It's exactly in the middle of a climatic miniboss of the open-world RPG that I am stress-binging when a series of cascading notes announces that someone is at my door. I stare at the flashing effects and the blood-red particles streaming off the miniboss, clearly marking it as undeniably villain and evil, and sigh, exiting the game. I am losing my progress on the miniboss, but it's nothing I can't regain. Eventually.

Setting aside my controller, I stand and cross to the door, touching the 'accept entry' button on the control panel before I have time to wonder who's behind it. It's Deception. She's dressed in something purple and black and elaborately form-hugging this time, the fabric somehow sleek and shiny enough to reflect the colors of the hall in its sheen. Her hair is swept back into a high tail, and its absence around her ears accentuates the little amber-bejeweled snake earrings and yellow painted lips.

My breath catches and I freeze. It's Deception and a man dressed in a suit. Fear and dread war with a spark of excitement, hope, and a flash of red particles mixes with the blue glow of hero, good, safety. I tear my gaze away, heart pounding, and glance at the man standing beside her.

Everything about him presents as professional, with his neat black and gold business suit, slicked back light-blond hair, and charming, confident smile. But his eyes don't fit. They're sharp as blades and cut into me with the distinct flavor of hostility and disapproval.

I swallow, dread pooling between my fingers. What is going on?

Deception smiles and it's almost sickly sweet. "Hey, Elias. This is Sebastian, our fabulous host. We're touring the newly renovated gym and I thought you might want to join us."

That I might want to join her? Like I could refuse? Was that even an option? My gaze flits between Deception and Sebastian's smiling faces as I hesitate, winter starting to build under the PowDown patch. I don't want to test it. I don't want to find out what happens if I say no.

"Sure." My voice is rough from hours of disuse and I clear my throat. "Nice... to meet you, Sebastian." It takes more effort to swallow the I guess at the end than it should.

Sebastian nods pleasantly, sticking out a hand. "You too." Hesitantly, I take his hand and immediately regret it. He grips it like an iron vice and almost viciously shakes it up and down, that tacked-on smile never faltering as he speaks. "It's great to finally meet the friend Decs has been speaking so highly about."

Did he just call Deception Decs? A nickname? Really? "Oh." As soon as he releases my hand, I pull it back and rub it, inwardly wincing. I glance at Deception. "You talked about me?"

She giggles. "How could I not? You were my first co-conspirator! We started the Viper's Nest gang together." Still giggling, she waves a hand at me as she turns. "Come along, you'll like the gym."

I follow, walking on the opposite side from Sebastian. "You were my first co-conspirator." I was her first? Why did she choose me of all people?

Out of the corner of my eye, I watch the swing of her hair, the twitch of her lips, the blink-fast flutter of her eyelashes, and try to understand. But there's nothing for me there, no answers written into the texture of her skin, no hints in the curve of her mouth, no truth revealing itself in her words. She is a slate as impenetrable and convoluted as mine is blank, and it makes my insides crawl with purple and white.

"How are you feeling?"

I start out of my thoughts, scrambling to order them into coherence. Shoot, right. Conversations. Being a normal person. I have to do that. Running my tongue through my teeth, I shrug, flicking my gaze to the consoles of the main room. "Eh," I say, shrugging. "I'm alive." It's a non-answer, one that I hope she doesn't press.

Deception nods, eyebrows tilting upwards. "If you need anything, you can tell me." She pats my arm and it takes everything in me not to malfunction. "We've got access to everything here."

I'd really like an escape plan, but I highly doubt she's got one lying around for me to use. Hiding a grimace, I nod back. "I'm fine. Really."

She frowns, obviously not buying the arguably most used lie, but lets the subject drift elsewhere.

Our conversation is mostly dominated by Sebastian, his work (managing a large hovercar-making company), and increasingly invasive questions about END. How does it run, what my schedule was like, who were the heroes that took care of me—all things I don't want to answer. As far as I am concerned, my life at END isn't over and after (there will be an after, there has to) I escape, I am going to return to that shaky sense of normal with no safety compromised.

After deflecting another question about END, Deception shoots Sebastian a sweet, sharply pointed smile, and the questions stop. I hunch my shoulders and fix my gaze ahead, absently listening to their banter. We walk down the Don't Go There Hall and past the doorway that I blanked, following the slow curve of the walls until we reach two double doors.

