Arcen didn’t get to run far before he reached the edge of the world. The marble-polished floor ended abruptly in a sheer cliff that dropped into a dark void that messed with his depth perception. He’d not awakened in an endless world. This was one gigantic pillar the size of a small island.

  King was catching up behind him, his tar feet pattering on the polished ground. Arcen steeled himself and jumped off the cliff into the void.

  He ended the nightmare.

  Or so he thought.

  King jumped after him, and another gigantic, polished pillar of rock rose out of the void to meet him. Arcen screamed, crashing into it headfirst. He was scattered to pieces like a watermelon thrown out of a skyscraper. King swiped his hand, putting his flesh, bone, and skin back together before he died.

  I THOUGHT YOU WERE GOING TO MAKE ME LEARN. YOU WANT TO PLAY NOW. I LIKE YOU.

  King smiled ominously with his large rows of teeth.

  “Let me go! I don’t want to play!” Arcen yelled, trying to run again. King restored him right away for a reason. That meant if he died in this world, he’d just wake up in the real one. He had to try his very best to kill himself.

  He crawled back onto his feet and ran again. He found the edge of the pillar and threw himself off with no hesitation. This time, King had jumped behind him so closely that he was restored while he crashed into the next pillar, legs first. King restored him from feet to the top of the head; it was like he reprinted a new Arcen from his old material.

  Fuck! this thing’s not letting me die!

  I WANT TO TOUCH THE WORLD AGAIN. TAKE ME WITH YOU.

  King smiled, grabbing Arcen by the hand. He had the grip strength of an ape despite his smaller stature.

  LET ME IN.

  “Let me go!” Arcen yelled, pulling his hand away with a violent jerk. His elbow socket widened, and he felt thundering pain as he ripped his hand from King’s iron grip.

  King raised his hand, summoning gigantic pillars all around him. The pillars created a huge wall around that was hundreds of meters high, leaving no more cliffs to jump from.

  TAKE ME OUTSIDE TO PLAY.

  King said in a more raised voice. It wasn’t exactly malicious, but Arcen felt his frustration like a gut punch. This wasn’t a creature that he could piss off indefinitely with no consequences. This world belonged to the Meronolith, and he couldn’t do anything here to save himself.

  Why isn’t it using the Red Court then?

  The first time that he was here, King had made him walk up a staircase to meet him. This world was tinted red instead of the pleasant evening sky. King was holding out on using the language that should be second nature for him.

  “I won’t take you to play anywhere. Do what you will,” Arcen said, sitting on the ground on his wobbly feet. There was no way out, but he didn’t want to surrender either. There was no ‘saving himself’ that he could do here. King would always get his way. It was just a matter of time.

  I CAN WAIT.

  To his surprise, the king sat down as well. He stared at Arcen with his big red eyes without blinking. This continued for a while. Arcen did his best to hold out, to be as boring as possible to bore the King out of what he wanted to do. Either that, or force the King into using the Red Court.

  None of it seemed to happen. King stared at him the whole time with a blank expression on his face. He had infinite attention to pay towards Arcen for some reason.

  He hit his threshold of boredom before King did. The endless quiet, the black pillars, and a sky where clouds didn’t move. This was an unbearable place to be trapped in. He kept rubbing his fingers and bending them all sorts of different ways to keep himself entertained.

  None of it worked.

  He tried sleeping, but it was like the world itself refused the concept of sleep. He could only keep his eyes shut for a few minutes at a time; sleep didn’t come to him in any shape or form.

  That’s enough of that.

  Arcen gave up after what felt like a full day. He knew it hadn’t even been hours, but just like Osiryn’s gray sands, this place was remarkably empty and devoid of movement. He felt his own mind slipping into insanity as King sat there without another word.

  DO YOU WANT TO PLAY WITH ME AGAIN?

  King asked, standing up from the floor exactly when Arcen did.

  “No, but I want to get the hell out of here. So why don’t you get this over with?” Arcen asked angrily. “Why don’t you use your red lights and make me do what you want to?”

  YOU SHOULD WANT TO PLAY.

  “Well, bad news, buddy. I still don’t!”

  WE CAN WAIT UNTIL YOU DO.

  King gestured at the ground again.

  Arcen realized his predicament right then. He had to take the King out to play as if it were his own idea. That was the only way out. He closed his eyes, trying to bring himself to say it. He breathed heavily once he decided it.

  “Yes, I want to play with you,” he said, begrudgingly.

  King smiled, clapping his small hands.

  I WANT TO PLAY.

  Arcen stared at him for an awkwardly long while, waiting to see whatever this play involved. King wanted something to do with that hell dog out in the real world. Arcen expected to be killed in this world somehow, the same way it happened the first time he was here, being swallowed by the King to merge with him.

