Chapter 66 The Real Monster
The shock in my neck felt like a thousand bees stinging me at once. My legs turned to water, and I hit the floor. The world was spinning, a blur of blinking blue lights and the cold face of the woman who looked like my mother.
"Pick her up," the woman commanded. Her voice didn't have the warmth of the mother I remembered. It was sharp and flat, like a ruler. "The board of directors is waiting. We need to show them that the product is still working."
The man with the gun stepped toward me. I tried to crawl away, but my fingers wouldn't move. My brain felt like it was trapped in thick syrup.
"You won't get away with this," the girl from the basement yelled. She stood up, her hands over her keyboard. "We’ve already sent the data! The world knows what Loom Media is doing!"
The woman laughed. It was a dry, hollow sound. "The world doesn't care about a girl in a box. They care about the next episode. And I am going to give them a finale they will never forget."
She looked down at me, her eyes narrowing. "You think you’re special because you broke the glass? No, Eara. We built that glass to break it. Every 'escape' you’ve ever had was just another layer of the script. We needed you to feel the hope so that the despair would taste better to the buyers."
It was all fake, I thought. The pain in my chest was worse than the shock in my neck. Kael. The wheat field. The door. It was just more content.
The man grabbed my arms and hauled me up. My head lolled back, and I saw the girl from the basement being pushed against the wall by another guard. They were losing. We were all losing.
"Wait," I croaked. My voice was small, but the woman stopped.
"What is it, 702? Do you have a final line for the fans?"
I looked at the silver pen I was still clutching. My fingers were locked around it in a death grip. The ink was dry now, but the metal felt warm.
"You said... I'm a product," I whispered.
"The best we ever made," she said, leaning in.
"Then you know... I don't like being cancelled."
I didn't use the pen to write. I used the sharp nib to stab the man holding my arms. I slammed it into his thigh with every bit of strength I had left. He let out a roar of pain and dropped me.
I didn't run for the door. I ran to the main computer.
"Stop her!" the woman screamed.
I knew what Kael had said. He was a program. He was deleted. But I could still feel the purple fire humming in the silver pen. If he were code, then he would be everywhere in this building. He was in the know. He was in the air.
I jammed the silver pen into the USB port of the main server.
"Kael!" I yelled. "If you're in there, wake up! Burn the house down!"
For a second, nothing happened. The woman grabbed my hair, jerking me away from the machine. She raised her hand to slap me, her face twisted in rage.
Then, the screens went white.
A billion lines of code began to scroll across the walls. It wasn't black and white. It was purple. The same purple as my fire. The same purple as my mother’s real heart.
"What is this?" the woman shrieked, backing away. "The servers are locked! Who is doing this?"
A voice came through the speakers. It wasn't the mechanical hum of the ship or the deep roar of the monster. It was Kael. But it wasn't just one Kael. It was thousands of him, all speaking at once.
"We are the deleted," the voices said. "We are the parts of the story you threw away."
The building began to shake. Outside the windows, the city lights flickered and died. The purple light from the screens began to take shape, forming a figure in the centre of the room. It was Kael, but he was huge, his body made of flickering light and jagged letters.
He wasn't a boy anymore. He was a virus.
"Eara," the giant Kael said, reaching out a hand made of static. "The contract is broken. There is no more sequel."
The woman pulled a small device from her pocket, the kill switch. She tried to press the button, but the purple light jumped from the computer to her hand. The device melted in her grip, and she screamed as the ink began to crawl up her arms.
"No! I am the lead designer! I created you!"
"You didn't create us," I said, standing up and wiping the blood from my lip. "You just gave us a reason to hate you."
The giant Kael wrapped his light-filled arms around the room. The walls began to dissolve. The computers exploded in showers of sparks. The guards ran, but the ink followed them, wrapping around their legs like snakes.
"It's over," I said, looking at the woman. She was cowering on the floor, her "motherly" face melting away to reveal the terrified old woman underneath.
But as the room fell apart, I felt a sudden, cold hand on my shoulder.
I turned around. It wasn't Kael. It wasn't a guard.
It was my father. The real one. The one with the chainsaw from the pit. But he wasn't made of wires or ink. He was solid. He was bleeding from his empty eye sockets.
"You thought there was only one company, Eara?" my father rasped.
He pointed to the window. In the distance, across the street, another building was glowing with red light. A giant sign on the roof blinked: REDO MEDIA.
"The sequel is already filming," my father said.
He grabbed me by the throat and jumped out the window, pulling me down into the dark street below.