfectly, but well enough to move. His eye remains fixed on you.
"Tactical adaptation registered," he says. "Attack redirected toward environment instead of target body. Efficiency increase: 31 percent."
You wipe the blood from your nose without looking away from him. "You talk too much."
"Verbal output serves psychological stress measurement."
"Then measure this."
You tear both arms apart.
The sprinkler pipes above you burst.
Water erupts from several points in the ceiling, strikes smoke, dust, and heated metal, and transforms the hallway into a chaotic field of steam and falling droplets within seconds.
Zero moves immediately, but this time you do not try to throw the water at him.
You stop it.
Not all of it. There are too many droplets, too many individual movements.
You do not consciously seize each one. Instead, you stretch your telekinesis through the room like a fine net and force everything small enough to slow within it for a fraction of a second.
Water droplets hover in the air. Dust hangs between them. Scraps of paper, shards of glass, and tiny metal splinters lift from the floor and spread throughout the corridor.
Suddenly, you can feel the room.
Every movement displaces something. Every body leaves a gap. Even if Zero vanishes from your field of vision, he must pass through water, smoke, dust, or fragments.
You no longer need to follow his red eye.
The entire corridor becomes your eyes.
An elongated gap forms high to the left.
You hurl a door into it.
Metal crashes against metal, but the struck body immediately falls apart into several small pieces. Only a discarded arm. A decoy.
At the same time, three more gaps move through the sensory field. One low across the floor, one along the right wall, and one directly behind you.
Three targets...
No...!
Four.
Zero throws his own body parts and cables through the water, knocks debris aside, and creates artificial movement. Your net detects displacement, but not what causes it.
You turn toward the wrong gap.
A black shadow rises from the floor directly in front of you.
Zero's mask is suddenly so close that the red light blinds you.
His fist strikes your chest.
Before it even touches you, you see his arm change. Plates slide over one another, mechanisms lock into place, and in an instant his weight concentrates in the front of the fist.
The blow does not feel like a punch.
It feels like being hit by a car.
You are thrown backward through the damaged wall and land in the adjoining lecture hall. Rows of seats break beneath your body, wood splinters, metal frames bend, and only the massive lecturer's desk finally stops you.
Something in your chest gives way again. Deeper this time. Closer to the sternum.
You try to inhale.
Nothing.
Your lung does not fill properly.
Panic tears through your body. For a single moment, you forget Zero, Bubba, and even Karasu. You only want air.
You open your mouth, gag, brace both hands against the floor, and force your chest to move. A thin, wet rattle escapes your throat.
A rib may have injured your lung.
Zero steps through the hole in the wall. An artificial replacement leg supports him now, while several cracks run across his mask. Water streams over the white material and drips from the three narrow mouth slits.
"Sensory field: creative," he observes. "Weakness: lack of object classification. Countermeasure... successful."
You lift your head with a tremor.
He's right...
The water shows you where something is moving, but not what it is. As long as Zero controls enough parts, cables, and debris, he can flood your net with false signals. And every individual object you try to distinguish adds to the strain inside your head.
You do not need more accurate sensors.
You need a rule his decoys cannot imitate.
Zero lunges forward again.
You let your sensory field collapse.
All the water falls to the floor at once. For a brief moment, the lecture hall fills with the patter of thousands of droplets, and Zero appears to interpret the abandonment of your net as a failure of concentration. His route changes. Direct. Efficient.
He takes the shortest path toward you.
Exactly what you were waiting for.
You do not seize his body.
You seize the floor beneath his remaining leg and thrust it diagonally upward while simultaneously pulling the ceiling behind him down.
Zero instinctively increases his weight to resist the telekinetic force.
That leaves him unable to change direction in time.
The ceiling strikes his back.
The entire upper section of the lecture hall collapses onto him. Concrete, lamps, and steel beams bury his body beneath several tons of material.
You hear metal break, see his artificial leg protruding from beneath a slab, and close your fist further.
The pile of debris compresses.
Concrete shatters under the pressure. Metal supports bend inward. Everything drives toward the single point where you can feel his body.
This time, I have him!
You push harder.
A warm drop runs from your nose, then another. Your skull begins to throb, and your injured ear sends a fresh wave of pain through your head with every heartbeat.
Fuck, not now...
Still, you increase the pressure.
The pile of debris stops moving.
Then you hear Bubba scream.
"Y/N, above you!"
A thin cable hangs from the damaged ceiling.
It was already there before you brought the lecture hall down.
Zero had not been entirely beneath the rubble. At the moment of impact, he left part of his body behind and pulled his actual core out of danger through the cable.
