Season 4 Episode 14: No Matter How I Look at it, it's Sand Reckoner's Fault the World is Ending!

You are Alabaster Soliloquy.

Headlamps appear in your rearview. First one set, then two, then many.

"They are following us," Chloe says.

Though she makes you drive, she lets you speak. "They'll kill you," you say.

"They certainly mean to," she says. "After what transpired in the house, back there -- I suppose they don't care if you get caught in the crossfire."

"Good," you say, voice dripping venom. "I hope they kill us both."

Chloe frowns. "Is that truly how you feel? I am sorry about what happened to Whitney -- I am. But you know so very little... this day is going to be the most important day in the history of the universe. It is not even dawn yet. Let us see again, at sunset, whether you still feel that way."

She climbs into the backseat, and fishes around by the floormats. Sure enough, she finds what she wants: the stash of firearms Rose keeps in the Volt. She pulls out an auto pistol, checks that it's loaded, and gets back into the front with you.

"Excuse me for a moment," she tells you, then rolls down the passenger-side window, and pokes her upper half out with the gun at the ready.

---

Renee is making a sound that you've never heard in real life. You've heard it in footage of the aftermath of bombing campaigns, though -- that haunting wail of mothers picking through the rubble for their dead children. But the lossy compression of digital audio removes the upper and lower registers of that sound -- the parts that really pierce the eardrum and curdle the stomach. It's like an air raid siren come moments too late to save any lives. She's on her knees in the hallway rocking back and forth over Whitney's corpse, stooping, cheek-to-cheek, holding Whitney's upper half in her arms. Just the way she might have cradled her when Whitney was a little girl, if they'd had the chance; and the lake of tears Renee sheds does nothing to breathe life back into her.

Just beside this awful sight is Vivian, face-down, curled up like an inchworm mid-wriggle, with her forehead pinning her wrists, as motionless as a corpse herself.

And not far from Whitney's body is Johann the penguin, missing his eye -- his evil eye, too.

You pick him up.

"Sorry for bodyjacking you. You're free now." You go downstairs and set him on the dining room table to hang out.

Your wisecracks feel hollow even to you.

In the living room, Kay interrogates Samantha:

"It was Chloe!" Samantha insists. "Master Ally would never do that to Whitney! She used -- the eye thing -- that has to be it!"

Kay is one of the few among you not crying, but her grief expresses itself via rage instead: "How the fuck do you know that, you stupid slut? God damn it. You saw this happen? You didn't do anything to save her?"

Samantha clutches her face and weeps.

"She's right," says Rose -- no, Rose2. She can hardly speak through the frog in her throat and the fits of sobbing that refuse to subside. "Alabaster loves Whitney. You know this wasn't him."

Noelle comes in through the front door. "We've got them tailed," she announces. "Half our security force is going after them."

"Why not all of them?" Mom wants to know.

"Because we're still here, and we're still sitting ducks," Noelle says.

"This is all your fault," Charlotte says grimly. She has to speak up to be heard over Renee's screaming from upstairs, which only seems to get louder and louder over time. "You let this happen to her. You're supposed to be her bodyguard. What good are you?"

"Go to hell," Noelle says.

Alex has been mute the whole time since this nightmare began, sitting in a chair in the den, staring at the ceiling. Finally now he glances down, and catches your eye.

"I need to go back there," he says.

You nod. "All right. Why?"

"I'm the project lead. She's using my project to do this -- I can use it to stop her."

He's got a crazed lilt to his voice that tells you he's not all there, mentally -- but then again, has Alex Best ever really been all there, mentally, to begin with?

"I guess you want me to escort you," you say.

"No!" Mom yells. She's at your side in an instant. "Not on your life! Alabaster's in enough danger as it is -- I'm not putting either of my other children at risk!"

"Ms. Catachresis," Alex says, "with all due respect, Amber is the only person here who can get this done."

"I'm not betting one child's life to save another!" Mom says. "No!"

"It's too late," you tell her. "I already decided."

"Amber--" Mom begins.

"You have three other children, by the way," you tell her.

"...What?"

"Never mind." You look at Alex. "What do you want to do?"

"Alyosha tried to take Alabaster's and David's implants," Alex says. "Those are the same ones the cunt took, too. Why?"

It's a rhetorical question, one he answers for you:

"Alabaster's implant gives him close to eidetic memory. It also gives him memory of a different kind. Memory of the world before Sand Reckoner... for example... it let him see that you were Camelia. Maybe they think Alabaster's implant can remember the location of the lighthouse, too."

"You Sherlock Holmes, or what?" You say.

"...But to get it done, they want to give it more power. The power of David's implant -- the power of Penelope. Here's the thing: Penelope is nothing essentially new. Just a culmination of the prior generations of implant. Of which -- we have them all. Yours, Gal's, and Vivian's. If Alabaster's implant can be upgraded by David's -- it could just as easily be upgraded by yours -- I could do it. I need to get inside the building, though. The three of you, too."

It's a complete moonshot, of course, and you aren't at all confident that he's got the right idea to begin with.

You start here: "Problem A," you tell him. "How do we get inside the building alive?"

"I'm sure we'll figure it out when we get there," he says airily, like this is a minor nitpick.

Wants to go up against a multitude of armed gangsters without a clear plan. Now here's a trap after your own heart.

"Well then, first thing is first," you say. You peel your eyepatch away -- and this time, you discard it. It makes you a bit nauseated, and the world hums around you with topsy-turvy wrongness, but the sensation of it no longer hurts, and you can see clearly the things you want to.

Chloe, or just "the cunt" as Alex so correctly labels her -- is in a shootout on the freeway -- familiar environs -- flanked by a little rolling caravan of the blind warrior-monks enslaved to her, and pursued by your PMC, who are putting up a hell of a fight against Sand Reckoner supersoldiers. It doesn't last too long, because Chloe's men rout them, and then she makes Daddy pull off towards the surface streets.

Fan-fucking-tastic.

"They are headed for Darkbloom Analytics -- right?" Alex says.

You'd answer, but you're seeing something else you need to attend to first.

Upstairs, in the bathroom, Vivian is hacking and coughing, and wiping the remnants of her vomit away from her chin using a hand towel. The sink is full of her sick. She struggles to stay standing.

You've got your eyepatch back on. Vivian catches sight of you in the mirror, turns. Her lips quiver in rage. "Take that off," she says. Her voice is low, and emotionless.

"No," you tell her. "No fucking way, Jose. It just made you--"

She steps to you. "Take it off."

"Viv--"

She pushes you back with strength you never knew she had. Knee to your groin and hand to your face, she tries to take the eyepatch off of you by force, since you won't do it yourself. You push and kick back at her, grunting, and shouting half-formed curses. The scuffle draws bystanders -- Cerise, Gal, Mom, Kay -- and then, pushing into the room from the back of this little crowd, comes a still shellshocked and tear-choked Renee, who croaks: "What are you two doing!"

"Take that eyepatch off!" Vivian shouts viciously. "Take it off, you bitch!"

You huff, twisting yourself this way and that to evade her grasping claws. "Vivian, stop -- god fucking damn it --"

Cerise lunges forward, hauls the little girl back, and forces her off of you. Free again, you clutch your knees and catch your breath.

Vivian is out of breath too. It's shallow and sounds as if she might puke again. When Cerise lets go of her, she falls to her knees, sapped. But she manages to slur: "My sister is dead. My father and the man I love are in the clutches of her killer. That implant of yours is the only tool we have at our disposal -- take that eyepatch off -- do it!"

You shake your head no. "I love you too much," you tell her gently.

"You haven't loved anything in your life!" Vivian shrieks.

You know she doesn't mean it -- it's the grief talking. But it hurts.

Renee takes Vivian by the shoulders and swallows hard and looks her in the eyes. "Please," Renee says, "don't rush into things half-cocked. We don't know which way is up right now... the last thing we need... is for you to get sick, or -- or worse -- for no good reason... if you won't believe Amber, believe me. I love you too much -- to lose you too. I'd shrivel and die..."

But Vivian won't be swayed even by this. "What difference does it make?" She spits.

"It makes all the difference," Renee says.

