The stench of scorched synthetic fabric hangs over us as we run through a corridor of windows and skid into a medium sized room with white cubes scattered around like piles of crates. Picking the largest pile, we hunker down, chests heaving. Smoke still lifts from Wraith's arm where Conflagration's bolt had grazed her—not enough to take one of her lives, thankfully.

As soon as we are in cover, Wraith starts inspecting the damage done to her sleeve.

"Why did you—"

She spears me with a glare so sharp I snap my teeth together hard enough they make a small click! "Have you really forgotten so much?"

I recoil at the fury in her voice. "I—only remember up to twelve." As if that explains why I was so terrible at aiming I almost hit her. Why I reacted so slowly that she had to shove me out of the way and nearly lose one of her lives. Why I had lost control and blanked my gun.

Wraith bares her teeth in a furious scowl, acid practically dripping from her voice. "Idiot fool."

Fire sparks against the prickle of ice across my skin and I splutter. "Hey—"

Footsteps sound and Wraith pushes a hand over my mouth, pulling both of us further behind the pile of crates and hunkering down. Someone runs past, heavy boots echoing down the otherwise empty hall. When the footfalls have long since died away, Wraith removes her hand and leans over and hisses in my ear. "You've forgotten everything. Why did you return? You were free from her control."

I curl my fingers into tight fists against the floor, my own acid bubbling up my throat. "I was kidnapped. I didn't want to come back here. I wanted to stay in End."

Wraith snorts, pulling away from me. "If you did, you wouldn't still be here. Everyone stays on their own volition."

What? "No, I don't! I can't leave—"

"—That's what she wants you to think."

I glare at her, sparks spreading over my chest and alighting with frost cold enough to burn. "I wouldn't get farther than a couple halls! There's surveillance bots!" It's not just as easy as up and leaving. There's codes, locks, and surveillance bots ready to report every move I make so that Deception can find and stop me. She's not stupid.

Wraith rolls her eyes. "You can break into any building by a simple touch. Do you think bots are any different?"

"They could have tranq guns."

She ignores my weak protest. "You could blank those Leapers any time—you're free to go just like me. But you don't because you don't want to leave."

"That's not—that's—" I growl, shaking my head so my curls fly. "Of course I want to leave. I chose End. I don't want to be a villain." I am stuck here. Deception must have things in place to stop me. She knows about my power, knows how I could blank through every lock. She must have safeguards in place.

Unless that is what she wants you to think, an unbidden part of me whispers. Unless her way is to make you think you can't leave. Unless her way is to make you stop wanting to leave.

Air whooshes out of my lungs and I still, the thud of my heart spreading spiderweb cracks through me. No, no, no. I want to leave, I really do. I want to go back to End, to Edison, to David and all of Storm Cell even if some of them don't like me all too much.

I want to go back...but. But there's a but. There's a part I can't deny that wonders that if I stay, I might learn about what really happened between my last memory as twelve and the first one when I woke up to the Auto-played message. Who I thought Deception was. Who I used to be, used to stand for.

Wraith's eyes dart over me and her mouth twists in a sour frown. "Do I really need to spell it out for you?"

When I don't answer, she sighs and grabs my shoulders, shoving me against a crate so we are practically nose to nose. "Leave," she nearly spits, lips curling from her teeth. "Bring this building down on us all, or whatever, but leave."

The spiderweb cracks spread, reaching my lungs and filling them with freezing air. "That— That will kill everyone."

"Better we're all dead than her having you in her hands." She glares, nearly snarling in my face, voice rough and bitter like a shattered mirror, so filled with bitterness, the almost oily tinge of fear, that it stings like a sandstorm.

Something stronger than a rubber band snaps across my chest and the cracks burst outwards like a supernova. "You'd rather everyone die than—"

"Think, Elias, if you still can! She can control anyone she wants. You can blank buildings in nanoseconds! She'll kill thousands more with you under her thumb, and it'll be on your own hands." She snarls, face twisting into something like...regret, maybe anger, maybe something deeper. "I can't let that happen! This has already gone too far..."

Blood on my hands. It's all too easy to imagine, the warm liquid seeping through my fingers, the sharp iron smell, the sound of the world crashing around me and Deception, laughing. No. She...wouldn't do that, right? The aim is to rebuild, not to have a murderous revolution. "She wouldn't," I protest, but it falls flat, weak, even to my own ears.

Wraith scoffs, eyes dark with personal experience. "Oh, she would. She would kill everyone with the snap of her own fingers if she could. She can't do her own dirty work so she makes me do it. Us do it. All of us. We're tools, assassins, murderers to her."

