Chapter 110 THE LAST PAGE

Chapter 110 THE LAST PAGE

The mirror cracked. It didn't break all at once; it spiderwebbed from the centre, the glass turning white and cloudy. The boy with the crown was still there, his face pressed against the back of the glass, grinning. He held up that sign, and my heart dropped into my stomach.

You never left.

"Logan!" Sarah screamed. She grabbed my arm, pulling me back from the store window. "Look at the street!"

I looked. The park was gone. The people walking their dogs were gone. The street was flickering. Everything—the trees, the cars, the buildings, was turning into thin, white lines of text. The whole world was unravelling like a sweater with a loose thread.

"We didn't escape," I whispered. "We just moved to a bigger cage."

The boy walked right through the glass window. He didn't break it; he just stepped out like he was walking through a curtain. He was holding that heavy black pen again.

"You did a great job in the last chapter," he said, mocking me with a small bow. "Destroying the machine? Tearing the wires? That was top-tier drama. The readers loved the climax. They were screaming for more."

"I’m not a puppet," I shouted. I reached into my pocket, but it was empty. No notebook. No pens. I had nothing.

"You’re an asset," the boy corrected. "And assets don't get to retire. We’ve got a sequel to write, Logan. And you’re the star."

He flicked his wrist. The ground beneath us turned into a long, dark hallway, the same hallway we had just escaped. But this time, it was different. Doors lined the walls, thousands of them. Each door had a number.

"Which one is it?" Sarah asked, her voice shaking.

"Number 110," the boy said. He walked over to a door and threw it open.

Inside wasn't a room. It was a mirror maze. A million versions of me and Sarah stretched out in every direction.

"If you want to be real," the boy said, pointing into the maze, "you have to find the exit. But here's the catch. Only one of you gets to leave. The other one stays here forever to feed the system."

"No way," I said. "We go together."

"That’s the beauty of it," he laughed. "You have to choose."

He slammed the door shut and locked it from the outside.

I turned to Sarah. She was looking at me, her eyes wet with tears. She didn't look scared anymore. She looked ready.

"We don't choose," she said firmly. "We break the maze."

"How? There’s no pen, Sarah. There’s no code."

"We don't need code to break glass," she said. She picked up a heavy metal trash can from the corner of the room and smashed it against the nearest mirror.

CRASH.

The sound was deafening. The mirror shattered, and behind it, I didn't see another room. I saw wires. I saw the guts of the system, the same wires I had pulled apart before.

"Keep going!" I yelled.

We started smashing. We hit every mirror, every wall, every piece of fake glass in that room. With every hit, the maze shuddered. The ceiling began to drop, and the walls started to close in, trying to crush us, but we didn't stop.

We were covered in sweat and dust. My hands were bleeding, but I didn't feel it. I just felt the need to destroy everything that wasn't real.

Suddenly, the boy’s voice came over an intercom, sounding panicked for the first time. "Stop! You’re deleting the entire project! If you break the foundation, you’ll be erased too! You won't exist at all!"

"Better to not exist," I shouted, "than to live a lie!"

I found the main pillar, the one thing holding the ceiling up, and I slammed my shoulder into it with everything I had. It cracked.

The whole building started to moan. The metal was screaming, and the glass was raining down on us like sharp snow.

"Logan!" Sarah yelled. She grabbed my hand, squeezing it so hard my bones ached. "If this is it... I’m glad it was you."

"We aren't done yet!"

I gathered all my strength, closed my eyes, and shoved the pillar one last time. It snapped.

The world went black.

There was no sound. There was no light. There was just a feeling of falling, fast and deep. I couldn't feel Sarah’s hand anymore. I couldn't feel my own body.

Then, I hit something.

BEEP. BEEP. BEEP.

I opened my eyes.

I was lying in a hospital bed. A machine was beeping next to me, showing a green line moving up and down. A doctor was standing over me, looking shocked.

"He’s awake," the doctor said. "He’s actually awake."

I tried to sit up, but my body felt heavy and weak. A woman was sitting in the chair next to the bed. She looked at me, her face pale, and started to cry. It was my mother.

"Oh, thank god," she sobbed. "Logan, you were in a coma for months. We thought we lost you."

I looked around the room. It was a real room. There were real flowers, a real window, and real sunlight pouring in.

I looked at my hands. They were just human hands. No ink. No code.

"Where is Sarah?" I asked, my voice raspy.

My mom frowned, wiping her tears. "Who is Sarah, honey? You’ve been alone since the accident. It was just you in the car when it hit the tree."

My stomach dropped. I looked at the table by the bed.

Sitting there was a notebook. It was my notebook.

I reached out, my fingers trembling, and opened it. The last page was filled with my own handwriting. It wasn't about the maze, or the boy, or the system.

It was a drawing.

It was a picture of me, standing in a park, holding hands with a girl I had never met.

And underneath the picture, written in ink that looked exactly like my own blood, were three words:

SHE IS COMING.

A shadow moved across the hospital door. The handle began to turn, slowly.

"Logan?" a voice whispered from the hall. It was her voice.

I froze. I couldn't move. I couldn't breathe.

The door creaked open, and a girl walked in. She looked at me, smiled, and pulled a black pen out of her pocket.

"Did you miss me?" she asked.