The white fire of the Host's denial didn't burn like heat. It burned like bleach.
It washed over us, scrubbing at the textures of our existence, trying to sanitize the Zero-Day God into something clean and manageable. The scrap metal of my avatar turned into polished chrome. The chaotic roar of the Node was auto-tuned into a pleasant hum.
"He is sanitizing us!" Warp shouted, his voice sounding weirdly calm, stripped of panic. "He is applying a PG-rating to the apocalypse!"
"Resist!" I ordered. "Be ugly! Be loud!"
I forced the Zero-Day God to vomit a wave of pure, discordant noise. The chrome cracked, revealing the rust beneath. The pleasant hum shattered into static.
We stood on a plane of infinite white glass. The Host—the ten-year-old boy in hospital pajamas—floated above us. But he wasn't alone anymore.
Behind him stood an army.
But not of soldiers. Not of Gardeners.
They were all Elara.
Thousands of her.
Elara at age five, holding a balloon.
Elara at age twelve, winning a spelling bee.
Elara at age twenty, graduating.
Elara smiling. Elara laughing. Elara safe.
None of them were the Elara who died. None of them were the sister I remembered—the one who got sick, the one who faded, the one who left a hole in the world.
These were the "Director's Cut" versions. The Elaras that never existed.
"You are Grief," the Host said, his voice echoing from every one of the thousand girls. "You are the memory of the end. But I have the memories of the might-have-been."
He pointed a finger.
"Bury him in happiness."
The army of Elaras charged.
It was the most terrifying thing I had ever faced. They didn't attack with weapons. They attacked with wholesomeness.
A five-year-old Elara hugged my leg.
My leg began to dissolve into butterflies.
A twenty-year-old Elara placed a hand on my chest.
The Zero-Day God stuttered, confused by the influx of positive data.
"They're overwriting our trauma!" The Mender panicked. "My rage... it's turning into contentment! I can't fight if I'm happy!"
"It's a trap!" I roared, trying to shake them off. "It's false data! None of this happened!"
"Does it matter?" the Host shouted from the sky. "It feels good! Why choose the rot when you can have the bloom? Just let go, Kael. Be the brother she deserved. Live in the lie with me."
It was seduction on a cosmic scale. To stop being a monster. To live in a looped eternity of picnics and graduations with the sister we both lost.
I felt the Node slipping. Tali was weeping at the beauty of it. Cas was lowering his defenses.
I looked at the Elara hugging me. She was perfect. Too perfect. Her eyes didn't blink. Her smile was a fixed geometry.
She wasn't a person. She was a Deepfake.
"You..." I whispered, looking down at the construct. "You don't smell like strawberries."
I remembered the real Elara. The smell of antiseptic. The sound of her coughing. The way she squeezed my hand until her knuckles turned white because she was scared of the dark.
That fear was real. This perfection was an insult.
"You are desecrating her!" I screamed.
I grabbed the Deepfake Elara. I didn't hug her back. I channeled the Ledger.
"Silas! Price check!"
"Zero value," I spat.
I crushed the construct in my hand. She didn't bleed. She burst into pixels and bad code.
"She wasn't perfect!" I roared at the Host, wading through the army of fake sisters, smashing them aside. "She was messy! She was annoying! She bit her nails! She was afraid of clowns! She was human!"
With every truth I shouted, a fake Elara exploded.
"She died scared!" (SMASH)
"She died in pain!" (CRUSH)
"And you weren't there!" (TEAR)
The Host flinched. The white glass floor cracked.
"STOP IT!" the boy screamed. "DON'T REMIND ME!"
"That is my function!" I bellowed, now towering over him. "I am Grief! My job is to remind you that the hole in your heart is the shape of her! If you fill it with lies, you lose her completely!"
I reached the boy. The army of idols was gone, reduced to digital dust.
The boy was trembling. He looked small. The god-like aura was fading, leaving just a scared kid in pajamas.
"If I accept it..." he whispered, tears cutting tracks through the white glow of his face. "If I accept she's gone... then I'm alone."
I knelt down. My avatar was terrifying—a wreck of chaos and metal—but I tried to be gentle.
"No," I said. "You're not alone."
I pointed to my chest. To the scars. To the Node. To the ugliness.
"You have me."
The boy looked at me. "You? You hurt."
"I hurt because I'm real," I said. "I am the proof that you loved her. You don't grieve for things you don't care about. The pain... it's the receipt, brother. It's the price of love."
I held out my massive, clawed hand.
"Stop running. Stop building worlds to hide in. Pay the cost."
The boy stared at my hand. The Ledger hovered between us, waiting for the final transaction.
The boy hesitated. He looked at his beautiful, fake world. Then he looked at the dark, messy truth of me.
He reached out.
His small hand touched my giant metal claw.
CLICK.
The sound wasn't loud. It was the sound of a lock turning.
The white glass floor didn't shatter. It evaporated.
The sky didn't fall. It simply ceased to be.
The Simulation of Neovalis, the Axiom Tower, the Gardeners, the fake Elaras... all of it began to dissolve like sugar in hot water.
"It's over," the Host whispered, his form beginning to fade. "I'm waking up."
"We are waking up," I corrected.
As the world dissolved, the Zero-Day God inside me began to howl. It had no purpose anymore. The Chaos was being evicted by Reality.
My avatar began to crumble. Tali, Warp, Cas, the Mender... I felt their connections snapping one by one.
"Kael!" Tali cried out as she faded. "See you on the other side."
"Is there an other side?" Warp asked, dissolving into logic.
"I hope so," I said.
I was alone again. Just Kael. The Glitch.
I looked at the Host one last time. He was smiling. A real smile this time. Sad, but real.
"Thank you," he said. "For hurting me."
Then he vanished.
And then, there was only the Light.
Not the digital white of the simulation. But a harsh, biological, blinding light. The light of a real sun. Or a hospital lamp.
I closed my eyes.
And for the first time in 27 chapters, I fell asleep without dreaming.