  “Well? What should we do? How do we play?” He asked, running out of patience.

  I WILL HAVE TO BE YOU AGAIN.

  King pointed at him, unfurling his hand.

  BUT YOU HAVE TO WANT ME TO.

  What the fuck is this power play going on here? Does he want all of this to be my idea?

  “Fine, I want you to be me. Let’s get it over with quickly.”

  I WILL SEE A PIECE OF YOU, AND I WILL LEARN FROM IT.

  Did you know this text is from a different site? Read the official version to support the creator.

  King said, slowly walking up to him.

  I WILL LET YOU SEE A PIECE OF ME THIS TIME.

  The King was talking about the memories. Last time, he’d browsed through Arcen’s entire timeline looking for something that resembled love before finding the one moment that Arcen kept closest to the surface; the one where Kysa held him after he got out from the doomed quarantine camp that he was put in.

  Dredging the depths of his memories for love had entirely been one-sided. King had done it like he was a bookshelf with screwed-up old books. It had intruded where Arcen had never let anyone in. It was absurd how the first person to ever see him that deeply was a clueless alien baby high on love pills.

  Remembering how it happened, Arcen hesitated to let King come closer. His memories weren’t pieces that he was willing to trade with anyone else. He was afraid of the honesty that it required and the vulnerability that came with it.

  YOU SAID YOU WANT TO PLAY?

  King asked, noticing how he leaned backwards.

  Arcen calmed himself down. At least this time, it was a trade. This ‘fairness’ was a thing with King now, in his own malignant Meronolith way. It wanted to be more amicable and diplomatic while still enforcing what it wanted to get out of him. As afraid as he was about the random memory that was going to be dug up, He was curious about what memories a creature could have without even hatching out of its egg.

  “Still want to play, yes,” Arcen said, leaning forward and standing straight. “Do your thing, King.”

  EKIN IS MY NAME.

  “Same thing. Anyways, let’s play.”

  King opened his mouth wide and opened his arms. A red glow burst from his throat, and his mouth grew three sizes larger. Arcen realized what it was this time—the growing mouth was an optical illusion. It’s what it looked like from the one being sucked in. It was sort of a portal to another world inside the King, the world that contained what made him an individual—his flesh, blood, organs, and bones.

  Arcen fell through his glowing red throat deeper into his stomach, passed through a searing orange membrane that looked like molten glass. On the other side, he came face-to-face with the four-sided brain yet again.

  Here we go again!

  The folded petals of the brain unfurled into a starry night sky as seen from space.

  Arcen fell in, bracing himself like a paratrooper. He didn’t scream this time.

  He opened his eyes in a car stuck in traffic. He couldn’t remember where this was right away, but he knew when this was almost immediately. Outside the window, the old Seattle skyline sprawled towards the horizon like a badly drawn sketch of a city. The toppled skyscrapers and the red dots placed it in time perfectly for him. This was after Mayday. He was somewhere in New Manning.

  Arcen turned around and saw his sister leaning on the steering wheel with both her hands. She had dark circles under her eyes, and her hair was in a completely messy bun. He looked down, and he knew why. He still had the wristband from the hospital.

  They were stuck in the traffic of half-built New Manning. This was two or three years after Mayday, when the new skyscrapers were being built. Construction changed drastically in the eight years since Mayday, accelerated by resources and lessons from towers. Things that took years before could be done in months or weeks.

  Kysa noticed him looking at her and smiled tiredly. She touched his cheek, rubbing her thumb over his soft purple skin. “Everything alright, Arcie?” She asked in a gentle voice.

  He knew why.

  This was the first time he had been home since the Mayday. This was after wasting six months in the quarantine camp and spending nearly two years in a medical institute tailored for mutants.

  Where he tried to kill himself eight times. It had nothing to do with the facility itself. Lemmings Medical Institute was run by mutants who understood what it meant to be mutated. There were no experiments or forced tests. The attempts came from him simply not wanting to live in this world anymore.

  He had been better in the last six months, and the doctors determined it was better for him to live with his family.

  “Want to stop for a snack?” Kysa asked.

  “No. I just wanna see the new place,” he said, grabbing Kysa’s hand off his face, offering his hand for her to rub with her fingers. He didn’t want to push her off because she had already cried her eyes out twice signing his papers. He didn’t ever want to be rude to her after what he’d put her through in the last two years.

  “Come on now, it’s not that cool,” Kysa said with a sigh. “Rent’s a bitch. I think we should move when the contract’s up.”

  Arcen had only seen the new apartment in pictures and videos. It was in one of the new buildings that had been propped up in a year. It was twice as spacious as the one they grew up in and had a nice view. Kysa had gotten a great offer as the first tenant; it was about thirty percent off.