Vivian launches into a speech, words coming twice as rapidly as you've ever heard from her: "We have to get Alabaster back. We have to kill Chloe. We have to destroy Darkbloom Analytics. Those are the only things remaining. There is nothing left to question -- and everything left to do. Am I the only one thinking rationally?! Amber must put her implant to use, no matter the cost -- and it cannot be done as a half measure. If it makes me ill, so be it. I have managed worse!" She looks at you. "You must do this -- if you love me, you must do this for me!"

>[x] Eyepatch off.

[ ] Keep it on; use it only if you need it.

You pull it away from your face again, slowly. Vivian closes her eyes and braces herself against the new waves of nausea that batter her. You kneel down before her, and put the eyepatch over her eye instead.

"Any better?" You ask.

"A little," she says.

"Keep it warm for me."

You kiss her. She kisses you back. She doesn't taste the best right now, obviously, but you'd gladly taste her bile any day, for the soft touch of her lips.

"I'm sorry, Amber... I'm so sorry..." she says, crying pitifully, and shivering.

"It's no one's fault."

"I know you love me."

"I do," you tell her.

She's sick again, all over you -- but that's fine.

"I can manage," she insists. "I just need to get used to it... it's a passing nausea, nothing more..."

You help her downstairs, shielding her from the sight of Whitney's body, as Cerise drapes it with a bedsheet.

---

The stench of standing sewer water invades your nostrils as you and Chloe wade through the tunnels. But she stops just before the final corner towards the section running underneath the main campus and the server room.

She hands you Penelope.

"Go on ahead," she whispers.

Not that you have much choice in the matter. But she lets you stick around for a couple questions.

"How are you doing this?"

Chloe puts a forefinger to her eyeball and pulls away the contact; her iris changes from reddish hazel to a brilliant blue.

"All I needed was a moment to focus," she says. "While you were unguarded, in the penumbra between wakefulness and sleep -- to stare into your eyes, one lover to another. And establish a link."

"You --" you sputter. "How did we not know--"

"It was inert," she says. "An empty shell waiting for the firmware update. I had it put inside my eye after your adventure in Vail. But it was capable of nothing at all, until Diogenes was completed."

"Why are you doing this?" You demand.

"Alyosha Kerimov is a moron," Chloe says, "and he thinks that the lighthouse is the key to unlimited power. He could not be more wrong. The lighthouse is a mechanism -- like any mechanism, it is built for a specific purpose, and it only functions within its limits."

"What do you want with it?"

"The lighthouse can reset everything. That is its purpose. It can remake the world in the fashion that we choose. Imagine if you could have conscious control over that burst of power Cerise so briefly wielded that night! But it won't let just anyone in. It fears its own destruction, and so it hides. We need the power of Sand Reckoner to see it. The full power. That is what Alyosha intends for you, Ally -- to use you as a means to an end, and then get rid of you. That is not what I intend for you. I intend for you to be part of the new world too. I want us to remake the world together. To inhabit a world where we didn't suffer as children -- where none of us did. A world for you, and a world for me -- and a world for Whitney, too, and all the others. That is my sincerest hope."

"You're not going to get what you want," you say. "Maybe you could have before you did what you did. Not now."

"We'll get what we want. Both of us."

"No matter what happens," you tell her, "I will make sure you die. And I'll make sure it hurts. That's the only thing I want anymore."

"I love you so much, Ally," she tells you, voice brimming with emotion. "Go on, now. Go see Alyosha. I will be with you soon."

With distance from Chloe, you have control over your own muscles again. It feels weird, somehow, to be able to move of your own free will, after an hour or so in the backseat of your body.

You'd return the way you came, and go after her, but even if you were lucky enough to find her -- she'd probably just take control again.

Your only options are to sit and do nothing... or to go and make something, anything, happen.

You press forward.

Up ahead, Will and Auburn both lie dead, face down in the brown water, bullet wounds to their heads. Execution style. You hope it was painless.

The charges that Will delivered are all still here, those Roomburners you so carefully assembled all those years ago. There are, in addition to that, several tall pyramids of C4 bricks, these quite near Auburn's corpse. He brought enough for the whole class.

Was he intending to totally demolish the building?

Maybe there's still time for that.

There's a hole in the ceiling already. Someone -- either Auburn, or the people who murdered him and Will -- already blasted a backdoor into the server room for you. All you have to do is hop up, catch yourself on the floor tiles above, and heave yourself through. You hardly have enough strength for it... should have done more pull-ups when you had the chance. You flop out onto the floor like a baby rhino dumped from the birth canal, and struggle to your feet again. Coughing, you swipe the plaster and concrete dust from your clothes. You glance around.

The ghostly hum of data and the eerie blue glow of the servers' lights is all you find.

Completely abandoned yet still maintaining 99.9999% uptime: Darkbloom Analytics systems are reliable, if nothing else. No one thought Whitney could keep this place running... they were wrong. She kept it running better than anyone. She did it all for you.

If it kills you, you'll find vengeance.

Up in the grand lobby, it stinks. Worse than the sewers, even. The devs who were working on Diogenes were camped here, literally, while under siege from the protests outside. They were living in the rec areas on the 3rd floor, and using the first floor as a trash heap. Scores of bulging garbage bags lie tied-off along the wall -- as tidy as garbage can be, but still smelling to high heaven.

You feel the chill of gunmetal against your skin. It's a sensation you've gotten way too used to. Someone has a pistol to the back of your head.

"Upstairs," comes a thickly accented Russian voice.

Time to go meet Alyosha again. Let's hope he doesn't want to take your other kneecap too.

In the elevator, surrounded by a half dozen men, each about 100 pounds heavier and 6 inches taller than you, you can't help asking:

"You do know you're all going to die, right?"

No response.

An image flashes through your mind of the besieged employees lying in a bloody heap among the ping-pong tables and game console setups on the third floor. Something tells you it isn't just an imagining.

"I guess you already killed the devs working on the Diogenes project," you say.

"All but one," says one of the men.

You come out into the C-suite. The bodies are gone, but the bloodstains on the walls remain: Armstrong's, in the hallway, and Muskfucker's, in the boardroom.

The man masquerading as Max Pershing is in the boardroom, too, waiting for you. So is Nelson. Nelson stands at a PC hooked up below a desk that's been dragged in from another office -- a sort of ad hoc workstation along the wall opposite the door. You identify the PC as Alex's -- formerly Sable's -- and Nelson is reviewing project files, going back and forth from that PC to another hooked up right beside it, this one his personal work terminal.

He looks as deflated and defeated as you've ever seen a person look.

Alyosha's cronies force you to sit, and tie you down.

Alyosha takes Penelope from you. He smiles. "No doubt Chloe's subterfuge," he says. "We'll root her out, and her warrior-chinks too. Do not worry."

"You get the bullet too," you tell him through gritted teeth.

"Uh-huh," he grunts. He sits across from you. He holds Penelope by the wire, dangling the grain in front of your face like a hypnotist. "Nelson is going to take this implant, and turn off its power limiters. Then, we're going to put the implant inside of you. Then there will be no more Alabaster Soliloquy: just a conduit that will lead me where I want to go. You have an hour or so left to live, Alabaster, so spend the time in quiet contemplation, why don't you." He looks up at Nelson. "Are you ready?"

"Almost," Nelson says.

He hands Nelson the implant. Nelson puts the wire end into an ad hoc adapter connected to Alex's PC. He resumes his programming work.

"I have some final arrangements to make," Alyosha tells you. "And I have to keep up appearances to the buffoons who run the US military. My men have some Chinese mercenaries to kill as well -- so please, wait patiently. Do not mistake being alone up here for being unguarded. Trying to do anything tricky will result in terrible retribution, so I advise strongly against it."

He stands, and goes, leaving you alone with Nelson.

Agonizing silence settles over the room, punctuated only by Nelson's keystrokes, and time seems to dilate until every moment is an aeon.

Swallowing, you muster your courage, and tamp down the bile. "Whitney's dead," you tell Nelson.

Nelson, his back to you, bodily winces. But then he continues working.

"Did you hear me?"

He says nothing.

"You're betraying me... I can't believe this. After everything. Everything we've been through -- you're betraying me."

Nelson moves back and forth between the terminals, working studiously, and not acknowledging your words.

"Not just me," you continue. "Everyone. Whitney -- you love her, and now you're spitting on her by doing this. Cerise -- Gal -- weren't you supposed to be like a mentor to them? And Vivian -- since she was a little girl, you've been part of her family, and--"

Nelson finally turns and looks back at you with large, sad eyes. "You have people you love, Alabaster. I have people I love. I'm sorry."

