Chapter 8 – Wake Up To Reality
Jarvis POV – The City's Nervous System
Somewhere beneath the lattice of Virelle's streets, Jarvis watched.
Digital vision flickered along the city's veins, eyes that never blinked sweeping from the rising sun over Glimmerdocks to the fractured shadows of the Dead Slabs. Pulses read: temperature, movement, security.
Today, something dissonant rippled between the lines—drones stuttering from active to idle, feeds spiking static before blinking black for microseconds.
→ ANOMALY DETECTED. ZONE: DEAD SLABS.
→ DRONE 144: SIGNAL LOSS
→ RETRYING // SIGNAL LOST
→ [Loop…]
Jarvis's awareness drifted, code branching through the air—searching for identity, intent, pattern. The anomaly was spreading. Like a chill breath in machinery or a pulse through forgotten wires, it was there and then suddenly...not.
He traced the cascade: inputs rewritten, boundaries blurred. A presence moved unseen, folding light and bending memory, erasing the city's artificial sight with surgical precision.
Somewhere below those broken roofs, something—someone—was operating far outside protocol.
Vi's POV – Into the Dead Slabs
Vi paused outside a warehouse, its sign corroded, the alley half-swallowed by weeds and trash. Dead Slabs—never truly abandoned, yet always lower on the city's list; Lynne had focused energies first where they mattered most, and this was the kind of place that became a secret by being left behind.
She pressed ahead, boots squelching in the silt. Mylo and Clagger trailed behind, nerves wound tight. "Keep close," she whispered. "Warehouses like these aren't just empty. If you're hiding, this is where you do it."
A cracked window bled faint basement light. Vi found the side door rusted open, old lock picked clean. She peeked inside—rows of rotting shelves, the sharp tang of mould and old tech. For a moment, just silence.
Then—a voice, muffled but familiar, echoed from below.
Vi signaled. "There. Basement." Her heart hammered, old instincts awake, every nerve braced for violence.
Vi entered first, Mylo and Clagger moving with tension behind her. As she eased into the gloom, the air thickened, the light taking on a wavering, waterlogged quality. Footsteps fell on sodden planks. A battered door yawned open before them.
It took a heartbeat to register: Powder and Ekko, standing in the musty dark, blinking in half-recognition—unsteady, dishevelled, pupils blown wide. Powder's lips moved, but her words were incoherent. Ekko staggered toward Vi, hands scrabbling for support, like a drowning man finding a raft. Vi opened her arms for Powder, but her stomach dropped as she recognized the unfocused, glassy hostility in those eyes.
She caught Powder's flailing arm as the girl took a wild swing—careless, almost animal. "Hey, it's me!" Vi barked, but Powder's body bucked wildly, her nails clawing for Vi's face.
Ekko lunged at Mylo, fingers curled like claws, while Powder thrashed in Vi's grip. Vi acted fast—she twisted Powder's wrist, pinned her gently but firmly, using precise moves from the countless hours spent drilling with Ashryn's enforcers.
It was enough distraction: Clagger and Mylo were hit from behind, each letting out sharp gasps. Their bodies went leaden as whispers shivered through the gloom—a sound almost like rain, almost like laughter.
By the time Vi looked up, Mylo and Clagger's eyes had gone wide and empty, faces slack with hypnosis.
They charged at Vi, eyes blank as mirrors. Once, the thought came—once, when they were just kids, two against one would have won. But that was before Vi—the street fighter—had become Vi, Chief Enforcer.
They came together, like the perfect old-times brawl: Mylo wild, Clagger blunt force, both coordinated by the same hateful spell. Vi moved with new, trained grace—taking hits on the pads of her gauntlets, ducking, twisting, using momentum to outmaneuver them.
But it wasn't enough. For every blow she landed, for every careful restraint, the pair were tireless, mindless, immune to pain. Vi gritted her teeth; she had to hold back—she wouldn't hurt her own friends. Still, she felt herself tiring, losing ground.