Then what I am crushing right now is...
You look up.
Only a shell?!
Zero's white face drops directly toward you.
His blade drives through your left shoulder.
The pain is so sudden and complete that your telekinesis goes out for a moment.
The debris around the false shell breaks apart, the water finally crashes to the floor, and you scream as Zero pins you against the lecturer's desk with the blade.
His red eye stops only inches from your face.
"Attention fixation through perceived success," he analyzes. "Subject displays increased error probability during perceived dominance."
You reach for his mask.
Zero turns his head aside before your fingers can touch it. His free hand closes around your right wrist. The weight in his fingers increases.
Your bones crack.
You feel one finger give way, then another.
Your wrist is forced against the table until the pain nearly drowns out every other sensation. You try to throw him back telekinetically, but he anchors the cable above and increases his weight at the same time.
Multiple points of attack.
Multiple sources of resistance.
Just like before.
My hand!
You cannot move his body as a single unit while he distributes himself through cables, blades, and anchors around the room. If you break one connection, he sacrifices it. If you seize him completely, he breaks apart into replaceable pieces.
"Musculoskeletal integrity: 63 percent," Zero says. "Continued resistance will result in permanent damage. Surrender recommended."
You breathe shallowly and hear the wet rattle inside your chest.
Your left arm hangs nearly useless from the blade, two fingers on your right hand point at unnatural angles, part of your ear lies somewhere in the other hallway, and every movement of your ribs feels as though they are slicing through your organs.
He is faster. Stronger. Better prepared.
And he knows your ability because of Emily.
You cannot defeat him by doing more of what you have already done.
Then a second bolt fires from Zero's back.
At Bubba again.
You turn your head and stop it at the final instant. At the same time, Zero pulls the blade from your shoulder and kicks your knee. You hear a dull crack, fall sideways, and strike the floor face-first.
Bubba screams your name.
Zero fires another bolt at him.
You stop that one too.
Then a third.
One is not aimed at Bubba, but at a load-bearing steel beam above him. The bolt severs an already damaged connection, and part of the ceiling begins to sag.
You hold it up.
Bubba crawls out of the danger zone on all fours while you simultaneously suspend two bolts in the air, support the ceiling, and try to keep Zero in sight.
The pressure inside your skull becomes unbearable. Blood now runs from both nostrils. Your eyes water. You can no longer feel your limbs. A red haze settles over your right eye.
Zero stands calmly before you.
He does not attack immediately.
He watches.
He's deliberately making me move more things at once... the ceiling, Bubba, the projectiles... even my own body!
A strained, choking sound escapes you.
That bastard knows the more I do, the less strength and attention I have left for him.
"Cognitive load: critical," he says. "Fine control decreasing. Estimated biological collapse in 43 seconds."
You look toward Bubba. He has finally crawled free of the sagging ceiling, but remains behind an overturned row of seats, staring at you in disbelief.
"Run," you force out.
"I can't leave you–!"
"Run!"
Bubba still does not move.
Zero aims one arm at him.
You understand.
As long as Bubba is here, Zero always has a second target. Even if Bubba runs, Zero can use him to divide your attention.
You could throw him out of the building telekinetically, but to do so, you would have to release either the ceiling or the bolts.
And Zero is waiting for exactly that.
You think of Karasu.
Of CatNap.
Even of DogDay.
And of Emily Carter.
Of the man in the laboratory, whose final letter is still somewhere among your belongings. People Playtime Co. never saw as human, only as material. Tools. Data.
Zero expects you to try to save everything.
He calculated it.
So I have to do something that makes no sense even within his calculations!
Your gaze travels upward.
The lecture hall has a massive concrete ceiling, its central section already threaded with cracks from the fighting. At least one more floor lies above it. Tons of material held in place by only a few steel beams and the areas supported by your telekinesis.
You let the two bolts fall.
Zero surges forward immediately.
But instead of repelling him, you rip the entire central section of the ceiling from its anchors.
Bubba cries out and throws himself behind the rows of seats. Zero stops abruptly, his eye turning upward.
Concrete slabs, steel, and pipes tear loose with a deafening crack and begin sinking directly above you.
You catch all of it.
Not above Bubba.
Not above Zero.
Above yourself.
Several tons of concrete hover a few meters over your head. Loose chunks are already falling along the sides, but the majority remains trapped in your telekinesis.
You struggle upright onto one knee while blood drips from your shoulder to the floor.
Zero does not move.
The red eye scans first the ceiling, then you.
"Strategy identified," he says after a brief pause. "Subject's own biological existence is being used as leverage."