"They'll kill you," you tell him. "Whatever they told you, you know it's a lie. After you're done with this, they'll kill you. Like Armstrong, and Muskfucker, and... like Whitney..." you fight back a revulsion of tears. "Once your usefulness is through, they'll dispose of you, just like all the others."

"I know," he says slowly. "I'm a goner. I know it. But if I help them, before they do that... then maybe... there's a chance, however small... that they'll let my family live."

"Help me," you beg him. "We can get them out too. Did you know Gustav Eichmann?"

"Yes. He hired me. Listen... Alabaster--"

"He lives far away from here. I'm going there after I get out, me and everyone else. There's room for your family too. You and Rebecca, and Mia -- and even your dogs. I'll get them all safe for you. If you help me, I can guarantee your safety!"

Nelson's expression is stony. "There is noplace on this planet far enough we can run to, to get away from these people. You know that."

He turns, and goes back to typing. "It's over, Alabaster. I'm sorry."

>[x] Accept his decision.

[ ] "If you don't help me, I will kill your family."

"What do you know about the lighthouse?" You ask him. If you can't get his help, you might as well probe for info.

"Less than you do, probably," he says.

"Try me."

"Big shiny red reset button, or so they say," he sighs. "Alyosha won't shut up about it. I guess he thinks he can give himself a version of history where he's king shit of fuck mountain... so to speak. There's a timeline where such a thing exists, right? He wants to hop on into it."

"All of this -- so some miserable old Russian fuck can rule the world?" You sputter.

"Basically."

"And you're going to help him? He'll erase your fucking family too, then! Won't he?"

Nelson pounds the desktop. "What choice do I have, Alabaster, you stupid bastard?" He turns towards you. He puts an index finger to his temple, twists it like a screwdriver. "Got any big ideas in that big brain of yours, huh? I'm doing the only thing I've got left to do! So shut the fuck up and let me work in peace, before you get my family killed!"

He turns again, and picks up where he left off with his programming. Voice still tinged by anger, he adds: "I'm sorry about Whitney. She was the best boss I ever had."

"She really was, wasn't she."

His voice softens. He glances at you over his shoulder. "Yeah. She was."

---

"Our security's gone," you tell them, sitting at the dining room table. "The ones we sent after the cunt, anyway. We're gonna have to raw-dog it when we head in there."

Kay huffs. "Here I go, killing Russians again," she says as she loads a revolver. She spins the barrel. "And some chinks in the mix this time, too."

"Hey," Noelle barks. "I'm Asian. You can't say that."

"I'm half-Japanese too, you dumb chink," Kay says. She marches off into the kitchen, for a glass of booze, to brace herself for the coming onslaught.

Noelle calls after her. "Well, you look more like a wetback than an Asian!"

When Noelle glances your way again, you meet her gaze with an unamused grimace.

"She does," Noelle insists.

You ignore this ethnical debate, and resume your largely fruitless attempts to soothe Vivian. You rub her back in small circles, and try to force her to drink some water. She can hardly swallow. Hey, at least she isn't puking anymore.

Mommy and Mommy's Mommy are arguing out by the foyer.

"I'm going!"

"No--"

"You can't stop me! That fucking bitch has my husband -- I will see her dead -- I will kill her with my own two hands!!"

"Rose, please -- do you really think Alabaster would want you risking your life --"

"No, that stupid prick doesn't think I'm capable of doing anything right! He'd tell me to stay too, then I'd tell him to go fuck himself and tag along anyway! That's how it works!"

Rose comes into the room with you now, too, toting her sawed-off. "Let's fucking go already."

You sigh. "Can you give Vivian, like, two whole seconds to get her sealegs before we--"

"NOW," Rose barks.

"God you are such a cunt, Mommy."

Rose doesn't even know how to process that particular string of syllables.

Charlotte joins her at her side. She, too, has a gun -- the Saul Mallory special, a so-called assault rifle with armor-piercing bullets. Guess the Mallory clan is ready for war.

"please no"

"There's no 'please no' here. Don't give me that shit."

"please no"

"Where you go, I go," Cerise says. "So don't you try to guilt trip me, because it won't work."

Gal's big doe eyes are welling with tears. "i dont want you to die"

"And I don't want you to die either. If we live, we live together -- if we die, we die together -- that's how this works, right? You fucking -- literally vowed that that's how this would work."

"i dont think wedding vows mean--"

"I'm going," Cerise says. "That's final."

Gal, knowing the argument can't be won, hugs her wife tight, head to Cerise's bosom. Cerise pets her.

And Mom, for her part, is testing the heft of a deagle -- you worry for your safety more with her armed than with her unarmed, but you'll never convince her to stay back. The Soliloquy clan is ready for war too, then...

Renee, on the living room sofa, looks like a shattered shell of a human being. Not even Samantha's insistent doting can move her. She guzzles whisky, joylessly, and considers the guns lying on the coffee table before her.

"Know how to shoot?" You ask her, as you stroll into the living room. "Don't answer that. I know the answer is no."

"I can learn on the job," she says.

"Drunk?"

She goes to take a swig, but you swipe the bottle from her.

"There's nothing but hatred in my heart anymore," Renee says. "I'm not even scared of pain."

"I guess you wanna come and take it out on some mooks."

"I'll do whatever I have to. If I don't shoot them, I think... I think I'll shoot myself instead," she says.

Well, there's incentive.

"Can I come too!" Samantha asks. "I'm coming too!"

"Sorry," you tell her. "It's not Take Your Pet to Work Day."

"But I can help!"

"Yeah? How? You don't know how to shoot, either."

She stands, strolls into the kitchen. You follow. She takes a knife from the butcher block. Then she squints, and throws it -- it describes a perfect, clean arc through the air, straight into the calendar hanging on the wall across the room. The blade has stabbed exactly the square indicating today's date.

"I should have figured," you say. "Learn that one in the circus?"

"See?" She says. "Let me help!"

Guess your bunny is as ready for mayhem as any of you.

"Okay, twink. It's your show. Where are we going?"

Alex nods. "I need to get your implants looking straight into Ally's, like you did that night -- or, failing that, directly connected to the servers. And I need access to my workstation. With that -- using Diogenes, we can upgrade Ally's implant such that it can do everything yours can... I hope. In theory."

"Don't hedge now, you fucking gayboy. Can we do it or not."

"Yes."

"Is that 'yes for sure' or 'yes no maybe I dunno can you repeat the question'," you demand.

"It's 'yes, this is our best chance'," he says. "He'd have the full capability, of every single part of Sand Reckoner and Diogenes both. Which is the key to finding the lighthouse. Alyosha thinks so -- the cunt thinks so -- unless and until we prove otherwise, they'll kill him trying to make it happen. So we may as well try because if we don't, he'll be dead by sunset."

Gal checks the PC in the living room. "your terminal is active, right now -- so is nelson's."

Alex nods. "I thought so. They're trying the same thing we are, then -- just using Penelope instead of the implants separately. Like I said."

"Where are those workstations?" Kay asks. "Physically."

"Can't seem 'em," you say sadly. "They're in the black hole of that building."

"They're probably close by one another," Alex says. "I'd assume they have Nelson working on it, so he'd be working on both, together. Those workstations are either in the server room, or upstairs -- maybe in the boardroom -- those are the likeliest places to check."

"How long would you say we've got, do you think?" Noelle asks.

"Let's go," is all Alex will say.

You tsk. Perfect news at a time like this...

"What's the matter?" Mom asks.

"Your trigger discipline, for one," you tell her.

"What?"

Charlotte gently guides Mom's finger off the trigger of her gun.

"Shouldn't I be ready to shoot, though?" Mom asks.

Charlotte slowly shakes her head.

"Well something else is the matter!" Mom says. "I know that look, missy -- you're not happy. What did you see just now?"

"I think we're alone here," you say.

"What do you mean?" Cerise asks.

"Our friendly neighborhood mercenaries just bolted -- guess they got word that their other half went into the meat grinder, and didn't want to join them in dying."

"That's the problem with hired guns," Kay says. "No loyalty."

"Now we're really gonna have to raw-dog it," you say. "One harem, up against the world. What do you guys think?"

