Chapter 100 THE ARMY OF ME

Chapter 100 THE ARMY OF ME
I stood frozen. Thousands of versions of myself stood in the shadows, all holding that same golden key. The original Logan walked closer. He looked like me, but his eyes were hard. There was no warmth in them. He looked like a man who had done a million terrible things and didn't care anymore.

"Why are you doing this?" I yelled.

He stopped a few feet away. He leaned in, his breath cold against my face. "Because it’s the only way to be free, Logan. You think this is the real world? Look around."

He pointed to the glass jars lining the walls. Every single jar held a tiny, glowing scene. I saw a palace, a war zone, a lonely school, a city made of neon.

"Every life is just a copy," he said. "The engine takes a memory, builds a story, and then deletes it when it gets boring. My memories, your memories, Sarah’s memories, it’s all just fuel. I’m tired of being fuel."

"So you’re going to delete the world?" I asked. "You’re going to kill real people?"

"I'm going to turn the engine off," he said. "Once the engine stops, the stories stop. No more puppets. No more scripts. Just silence."

He held up the golden key. It glowed, lighting up the dark room.

"Where is Sarah?" I demanded again.

He smiled, but it didn't reach his eyes. He pointed to a small, dark jar near the ceiling. I looked up. Inside the glass, Sarah was sitting on the floor. She was hugging her knees, crying. She looked so small. She wasn't glowing like the others. She was fading.

"She’s a special case," the original Logan said. "She was the first thing the engine ever built that had its own will. If I delete the world, she goes too. Unless..."

"Unless what?"

"Unless you give me the red pen," he said.

He held out his hand. The red pen I had taken from the woman was still in my pocket. I gripped it tight.

"If I give you this, you’ll let her go?"

"I’ll give her a life," he said. "A real one. I’ll write her out of the system and into the world. You’ll never see her again, and you’ll have to stay here with us, but she’ll be safe."

I looked at the jar. Sarah looked up, as if she could hear us. She shook her head. No, she mouthed. Don't.

I looked at the thousands of other Logans behind him. They were waiting. They were just as tired as he was. They had all been used. They had all been deleted. They all wanted the engine to stop.

"You're not doing this for freedom," I said. "You're doing this because you're scared of being forgotten."

His face went red. He lunged at me, his fingers turning into claws. I dodged, but he was fast. He tackled me, and we hit the stone floor hard. My ink-stump arm scraped against the ground, sparks flying.

I rolled away, but he was on top of me again. He grabbed my throat. His grip was like iron.

"You don't get it!" he hissed. "You're just a draft! I'm the one who started it all! I’m the original!"

I reached into my pocket and pulled out the red pen. I didn't point it at him. I pointed it at the floor.

"If you're the original," I gasped, "then you know what happens when you cross out the name."

I slammed the red pen into the ground and wrote: End.

The room shook. The floor cracked. But it wasn't stone anymore. It was paper. The whole place started to fold in on itself. The Logans behind him started to scream as they turned into lines of text and drifted away into the air.

"No!" the original Logan yelled. He tried to grab the pen, but his hand turned into words before he could touch it. Arms. Fingers. Skin. He was coming apart, word by word.

"You're killing us!" he shouted.

"I'm resetting," I said.

I pushed the pen down again. Delete.

The floor vanished. I was falling again, but this time, the white space was gone. I was falling through a tunnel of light. I saw the classroom. I saw the palace. I saw the bus. I saw all the people I had ever met, all of them standing in line, waiting for something.

I saw Sarah. She was falling right next to me, but she wasn't crying anymore. She was reaching for my hand.

"Logan!" she yelled over the wind. "Look!"

I looked down. Below us, the ground was forming. It wasn't a story. It was a city. A real, messy, loud city. People were walking, cars were honking, and the sun was setting over the buildings.

We were going to hit the ground. I didn't know if we’d survive, but it was better than being an ink-stump in a glass jar.

I pulled Sarah close and pointed the red pen at the sky. I didn't write a story. I wrote a command.

Stay.

The tunnel stopped. We were hovering a few feet above a park bench in the middle of the city. We dropped onto the grass, coughing and gasping for air.

It was quiet. The only sound was the traffic in the distance and the wind in the trees.

I sat up. My hand was back. I looked at my arm, and it was flesh and blood. No ink. No text.

"Did we do it?" Sarah asked, sitting up.

I looked at my hand. The red pen was gone. I looked around. A group of kids was playing soccer nearby. A lady was walking her dog. Everything looked... normal.

"I think so," I said.

I stood up and walked to the edge of the park. I touched a brick wall. It was cold and rough. I touched a tree. It was bark, not code.

"Logan," Sarah said behind me.

I turned around.

Standing on the sidewalk, holding a briefcase, was the man in the suit. But he wasn't a villain. He was just a guy waiting for a bus. He looked at me, checked his watch, and walked away.

He didn't know me. He didn't know the pen.

I let out a breath I’d been holding for a lifetime.

"We made it," I said.

I turned to walk away, but then I felt something in my pocket. I reached in and pulled it out.

It was a small, blank notebook. And on the front cover, written in my own handwriting, were the words: Chapter 100: The Beginning.

I opened it, and the pages weren't blank.

They were filled with my life. And on the very last line, it said: And then, the real story started.

I looked up, and I saw a person walking toward us. It was someone I knew. Someone I thought was gone forever.

It was my wife. She looked at me and smiled, but her eyes weren't right. They were glowing blue.

"You forgot one thing," she said, her voice echoing in my head. "The Author never leaves the room."

She pulled out a blue pen.