Alexander is a broken man.

  He sits in his cell, and I watch him, searching his hopeless eyes for the truth I need to understand. Who he is. But a broken man isn’t the answer. That’s who this Alexander is. I want to know who the one I’m fighting right now is and what he wants with the black zone hidden in SHOCKS Olympia.

  And for that, I have to watch a man sit in his own waste and stare at a door that’s welded shut. For hours and hours.

  Nothing happens. The silence and the stink drag on. Alexander doesn’t seem to mind. His aug’s an old model—the kind they installed early in development. It’s got a red light that indicates it’s in use.

  His light’s off. He’s not using it. He probably can’t connect it to anything in this place. I know exactly where he is: the SHOCKS cell he ripped his way out of. He’s going to do it eventually. So I stand and watch, and I wait.

  It takes almost a day. For all I know, it’s instantaneous, but it feels like a day. His eyes are closed when it happens. Two crystals—one blue and one moss green—appear around his head. It takes him almost half an hour to make a move from there. The move he chooses is simple. He opens his eyes. The augment’s glowing. Then his fingers dive into his eye socket and come out with the whole eye.

  I squeeze my own eyes shut, but I can still hear him screaming through his gritted teeth. It only gets worse when he jams a finger into his ear and keeps pushing there—pushing until his eardrum ruptures and the bones and organs behind it are pulp, and so is the augment tucked inside.

  Then he sits, bleeds into his own filth, and stares at the door some more.

  So far, he hasn’t done anything anomalous, but he’s in here for a reason, and I want to know what it was. No. I need to know. Not just for my Inquiry. Because I need to know what Alexander learned that caused him to destroy his own eye and ear.

  Something’s wrong, though.

  It’s taken almost a day to realize it.

  But the ‘real’ Alexander—the one I dragged into this memory—isn’t here.

  Truthseeker throws both me and the target into a memory. It did with Li Mei and the gigantic spider-thing. Alexander should be here. But he isn’t, and a shiver runs down my spine; if he’s not here, there are a couple of explanations. He could be ‘here’ but occupying the same space as the memory of Alexander. He could be somewhere else. Maybe there’s another event I need to see, and this is only half of the truth I’m seeking.

  Or…I shiver again. I might have fucked up.

  R-404 was safe because Alexander, a reality shaper, couldn’t shape reality at such low levels. But here, in his memories, that rule may not apply.

  My mind’s racing. I had no idea how to beat Alexander in a fight where he’s not only ready for me, but where he knows exactly what’s about to happen, and where he’s had a full day’s head start.

  The memory of Alexander stands up. He’s unsteady; I’ve been there, when SHOCKS shut my augment off after I killed the Painter. But all it takes is one deep breath, and suddenly, reality shifts. He’s not wobbly anymore. Now it’s everything else that is.

  “James, you getting this?”

  [No,] James One says, [I’m busy dealing with Reality One interference with my systems, and I have no influence over a memory. That said, it’s been almost two minutes. Are things going okay?]

  “Everything’s just great,” I say. That’s a lie. I follow the memory of Alexander as he melts the door into nothing. It’s not heat. The steel just disintegrates and vanishes. And in that moment, I realize something I should have realized a long time ago. Alexander is way, way more powerful than he appeared. He’s been holding back this entire time. And I know exactly what happened to SHOCKS Olympia—why it’s completely empty, including the people.

  Alexander happened to SHOCKS Olympia. An already-powerful reality-shaping anomaly received access to the Halcyon System and bonded with an anomaly that gave his powers enough of a boost to overwhelm the cell’s defenses. And the only thing that’s keeping him from simply melting me away like ice cream in a blast furnace is…

  Reality 404. But to get there, I have to survive Alexander’s memory. And that means surviving Alexander—the real one.

  If I didn’t think Alexander needed to be dead before, watching him melt the SHOCKS Olympia staff and disappear them into nothing convinces me.