Sebastian steps forwards and waves a palm at a scanner, which beeps authorization. The doors swing open, revealing a large, rectangular gym with steel and silver-gray walls accented by lines of ebony black that seem to pulse to the baseline of an upbeat workout song. Normal workout equipment is arranged in neat rows on one side, but the other has nothing except a sleek control panel facing the door.

Deception steps into the gym and turns to face me, arms open wide as she grins. "Welcome to the best gym in the region!"

She says something more, but I am not listening anymore as I make my way inside, eyes wide as I take the place in. It's larger than it looks from the entrance, with a running track on a second floor and one half of the ceiling netted off with various ropes and platforms to simulate rooftop parkour or something similar, like END's gymnasium.

Actually, everything is startlingly similar to END's gymnasium in tech. Apart from the missing hydro treadmills, a swimming pool, and decorations, all their tech is here. Even the obstacle simulator that would push and pull blocks from the floor and wall for users to dodge, climb, and launch off of in real time is tucked into the corner! Just how much money do Sebastian and Deception have? How much of it is stolen? How much of it did I contribute to?

Ice slides down my back and I shudder, glancing at my hands. The fingertips are white, my power hovering so close to the surface. So easy to call upon. How easy would it be for me to walk up to a bank and blank through all their security? How easy to steal, to take, to unmake every obstacle in my path?

No wonder Deception wants me on her side. I was already powerful as a nine. Now, as an eleven... I would be unstoppable.

"Impressive, isn't it?"

I jump, clutching my hands into fists and stuffing them into my pockets as I whirl. Sebastian raises one perfectly smooth eyebrow at me, and it takes me a moment to realize he isn't talking about my powers. "Um—" I clear my throat and glance at the sloping walls around us, "—yeah. It is."

The side of his mouth quirks and he gestures around us. "We've got all the latest tech here, thanks to Decs' new project. We even have a Field Simulator."

"Yeah. END's got one too." I wince. Megabytes, I didn't mean to say that. The less he knows about END, the better.

Sebastian's eyebrows rise again, a glint of interest flashing in his eyes. "Oh? What are they training villains for?"

Clenching my teeth, I glance down. We weren't training for something like a job or a task or escape. It was for peace of mind, familiarity, for greater control over our powers. The gym and all its top-notch tech was for us, the inmates, because the heroes want us to get better.

But I can't explain that to Sebastian, this probably millionaire with sly smiles and sharp eyes. I can't explain that to anyone. So instead I say, "How not to be villains." And it's true, but it's not the full truth, like so much of what I've said recently.

Sebastian disdainfully snorts. "And what's that like?"

I bite the inside of my cheek. "Hard", "confusing", "impossible-seeming", "daunting", are all things I want to say, but after rolling them around in my mouth, I swallow and cast a glance at Deception as she walks ahead towards a wall of towering windows. She doesn't have a shadow in this light, like she isn't real. "Like I don't know who to be."

"Don't know or don't remember?"

His question takes me by surprise and I snap my gaze towards him, mouth slightly open. Did I know before? I suppose I did, as Blank Slate and before that, young Elias, but I am someone new, someone different now, right? But what if I am not? What if I am somehow exactly the same and I just don't know it? What if—

"Are you two coming or not?" Deception waved at us and put her hands on her hips, foot tapping.

"Coming," I call and stride over to her, shoving down the rest of my thoughts before they can take over. I need to focus on the now and surviving this encounter with Deception, not get lost in my head. Not question my identity. Not question END and Edison and everything I know. Taking a deep breath, I let it out slowly in measured spurts, smoothing down the prickly icicles gathering in my fingers and forcing my attention to my surroundings.

Deception stands facing a wall of windows looking into a line of smaller rooms with gym mats and, in some of them, racks for weapons. In one of such rooms is a figure shrouded in smoke, rolling through a series of kicks, punches, and spins with the deadly grace of an airplane gliding through the air.

The figure swings her leg up and slams it into a cloud, scattering it into swirling eddies, then lashes out with her fist, a high-pressured stream of deadly black smoke spewing from her mouth. I can see the side of her face, the tilt of her nose, the scrunch of her brows, and a dull thud resonates through my ribs.

It's Wraith, and her eyes burn with self-loathing.

"Frightening, isn't it?" Sebastian's smooth tenor voice muses from my left.

Despite the jolt of winter in my fingers, I don't twitch, transfixed by the way the clouds of black swirls and scatters with each of her moves; how no matter how hard or sharp or fast her fists and feet pummel an imaginary enemy, her expression never changes; how she lives and breathes through the smoke like it's not there, like it's a part of her like blank winter white is to me.