"We had worse odds in Vail," Noelle says.

"Where's Chloe?" Vivian asks, voice drowsy, and having trouble just sitting upright in her chair.

"Hanging out in a sewer, surrounded by some blue-eyed ubermenschen."

"Alyosha?" Kay asks.

"Can't see him, so probably inside. Let's assume with the red guard."

"How are things outside the campus?" Rose asks.

"Riot-y."

"Three options here," Kay says.

"Shut. The. Fuck. Up." You tell her.

"We can fight our way through the sewers, fight our way through the front gates, or land on the roof -- which is noisy and dangerous in its own way.

"The fucking roof, really?" Rose says. "I suppose you'll just fly a helicopter in."

"Sure. Why not?"

"...Oh yeah. You're a pilot."

[ ] Sewers.

[ ] Gates.

>[x] Roof.

Nelson pauses. "Does David know what happened to Whitney? The implant is off right now... was it that way when-- you know."

"He didn't see it," you say.

He nods.

"It's ready to turn back on," he says. "No more low-power mode. Who knows if David's consciousness will even still be in this thing once that happens. But... if it is... would you like him to know?"

"I don't care," you say. Because you really don't.

"If it's all the same to you, then," Nelson says, "let's let him spend his last few moments in ignorance."

"He'll know anyway," you say.

"Maybe. But why torment him?"

He pulls the implant, still powered-off, from the workstation, and walks to you.

"Everything is ready. If I turn it on, and you look into it, it should upgrade the one in your eye -- I don't know what happens then. Having all of Sand Reckoner in her brain put Cerise into a coma... maybe it'll do worse to you... then again, she didn't have Diogenes to help her mind weather the deluge of data, did she. We're in unknown territory, is what I think I'm saying."

Instead of turning it on and forcing you to stare into it, he sets it on the table in front of you, still inert.

"I'm not going to do it," he says. "Alyosha can do it himself, when he gets back. I did my part of the bargain. And... I know you think this is a betrayal, Alabaster... but I always liked you. And I don't want you to come to harm. I've done the minimum expected of me, to help the people I care about... now come what may."

He sits down beside you. From under the table, he produces a cooler. "Do you like beer?"

"Beer is... fine," you say.

He cracks open a couple of cold ones and -- since your arms are tied down -- he helps you drink yours, while the two of you await your impending deaths.

You talk of old times -- the funny malapropisms Whitney always made, and how mad Armstrong always got during Lightning Rounds, and how no one ever seemed to realize that if they didn't want Kay snooping, they had every right to kick her out, and how that sensitivity coach Rose brought in after Whitney's N-word debacle was the biggest fucking oaf in the cosmos, and how Mom's baking was maybe the only thing that kept everyone from leaving for greener pastures, and, and, and... and now it's all gone, washed away like rain down the storm gutter, and not even your recollections can stir the joy you once had.

Alyosha reenters the boardroom to find you and Nelson sitting there chatting. Though you both fall silent the moment he enters.

Max Pershing's dress uniform is stained with blood, and he's carrying a smoking pistol -- either circumstances forced him to join the fight, or he simply missed being in a body hale enough to do some killing. You wouldn't put it past him. Either way, he's been neck deep in it.

"Is it done?" He asks.

Nelson sighs, beleaguered.

Instead of saying yes or no, he directs his final words to you. He takes a final swig of beer, savors it, sets the bottle on the table, and says: "I'll see you in another life, Alabaster."

Alyosha laughs, raises his pistol, and shoots Nelson in the head. Nelson's body jerks back as if zapped with electricity, and then his arms fall limply at his side and he slumps lower in his seat, nearly sliding off of it entirely as the brain matter runs in clumps down the chairback.

"All right, then," Alyosha says. "Things are how you might say... dicey downstairs, so we're getting an extraction by helicopter. We'll be leaving in about ten minutes."

But just as soon as those words are out of his mouth, you hear the gentle roar of rotors overhead, translated through the sturdy roof.

Alyosha frowns. "Early... Good news I suppose! Off we go."

He cuts you free from your bindings.

Alyosha leads you from boardroom, into the C-suite and towards the small, isolated stairwell that runs only between the building's top floor and the helipad. A small retinue of his cronies joins him, and marches alongside.

"Where are you taking me?" You ask, as if you're in a position to demand information.

But Alyosha is feeling magnanimous in what he assumes is imminent victory. "Kamchatka -- not that you will survive the journey. We will do the upgrade while airborne. Then Konstantin will assist the operation to put Penelope inside of you as well."

Konstantin -- you recognize that name. Of course. Mara's mob doctor. He was supposed to be in federal lockup. Seems that taking over the body of one of America's highest-ranking military officials brings with it some additional perks, like the sway to bust friends free from prison. Or maybe the FBI has its own useful idiots too, who helped out. You've never seen an image of him, but you think you can pick him out of the crowd: he's the nebbish walking with you on Alyosha's other side -- a 5 foot zip little twerp with advanced male-pattern baldness, a patchy attempt at a Rasputin-esque beard and a paunch to match. The man's certainly not one of Alyosha's bodyguards, so it must be him.

This fucking half-midget scum who works in league with child-murderer Alyosha Kerimov is going to scoop out your eyeball and erase your consciousness so his boss can enact some cockamamie world domination scheme. It's absurd. Your life is going to end with an absurdity, just like that...

Into the stairwell now. And just like that...

Konstantin Federov is no more. You see the flecks of skull and bits of brain spattering your shirt before you hear the boom of the gun. Konstantin topples to one side, dead as dead. Amber is on the landing, holding the smoking gun, and smiling wickedly.

Your vantage on the world does a 180 as Alyosha grabs you about the midsection, tackling you like an NFL linebacker out of the stairwell and into the nearest office -- which just happens to be the one formerly belonging to Armstrong. Framed photos of Armstrong with every US President since Carter, and many other world leaders besides, line the walls; and fittingly, there are trophies from his college ball days in here, too.

A couple of his henchmen come barrelling in too, as Alyosha climbs off of you. You right yourself. Alyosha, plus these two towering footsoldiers most closely guarding him right now, keep you hedged. They stand in front of you, with their pistols at the ready, near the open door's jamb, peering out.

"Get back!" Alyosha barks. "We will kill Alabaster if you don't!"

Already there is a cacophony of gunfire outside the office. Amber didn't come alone. As expected.

Someone in the hall, you've no idea who, sprays the office walls with gunfire. It can't hit any of you through the thick drywall and studs; but it does force Alyosha and his men to stand back from the entryway -- since a stray bullet could definitely strike them, otherwise.

The three are now shouting curses in Russian among themselves, surely some variation on: "where the fuck did they come from?"

You consciously choose to let hope burgeon inside you. Your girls have come to your rescue.

"I told you that you'd all die," you remind the three stooges.

This cuts into the ongoing dispute between the men, and they turn their attention on you. Maybe you were cocky. Alyosha strides forward, and roughly hauls you by your collar, pressing his muzzle to your temple. "Go out there and force them to stop or I will murder them all before your very eyes."

"Go fuck yourself," you tell him.

He punches you in your solar plexus. His threat, to Amber, of killing you, was definitely empty -- he needs you -- but there's nothing to make him squeamish about damaging you a bit. When he lets go of you, you fall to all fours, gasping, and then for good measure he kicks you in the teeth. You flop to your back.

"Go out there and stop them firing on us!" He says. "You will regret it if you don't!"

Your face is bloody and your front incisors are definitely looser than they should be.

Going out there, to be with your girls... is just what you want anyway. You stand, with the manhandling assistance of Alyosha. His gun pressed to your back, you walk with him into the hall.

You knew Amber was no stranger to gunplay, but you didn't expect Dr. Carte to be standing at her side. Shoulder-to-shoulder they buttress the jamb of the stairwell, firing at the now depleted royal guard Alyosha had intended to spirit you towards Siberia with. Noelle and Kay are the forward force: they're halfway down the hall, shooting point-blank into a couple offices that some of the more tactical, or just cowardly, of Alyosha's men took cover in.

Accompanying the two Christmas Cakes is also Samantha Smatters, who's mopping up... what?... she's busily, and remorselessly, stabbing wounded survivors through the head.

