Chapter 96 The Screen of Lies

Chapter 96 The Screen of Lies
The gun in Julian’s hand wasn't real metal. It was made of shifting, glowing code that pulsed with a sick, blue light. He didn't blink. He didn't move. The screen where his face should have been flickered with scenes of me, crying in the cage, bleeding on the lab floor, holding the silver pen.

"Julian?" I whispered. My voice broke. The man I had fought to save, the boy I had loved through ninety-four different lifetimes, was nothing but a projector.

He’s not real. He’s just a loop. A trick of the light.

"Don't call me that," the screen-faced boy said. His voice came through a speaker in his chest, metallic and cold. "Julian was just a placeholder. An empty file I used to keep you tethered. You’re such a simple creature, Elara. You love anything that looks like a child."

I felt the last of my hope turn to ash. My legs felt heavy, but I didn't fall. I couldn't afford to fall.

"Why?" I asked, my voice hard. "Why keep me? Why not just delete me?"

"Because you're the engine," he said. He tapped a key on his chest. A new window opened on his screen, showing my own life, real, raw, and bleeding. "Every time you suffer, the story gets more views. Every time you scream, the company gets more data. I don't write the story. I just manage the output. And you... you produce the best pain I've ever seen."

He raised the gun higher.

"The contract is up, Elara. The company decided the 'revenge' arc has run dry. They want a new angle. They want a tragedy where the mother destroys her own son. It's a classic."

I didn't think. I didn't plan. I just acted. I surged forward, grabbing the barrel of the gun. The code bit into my skin like cold wire, but I didn't let go. I shoved it aside just as the screen-faced thing pulled the trigger.

ZZZT.

A bolt of blue energy missed my ear and slammed into the basement wall. The wall didn't break. It melted, revealing a row of servers humming in the dark, thousands of blinking lights, each one a different reality, each one a different me.

"You're not the writer," I hissed, wrestling with him. "You’re just a script-reader!"

I pulled him close. I could feel the heat of the screen against my own chest. I realized then that I didn't have to kill the machine. I just had to feed it the truth.

I took the silver key I had carried from the attic and jammed it into the port at the base of his screen.

ERROR.

The screen flashed red. The boy spasmed, his body glitching, his form turning into a mess of floating pixels.

"What... what are you doing?" he screamed.

"Giving you an update," I said.

I didn't stop. I shoved the key deeper. I felt the data flowing from my own heart, my real memories, the ones I had hidden from the ink, pouring into him. I gave him the pain of the fire. I gave him the feeling of the cage. I gave him the love for the boys that was so real it hurt.

He shrieked as the data flooded him. His screen turned white, then grey, then back to a face. But it wasn't a face I knew. It was my own.

He was looking at me through my own eyes.

"I see," he whispered, his voice finally human. "I see why you fought. It wasn't about the revenge. It was about the choice."

He fell to the floor, his blue glow fading. The gun dissolved into dust. The room went silent.

I stood over him, gasping for air. I had won. The machine was down. The basement was quiet. I was finally free.

I walked to the stairs, ready to leave, ready to find the sun. But as I reached the top, the door swung open.

A woman stood there. She was holding a tablet, and she looked annoyed. It was the girl from the attic, the one who said we were twins.

"Impressive," she said, looking at the dead machine. "But you missed a detail, Elara."

She held up the tablet. It showed a live feed of the basement, of me, standing over the broken boy.

"The readers aren't watching the story anymore," she said.

She turned the tablet around. It wasn't a list of subscribers. It was a list of me.

Thousands of names. Thousands of IDs.

"They aren't watching the story," she repeated. "They're casting votes. And the vote for your survival just hit zero percent."

She stepped aside.

Behind her, a squad of soldiers stood in the hall. They didn't have guns. They had syringes. And their faces... their faces were all mine.

"We are the new cast," the girl said. "And the director wants a cleaner ending."

They lunged at me.

I grabbed a piece of the broken desk, a sharp, jagged sliver of wood, and held it out.

"Come on then," I said, my voice cold as ice. "I’ve killed ninety-four versions of myself. What’s a few more?"

But just as they touched me, the floor gave way.

I fell through a trapdoor, tumbling into a dark, wet tunnel. I landed in a pile of rusted metal and old, discarded scripts.

I looked up.

There were no more stairs. No more doors.

Just a single, glowing hatch at the very top of the shaft.

And standing on the other side of that hatch was a man. He had my father's face, my brother's hands, and a voice that sounded like every loved one I had ever lost.

"Welcome home, Elara," he said, and he began to pour gasoline into the shaft.

He lit a match.

"Time to see if you can burn as well as you can write."

He dropped the fire.

The tunnel turned into a chimney. I looked up, the flames rising to meet me, and realized there was only one thing left to do.

I looked at the walls of the tunnel, covered in millions of words of my own history, and I started to climb. Not to get out, but to reach the top, and take the match-holder with me.

"If I burn," I screamed into the rising heat, "I'm taking the whole library down with me!"