  The memory of Alexander walks calmly down the hall. He ignores the thumping on cell doors as he passes, and the alarm that goes off when he forces his way through the door to the tram station. An RST—a whole team—tries to intercept him, but they vanish like they never existed.

  And the whole time I watch him destroy SHOCKS Olympia’s finest troopers with little more than a glance, I’m on high alert for the real Alexander.

  This one’s on train tracks, but the one I’m afraid of is off the rails.

  The memory doesn’t stop with the tram. He vaporizes the guards, then the researchers in SHOCKS Olympia. They simply cease to exist. It’s not a fight. It’s a massacre. He doesn’t vaporize Director White, though. The tiny black woman spills every secret the facility’s got in a whisper I can’t hear, and she does it willingly, even as her augs melt and pour into her skull. When she finally dies, Alexander vanishes her body, too.

  Then, he heads for the black sector. I follow him. That’s where Alexander will ambush me, but even so, I have to know what he found, and I can’t trust that it’ll still be there in Reality Zero.

  If I’m going to figure this out, it has to be here and now.

  So, the question I need to answer is whether Alexander can actually hurt me here. No other memory-watchers have been able to, but Alexander’s not playing by the same rules Li Mei had to.

  I follow the memory of Alexander as he strolls toward the black sector. He’s not in a hurry, but he’s not lollygagging, either. He knows exactly where he’s going, and I can’t help but wonder what his limits are. He learned everything he needed to know from Director White; he didn’t access a single computer or read a single document. And she had to tell him; he couldn’t just pull it from her thoughts. On the other hand, she did tell him. He’s mind-affecting, too.

  Then he’s through the wall at the end of the hall. It’s there, but it’s not there—a weird opposite of the steel barrier at the tram station. I can pass through it easily, like an illusory wall in a video game.

  The memory ignores the experiments and heads straight for the bridge. He crosses it, and I follow.

  On the far side is a room.

  Just a single chamber. It’s suspended over the empty void below and shackled to the bridge with huge metal clamps. Its Plexiglas walls are covered in shining silver metal and wires. Thousands of cables and tubes weave in and out. They all lead to a central chamber—this one solid steel except for a tiny window that’s black and foggy—and then back outside. None of them lead across the bridge. The whole thing is self-sustaining. When Alexander steps inside, the entire room creaks. When I follow him, it doesn’t.

  The memory heads straight to the chamber in the center. He reaches out and starts entering a code.

  The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

  “I’m not going to kill you, girl,” the real Alexander says. “Not yet.”

  I whirl. The Revolver goes up. Then my arm freezes. It’s not lined up right, and Alexander steps out of the gun’s sights without a problem. “I need you to understand what went wrong so you can understand what has to happen—and why. So you can help me fix it.”

  A beep fills the air. The memory of Alexander steps back from the chamber.

  “Attention: Code Failure. One attempt remaining. Exterior doors sealed,” a digital voice announces. “Venting and releasing Atero-Danger Class S Containment Cell in fifteen seconds, or on second Code Failure.”

  “Fuck,” Alexander—the memory—says.

  And just like that, they’re both gone. Both the real Alexander and his memory vanish from the room.

  I don’t.

  Fourteen seconds.

  Okay. Equation time. This one will be messy, and I’m almost certainly going to mess up the math, but the variables and constants need sorting through first. Constant number one: I’m stuck in Alexander’s memory. I try Mergewalking out, but I’m not in a reality, so that doesn’t work. I don’t have a good way out of this cell, either. So this is a problem.

  Constant number two: Alexander isn’t here, and he’s capable of taking actions inside his own memory. That implies the opposite of what I just learned. This is a reality.

  Twelve seconds. Gotta speed this up.

  Constant number three: I can get control of the situation by getting to R-404.

  Variables. Variable one: Can I break out of the memory, or if I can’t, can I survive until it ends? If this is the end of the memory—or close to it—maybe I can tough out whatever’s about to happen.

  Nine seconds.

  Eight.

  Variable two: What happens at the bottom of the drop? I don’t have an answer to this one. I leave it blank.