You smile weakly despite every movement of your face hurting. "You need me alive, you idiot."
Zero remains silent.
"All I have to do is stop holding the ceiling."
"Self-termination contradicts previously observed survival behavior."
"You don't know my survival behavior."
The red eye seems to narrow even though the viewing slit itself does not change. You can see it only in the intensity of the light.
Zero cannot knock you unconscious. He cannot completely break your concentration.
He cannot land another massive blow without risking you releasing the ceiling and dying beneath several tons of concrete. Even if he were fast enough to pull you from the rubble before your body was crushed, the risk would be too high.
For the first time, you possess something Zero cannot ignore.
His mission.
"Bubba," you say without taking your eyes off Zero. "Get to the door. Now."
This time, Bubba moves immediately. Slowly, crouched low and wide-eyed, he crawls through the ruined rows of seats toward the exit.
Zero follows him with the red eye, but does not raise an arm.
"Attack him again," you say, "and I let go."
"Threat would eliminate you as well."
"Yes."
"Psychological profile indicates fear of death."
"Fear does not always stop people."
Zero processes your answer.
You can almost see it. Not in his mask, but in the minute movements of his body. The way his weight shifts. The way several tools reposition beneath his clothing.
He is searching for a way to control you without interrupting your concentration.
No blows.
No bolts.
No blade through vital areas.
He needs a restraint.
Something that holds you in place while you remain conscious.
Your gaze falls on the cable still running from his shoulder into the ceiling.
Of course...
Zero slowly raises his left arm.
A panel opens along his forearm, and a bundle of thin black cables shoots from it. They do not move like lifeless ropes, but like snakes, each fitted with tiny hooks and joints.
They race across the floor, weave along the rows of seats, and approach you from several directions.
You could stop them.
You do not.
The first cables coil around your right arm. More close around your torso, press into your broken ribs, and tear a strangled scream from your throat.
A third bundle wraps around your injured leg and forces you fully onto your knees.
Zero remains beyond your direct reach.
"Restraint initiated," he says. "Conscious state maintained. Telekinetic support of ceiling remains possible."
The cables tighten.
You let them.
Your vision nearly blurs from the pain. Every loop presses against open wounds and broken bones. Still, you continue holding the ceiling and watch where the cables lead.
Back into Zero's arm.
A direct connection.
Until now, you had tried to seize his body. He had detached, anchored himself, and sacrificed parts.
But the cable cannot be attached to you and independent of him at the same time. As long as Zero exerts force through it, a physical connection must exist between you.
He believes he has restrained you.
In truth, he has bound himself to you.
You close your hand.
Not around Zero. Around the cables.
Your telekinesis seizes every individual metallic fiber at once. You do not merely alter their direction, but their tension.
Every bundle snaps taut, and Zero is yanked forward before his anchors can fully respond.
His red eye flickers.
"Anomaly–"
You whip the cables sideways around a load-bearing pillar.
Zero's shoulder slams into it. The concrete splits, his mask strikes the edge, and the existing crack spreads all the way to the viewing slit.
He tries to sever the cables, but you twist them again, wrap them tighter around the pillar, and use his own increased weight against him.
The heavier he becomes, the deeper the cables cut into his joints.
Metal shrieks.
His left arm is ripped from the shoulder.
Not cleanly. Several cables and wires remain attached, sparks spray from the open connection, and black oil runs across his chest.
Even so, Zero immediately detaches from the lost arm and pushes away from the pillar on both remaining supports.
You expected that.
The instant he sacrifices his arm, you release every cable and hurl three thin metal needles at his mask from different angles. Two are deliberately aimed at his shoulders.
One at the red eye.
Zero ignores the first needle. It pierces his right shoulder and emerges from the other side. The second drives into his lower torso, but even then he reacts with only the slightest turn.
For the third, he changes his entire position.
He jerks his head back, folds an additional plate over the viewing slit, and throws his body sideways out of its path. The needle still grazes the mask. White material breaks away, and for one brief moment you see no face behind the crack.
You see layers.
Lenses. Cables. A circular housing.
And behind them, something small and dark red that does not resemble ordinary electronics.
The core. That has to be it.
Zero's movements accelerate immediately. Not because he is angry, but because you saw something you were never meant to see.
He launches himself from the pillar and vanishes from your field of vision. Your sensory field has collapsed, but the cables around your body reveal his movement.
The severed arm remains connected to his system by several fibers. You pull on it, alter his trajectory, and force him to the right for a fraction of a second.
This ends now!
You hurl a heavy steel bar toward his lower body.
Zero turns, but with one leg and one arm missing, the movement is no longer perfect.