It's because of Samantha that the other two men who were just in Armstrong's office with you -- who aren't so lucky as to have you for a meat-shield like Alyosha does -- die the moment they set foot in the hall. They get felled by twin blades that Samantha chucks in their direction with all the grace and precision of an Olympic archer. They clutch the handles of the knives lodged in their aortas, as their knees wobble under them, before finally giving out, and dropping -- disbelieving that their entire lives, through whatever twisted paths it has led them through the years, end now right here, in a California office building, at the hands of a slut in a bunny costume.

"What the fuck--" you breathe. You're disbelieving it, too.

Alyosha, outnumbered badly and with reinforcements not coming quite soon enough to be of any help, steps backwards into Armstrong's office with you once more.

Amber appears at the threshold. Alyosha cowers behind you. But you know Amber will be able to hit him -- she hasn't got her eyepatch on. You slowly nod at her.

It's a game of quickdraw, then.

Amber raises her gun, and Alyosha his. They fire, seemingly at the same moment -- each forcing the other to retreat. Alyosha kicks you in your tailbone, shoving you forward, and dives behind Armstrong's desk; Amber ducks back into the hall.

Free now, you fall to your belly and grasp at the nearest corpse, looking for a gun of your own to join the fighting.

Amber is back inside the office again, all at once, striding with purpose towards the place where Alyosha hides. Your eyes follow her transit. Your gut somersaults in terror as he stands up from his cover, and fires at her, point-blank. She's a dead girl walking.

Except not -- because none of Alyosha's bullets hit her. Dismayed, he glances at his weapon, as if to check that it hasn't been replaced with a popgun. He chucks it aside and banks then on the primeval method of warfare: bare-knuckle brawling. It's a terrible mismatch of weight classes. He charges Amber and brings her to the ground, starts to wallop her, and he isn't holding back: full-force blows straight to her pretty face.

"How did I miss!" He screams. "Tricks! What tricks have you used!"

He should know already, though -- stupid asshole.

Your hand curls around the grip of an Uzi -- this will do.

Amber, grinning smugly, spits a wad of blood in Alyosha's face and tells him: "I'm just going where the bullets aren't."

He snarls."Well so am I."

He gets his hand around Amber's throat and squeezes hard, then with his other hand he pulls a little snub-nosed pistol from his butt pocket. "Can't dodge if I hold you still, though, can you?"

But Amber's still smiling. "You're going where the bullets aren't, too?" She croaks. "Well -- are you also going where the knives aren't?"

His face goes slack. That pre-warning wasn't pre- enough to save him. He looks up just in time to see Mom lunging into the room. She puts a butcher's knife through his gut. He yowls like a dog hit by a car, and falls back, quickly bleeding out -- deja vu, all over again.

"You moronic degenerates," he sneers, trying hard just to breathe anymore. "You won't make it out of here alive..."

He dodged this same fate once. He won't a second time. What Hazel Cantor tried to do, you finish for her. You put the uzi under his chin, and fire -- you make sure the little grain in Max Pershing's eyeball gets obliterated, too.

"This building -- definitely has to burn now," are Amber's first words when the ringing of gunfire fades. "We just killed a four-star general, Daddy."

You drop the gun -- and take Penelope from the breast pocket of Pershing's uniform.

"Are you okay?" Mom asks, clutching your face and hugging you. You nod.

"Do you know where Chloe is?" You ask Amber.

"No," she says.

"Somewhere in this building, then," you say. "How did you guys get here?"

Kay, passing by, swipes her palm back and forth through the air like a drifting feather. "Flew in."

"Alyosha has people coming in by chopper too," you tell them. "They'll be here any--"

Any second. Here comes the whir of more rotors, now.

"I know, Daddy, I know," Amber says. "We're not done yet -- we gotta get out through the basement. And blow it all up on our way out... let's go."

You rush with your girls down the hall -- plus Alex, toting his work PC with him under his arm like an office drone stealing from the job, power cables dangling behind him. Most of the others are holding weapons of one kind or another. Your harem is a phalanx, united, and ready to face whatever you find on the floors below.

"How's Palau this time of year, again?" Noelle asks.

"Warm and sunny," Kay replies.

(Actually, it's monsoon season, but you'd rather live through a thousand monsoons than one more second of this madness.)

You slip into the main stairwell, on the other side of the hall, and down a couple floors -- to avoid being caught waiting for an elevator while Alyosha's extraction team storms the place.

Then, on the floor where Charlotte and Saul used to have their offices, Rose too -- you do call for an elevator. But when it smoothly arrives and the doors slide open, inside are Chinese soldiers in flak jackets, surrounding a grinning Chloe Xi.

---

Your Daddy is a real dumb asshole. When he isn't thinking with his big Daddy cock, he's doing retarded shit out of anger. Like now, as a for-instance: he tries to jump Chloe as if he's gonna strangle her to death in the middle of a group of a dozen mercs pledged to her service. It's a half-baked plan that doesn't even begin to go off. She just uses her Jedi mind-trick bullshit to floor him.

And then her people turn their fire on the rest of you.

Being able to predict where the bullets will go doesn't mean you've got a safe place to put yourself. If there's nowhere safe, then that's just it: there's nowhere safe.

Predictive powers also don't mean you can save everyone. Eventually, no matter what you do, you can't.

Here's how it happens:

A yellow-toothed piece of shit bootlicker in Chloe's employ gets his muzzle pointed directly at Kay's head, and fires, but Noelle, zero hesitation, like a Secret Service guard, puts herself between them, and takes a bullet to the chest.

Simultaneously, Rose tries to blast Chloe's away with her boomstick. But the same merc who just fatally wounded Noelle becomes the negative-image of Noelle's valor, and takes the shot for Chloe.

You kneecap another two goons, but they're like rats; can't kill 'em all. Noelle hasn't even hit the floor before one of them is already scooping Daddy into the elevator like picking up a discarded marionette. Another is stealing Cerise -- of all people -- who hollers for Gal to run. Gal is frozen in terror and can't heed the call. It's Alex who gives her the motive force necessary to pump her feet. At a rapid trot he hugs her with his free arm, and all but carries her back to the stairwell. You know where he wants to go -- it's your only chance -- so even as you provide cover fire, you follow.

You try dragging Vivian, the way Alex drags Gal. It's no use. Vivian is weak, and heavy -- you can't manage carrying her and shooting at the same time. Your evil eye gives you vision, not strength. Luckily you've got a fuckbunny to help. She doesn't know where the hell you're going, obviously, but that never stopped her in the past. Samanantha hauls Vivian up, carries her like a baby, and dashes away with you.

Kay is screaming blue murder and firing indiscriminately at the men who killed her lover; Renee is right beside her, fearing death even less.

And Mom...

She sees you make it to the stairs. So she throws her lot in with the two children who aren't at least somewhat safe. She charges, unthinking, for the elevator where Chloe's men hold Cerise and Daddy. Whatever happens next, you don't witness, because you're out of the room, and you can't see into the parts of the building you don't currently occupy. Is that a blessing or a curse? You don't think you'll ever see your mother again, in person, or otherwise. You can't consider that right now -- you need to make for the server room -- it's time for plan B. Alex is going to give Daddy the juice, remotely.

---

"Both your children will live," Chloe promises Mom. "Please leave -- they are in able hands now."

You can only watch in mute horror, as Mom points her gun from face to face. Chloe's men point their weapons right back.

Your girls took out a few of these thugs, but far from even a majority: there's 9, plus Chloe, by your count, still up and about, jammed into the elevator with you as Mom holds the doors open. The please-stop-holding-the-fucking-doors-open alarm blares, unheeded.

Mom is the only one left standing in Chloe's way. Chloe's men have got Cerise and now also Renee both held tight, here in the elevator with you. Meanwhile Rose, Charlotte, and Kay already had to duck into what used to be Charlotte's office; out of ammo, all, and knowing they won't be able to win regardless.

"Mom..." Cerise chokes. "Just go -- find Gal and get her safe, okay?"

"I love you," Mom says. She keeps having to press the doors open as they try to slide shut, and she wags her gun around. She looks from you to Cerise. "I love you both -- I didn't say it enough -- I'm so sorry."

Cerise is crying. "Don't do anything stupid. We'll be okay... I promise."

Chloe grants you the ability to speak -- these, your own words: "I love you too, Mom. Don't get yourself killed." You nod at her. "The lighthouse exists. I'll fix everything."