  Variable three: Can I die in Alexander’s memory?

  There’s no time for a fourth variable. Either the equation’s solvable or it isn’t.

  Four.

  Three.

  The keypad’s a number-and-letter variation. I take a deep breath and punch a series of letters and numbers in. It’s a shot in the dark, but they’re the first six that both pop into my head and make sense. Zero, P, Four, L, One, O.

  One second.

  I press enter.

  I’m wrong.

  The cell drops. At the same time, air rushes out through a dozen vents that open, and in less than a second, there’s nothing to breathe. It’s a physical sensation, and I hold what’s left of my breath in my lungs. Physical Anomaly Resistance helps, but I’ve only got half a lungful of air, and I’m falling. The whole cell is falling. The string of numbers and letters means something. Otherwise, why would it have popped into my head here, of all places?

  That’ll only matter if I survive this.

  Now, all that’s left is to see if I did the math right.

  Location Unknown, Reality 404, Time Unknown

  - - - - -

  When I come out into Reality 404, Alexander’s waiting for me.

  So is James One. [We’re at about two minutes until I’m no longer viable and will initiate self-deletion, Claire.]

  “Got it.” That was the plan the whole time. It’s just taken me longer to deal with Alexander than I’d hoped.

  “Now you understand?” Alexander asks. He’s got a manic look in his single eye, and he’s staring at the Personal Reality Anchor that’s still running on my chest. “Now you see why I needed to do all of this?”

  “No?”

  “No?”

  “No, I don’t understand. I didn’t see your truth. All I saw was a cell with a metal tank in the center and a bottomless pit. If you’ve got some big reveal, now’s the—“

  He cuts me off. “If you don’t see it, then you’re not a threat to me anymore.”

  That’s all he says. He doesn’t leave because he can’t. But he lunges toward me. The Revolver goes off, and a mergekiller round punches a hole in his arm, but it doesn’t throw him to a different reality or break his anomaly apart or anything like that. And then he’s on me. The moment he’s inside the Personal Reality Anchor’s area of effect, his power starts up again. I feel myself getting thin, like I’m stretched out like a balloon. My resistances scream; they’re helping, but not enough.

  He’s disappearing me, and there’s nothing I can do to stop him. I can’t move. I can’t even—

  The Personal Reality Anchor explodes.

  Shrapnel rips across my face in a dozen tiny cuts that Physical Anomaly Resistance starts healing instantly. My stomach shreds, and that’s going to take a little more time to fix. The Revolver’s fine, though, and so are my eyes.

  The explosion throws Alexander away from me. He’s bleeding—the blood shifts and changes in R-404’s unreality. A dozen wounds. The hole in his arm, shrapnel across his chest and legs—even his destroyed ear.

  I don’t waste any time. Bullet Time. Three rounds, all to the man’s head. He’s too dangerous to leave here; he shouldn’t be able to survive it, but I can’t take the chance. Time starts.

  A crystal—bright blue—intervenes between Alexander’s head and the three mergekiller rounds. It shatters into thousands of pieces, and Alexander’s powers activate again. I Slither away from him, then Smoke Form when it’s not enough. For a second, I’m not sure why I ever wanted to fight him. What I really want is to hand him the gun. It’ll be easier than fighting him.

  Then I’m drifting away. My mind snaps back to reality, and I empty the last two rounds into Alexander. This time, it’s the other orb that blocks—but it only stops a single shell before it shatters.

  “No.”

  Alexander says it with such authority that his wounds stop being wounds. The Revolver’s just a mass of ceramics and steel, and the cylinders in my sports coat’s pockets are nothing but paperweights. The second shell stops mid-air.

  “No. I haven’t come this far, crossed oceans and spent years imprisoned in a shit-filled cell, to fail here. That chamber is the key to becoming a god, and I will have it.”

