The Abyss was filled with unstable energy vibrating like a dying heartbeat. Natasha stood rooted on the ground, her breathing was weak, her senses trying to understand the scenes around her. Nothing here remain the same. The sky calm and the ground filled with living things and time changes constantly. But the moment she stepped into the fog she didn't feel any of those again.
"No way..." she breathed.
He looked exactly like her brother, same curly hair, same nervous smile even the pendant he wore in real life was the same. The one she gave him the day he got into the beta testing program but there was something about him that was different, the cold look in his eyes.
"Tasha... it's really me," he said, his voice breaking. "I knew you would come. I knew you would find me."
Her heart pounded heavily in her chest. For a moment she wanted to believe him, she wanted to hold him and scold him with tears in her eyes after everything she had been through, all the sacrifices, all the pain she felt, the ideal that her brother is still alive, even if just trapped within the game was almost to much for her to process.
But she couldn't ignore the doubt she was feeling. "You, how? They said your avatar was deleted. You were gone."
He flinched at her words, like they physically hurt him. "They lied, Natasha. The devs... the system. They never deleted me. They copied me. Cloned my data. Put me here like a.. placeholder. A patch to stabilize the code. I was never dead. Just trapped. Forgotten."
She swallowed hard, taking a cautious step forward. "If you are really him, tell me what I said the night you logged in. The last time I saw you."
He didn't hesitate. "You told me not to eat too many sour worms, or I would get a stomachache. That you would beat the game first, even though I got in before you. Then you hugged me... and said to bring back something cool from the jungle."
The memory crashed into her, vivid and painful. Her throat closed.
"But that could all be in the system logs," she whispered.
His expression darkened, desperate. "What if it is? Does it matter? I feel like me. I remember everything. Every second. Don't leave me here, Tasha. Please."
The world shifted.
Suddenly, Natasha was surrounded by flashes of her real life memories. Her brother on the couch, controller in hand, cheering when he beat the first boss. Her mother laughing from the kitchen. The day they got the beta invite.
And then, in harsh contrast, scenes from the game bloodstained vines, collapsing temples, the screech of a glitch spawn ripping through teammates. Reality and simulation merged, fighting for dominance in her mind.
What if you were never meant to win? a voice whispered.
What if saving him was always a lie?
She clutched her head. "No... Stop. This isn't real."
"It is real!" the brother echo screamed. "You think you are the hero? This game doesn't have heroes. Only survivors."
Meanwhile, in the jungle, chaos was everywhere.
Alison hide beneath a glitched out vine that whipped through the air like a serpent. His dagger pulsed in his hand, useless against the glitch spawn now flooding the area. Monsters made of corrupted data twisted into grotesque parodies of the jungle's original creatures. One of them a horned monkey made of shattered polygons shrieked and lunged.
Dren caught it mid-air with his bow, but it disintegrated into writhing code instead of dying. "They are not dying! They are just... resetting!"
Ira stood at the edge of the clearing, eyes closed, hands raised. Her voice was low, rhythmic, speaking the ancient system binding code she had discovered in the lost temple. Her consciousness dipped between layers of the game, attach by a slim thread to Natasha's fading presence.
Come on... come on... where are you?
And then she found it. A glitch in the code, deeper than anything she had seen. It wasn't just a pocket dimension. It was outside the original structure. Unauthorized. Wild. Dangerous.
The Abyss.
Her mind brushed against Natasha's, and she gasped.
Flashes of Natasha's thoughts struck her like lightning: memories laced with pain, guilt, doubt. The image of her brother real or fake loomed largest. But beneath that, something darker lurked. A foreign presence. Watching.
No, Ira whispered in horror. She's not alone in there.
Back in the Abyss, Natasha reeled from Ira's brief touch. It grounded her for a heartbeat.
"There is something wrong here," she muttered.
The figure of her brother stepped forward. "You have to choose now. I can feel the Compiler reforming. If you don't act, it will erase me. Forever."
Behind him, the digital fog thickened. From it, the Compiler emerged its body shifting constantly, a shape of jagged code and burning logic. It pulsed like a god of the machine, eyes scanning for deviations.
"You are the anomaly," it said, voice layered with thousands of mechanical echoes. "You must be purged."
"Tasha!" Her brother echo cried. "Please!"
Two doors manifested beside them. One glowed with soft gold, the other shimmered with eerie blue static.
One leads to reunion. One to isolation.
She looked between them, heart thundering.
"What happens if I choose wrong?"
"You won't get another chance," her brother whispered. "They will lock me away. You will forget everything. You will lose yourself."
The Compiler raised its hand, code flaring like a blade.
"CHOOSE."
And in that instant, Natasha moved.
She grasped her brother's hand.
A burst of blinding light consumed them both. Pain lanced through her body. The doors vanished. The Abyss screamed.
Natasha... don't trust them, her brother's voice said inside her mind. They lied about everything.
Her eyes flew open.
She was no longer alone.
Beside her, another figure rose. Cloaked in flame, eyes blazing with familiarity. A mirror image. But wrong. Twisted.
"Welcome back," the echo said, smiling with her face. "Now we begin."
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