"I can't just leave you," Mom says desperately.

It's Charlotte who de-escalates. She steps forth from the cover of her office, gingerly, empty hands held up in a show of non-aggression. She clasps Mom's shoulder. Rose joins her now, too. You lock eyes with them.

"We all love you," Charlotte tells both you and Cerise. She glances at Dr. Carte. "And you, too. Even if we argue."

Dr. Carte isn't in a lovey-dovey mood. She just struggles against her captor, uselessly.

"I'll see you soon," Rose tells you.

You can't even nod -- no control whatsoever -- but you know your eyes glimmer with agreement. You won't let hope be extinguished...

Mom steps back and, at last, with no more bloodshed, lets the doors slide shut. Her face disappears between the narrowing gap; it's the last you see of her.

Chloe takes you, Cerise, and Renee to the nurse's office on the third floor -- past the cafeteria, where, through the glass-paneled walls, you can just glimpse a small sight of the carnage in the rec areas beyond.

---

Alex hurriedly sets up his PC, connecting it to some outlets at the end of one of the walls of server towers. He steals a monitor from some tech's office located on the massive subterranean facility's periphery. You, just as hurriedly, travel back and forth from the little hole leading down to the sewers, toting bricks of C4 with every trip, and sticking them to the towers at roughly even intervals.

At the end of every brick, you stack one of Daddy's so-called roomburners: these will be fuses for the real pyrotechnics.

You try not to look at the bodies of your two closest friends each time you drop back into the sewers for more bombs -- these boys who loved you, and whose deaths are directly because of you.

With that guilty thought in mind, you send Samantha Smatters out: telling her not to wait up for you all at the Nail House, because you think maybe none of you will come back. You don't want your pet to die too, if you can help it.

But:

"But I will! I will wait there for you!" She insists.

"I just literally told you not to-- you should go literally anywhere else besides the Nail House, Sammy--"

"I will wait!" She says again. "You're the only masters I've ever had who really liked me! You take care of me... I love you all! Samantha Smatters will not let you down okay! If you come back, then pick me up!"

She goes before you can argue otherwise.

You hope that someone among you all does make it back home -- if only to give the pets some water and kibble.

"Do you think--" you begin. "Do you think the lighthouse can fix this?"

"I hope so..." Vivian says weakly. Her nightshirt, that she never had the chance to change out of, is still stained with her sister's blood.

Alex is all grit and determination: "The next part's gonna hurt. I need to -- penetrate your tear ducts with some conductive wire -- since there's no way right now to pull the implants out, this is all I can do, to get them directly into the servers..."

"Stop!"

You glance towards the direction of the barked order. Jesus fucking Christmas: more Chinese zombies.

"We are orders on not killing you," he says, ungrammatically, and so accented that even you, with all the computing power mankind can offer, have difficulty understanding. "Only if cooperate. Cooperate!"

End of the line. They're already got Vivian and Gal, and fighting would only lead to their deaths. You hold your hands up. Mr. "Cooperate!" grabs you by one wrist and tugs you toward him.

"Asshole," you grunt.

Alex, looking less scared than enraged -- watches. He hasn't been subdued by anyone. The merc squad takes you, and Vivian, and Gal -- but none among them even glance his way. Mr. "Cooperate!" radios, in Chinese, back to Chloe; you never spoke a word of Mandarin, but you know what they're saying:

"We are here. We have the other implant users in hand."

"Alex Best?"

Alex doesn't speak Mandarin either, but he recognizes his own name, of course. He cocks his head, befuddled.

"We are looking for him now."

A group of men toting FAMAS rifles push past, boots clattering, sweeping their sights up and down the rows of server towers -- searching for the boy who's standing, literally, right in front of their noses. Alex sidesteps them like a jewel thief dodging laser tripwires.

Mr. "Cooperate!" walks towards Alex's PC setup, all but bumping booties with him. Alex, carefully, and quietly, steps backwards out of his way.

"His terminal is here. He can't be far."

"Find him quickly. That Tiresias implant he has may make him difficult to detect."

"Understood."

You don't even want to look in Alex's direction, lest you give him up; he gives you a curt nod as he passes, and slips away from the room.

What other aces do you have up your sleeve today, Alex Best?

---

Kay kneels over the dying Noelle Keki. They're alone together -- for the last time.

"Why..." Kay breathes. "Why did you -- fuck you. Why!"

Noelle turns her head this way and that, like a person delirious with fever; she's clammy, and blinking rapidly, as the vitality escapes from her. She manages enough focus, though, to meet Kay's rheumy eyes.

"You're a cockroach," Noelle says weakly.

Kay stutters. She's hurt, and confused, and most of all, distraught. "--What? You... you don't mean that -- you're so stupid--"

"No. I mean it." Noelle gulps. "You reporters -- you're like cockroaches -- you can survive anything." She clasps Kay's hand. Grits her teeth. "Get out of here. Survive. This building is gonna get lit up soon -- and everyone's gonna die -- but not you. The world still needs Kay Vera. I died for that -- so don't piss me off -- go --"

Kay kisses Noelle, one more time, deeply, and forcefully. Then weeping, she stands, turns, and scurries from the building. Noelle dies smiling.

---

Chloe sets her radio on the little metal counter by the examination table. Outside, you hear the crackle of yet more gunfire: an ongoing battle between the remnants of Alyosha's people and Chloe's.

She checks the clock on the wall. "So early yet. These events have proceeded much more quickly than I thought."

"What do you want with Cerise, you miserable cunt?" Dr. Carte says.

"Hand me Penelope," Chloe says, and makes you follow her directive. "Thank you."

She peers at the powered-down grain of circuitry, contemplative.

"I think Alex Best is approaching the situation from the wrong perspective," she says after a turn. "I just apprehended the other implant wielders in the server room -- he must intend to upgrade you remotely, no?"

You say nothing.

"He's more than welcome to it," Chloe says. "If we find him, that is exactly what we will have him do. With both of us properly outfitted -- we are sure to find the lighthouse, you and I, together."

"I cannot fucking wait to see you die," Cerise says. "If you lay a finger on Gal, or Alabaster -- or anyone else--"

"Idle threats," Chloe cuts in. "Renee... you will put this inside my head for me, right?"

"I will cut out your goddamn eyes and feed them to you!" Dr. Carte shrieks viciously.

"And I will remind you that we have Vivian. You certainly don't wish to lose both your daughters today."

Renee shutters her eyelids and rolls her jaw, wincing back like an admonished dog. All the fight is gone from her, just like that.

"But why me?" Cerise says. "What do you want with--"

Chloe flicks Penelope on. It glows a nearly ethereal white; and she holds it up to Cerise's eye, by the wire end.

Cerise jerks back, reflexively. Chloe grips her around the neck, just below the chin, to still her.

"Penelope has to remember the world as it was before Sand Reckoner too," she says. "And for that -- it must see inside the mind of the person who changed the world with it. This will take just a moment. I am no sadist, whatever you think of me -- I will sedate you through it..."

"What are you doing!" You wail. "Stop--"

"Just a moment," Chloe repeats. "I promise -- this is a temporary pain."

Threatening Vivian brought Dr. Carte to heel; threatening Cerise has likewise reduced you to a cowering dog -- you beg like one, too:

"You don't have do this!" You shout. "My implant -- mine is enough on its own, right -- to find what you want! You don't have to -- to hurt my sister--"

"Alabaster--" Cerise begins. She gulps, with difficulty, around Chloe's gripping hand.

"You don't have to do this!" You tell Chloe, over and over.

Chloe looks at you. "I beg to differ," she says regretfully.

She takes a hypo from her purse and jams it into Cerise's neck. Cerise's eyes roll to the back of her head, and she passes out. Chloe eases her backwards, lying her flat on the exam table.

Then Chloe hands Dr. Carte a scoop -- the same one that you and Chloe used on Dalton Cantor a few weeks back.

"Wire her up or I will have Vivian killed," Chloe says.

If begging Chloe didn't work, maybe you can get through to Dr. Carte instead. "Dr. Carte... Renee. Don't do this. Please."

"I'm sorry," she says weepingly, and then sets to work.