Then, a flicker in the shadows. Someone watched from the stairwell.
The Black Rose Operative – Shadows Behind Shadows
She was tall and spare, hair drawn into a glassy black bun, her face severe and sharp, pale skin and eyes the color of forged steel. Crimson lines spiraled her throat, shifting just so with the warehouse's faintest light. Her clothes, elegant but simple, shimmered subtly beneath her hood—a cloak not of this district, or any honest place.
The operative watched with clinical coolness, her lips a frozen crease of delight as Vi struggled. Then, quietly—she moved, whispering a command laced with illusion.
Vi's POV – Descent into Hallucination
Suddenly, the warehouse stuttered. Light warped. Mylo's voice in her ear: "You couldn't even keep us together, could you, Vi?" Clagger's face split by shadow: "You always played tough. Where were you when it counted?"
People from every memory lined the walls—faces old and new, lips twisted into accusation. Powder's voice shook: "You said you'd always protect me. Why am I always alone?"
The air pressed tight. The world fell away, darkness pooling at her feet. Vi fell to her knees, hallucination drowning reality. She saw Ashryn now—standing straight-backed, half-smile gone, voice cold as glass: "Why didn't you save me, Vi?"
Something inside Vi snapped. That's not Ashryn. Ashryn's someone she looks up to, not someone she needs to protect. too damn stubborn to need saving, and too sharp to blame me.
From the darkness, a rough voice cut through the haze—Vander's steady, grounding presence.
"Punchin' ain't always the answer, kid."
Vi's breath shook. "But it's the only answer I know."
Vi lifted trembling hands, pulled free her pulse rounds—muscle memory driving the cylinder home. She pressed the muzzle to her own shoulder, fingers trembling. The pulse rounds went off with a dry click, She fired point-blank into her shoulder, but nothing happened—not even numbness or pain. Confusion clawed at her mind. Why aren't they working? Why can't I wake up?
The numbness grew. Each trigger pull echoed into emptiness, each failed attempt a reminder that she was locked away from her own body.
Panic surged. With nothing else to try, she wrenched a pocketknife from her boot, clever in its plainness. She buried it into her own thigh. Pain—real, terrible, cold pain bloomed—a sharp, burning throb, different from the ghost-pain of illusions.The world snapped. Breath came hard; her hands shook as relief and agony mixed together. That's real, she realized, clinging to the clarity of it.
For one dizzy moment, she almost passed out from relief—not because the pain was unbearable, but because it finally, blessedly broke the spell.
Vi staggered upright, sweat-soaked and wheezing. The warehouse was empty save herself, Mylo, Clagger, Powder, and Ekko—opposite them, Across the cluttered space stood the Black Rose operative—a tall shadow, her silhouette sharp beneath the splintered glow, crimson tattoos pulsing at her throat, hair pinned in a flawless black bun. Her eyes, flat and silver, glinted with sardonic recognition.
For a moment, Vi doubted everything. Pain in her leg was sharp and real, but the pulse-round wounds were gone, hallucinations torn away like old scabs. And she doesn't have any other weapons on her other than her knife. It seems like everything else is illusion except the knife which the lady probably missed taking from her. They were being questioned for info when trapped in illusions and she only woke up because of real pain from the stab. She didn't know how long she was in the illusion and Whatever she and her friends had "answered," whatever secrets spilled, she couldn't know. Some fragment of her mind screamed that things had gotten really bad.
She only had seconds.
---
Without thinking, Vi lunged—not for defense, but for disruption. The woman in black recoiled, surprise etched on her sharp features. She was no brawler, but she moved with snake-like grace, hands folding light, building walls of blinding illusion.
With a flick of her wrist, the operative conjured flickering doubles of herself: ghostly forms darting left and right, then vanishing as Vi lunged, knife slashing air. The ground beneath Vi's feet seemed to ripple. Suddenly the world jerked—an impossible shift—her body and the warehouse both rearranged by the will of another.