  She’d moved there, anticipating his release from the hospital about three months ago. Until then, she and his brother had lived in a shitty two-bedroom apartment in a renovated old Seattle building.

  Kysa had paid for the new place with her savings. The money that she earned from a very young age as a dancer and her modeling work had come in clutch post Mayday, but it wasn’t a fountain that could sustain three people.

  He had no way to express how badly it stung him when she went to such lengths to make him feel better about life, as she owed it to him. She owed her nothing. He knew he should’ve been there with a job to help his family. Instead, he’d been busy plotting ten different ways to kill himself before the day was over, for two whole years.

  He’d said this to her in nearly the same words a while ago, and it caused a weeklong drama with tears, increased therapy sessions that extended his release by another few months. He had to learn how to phrase his sentences to sound a lot less suicidal in tone.

  Kysa stopped the car after squeezing through the New Manning traffic. They had something to take care of before they stepped into the new apartment. She turned on her seat to face him, her lips tightened with a pained expression. This was a stop that he wanted to make, one that he’d strongly insisted she make. He was glad she did it without having to push her more for it.

  There was something in the car that he couldn’t take back home. He opened the dashboard compartment and took it out. It was a yellow file with his name on it.

  A. HENWICK - MUTATION ANALYSIS REPORT

  Of all the files he wanted to bury, this was the one he wanted to get rid of the most. It was the only file Kylan was never allowed to know about. He knew all about eight suicide attempts, he knew all about the medications and whatever else that the hospital documented.

  This one yellow file had something Arcen didn’t want his twelve-year-old little brother to see. It broke Kysa when she read it, and it would’ve broken his mother if she weren’t a tree.

  The kid didn’t need to ever see it.

  “You’re sure about this, Arcie?” Kysa asked, gulping hard. He saw her nostrils flare as she spoke, and fresh tears were gathering on her eyelids.

  “They have a copy if it’s ever needed again. I don’t need this in the house,” He whispered, digging through the compartment for the lighter. Once found, he stepped out of the car with the file.

  Kysa got out and ran to meet him before he could burn it. She hugged him from behind, crying all over again.

  “Hey, we talked about this already. It’s fine. I’m okay,” he said, feeling a penny in his own throat as he did. He zipped his lips because he didn’t want his voice to break or let a single tear out for it. He wanted to get it over with. He nudged the lighter to its highest flame setting and burned the file, making sure it turned to ashes.

  Kysa stood there, wiping her face as she hugged him. The file melted, turning into bubbling goo and then ashes in a minute or two.

  Arcen nudged his sister with his forehead, whispering in her ear to calm her down. He managed to get her back in the driving seat. She continued sobbing with her head on the steering wheel while he smoked out of the window to get his own thoughts in order.

  Having come to terms with what he just did, Arcen tossed the cigarette. He suddenly got an idea to make things better. He leaned over and crawled under Kysa’s arms. She started laughing through her tears as his head appeared on her lap.

  “That’s enough crying about that. Let’s get going, I wanna see my new room,” Arcen said, poking her red nose.

  “Let me cry when I’m crying, damn it,” Kysa said, wiping her eyes.

  “I can tickle you if you want.”

  Half an hour later, they arrived at the new building in the east residential block. Kylan was in the parking lot waiting for them, nose already red from crying. He went quiet, on the edge of crying all over again as Arcen hugged him.

  “It’s all good, Kye,” he reassured his brother, messing with his hair. They’d done this same routine only two days ago in a hospital visit. It wasn’t like he was coming home from a maximum security prison, but logic wouldn’t help Kylan.

  He’d been worried about Arcen since the Mayday. He’d cried until he puked when Arcen was sent off to a quarantine camp. He’d cried when his sister dropped him off at one of her friends’, and went missing for three days while she was out looking for Arcen, he’d cried on his every failed suicide attempt. Arcen felt terrible about everything his little brother had to live through.

  “Come on now, stop crying and show me your room,” Arcen said, patting him on the back.

  As he did, the memory slowly blended with reality. He felt himself coming alive in his own body. The world flickered all around him, freezing his siblings and the birds flying in the sky where they were.

  King flickered into existence and looked up at him.

  I SAW YOU HIDING A SECRET.

  Arcen jolted when the voice echoed directly in his head.

  I WONDER WHAT IT WAS.

  It’s nothing useful for you, I can tell you that much. Why did you even pick this memory?

  IT SMELLED LIKE THE MOST PAINFUL.

  That’s not cool-

  I ALSO HAVE SECRETS. I WILL SHOW YOU ONE.

  The world flickered out like a faulty light bulb.

  Spending quality time with his malignant toddler.

  Next chapter on Friday.

  Regular reminder to rate/review if you’re enjoying the ride!

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