The bar strikes his side, pierces the outer armor, and drives through his lower torso. The impact carries him several meters farther and pins him to the wall.
Black fluid splashes across the concrete.
The red eye flickers violently.
With your telekinesis, you drag the steel bar sideways through his body.
Metal plates tear apart. Several internal cables are severed, sparks burst from his open torso, and Zero's body slumps against the wall for an instant. The missing leg, severed arm, and destroyed side make him look truly damaged for the first time.
But he is not defeated.
Not even close.
Zero's remaining hand closes around the steel bar.
His weight increases.
The wall behind him breaks, but instead of allowing the bar to tear him apart further, he pulls himself along it directly toward you. He uses the weapon impaling him as a rail.
You try to throw it back.
Too late.
Zero reaches you and drives his mask directly into your face.
The white material strikes your nose. Something breaks, blood immediately spills over your lips, and for a moment you lose control of the ceiling.
The entire concrete mass drops half a meter.
Zero stops.
His head turns upward.
You catch the ceiling again at the final moment.
"Mission compromise confirmed," he says, but his voice is no longer perfectly clear. Individual syllables overlap, some repeating with a brief delay. "Direct loss of consciousness is not permissible."
You spit blood into his face. "Then you have a problem."
Zero drives his remaining hand into your right shoulder–not deep enough to sever an artery, but hard enough to force you against the floor. His fingers close around the bone.
You hear your shoulder leave its socket.
A scream tears itself from your throat.
The ceiling wavers again. Several large chunks of concrete fall along the sides and crush the remaining rows of seats.
Yet Zero keeps you conscious. He regulates every injury with such precision that you do not pass out.
"Pain level increased," he says directly in front of your face. "Motor control reduced. Restraint complete in 14 seconds."
Fourteen seconds.
You look into his red eye.
It is no longer perfectly centered within the slit. Through the damaged mask, you can see the entire lens system having to readjust briefly with every movement.
The core behind it is protected, but not perfectly. Zero sacrificed arms and legs without hesitation. For that eye, however, he changed his entire strategy every time.
Your telekinesis reaches for one single thing.
Not the ceiling.
Not Zero.
A tiny shard of metal embedded in the remains of the lecturer's desk.
Barely longer than your little finger.
You slowly pull it free, concealed beneath your own body. Zero does not register the movement. Too much debris. Too much damaged electronics. Too much blood and metal between you.
"Twelve seconds," he says.
The shard glides across the floor.
Come on!
"Ten."
You guide it upward behind Zero's back.
Almost there! Come on!
"Eight."
Your skull feels as though it is splitting apart from within. You are holding several damn tons of concrete above you, controlling the shard, ignoring the cables around your body, and simultaneously trying not to suffocate on your own injuries.
No greater force.
Only precision.
"Six."
The shard reaches the height of his mask.
Zero presses your shoulder deeper. Black spots dance before your eyes.
"Four."
Fuck–! Fuck–! Fu–!
You let the ceiling sink several inches.
Zero's red eye instinctively snaps upward.
Now I have you, you bastard!
At that exact instant, you drive the metal shard from behind through the crack in his mask.
It misses the core.
Zero moves his head just in time.
But the shard pierces one of the internal lenses, emerges from the front of the viewing slit, and tears the red eye halfway from its socket. A blinding flash fills the lecture hall.
Zero's body jerks, his fingers release your shoulder, and every cable around you loses tension for one brief moment.
You use it.
With a telekinetic blast, you tear the cables apart, throw Zero off you, and slam him against the opposite wall. At the same time, you shape three broken steel supports into long, narrow spikes.
Just as you did with Emily.
But this time, not aimed across the entire body.
All three target the damaged viewing slit.
Zero struggles upright. One arm is missing. One leg has been replaced and is already damaged again.
The steel bar remains driven through his lower torso, black fluid runs down his body in broad streams, and the red eye hangs crooked inside the broken mask. Even so, he raises his remaining arm.
A long blade extends from his wrist.
It points directly at your chest.
Barely three meters separate you.
He could reach me...
Perhaps even before your metal spikes pierce his core.
But the ceiling still hovers above you.
If Zero kills you, it falls.
If he knocks you unconscious, it falls.
If he damages your brain or ability badly enough, it falls.
And if you fire the spikes, he may lose his core, all his combat data, and his ability to leave this place at all.
Neither of you moves.
You kneel on the floor, barely capable of holding your own body upright.
Your left arm hangs bleeding, your right shoulder is dislocated, several ribs are broken, every breath rattles, and blood from your nose, ear, and mouth has stained the entire front of your clothes dark.