There's something about it, some part in the way she flickers in and out of view, the look in her eyes, the tightness in her jaw, that reminds me of the wraith she is named after: haunted, vengeful, displaced, unreal, a tattered scrap of crooked fingers and unearthly screams and of someone she should've, could've been.

It leaves my innards cold and clammy and a strange ache of kinship nestled in between my lungs. I swallow and nod. "Yeah."

Sebastian chuckles. "As it should be. She's the Wraith of the Alley Woods after all."

The what? I tear my eyes away from Wraith and glance at Sebastian then Deception. "She's the what?"

"You don't know?" Sebastian arches an eyebrow, a frown tugging at his mouth.

"Of course not, silly." Deception elbows him with a snort, smile flashing. "He's been in END for months. I don't suppose he can keep up on the latest South Quarter news there, right, Elias?"

"Yeah." I clear my throat. "News isn't really allowed." At least, most of the news channels weren't. Only a select few were shown, and only with Guardians present, in case it was upsetting. Edison did keep me updated, though. Why hadn't I heard of this before?

Understanding flits across Sebastian's face and he nods. "Right," he says as if he'd never objected. "When Wraith was with the Noir gang, she was known for her raids, hits, and hauls without ever being sighted as anything more than a shadow. They say if you linger in a dark alley, the last thing you'd ever see is a shadowy figure, like a wraith, hence the name."

Deception giggles, tossing her head so her jet black hair swishes out of her face. "Before I rescued her from Noir's clutches, she was well on her way to ranking second-most-wanted in South Q! Just under me in a couple of months of her first encounter with public squares; atta girl. So of course I had to offer her a place in my nest of vipers." She grins. "And now she's our best fighter."

"Except for you," Sebastian drawls, smirking.

She swats at him with a short laugh. "Flatter much?"

"Flattery? Pshaw, it's only the truth."

Deception's eyes flash with a challenge and the conversation devolves into friendly banter that I lose track of almost immediately. Sighing under my breath, I shift my gaze back to Wraith, watching her figure flit through the thick smoke, imagining the dark shroud of an alleyway, a flicker of movement, and the pale skin around her eyes and in between the bandages around her hands as the last thing I see.

It's not hard to conjure the image, to feel the grit and flake of blood in between her fingernails, to recognise the cold steel of someone hardened to crime and death behind her eyes. No, it's all too easy to see it, to feel it, to recognise it, like how easy it is to doom scroll through all the articles of Blank Slate's crimes and feel the weight of it dragging me to the floor. It's too easy to see her as a villain like myself. Too easy to see her as not a villain and not a hero, but something else, something nebulous, like I am.

She and I, we were someone powerful and deadly and feared by the public taken from our whelping den to here, Deception's "nest of vipers." She is a villain, like I am—was—and the first thing she told me was that everyone is controlled and that I should leave. Why? Shouldn't she want me here like Deception does? Isn't she on Deception's side? Isn't she controlled, too?

Wraith stands in the middle of the room, back to the windows, shoulders heaving for breath. Smoke shrouds her form like static hums in my mind.

"Elias?"

Winter bites into my fingers and I hiss through my teeth, wrenching my hands out of my pockets before something happens and I blank myself again. "Deception! Don't..."

She's staring at me with those deep, violet eyes, a crease in her brow and a slight frown on her face, and she...she...looks like Edison when I've just lashed out or had a really bad day. And I...I...

Deception lays a hand on my arm, so soft and tender it almost doesn't happen. "Thinking much?"

Sebastian's stare bores into my skin and I clear my throat, moving my arm away. "Yeah. Just...processing." If it could be called that.

She puckers her lips, searching my face, and hums noncommittally. "I think there's more than that going on up there." She taps my forehead. "But I have an idea to fix that. Come on, this way!" Snatching my hand, she pulls me towards the far side of the room.

"Woah, uh, okay." I stumble and lengthen my strides to keep up, purple chasing my ankles.

Deception leads me and Sebastian into a side room. It's not as large as the gym, but still sports two floors and a good sprint's worth crossing from one wall to the other. It's empty, save a watchtower made from wood, easily reaching the second floor. She stops in front of it and drops my hand, facing me, grinning. "This is our training tower. Go on, blank it!"

Blank it? Brows scrunching, I tilt my head up, tracing the length with my eyes. "Why?" It looks well built and fairly new, despite a few scuff marks.