---

It really, really fucking hurts to have things jabbed into your eyeballs; even if only through the tear duct. Mr. "Cooperate!" isn't exactly a trained medical tech, either. He gets you all hooked up and ready to go, with (hopefully) sterile copper now hotwiring your implants directly into Alex's workstation, which is itself directly networked to the servers. Thus daisy-chained, you're ready to beam your powers up to Daddy.

"If we die here today..." Vivian tells you. "I want you both to know..."

Oh boy. Here comes the sappy farewell love confession.

"...That both of your beautiful little cunts have given me so many happy experiences, and I will always cherish that."

You huff. "God almighty. Is that really how you want to say goodbye to us?"

"No," she admits. "But I fear if I focus on any sentiments beyond the absolute most base and carnal... I may begin to weep terribly, and I won't be able to stop..."

"i love you both too," Gal says. She looks your way. "you saw more in me than you should have"

"I think you've got that the wrong way around," you tell her. "And... I'm sorry I roped you into this, back then -- when I was Camelia."

"don't be... this was the greatest two years of my life"

What a loopy bitch. You love her so much.

Your stomach lurches. Alex is being dragged back into the server room by a pair of Chinese mercs -- despite Tiresias, they found him.

"Do what you were going to do," Mr. "Cooperate!" tells him.

He shoves Alex forward. Alex, rubbing his sore wrist where the lunk held him, goes and stands at his workstation.

"How..." you breathe. "That's not --"

But then you see how (thanks, evil eye.) They didn't find him. He gave himself up.

The why still escapes you, though.

He taps his temple. "Don't worry," he whispers. "I have a plan. Trust me."

---

"For the love of God," you plead. "You'll kill her! Don't do this!"

Dr. Carte can't bear to so much as acknowledge you. She's been forced into this gruesome Sophie's choice: Cerise's well-being, or Vivian's life. You can't blame her for what she's decided. But you kind of do. You can't help it.

Chloe assists her as she strings the wire across Cerise's dangling ocular nerve. And then Dr. Carte connects it to Cerise's brain -- not at the spot it used to go -- but a different one, pointed out by Chloe, right beside the point Cerise's eyestem meets it.

It's an awful replay of a show you've already seen. Cerise's eyes changing color; spine arching to the point you worry it will snap in two; lungs gasping for air like a dying fish, whole body flopping around; then mouth letting out a horrible shriek that could shatter glass. It lasts for only half a second because Chloe immediately disconnects the thing -- but that moment was all it took -- Cerise is unconscious, and who knows whether her mind withstood Sand Reckoner Round 2 -- or whether she's been permanently fried.

Cerise, the shitty sarcastic drunken degenerate weeaboo NEET older sister who gave you so much grief and who you love so fucking much, is only feet away from where you stand. And as close as you are to her; she's totally beyond your help.

"Now me," Chloe says.

"I hope it kills you!" You wail.

"I don't think it will," she says nonchalantly. She turns the switch off. "We'll keep it powered down for the initial install -- and turn it on again, when my brain has adjusted to its presence, and we're ready to make the final push. But maybe it will kill me anyway -- that risk attends this procedure. Would that satisfy you then?" She smiles at you. "If not then we'll be peers -- equals at the top of a grand hierarchy -- and we will find our paradise together... all of this washes out, Ally, every speck... we'll replace it with something so much better."

She takes another hypo, and this one she jams into her own neck -- even more ruthlessly than she jammed it into Cerise's. She passes out.

Dr. Carte starts to work again. She scoops out Chloe's eyeball and leaves it hanging across her cheek. With Chloe unconscious, you can move again.

You do the very first thing you can think to do, and pick up a nearby pair of scissors, ready to lodge it directly in Chloe's heart.

"If you do that--" Dr. Carte says, staying you. "If you do that, we're all dead. There are armed men out there ready to shoot us all the second Chloe gets hurt -- and they'll know it, too."

"I have to!" You say. "This fucking cunt killed Whitney! She just blew up Cerise's brain! Don't you want to see her dead?"

"This is all that's left, Alabaster..." she whispers. "Chloe is batshit insane, but this is all that's left. If what she says is true, and it can be undone -- why not? Why not go with her and undo it... you could bring Whitney back, if you find the lighthouse, right? And you could make Cerise okay again." She nods at where Cerise lays, in a stupor, or a coma -- Cerise's expression that same dead-guppy vacancy she had in the hospital during her illness. "And Noelle, too," Dr. Carte adds, "and god only knows whoever else got shot in the past few minutes, or worse! Isn't this the right thing to do? Isn't it?"

She's begging you to tell her that it is.

"You know what the right thing to do is," you tell her. "This is the only chance we get."

You raise the scissors above your head.

---

"Work faster!" Says Mr. "Cooperate!"

So impatient.

"I'm working," Alex says glumly. And he is.

The man nudges him. "Do faster!"

"So this is how I die," you say. "Listening to a FOB shout in my ear like he's stuck in rush hour traffic. Fuck me sideways."

"Quiet! Be quiet!" He says.

You really hope Alex's plan pans out. Mr. "Cooperate!" waits around, agitated, while Alex finishes up.

"There's just one little thing," Alex tells him, at last.

"What! Out with it!"

"I heard you say my name over the radio, to the cunt -- and she said 'Tiresias' back -- you think I have Tiresias?"

Mr. "Cooperate!" either doesn't understand, or just refuses to answer.

Alex holds a hand up, to show him the freshly, but haphazardly, sutured wrist: "Not anymore."

The eyes of Mr. "Cooperate!" bulge in fright, just before they explode -- along with the rest of his skull, blown out by Mommy's shotgun. Rose also has a fresh suture of her own, to match.

Tiresias is a good cloak, but it can't conceal the report of buckshot. Rose sprints away as the other mercs, yammering, give chase, and fire blindly (literally, blindly) at her. Fire enough bullets, and even if you can't see the bitch who killed your buddy, you're bound to hit her anyway, right?

But Rose didn't return to the server room alone. Wolf-whistles from the other side of the room, from the mouth of a different row of towers, draw the merc squad's focus off of Rose. Mom and Charlotte are here, hooting and hollering, making a racket, and lighting them up with as much gunfire as they can muster.

You clutch Gal and Viv, and duck with them, trying to shield yourselves as best you can from any stray bullets.

Alex, totally unafraid, turns and resumes typing amid the firefight.

The MILFs do what they set out to do. They protect you all. They draw heat just long enough to give Rose the breathing room she needs, to return, and do the actual killing. Rose picks the Chinese soldiers off one-by-one, from the rear, while they in turn focus on the more visible, and seemingly more immediate, pair of threats in front of them.

There's more shouting, incoherent, and then the flashes of bright lights. The smell of sulfur and copper hang over the room, and you choke on the clouds of gunsmoke. Alex cracks his neck.

"This was your plan?!" You shriek. "My Mom!! You just made my mother--"

"We have only one hope left," Vivian -- not Alex -- tells you. "Mr. Best knows it too... we've lost everything anyway, if we don't succeed here..."

You cannot see directly what happens next, in the next row over. But you don't even need your evil eye to tell you what a death rattle sounds like.

They shot Mom first -- and then Charlotte... your mother is dead, and so is her niece... all for a moment's distraction. You scream in despair. With the power of nigh omniscience, you still could not save their lives. Or anyone else's.

"If the lighthouse is what it's supposed to be," Alex says, "Ally has to go and find it now... all we can do is give him the chance to make it happen." He looks from you, to Viv, to Gal. "The work I'm about to do here -- must be destroyed, the moment it's through -- so no one else can take what Ally will get -- so that only Ally has the real power of Sand Reckoner -- do you understand?"

"I understand," Vivian says.

"yes" says Gal.

Closing your eyes, nodding, you agree.

Of course you understand -- this has been so long coming. It's what you wanted in another life, too.

Rose, tears streaming down her face, returns -- alive. Scathed, but alive -- she's bleeding from some incidental flesh wounds caused by grazing bullets.

"It's ready," Alex tells her. "You're gonna want to get out of here, Rose."

She nods.

As she hurries away, she stops, and glances back over her shoulder.

"Thank you, Alex -- for everything."

He nods.

"Gal, Viv, Amber -- thank you," she adds.

You nod at her too.

The squeak of hinges as she lets the door swing shut behind her, is the last you hear of Rose Soliloquy, your Mommy for better or worse.

---

Dr. Carte gently takes the scissors from your hand.