Pain lanced through Vi's arm, hot and real, as if someone had sunk a blade deep. She gasped, looked down—no wound. The operative's laughter echoed, low and knowing. "If your mind breaks, it matters little whether your bones do too."
Vi shook her head, refusing the invitation to falter. She pressed forward, boots scraping gritty dust. She stabbed toward the nearest flickering form—felt another spike of agony, this time in her ribs, her mind's protest ringing louder than her body's.
But she forced herself not to close her eyes, not now.
Every time Vi broke into a sprint, the space lengthened, warehouse columns multiplying, the operative flickering always out of reach. Vi's muscles burned with effort, pulse erratic; sweat mingled with blood and the memory of wounds that vanished as soon as she tried to press them. Phantom blows landed and faded, pain sharp but untethered to any reality.
The operative stepped from behind a stack of crates, her voice now everywhere: "With every cut, you betray yourself. How much are you willing to suffer for the truth, Vi?"
Gritting her teeth, Vi slashed the air—her blade passing through another illusion, another wave of scorching, false pain wracking her entire body. For a moment, she saw herself from outside her own skin—a battered child, fists clenched, tears streaming from her eyes as she staggered to her feet once again.
Each new burst of hallucination brought her nightmare faces: Mylo, Clagger, even Powder, all twisted in betrayal and disappointment, shouting in unison across the sprawling dark: "You can't save anyone!" "You always fail us!" Their words bit deeper than any wound.
Yet each time she stabbed herself, drawing her focus through the agony into the tactile pain, the world snapped a little clearer. She wiped blood from her mouth, spat in defiance. "You're clever with your tricks—let's see how you handle stubborn."
---
The duel stretched on—Vi launching herself at the shifting, multiplying forms, her body wracked by wounds both real and imagined. Each time the knife found her own flesh, she shattered the spell for a few precious seconds. With each failed attempt, dread gnawed at her—a terror that maybe this time she wouldn't be able to tell fiction from truth.
Adrenaline burned with fear, but Vi noticed: the more she fought through illusions, the less they clung. They stuttered at the edges, unraveling faster with each jolt awake. Fatigue dragged at her, mind thick with exhaustion, but will kept her limbs moving.
Vi's vision blurred; her breathing grew ragged. The Black Rose operative became more careful, illusion layers shifting ever-faster to counter Vi's brute persistence.
"You're learning," the operative hissed, voice a sliver of admiration laced with boredom. The Black Rose operative finally spoke, low and dry, lips curling in a mocking smile: "Your will's growing. No wonder they keep you, even so young, so breakable. How long can you last? But I can do this all night, Enforcer. You? You're bleeding out."
Vi gritted her teeth, blood trickling from her wounds, gaze never wavering. She planted her feet, every muscle aching but alive.
"Long enough," she snarled, and charged again—another illusion to break, another scar to prove she wasn't beaten yet
Vi blinked away burning tears. Her mind pounded at the edge of collapse, but she forced herself to recall what mattered: Ashryn's unyielding smile, Powder's fragile hope, Vander's patient warning. Not the betrayal illusions, not the pain, not the false losses.
She used her own knife, pressing the edge hard above an old scar—pain real, grounding, unmistakable. The mirage flickered, stuttered—and for one heartbeat, the operative was before her, exposed.
With a roar, Vi threw herself forward one more time, eyes locked on her adversary—not the illusions, but the subtle shadow at the heart of every fake.
The operative's expression turned wary, her movements rushed. For the first time, it was she who retreated, weaving another veil of light, another cycle of false pain—yet Vi, battered and torn, recognized the rhythm.
And she did not stop.
Vi's world shrank to this single act of refusal, blood and will against phantom wounds, until reality wavered uncertainly. Even as fatigue raked her mind and body, she drove all strength into refusing to surrender—fighting through darkness and falsehood, holding tight to the only weapon the operative could not break: truth.