Zero stands opposite you, impaled, one-armed, and nearly blind. Sparks fall from his torso, his movements stutter, and his damaged voice repeats individual sounds before assembling the next sentence.
"Mutual elimination... possible."
You aim the three metal spikes more precisely at his eye.
"Try it."
The red light flickers.
"Probability of successful subject recovery: 18 percent."
You say nothing.
"Probability of irreparable damage to ability carrier: 61 percent."
Zero draws the blade back several inches.
"Probability of loss of collected data and central processing core: 73 percent."
"Doesn't sound very good for you."
His head tilts slightly. The damaged lens tries to focus on you again.
"Continuation of confrontation under current conditions: inefficient."
You laugh weakly once. The sound immediately turns into a cough, and blood spatters across the floor. "Then fuck off."
Zero does not react to the insult. Instead, he slowly pulls the steel bar from his own body.
Black fluid pours from the wide opening, but several internal plates immediately slide over it and crudely seal most of the damage.
You keep the metal spikes hovering in front of his eye.
"Preliminary assessment revised," Zero says. His voice is distorted, but understandable. "Subject Y/N is not dangerous solely due to ability."
The red eye moves over you one final time, then the hovering ceiling, then Bubba, who is now standing at the exit of the lecture hall.
"Primary threat: adaptive decision-making under lethal pressure."
"Glad to hear it."
"Psychological instability remains exploitable."
Your gaze hardens.
Zero raises his remaining arm. Not to attack. Behind him, a small device opens, drills into the damaged wall, and distributes several explosive charges.
You recognize them immediately.
"You–!"
"Retreat route being created."
The charges detonate.
Not in your direction. The wall behind Zero bursts outward, smoke and concrete thrown into a maintenance shaft beyond. At the same time, part of the remaining wall collapses between you.
You fire the three metal spikes.
Zero turns his head. Two strike his chest and pierce him again; the third races directly through the viewing slit.
At the final instant, an inner protective plate folds over the core. The spike slams into it, penetrates several inches, and extinguishes the red eye completely.
Zero's body is ripped backward into the maintenance shaft.
For a moment, you believe you actually killed him.
Then the red light appears again.
Weak. Flickering.
Farther back in the darkness.
"Combat data stored," his voice says from within the shaft. "Next confrontation will be adapted."
You try to call the metal spikes back. Your head responds only with stabbing pain. One of them shifts several inches, then falls to the floor.
Zero disappears.
But damaged badly enough that even he could no longer continue the fight.
For several seconds, you hear only the fire, the alarm, and your own rattling breaths. Then the ceiling above you begins to sink again.
Your arms tremble.
Although you no longer truly need them, you hold both hands upward as though the physical movement might somehow help your telekinesis. The concrete is too heavy. Your mind too empty.
You see double, then triple, and the blood in your right eye turns the entire room red.
Bubba runs toward you.
"No," you manage.
He does not stop.
"You can't hold it anymore!"
"Get... away."
"If you let go, you'll die!"
"That was... the point."
Bubba drops to his knees beside you, his hands hovering helplessly over your injuries because there does not seem to be a single part of your body he could touch without making everything worse.
His gaze falls on the missing piece of your ear, the open wound in your shoulder, your crooked fingers, and the blood that runs from your mouth with every breath.
Then he looks up.
The ceiling continues to sink.
"Y/N," he says, and for the first time his voice sounds neither curious, analytical, nor superior.
You close your eyes for one brief moment.
CatNap's face appears in your mind.
Not the face from your final seven seconds. Not in the rain and not in bed. You see her as she pressed her forehead against yours only minutes ago and said she understood that feeling.
I know.
I know...
You told Zero you did not need to live.
Perhaps, in that moment, it had even been true.
But CatNap is waiting for you.
Karasu is still somewhere inside this building.
And if you simply disappear beneath the ceiling now, Playtime Co. still wins. Not your body. Not your ability. But everything else they have already taken from you.
You open your eyes.
"Get behind me," you whisper.
Bubba obeys immediately.
You gather everything that remains of your concentration.
Not to continue holding the ceiling. You cannot. Instead, you change the angle of its fall.
You do not push against its entire weight, but force one side upward and pull the other downward.
The enormous concrete slab tilts.
It does not fall on you.
It crashes sideways into the destroyed section of the lecture hall, crushing rows of seats and tearing the remaining wall down with it.
The shock wave throws you and Bubba across the floor. Dust swallows the entire room, and the roar is so loud that even your uninjured ear hears nothing for several seconds.
Then everything is still.
You lie on your back.