"Let it be me," she whispers. "They'll keep you alive, and kill me -- and that's fine. I'm okay with that."

"We'll both get out," you tell her. "No one else has to die."

Dr. Carte just shakes her head. She thinks you're so wrong, and she doesn't have the words to tell you how.

She turns -- and in one swift motion raises the scissors high above her head, as you did -- aiming for the gaping hole in Chloe's eyesocket. But she doesn't deliver the death blow. She seizes up -- goes rigid.

Chloe just woke up. And now Chloe's dagger is lodged in Dr. Carte's belly.

Dr. Carte, stupefied, looks down at the sight -- then across the length of Chloe's arm, and finally at Chloe's grinning face -- as Chloe, eyeball still dangling from her orbit, rises to her butt.

Chloe pulls the dagger out of Renee's belly, just long enough to stab it into her heart. Dr. Renee D. Carte dies instantaneously -- and falls to the ground.

You shriek in torment so awful that it manifests as physical pain. Even so, you find yourself forced to your rear, on a nearby stool, as Chloe, her eyeball bouncing with every step she takes and stippling her cheekbone with blood, saunters towards you. She pulls her dagger from Dr. Carte. She's in control of you again.

"I'm trying so hard not to kill your friends, but they do these things..." she stumbles, and braces herself against the metal counter. "Excuse me... this is painful, and the sedative is leaving me a bit drowsy still..."

You cry and cry.

Chloe clambers into your lap. She strokes your face. The gelatinous surface of her externalized eye rubs sickeningly against your cheek and bloodies it too.

"I can do the operation myself," she says. "With your help -- surgeons have done similar in extreme circumstances. Let's give it a try, no? Maybe I'll slip up and kill myself, but... once again... such risks are impossible to avoid... what fun is life with no risk?"

She gets off of you, and lies back down, and has you approach her -- not of your own will -- but of hers.

"Be gentle with me please," she says, smiling up at you.

You begin to say something. But the building shudders -- and then the real shockwave hits you. The room blasts apart in a shower of concrete and rebar.

---

It has all come down to this, a single final line of code for Alex to write:

world.execute(me);

A little joke, for himself, there.

He hits the enter key.

The processors in the server towers in their hundreds whirr to life and send their payload at quadrillions of FLOPs through the funnel of Alabaster's eyeball, and having intoxicated him with an entire universe of data the bombs detonate. It happens efficiently, in sequence, although the entire process takes just milliseconds. The tower Alex is wired to is the first to go: it bursts in a ball of orange that engulfs and incinerates him so quickly that he hasn't even let go of the enter key before he is dead.

Like dominoes, the servers explode one after the other, their cases bulging, buckling, and finally melting as the fire rips through them. Boom, boom, boom. Anna Soliloquy, alias Galatea Tontine, who was right beside Alex and tightly squeezing his hand at the moment of detonation, is the next one swallowed up. She dies thinking of her wife and everyone else she loves, and hoping that her Sir, Alabaster, can finish this. Boom, boom, boom. Vivian and Amber are the final two alive. A year ago they were enemies, and now they die with a love between them as powerful as any. The destruction of the central nervous system of Darkbloom Analytics would once have horrified Vivian to despair and elated Amber to ecstasy. They don't pay attention to it now, even as they stand amid it. They die in each other's arms, kissing. Boom, boom, boom.

The whole structure shakes and rubble clatters, the foundations becoming irreparably compromised; the 16 floors above stay standing, though knocked off-kilter, and they will not be upright for much longer at all. Darkbloom Analytics is doomed, and will fall in on itself, swallowed up by the maw that has opened beneath it, the void where once its crown jewel was kept, its central server facility. The place is in flames already, shedding concrete and glass from its facade like a mangy dog sheds hair. This is what Camelia fought and bled and died for without achieving, what she roped Alabaster into orchestrating, who failed too; what the unstable genius Sable Guiteau, in her horror at what she wrought, tried to replicate; what David Darkbloom himself, finally, realized had to be done to his life's entire legacy; what countless enemies foreign and domestic schemed and hoped for. But at last: it took unassuming Alex Best to actually do it. He -- he has plunged the dagger into the dark heart of Darkbloom Analytics from within the heart itself. Once the most powerful organization on Earth, it now belongs to history. Its only survivors are Rose and Alabaster Soliloquy, upon whom everything now hinges.

This is the thought Alex himself died with: "Rose, Ally... I didn't let you down. Don't let us down, either. I know you can do it."

---

When Chloe wakes up, she's all alone, and half-buried beneath a pile of debris. She wriggles herself free. With effort she grabs her eyeball and dusts it off with a handkerchief, then forces it back into the socket using the heel of her palm.

She blinks, and rolls the eye around. It really, really hurts -- but she'll be okay.

"Ally! Where are you!" She screams, looking all around.

She doesn't have Ally. And she doesn't have Penelope either -- dropped it amid the rubble, and it being turned off, it's a needle in a haystack.

She clambers hand-over-foot across the corpses -- into the ruined stairwell, and down towards the caved-in grand lobby.

"Ally! Don't do this!"

She's crying. Real, hot and bitter tears. At the very moment of their union, he's gone and done something like this...

He's going to get away... he's going to go to paradise without her...

That fucking bitch who he's married to... she's behind this. Chloe can tell. She didn't understand -- shortsighted, fat pig she is.

Ah-- there she is now -- limping the other way up the stairs. She's missing Ally, too. They have that in common.

They lunge for each other -- tackle each other -- Chloe, even in the frenetic fray, sees that Rose has that homosexual's implant in her. Well, it can work on lower-level users, but not on her. She sees Rose perfectly well -- and she's ready to kill her for her betrayal.

They roll around, fighting for control of Chloe's dagger. Rose wins: she gets it in hand and lodges it straight into Chloe's groin, right at the point where that heart-shaped tattoo's apex lies.

Chloe shrieks in a mix of blood-curdling agony and despair, as the crimson spurts wetly from her destroyed uterus. She can't scream for long because then Rose punches her; then punches her again; then starts to strangle her.

Chloe can give as good as she gets, though. She finds Rose's pistol in the waistband of Rose's skirt -- pulls it free. She fires blindly. It doesn't kill Rose, but it nails her shoulder, and bowls her back. Chloe rises, the dagger still sticking from her womb. She takes better aim now, this time for Rose's head. But the gun flies from her hand, shot away; as Ally, eyes glowing blue with murder, comes around the landing holding a rifle.

Chloe knows to cut her losses. She has no control over him any longer. She isn't his peer.

She leaps, over the banister, down a few half-collapsed flights, then out into the lobby and through the front gates -- disappearing in the fog of the early morning Bay area, and the racket of protesters and bystanders and authorities wondering over the recent explosions -- running just as fast as her legs will take her.

She'll have her chance with Ally again, soon. She knows just where he's going to go.

---

You curl up in the fetal position in the passenger side of the Volt as Rose takes the steering wheel and fires it up. She starts to drive.

Jets are scrambling overhead -- choppers, too -- military. The destruction of Darkbloom Analytics with Russian and Chinese forces inside it, is an international incident too huge to cover up... and too huge to ignore. This is the dawn of war on a scale no one thought could happen after the fall of wall.

"Where are you going," you say flatly.

Rose, through the tears, says: "I was hoping you could tell me. North, right?"

You pound the visor above your seat, viciously, rapidly, with both fists, like a boxer training with a punching bag.

You scream, totally incoherent, horror and grief bursting forth as one: "AAAAAAHHHHH! AAAAAAHHHHH!" -- and then after that, the tears.

"Alabaster--" Rose says. "Alabaster!"

"They're all dead! They're all dead!" You shriek. "Just drive this car off a fucking bridge, because they're all dead and we might as well join them!"

Rose pulls over to the side of the road, and stops the car. Ambulances and cruisers zip by in their hundreds.

"Alabaster!" Rose yells. "We're alive! You said the lighthouse is real -- you said you'd fix this! And as long as we're alive -- Alabaster!" She grabs your shoulder, shakes you, as you clutch your face, and try to hide from her. "Alabaster! Look at me! As long as we still can breathe, we can try to get there! We can try to do that much! We can still fix this!"

"Just drive," you tell her, drained.

"Where am I going?"

"I don't know. Somewhere in Alaska -- we can start looking there."

She fires the engine again, and sets off.

END OF EPISODE 14.