/ Collapse, Pt. 1: Sinistra /

Arufa fell to her knees, bruised from earlier trauma. Her sister—or some version of her—laid limp on the floor, a bloody hole between her eyes.

I was too scared to say anything. I could have stepped in and saved her, but now she’s dead. Does that make it my fault?

Immediately, Ghiles tossed the gun aside and ran to the Transversal. Without a second to lose, he typed erratically on its keyboard while the laboratory above shuddered and shook.

Q

Skyler took a breath and stepped away from Dr. White’s body. “…It shouldn’t have come to that.”

“Arufa, are you alright?” Marsia asked, seeing her all alone. “You don’t seem so well.”

“First it was Locri, then it was her. Who else has to die for this stupid project?”

Bam! Ghiles slammed the table with his fist—it echoed throughout the halls in tandem with the crashing from above. “No! No, you’re kidding me!”

“What’s that?” Marsia called.

k

“You three, come here. It’s bad.”

Marsia took Arufa by the arm and brought her to her feet; the three remaining subjects shakily walked past the two bodies and approached the Transversal’s monitors.

Data blinked across its screens, hundreds of unknowable statistics encapsulated by its code. Its light flickered, receiving little electricity from the reserve. It was incomprehensible.

“I’m trying to send you home—well, back to your parallel worlds, wherever you were within them. You guys deserve that,” Ghiles said. “I got a tracking on Skyler’s parallel, but… something’s wrong.”

V

“Okay, am I gonna be able to go home?” Skyler asked cautiously.

“Yeah. I’m… fairly confident you’ll be fine. It’s Marsia that’s the problem.”

Marsia put her hands on her hips, her wires glowing like a sunset. “And why is that, doctor?”

C

He sighed. “I have your world’s tracking saved in the logs, so I should be able to get you there, but the reserve power’s not enough to get you both home at once.”

“And what about Arufa?” she spat. “She deserves to go home, too!”

“I am home,” Arufa muttered, much to Marsia’s dismay. “This is my world.”

Ghiles nodded. “She’s right. I only need to focus on you two.”

“Right, so… if the power’s not enough to get both of us at once, just do it one at a time.”

He thought for a moment and smirked. “That’s really stupid. But it might work. I’ll target Skyler first.”

While he typed, Skyler looked around at the sirens, slowly dimming as the facility’s power ran dry. Cracks ran down the wall—dirt seeped in and scattered on the tiles.

“How much time will it take?” they asked.

“A few seconds. To us, it’ll look like you’ve fallen into a coma. But your soul will be soaring across causal space-time to return to your real body.”

U

“Causal space-time?”

“Dr. White made that term. It accounts for a ‘fifth dimension’, orthogonal to time and space. If you think of parallels as literal lines, causality is perpendicular to them. The Transversal makes calculations in that space and directs your consciousness to a destination.”

They closed their eyes. “I wish I had more time, but I won’t take any more from you. Every second, this lab gets closer to collapsing—and I want you and Arufa to make it out alive.”

“We’re good to go, then. Say your goodbyes.”

Marsia shrugged. “Bye, Dr. Everly.”

They winked in response. “Dr. Lilia.”

k

“Skyler,” Arufa said. “You… were a really great friend.”

“You too, Arufa. I’ll never forget you. So don’t forget me either, okay?”

“I won’t.”

And suddenly, Skyler collapsed to the floor, their wires shutting down. Their comatose body let off no light—possibly the first happy ending for anyone in the laboratory.

Skyler… Thank you.

F

As the speakers wailed out in distress, Marsia stepped forward. “It’s my turn.”

Ghiles pulled up what was presumably her own destination. “Be quick,” he said.

“Do it while I hug her,” Marsia said. She turned to Arufa and brought her in, arms wrapped around her back. “I want to remember what this feels like.”

W

The two stood in their embrace, quiet. It felt as though the alarms faded into silence, the only sound Marsia’s soft breathing near her ear.

This is nice. Everything is terrible, but… this is nice.

“Marsia…?” Ghiles said, a tremble rising in his voice.

“Yes?”

“This… doesn’t make any sense. It says… you’re already there. Your consciousness is already in that world!”

“Does that mean…?”

R

“I can’t transfer you over,” he grumbled. “And even if I could… something’s sucking up the reserve power. Ari must’ve put in some failsafe for her experiment downstairs.”

Arufa backed out of the hug and began to panic. “You mean… she’s trapped here?!”

“I… I’m sorry, I don’t know what to do…!” Ghiles said, red light illuminating the fear in his eyes.

Marsia hmphed. “Well, then. I guess I’ll be escaping with you. Skyler said we didn’t have much time, so we’d best get going. Ghiles, you know this place. How should we go about this?”