"No," I breathe. Deception isn't like that. That isn't what we're—she's fighting for. She—okay, she uses people, but to do that? To kill?

Wraith falls back against the wall. "ARGH! You're so blind! No wonder she picked you first. You're—" Her chest heaves with a forceful breath. "Just get out of here," she hisses finally. "She's done too much harm already! I've—" Her voice breaks and she tears past me, teeth bared in a half grimace, half snarl, fists clenching and unclenching. "Do whatever you have to do, whoever you are. Just don't make mistakes like me and become her pet project. Don't make me— Don't— Don't be stupid."

I open my mouth, staring wide-eyed, but a blue bolt streaks past and slams into Wraith's shoulder with an explosion of lighting. She screams, not in a wounded, dying way, but with the unearthly fury of something knowing it has lost.

"Got you!" crows Grease from somewhere above.

Staggering to her feet, Wraith launches herself over the crates and straight at Grease with a screech.

The smug look vanishes from Grease's face and she rolls out of sight just in time to avoid a solid punch. "Hey! It was—ow—fair and square!"

"Bolts are round, you scum!"

"Pretty sure they're cylinders!" Grease quickly back-skips into my cover, gun raised to shoot Wraith, and suddenly I am presented with the perfect opportunity.

I don't think. With Wraith's scream still ringing in my ears, I pick up her dropped gun and fire, catching Grease square in the back. Her cube flashes game over as she falls to one knee with a gasp. Before I can begin to process what I did, how numb I feel, Grease whirls and instinct takes over.

I throw out my hands, winter flashing bright, and two somethings slam into my chest. It hurts like lightning, like fire, like the bright flash of a dying computer, and I seize, falling back with a wheeze. Then the blue fire is gone and I am left staring up at the ceiling, panting and listening to Grease's curses over her blanked gun and my cube buzzing game over.

My chest feels as if a hovercar landed on it and the winter in my hands spins in confused circles like it has forgotten where the exit is.

Wraith comes into my view and glances me over, expression a smokescreen. She offers a hand but I shake my head. I am not ready to get up yet. I still ache and there's too much on my mind, too much to think about, too many walls to stare at and wonder how hard it would be to bring them down.

●↽—0101001101001100—⇁●

The game ends in a tie.

Not because of skill, but because the last two players had an epic shootout and somewhere in the chaos, a gun not in use got knocked and went haywire, ending the game simultaneously with Wraith out of lives and Conflagration effectively immortal according to his broken game cube. Grease calls foul and thus no one wins.

Conflagration disputes the foul, but after Grease threatens to go full dragon mode, he backs off with a definitive 'I still won anyway' air and instead starts shooing us away to leave to let Grease review the data and tinker in peace. Which is fine. I need my own time to think.

Wraith follows me to my room and lingers at my door. I turn, finger hovering over the close button and stare at her, eyebrows raised.

She stares right back, lips twitching in odd ways, eyebrows scrunched and nose wrinkled as if she is finding and discarding everything she thinks of saying. "Think about it," she says at last. Her eyes harden, fierce as a hawk's. "I'm watching." And then she pushes off the door and walks away, dark hair swinging with each step as if nothing abnormal ever happened, if she hadn't told me to blank this building and everyone in it earlier, if she hadn't screamed like a soul dying.

I hit the button and the door swishes closed, cutting me off from the rest of the world. Shoving my hands in my pockets, I turn and gaze blankly at my distorted reflection in the holoTV. My face is scrunched in, my curls frizzy and tussled, a deceptively average look instead of everything else wrong with me. You could blank your way out. Wraith's words hover between me and my reflection. You're an eleven. Do you really think you can be stopped?

I do. I think that I could blank the Leapers and I could blank the surveillance bots, but I also think Deception knows I can. She has more tricks up her sleeves, hidden in the mansion above, and she isn't afraid of using them. But...I also think I could blank through those too. I am an eleven, not a nine anymore. Buildings fall at my hands, doors turn to scrap, memories turn to empty wastelands at a single touch.

What is really keeping me here? Is it really only Deception, or is it myself?

My reflection stares at me with hazy eyes that seem blank and expressionless, and it almost seems like it's...looming, like I am angry. Full of malice and hate.

I am probably imagining it, projecting onto my reflection, but all the same I grind my teeth, listening to the howl of my desolate mind. "I'm thinking," I say to my reflection with no voice. "And I still don't know what to do."