Smoke above you moves slowly beneath the red emergency lights. You try to raise an arm, but neither obeys properly. Your chest moves only shallowly. Every breath brings less air than the last.
Bubba says something beside you.
You cannot understand a word.
Farther down the hallway, several silhouettes appear in the smoke. People call over one another, climb across debris, and come closer. A blonde figure. Several others directly behind her.
Then black hair.
CatNap.
You recognize her immediately, even though your vision is no longer sharp enough to see her face.
You recognize her by the way she runs. Too fast, paying no attention to the rubble beneath her feet, as though every injury is meaningless so long as she reaches you.
She calls your name.
This time, you hear it.
Only faintly. Far away.
But you hear it.
You want to answer her. To tell her that the thing escaped. That Karasu must still be somewhere here. That Bubba saw everything. That Playtime Co. now knows what you are and will be prepared next time.
But your mouth no longer moves.
The last thing you see is CatNap running toward you through the smoke.
Then everything turns black.
---
Deep beneath the ruined laboratories of Playtime Co., there is no fire alarm.
No screaming students, no professors desperately trying to control a fleeing crowd, and no sirens warning that part of the university is breaking apart above them.
Down here, none of it reaches the long, abandoned corridors. The concrete is too thick, the floors too numerous, and the darkness too old for the noise of the surface to retain any meaning.
Only one sound breaks the silence.
Metal scraping across metal.
Slowly. Unevenly. Agonizingly.
Something drags itself through the dark corridor, leaving black fluid across the floor and a trail of sparks that flare for a few seconds before the darkness swallows them again.
Every attempted movement is accompanied by mechanical cracking. One leg is missing entirely, the left arm has been torn from the shoulder, and a hole cuts through the lower torso so large that the twisted internal plates behind it are visible.
Several cables hang from the open body and drag behind it like dead limbs.
Zero's white mask is barely recognizable as such.
The horizontal viewing slit has been broken open, large sections of the right side are missing, and the single red eye flickers erratically in its damaged socket. At times it shines for several seconds almost as brightly as before, then goes dark entirely, leaving only the faint hum of overloaded electronics.
Still, he continues moving.
His remaining hand claws into the floor and pulls the ruined body forward inch by inch while a thin mechanical sound emerges from the three damaged slits in his mask.
The voice no longer possesses its former uniformity. Words overlap, syllables break off and begin again, as though the system can no longer assemble its own thoughts quickly enough.
"Combat evaluation... incomplete. Restoration of motor functions... impossible."
Zero pulls himself forward once more. The shoulder connection grinds beneath the weight of his body, several small components break free, and scatter across the floor.
"Subject Y/N... was underestimated."
The red eye flickers.
Before his internal vision, the final seconds of the fight repeat. The hovering ceiling. The cable. The tiny metal shard moving beyond his damaged field of vision. A strategy that appeared in no simulation because it depended on a decision that contradicted every previous self-preservation data point.
Zero recognized your fear of death.
He measured it, categorized it, and incorporated it into every subsequent calculation as a reliable constant.
A person who fears death would not use their own life as leverage.
They would protect their body, avoid pain, and surrender the moment their probability of survival dropped below a certain threshold.
You had feared death.
And still allowed it to hover above you.
"Human will..." Zero's head jerks as though the very phrase causes a system error. "Stronger than projected. Emotional instability produces... not solely weakness. Unpredictability exceeded available combat data."
He reaches the end of the corridor.
There, his remaining arm finally fails. The joint folds beneath him, his body falls heavily to the side, and the damaged mask strikes the floor.
The red eye lights fully one last time, scans the dark surroundings, and finds nothing but empty walls, old pipes, and its own destroyed reflection in a black pool of oil.
"Adaptation required for second confrontation," Zero says. "Subject must be isolated from emotional attachments. Karasu. CatNap. Additional relationships will–"
A shoe steps out of the darkness.
The heel lands in the center of Zero's head.
For a fraction of a second, his entire weight increases.
Zero instinctively attempts to counter the mechanical pressure, but his damaged system no longer possesses enough strength. The white mask caves in beneath the shoe.
The remaining eye is driven deeper into the housing, internal lenses shatter, and the back of his head strikes the floor hard enough to crack the concrete.
A piercing electrical tone fills the corridor.
Then Zero's head bursts apart completely.
Metal, glass, and dark fluid are forced out beneath the shoe.
The red eye flickers once more among the fragments, emits one final weak glow, and goes dark forever. Only the hum of exposed cables remains, accompanied by the irregular crackle of small sparks jumping across the ruined body.
The figure standing over him does not immediately withdraw his foot.