“No, I can make it work! I’m sure it’s just a bug, or–”

A huge chunk of concrete fell from the ceiling and shattered the elevated office behind them, sending sparks flying all over as electronics short-circuited. A couple of small fires began in and around the computer complex.

“Ghiles!” Arufa shouted.

“Okay! The elevators are out right now, so we need to take the fire stairs. Follow me.”

He ran into the hallways, taking a path the two had never gone down before. Sirens still loud as ever, they focused solely on following the scientist.

U

He couldn’t transfer her because her consciousness was ‘already in that world’. But how is that possible? Her consciousness is right beside me. There’s no way…

Either way, the chance the Transversal makes it out of this is basically zero. This is my world—as far as I know, we haven’t proven any kind of Many-Worlds Interpretation. Maybe Ghiles could figure something out, but…

Ghiles found the fire exit in the receding darkness, slamming it open with his shoulder tucked; Arufa and Marsia flew by like afterimages as they scaled the stairwell with nothing but a flashlight and a prayer.

Not watching her step, Arufa fell up the stairs, fumbling with the light as it escaped her grasp. It rolled down the stairs with several clunks, turning off on the last step as it came to a halt. She turned around, unsure whether to go back for it.

“Grab that!” Ghiles called. “I can’t see up here!”

“What if it’s broken?!”

“Just grab it!”

Arufa’s eyes hardly adjusted to the all-consuming dark. She could feel the cold metal of the rail in her hand—she would have a guide. A light crumbling sound came from above, though, and she began to fear.

If I go back and get it, I’ll get crushed! But if I do, I–

She felt a body move past her and watched the luminescent wires on Marsia’s outfit fly down the stairs and snatch the light. The braver woman clicked it on and dashed back up, giving Arufa a side-eye on the way.

F

Words appeared in Arufa’s mind as she continued following the other two. ‘You think people can really change—I want to believe that. And I need you to prove it,’ Ghiles had told her.

But slowly, surely, Arufa was relapsing into the person she once was; she had seen Locri and Marsia inevitably change, and now she was a victim of the very same phenomenon.

To exist is to remember. And if all I remember about my real self was being scared and indecisive… that’s my whole existence, isn’t it?

It might not matter how hard I try to change. In the end, X2 was a temporary fix. And a permanent one might not even exist, but I have to prove to Ghiles that it does. That his test really did something more than just torture us.

The steps themselves were metal beams affixed to the walls and as the building’s foundation cracked, several of them jostled out of place—whether they were too low, too high, or gone altogether, they posed a threat to their escape.

“Everything that’s happening here is just displaced dirt?” Arufa called. “Is it really this strong?!”

S

Ghiles replied, short of breath: “Huff… A thousand tons of anything… huff… is this strong…”

Hopping over broken steps and scrambling for height, the three allies made their way up to a floor labeled ‘B1’ in a bold, purple font. As they approached the surface, though, dirt and mud clogged their path—water dripped from above.

“That’s why,” Marsia said. “It must be raining. Mud is unstable.”

“And way heavier,” Ghiles added.

Arufa took in a gasp of air—fresher and warmer than it had been down below. “How much further up is the ground level?”

“That’s it up there,” he replied, pointing upwards. “Just one more story, and we’re–”

A loud crack resonated in the tall rectangular spiral. Rubble fell over their heads, caught barely by the stairs above them; a tree burst through the concrete wall, broke the beams, and blocked off the path to freedom.

V

“Dammit!” Ghiles shouted.

“If we’d just been a few seconds faster…!” Marsia snarled as the rain poured in heavier. “Maybe if Arufa hadn’t frozen solid earlier, we’d be out of here!”

“That’s not my fault! We could blame that on anything!” Arufa shot back, shielding her eyes.

Ghiles shook his head. “We don’t have time to argue. Come on, we can still get out through the elevator shaft!”

He shoved open the door to B1, the floor just below ground level, and the runaways continued on. Despite what she’d said, Arufa was beginning to think it was her fault. Her old self-doubt began to creep back in the recesses of her brain.

The upper laboratory looked more like a proper place of study, though ruined by flooding and tremors; the odd chemical smell mixed poorly with petrichor. Right in the back of the room was an elevator, steel doors tightly closed.

U

Footsteps splashing the puddles all around, the trio approached the doors with haste. Arufa tried hitting the ‘up’ button, but it didn’t activate.

“These doors unlock during emergencies!” Ghiles said, pushing Arufa aside. “The switch is behind this panel…!”

He gripped the side of the call panel and gritted his teeth, pulling as hard as he could. His fingers slipped occasionally because of the water, but he eventually ripped it off; as soon as he did, he hit a switch behind it.

“Now pull them open!”