Deception shrugs. "We don't need it anymore." Leaning forwards, she waves at the tower. "Blanking it won't do any harm."

"Decs—" Sebastian cuts in, stepping forward to intervene.

She holds up a hand, eyes still fixed on me. Her attention, still mine. "I want to see what you can do."

I shake my head, flinging away the violet fog threatening to form in my ears. "You've seen the news reports." She must've seen what I did to the heroes' HQ—to two of them. She should know it's a bad idea for me to blank this tower.

What if I lose control and I blank more than the tower? What if I accidentally blank myself, or her? It's never happened before in END when I blanked things for practice (under supervision, of course), but that was under a HHH PowDown patch. The one stabbing my neck with as much fire as possible isn't going to survive if I blank something.

Deception's eyes turn an even darker shade of purple and she sweeps the air clear of something foul with a dismissive sniff. "The news lies." Tilting her head, she leans forward, lips turning upward. "Besides, I want to see it firsthand. There's no harm done; we don't need this thing anymore."

There's something about the way the light catches her eyes that makes them flash, almost glow from within like a gem in a beam of sunlight. I start to tilt towards her, peer into her face to look for the bottoms, but my mind catches up to her words and I jerk back. The news lies. She said it so flippantly, so smoothly, I'd almost missed it. The news lies. Exactly what past me wrote in the auto-played message. A ghost's finger trails down between my shoulder blades and I shiver.

How much of what she said did I believe? The longer I am here, the more she sounds like the auto-played message. Like Blank Slate. It's...horrifying. Crazy. Scary. There's evidence of her control written all over me and I didn't know it. Wraith's words echo back to me, low and serious. "She controls everyone eventually." Just how soon is eventually? Does she control me now? Is it already too late for me?

My heart does a backflip and—her eyes go dark and she shoves me. I stagger with a gasp, flinging my hands from my body, and I collide with the tower, instinctively grabbing onto it for balance. "What are you doing?" I snap, hands burning with ice and heart thundering.

Deception bares her teeth, eyes nearly glowing as she stalks towards me. "Blank the tower, Elias," she croons and...my mind goes purple.

My control slips—no, I let go—and ice flashes through my hands. The tower gives way, at first crumpling inward like a folding chair then, as its supports bend, shatter in a thousand pieces. Hands jerk me away from the logs crashing to the floor in a cacophony so loud it hurts even with my hands slapped over my ears. It's like a powerful waterfall pounding into a basin right by my feet, roaring with a force of nature so strong it shakes my very bones.

Then, all at once, everything stops. The last item rolls to a stop, the last echo fades, and there is only silence, so sudden my racing heartbeat and deep, ragged breaths nearly itch with the contrast. Slowly, I blink, and blink again. The tower, once nearly two stories tall, lies in a pile of logs, splinters, lumps of ore, and a puddle of chemicals; disassembled like a fallen jenga tower.

I stare, each heaving breath bringing the scent of chemicals and freshly cut branches. Why do humans find pleasure in destruction? Why does the undoing, the falling, the huge crash and clatter bring me satisfaction? Most of all, why do I almost...almost like this?

My hands don't ache with cold anymore. The unsteadiness in my limbs is gone. My fingers are rosy pink, not chilled white. I feel empty. Empty of struggle and winter and, and, I want to grin and cheer because that felt...that felt good.

Deception squeals with glee, a grin splitting her face, and she flings her arms around me. "Elias! You're so powerful! This is exactly what we need to change the world!" She laughs, pulling back and shaking my shoulders, eyes wild with the look of someone who sees a way to make their long-sought after goals come to fruition.

And that look is directed at me. I am the key. I am this powerful.

"I'm an eleven," I say through a haze of static, stepping out of her reach as fists wring out my lungs. She's so elated that I can destroy things with a simple touch. That I can practically erase people with a flick of my fingers. That I can be the key to her plans.

She wants me—not Wraith or Conflagration or Sebastian or anyone else; me—to help her change the world. And I could. The ENglass slate said that my purpose is to unmake what needs to be remade. What if that meant unmaking government buildings? Hospitals? Factories? With the power of destroying anything with a single touch at her side, Deception could hold a revolution. With me as her weapon.

And I was her weapon before, wasn't I? I was her boyfriend and co-conspirator, her machine gun, back then. I wanted—I believed I wanted—to unmake things. To level buildings. To hurt people.

And nothing is more terrifying than the realization that sits in the palms of my hands that hold the power to destroy everything:

With a little practice, I could re-learn to like it.