  What kind of delusion is that? It’s a chamber in a research facility that SHOCKS doesn’t want people to know about, that they’re willing to kill to hide, but how does that apply to Alexander? I’m missing something. A core component of the Truth behind Alexander. And if I don’t find it now, he’s going to win. “I’ve fought gods. They’re not that great. Who are you?”

  He doesn’t say anything. The silence stretches.

  [Thirty seconds, then I’m shutting down. Ninety-eight percent of processing loops are compromised. Analyzing Alexander with new information. Please wait,] James One says.

  We’re stalemated. Alexander’s face strains as he tries to squeeze me out of existence. There’s not enough reality here for it to work, but I don’t have a single weapon that can hurt him. I do have time, though. The answer’s in there somewhere. The things Alexander said make me sure of that. He needs the chamber. The chamber’s gone; I saw it drop. But I also saw it on the far side of the bridge when I ambushed Alexander. Or did I? I’m not sure, and solving that variable solves the equation.

  So, let’s pretend the chamber’s there. That it’s, somehow, intact and totally fine at the end of the bridge. What’s special about it?

  What is that chamber in its center?

  [Analysis complete. Temporary link to James Prime established. Alexander containment document downloading. Download complete. Link shutting down. Self-deletion in progress.]

  James is gone. I’m alone in Reality 404 with Alexander. And a document.

  The file is a scanned paper document dated to the early 2000s. It’s heavily redacted—with black ink. Over half of it isn’t readable. But there’s enough in the document for me to work out a few things.

  Alexander isn’t real. He never was. He’s an anomaly, and only an anomaly. He’s not human.

  He’s Atero-Danger, just like the thing in the tank.

  And just like Sidney.

  I wish James was still here because I need to see his document. But without it, I can still make an educated guess.

  Alexander’s powers could have been very useful to SHOCKS. The ability to shape reality in the ways he does makes him problematic—but not impossible—to contain. The ability to simply receive information from people makes him the perfect interrogator. It didn’t work on me—not like Li Mei’s compulsion—but I’m not human anymore, or at least not a normal one. That second power could have earned him an Atero-Danger level as a useful anomaly, just like Sidney and James.

  Something went wrong, and he ended up in the Geren-Danger oubliette. He couldn’t get out. Not until Merge Prime, when he instantly gained a ton of power as the System empowered him. By that point, he was either paranoid, delusional, or both. Or something—I don’t have the right words.

  I’m making this up as I go, but I can’t leave him here—not alive—and I can’t hurt him, so this is a last-ditch effort to win.

  So, Alexander wants to be a god. He doesn’t trust the System. In fact, he trusts it so little he’s willing to destroy his vision and hearing so he doesn’t have to talk to it. But he doesn’t have the power to shape his own reality. That’s the key. He can’t just wish for more power for himself; he’s limited by his body, his anomaly, and his knowledge.

  I got the code wrong. Zero, P, 4, L, O, One.

  SHOCKS Olympia has a JAMES Unit of its own, and it’s held in the drop-cell. That’s what Alexander wanted. Access to knowledge, but without the baggage of the Halcyon System.

  Co-opting a JAMES Unit would have been a step toward godlike powers for Alexander—it probably would have made him a high-QISHI-Danger reality shaper. And he was one code that Director White couldn’t tell him from getting there.

  [Truth Learned: Alexander the God]

  [Active Skill Learned: Mergewalk 3]

  I do have the code now, though. At least, I’m pretty sure I do.

  Alexander feels the shift. His eyes narrow as the rounds in the Revolver start to glow, and all the pressure this reality can offer crashes down on me. But I don’t stop. It’s too late to stop. My finger tightens on the trigger, and a mergekiller round punches into Alexander’s chest. Then another and another.

  When it’s over, he’s dead. He has to be. But I check, just to be sure.

  He has no pulse. The two crystals are destroyed.

  I grab his corpse and Mergewalk out, heading back to the bridge where I ambushed him.

  That’s not where I end up, though.

  Patreon has one advanced chapter available for free members and seven advanced chapters ahead of Royal Road for $5.00. Come check it out!