Arufa and Marsia grabbed onto either side and tugged. Their atrophied muscles didn’t have much force to provide, but what they had was enough—they slowly slid open, wide enough to let a person through.

“It’s empty,” Marsia said, peering through the gap. “How do we…”

“The elevator’s locked at the top of the building right now,” Ghiles said. “It was undergoing repairs because of a faulty cable. That’s why we didn’t try taking it in the first place.”

“The cable’s still there. And maybe it can’t support the elevator, but it can probably support us,” said Arufa.

“Wait. We have to climb that?!”

“No choice,” said Ghiles. “You two, watch! Do exactly as I do!”

The scientist threw off his lab coat, revealing his white undershirt, and backed away from the doors. For a moment, it seemed he was convincing himself to take the leap—and then he was off.

Z

He flew through the narrow gap and clutched the metal wire, wrapping his legs around it as tightly as he could. With vigor, he inched his way up the cord and swung lightly before catching himself on the platform of the first floor.

He turned around and knelt down. “It’s about the legs! This isn’t like X2, okay? You have to put everything into it!”

Arufa looked to Marsia, who shook her head. “You’re supposed to be the brave one.”

“I don’t know if I can do it.”

“You don’t get a bloody choice, now do you?! Go before I push you myself!”

She eyed the cable, and, without looking down, jumped towards it. It flew towards her like a bullet—she was barely prepared to catch it. When she did, though, she found herself slipping.

Ghiles screamed at her. “The legs, Arufa!”

Right! She squeezed her thighs together to stop herself. Slowly, she reached up with one hand at a time and pulled herself higher. The shaft extended upwards for several stories more—she found her fear of heights kicking in anyways.

Steadying herself, Arufa looked around. She was right above the platform for the surface. Her freedom, her world, laid right beyond those doors. She glanced upwards again; the elevator above shook and swayed with the weather.

B

Please don’t fall, she begged. She closed her eyes, took a deep breath of rainy air, and began to swing on the cord. The wobble eventually became large enough where she could let go and land—the problem was, the timing would be tight.

In a moment of blind faith, she let go of the wire and fell forward, hoping she would reach her freedom. And when she felt herself caught in the arms of Dr. Ghiles, she relaxed. She’d done it.

“Thank you,” she whispered.

“Alright. I’m going to scout out the area. You stay and help Marsia up, got it?”

“Got it.”

“You were brave, Arufa. You changed. I know you did,” he reassured her before running off into the thunderstorm.

Is that true…?

She turned around to find Marsia about halfway up the cable, not nearly as controlled in her motion. Every move sent her forward two steps and back one; making progress, but not enough.

“Tighter! Marsia, come on!” Arufa called.

“I’m trying!” she screamed. “It’s so far down…!”

“Don’t look down! Look up! Look where you’re going!”

Marsia took her red eyes off the abyss and scooted up the cable just a little more. By the time she’d reached the height to jump from, Arufa could hear the concrete above her head beginning to crumble.

Marsia should be fine, but… the facility is going down. I don’t know how long I have to get out of here! Should I leave and let her manage on her own? Or should I stay and risk us both dying?

In X2, I would have just used my AG to grab her and fly out. But AG isn’t real. Neither was X2, nor were any of the memories I made there. I can remember my bravery all I want—in the end, the real me is a coward.

Defeated, Arufa began to jog away from the elevator. Marsia would be fine. She would be fine. It would all be okay, even if she decided to save her skin now.

But this is my chance to prove to myself I can change. It’s not about Ghiles anymore. I can change. Anyone can change. I just have to make the right choice…

“Arufa, I’m going to jump!” Marsia shouted. “Catch me!”

“I’m here!”

For the first time, Arufa finally made up her mind when it mattered the most.

Lightning struck as she sprinted back towards the elevator doors, watching as Marsia fell forward in slow motion.

Thunder boomed when she watched in horror as Marsia’s feet passed below the platform, and as she caught onto the edge with her arms and torso.

“Arufa, it’s falling!” she screeched, her speech slurred. The scene moved frame-by-frame as she tried to climb out of the shaft.

“Grab on!” Arufa reached out to grab Marsia’s hand in a last-ditch effort to pull her up.

“Arufa!”

What she saw next, she could not describe with words.

In an instant, blood and guts slathered the white doors. Marsia’s cries faded into an empty scream as her fear turned to agony. Her hands slid on the wet platform, losing their dexterity.

The box had disconnected from its cable.

Marsia had been ripped in two.

“You… ah… I can’t… feel my legs…” she whimpered.

“…”

“I’ll…  b e   f i n e . . .    I    p r o m i s e . . .”

…She lost her grip and slinked into the elevator shaft, never to be seen again.

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And Arufa stood alone in the collapsing laboratory, certain she had just killed the only friend she had left.