"People are like glass," a calm voice says into the darkness. "You can break them and then try to put the pieces back together. Perhaps you can even give them a shape that, from a distance, appears almost whole again."
Slowly, the man shifts his weight. Another piece of Zero's skull breaks beneath his shoe.
"But every time you look at them, you will see what you shattered. Every line. Every crack. Every tiny piece that refused to return to exactly the same place."
He takes his foot off Zero.
Only now does a weak beam from a defective ceiling light fall across his figure.
The man is tall, his body slender but held in a way that makes him appear even taller. Dark, medium-length black hair falls along both sides of his face, neatly parted on the right. Directly beneath the outer corner of his right eye is a small mole, placed almost too precisely to seem accidental on that face.
Over an immaculately fitted suit, he wears a long black coat.
A bow tie sits neatly beneath his collar, entirely untouched by dust, blood, or the chaos raging several floors above him. He could have come from a board meeting, an elegant restaurant, or a funeral.
Perhaps, to him, there is no meaningful difference between those places.
The Prototype looks down at Zero.
Not sadly. Not disappointedly. Not even with anger. His gaze possesses the same calm distance with which a person regards a spent tool whose blade has dulled after completing its work.
"You fulfilled your purpose," he says. "You found him. You confirmed his ability, tested his limits, and forced him to abandon all the small lies with which he had restrained himself until now."
His eyes travel over Zero's ruined body.
Over the missing leg, the torn shoulder, the wide hole through his lower torso, and the three metal spikes still buried deep in his armor. The damage tells almost the entire story of the fight. Every lost body part is a decision.
Every breached plate a flawed calculation. Every crack in the mask a moment in which you did something Zero failed to predict in time.
"Nothing more was required of you," the Prototype continues. "And now that this task is complete, there is no reason to invest resources in your restoration."
He slowly crouches beside Zero.
With two fingers, he picks up a broken piece of the white mask and studies his own distorted reflection in it for a moment.
"How disappointing..." he murmurs. "You had every piece of data. His movement patterns, the laboratory recordings, the structural damage following Emily Carter's death, his reaction times, and even the names of the people for whom he is willing to injure himself. You knew every component of the equation."
A faint smile crosses his face.
"And still, you failed to understand the result."
He lets the fragment of mask slip from his fingers. It falls onto Zero's chest with a small, bright sound.
"Human relationships are chemical reactions. Once a reaction has occurred, none of the substances involved can return to its original state. You can separate the components, heat them, cool them, or place them under pressure, but even if they appear similar again in the end, they are no longer what they were before."
The Prototype straightens and looks into the dark corridor as though he can see through the many floors directly to you.
"The boy whose data you were given no longer exists."
His voice grows quieter. More thoughtful.
"The person who used his ability during an exam because he feared failure was not the same person who killed Emily Carter. And the person who killed Emily Carter was also not the same one who was prepared today to let a ceiling crush him merely to restrict your options."
The smile on his face grows.
"Karasu changed him. CatNap changed him. The monster changed him. Every person he could save, and every person he could not, triggered something within him that your data could never fully capture. You tried to calculate a human being as though he were a machine."
His gaze drops once more to Zero's remains.
"When you were the only machine in the room."
For several seconds, he says nothing more. Only the electrical hum fills the darkness while heavy machinery operates behind a wall deep within the complex.
Somewhere, fluid moves through pipes. Metallic footsteps echo through another corridor far away without coming closer.
Then the Prototype slowly lifts his head.
"It will all end soon anyway."
His voice is barely louder than a whisper now, yet in the abandoned laboratories every word carries far enough that it seems the building itself is listening.
"All these little struggles... the university... the Smiling Critters... Playtime Co.... This ridiculous belief that people can still decide for themselves what role they play in this story."
He takes several steps away from Zero.
His coat whispers across the floor as his gaze moves over the rusted doors of the old laboratories. Years ago, people were held behind some of them. Behind others, names were replaced by numbers, bodies were opened, and memories were reduced to data.
Most of the rooms are now empty.
The desperation, however, still clings to them.
"Revolutions are wonderful things," he says, spreading his arms for a brief moment as though addressing an invisible audience. "Grand words, new systems, fairer worlds. People love the idea that one need only destroy the old for something better to rise automatically from the ruins."
A quiet chuckle escapes him.
"But the more desperately one tries to change the world, the more corpses and broken people one leaves behind along the way."
He stops.
"Isn't that right, Harley?"
No one answers.
Harley Sawyer is not with him.
Perhaps the name is intended only for the cameras still operating somewhere behind the walls. Perhaps the Prototype is speaking to a memory. Or perhaps he simply knows that words do not need to be heard to have an effect someday.
"You wanted to transcend the human form," he continues. "You took bodies apart as though they were defective machines and believed you could create something more perfect from their components. But all you created were beings who still remembered the pain. People made of flesh, metal, and hatred who knew, even without their names, that something had been taken from them."
He laughs again, more audibly this time.
"Perhaps you were right regardless. Perhaps change requires corpses. Perhaps that is the only price this world truly understands."
The Prototype raises one hand and studies it as though it already holds something invisible that only he can see.
"I will even kill my own father."
The words leave his mouth with complete calm.
No hesitation. No grief. No anger.
Only a statement of fact.
"If that can create balance–even a twisted, unnatural balance–then surely it should be enough. Am I wrong?"
His gaze faces forward, but for one moment something almost childlike lies in his eyes. Not innocence. Rather, the expectation of a son who finally wants to prove to his father that his entire world was built upon a mistake.
"My predecessors thought long and carefully about the best way to control the masses. Through violence? Too conspicuous. Through fear? Effective, but unreliable over time. Through hope? Considerably better, but hope possesses the unpleasant tendency to turn against its creator eventually."
He clasps his hands behind his back and slowly begins walking again. His steps lead deeper into the complex while his voice echoes between the walls.
"In the end, the answer proved astonishingly simple: direct everyone's attention toward a single thing."
The smile does not disappear.
"An enemy. A savior. A scandal. A tragedy. It does not matter what it is, so long as it appears large enough to make everything behind it vanish. Give an average group of idiots a common objective, and they will accept every lie as long as they believe they discovered the truth themselves."
He turns his head slightly as though someone is walking beside him.
"They will betray their friends. Sacrifice their children. Burn down their own homes and congratulate one another for it. You can even make them end their own lives, so long as death is described as a necessary sacrifice for something greater."
The Prototype reaches a heavy metal door. Above it is an old Playtime Co. emblem, its colors barely visible beneath dirt and rust. He places one hand on the control panel. Though he enters nothing visibly, the lights beside it activate one after another.
Red.
Yellow.
Green.
The door slowly opens.
Cold air flows from the room beyond.
Inside are screens, files, old records, and several feeds from different areas of the campus. One monitor shows emergency responders moving through the university.
Another shows CatNap kneeling beside your ruined body. DogDay stands behind her, while Bubba sits several meters away in silence.
A further screen displays an older image.
Elliot Ludwig...
The Prototype stops before it.
"As long as you sit upon the throne," he says quietly, "you will never need to search for food. The people beneath you will bring it. They will feed you, defend you, and even tear apart those who try to explain that the throne never belonged to you."
His fingers glide over Elliot's face on the monitor.
"But every throne needs a visible king."
The chuckle returns.
"And every king needs a death the people will remember."
Behind him, Zero remains motionless in the darkness.
His body is now only a pile of damaged technology, a tool that fulfilled its purpose and was then discarded. Soon, other machines would arrive, collect his remains, and remove every usable fragment. Nothing at Playtime Co. was ever truly wasted.
Not even a failure.
The Prototype studies your image on the screen once more.
CatNap is holding your hand. DogDay is speaking frantically to someone outside the frame. Bubba looks directly at the rubble beneath which Zero nearly died, and his face bears the realization that the world is far larger and crueler than his previous calculations assumed.
"You started something," the Prototype murmurs. "A reaction."
Then his gaze returns to Elliot Ludwig... his father and creator.
"And now I will ensure that none of you can ever return to your original state again."
---
Things are really starting to escalate now.
And finally... a proper villain reveal.
Yes, the Prototype is still the main antagonist of the story, but even I can't fully tell you what he's truly planning just yet. For now, his goal seems clear: he wants Elliot out of the way. But what exactly is this "throne" he's talking about? And more importantly... what do you have to do with it?
One thing is certain: the story has officially entered its final act.
The Smiling Critters now know about your ability. As for Karasu and Kickin... we still don't know where they stand after everything that happened. (And yes, poor Boogie has been completely forgotten so far... right alongside Boxy.)
As I mentioned before in The Genius of Playtime Co., I'm really trying to upload chapters more consistently again. After that long break–which was caused by some major personal issues that I'd rather not get into unless someone is genuinely curious–I'm finally in a place where writing regularly feels possible again.
The next few chapters are going to be especially interesting, because this is where the characters will truly begin to change. With everything they've learned, everything they've lost, and everything they're about to discover... none of them will leave this story as the same person they were at the beginning.
Anyway...
Thank you all so much for reading.
I'll see you in the next chapter.
