Inescapable Escapism

“Is that the badge you found on the corpse?” Dina asked, her voice trembling slightly.

I couldn’t tear my eyes away from the image of the woman before me to check the broach in my inventory, but I didn’t need to. I knew they were the same one, even if the one pinned to the scientist’s chest was shiny and undamaged, unlike the one I’d picked up. Time had destroyed it, just like everything else in the lab.

“Yeah,” I said.

Dina’s hand shot out, and she grabbed my arm as she let out a gasp.

“It’s finally happening, isn’t it?” she hissed excitedly, her earlier fear seemingly forgotten. “We’re getting lore! I knew it! I told you there was a story to this world. There was no way it was just climate change that caused all of this!”

“It could be,” I muttered.

I was excited about the potential of discovering the truth about that world, but something else was pulling at me and making me feel apprehensive. There wasn’t anything specific that I was worried about. It was just a general nagging sense of unease. The devs had probably added that in, though. There had clearly been an update, even if they hadn’t announced it. Perhaps they had messed around with their emotion manipulation, too. That would have explained a lot.

“Are you ready?” Dina asked impatiently.

“Yes,” I replied, the realisation making me feel slightly less nervous. “Go on, start the video!”

Dina’s lips stretched into a wide grin as she gestured towards the projection, and the woman began to move. An almost deafening sigh crackled through the ancient speakers on the projector, and Dina and I flinched. I lifted my gun, scanning the darkened room in case the noise somehow triggered an attack, but the room was still. The only movement came from the woman on the projection.

“Sorry,” Dina muttered. “Turns out the volume was on max.”

“That’s okay,” I said as a faint clinking noise sounded. “That’s better.”

Dina nodded without saying anything, her eyes returning to the projection. The woman had lifted the glass from the tray on her desk and tipped ice cubes into it. I had no idea where they’d come from; she must have had a freezer somewhere nearby.

It didn’t seem like she was aware that she was being filmed. She hadn’t looked at the camera once. She was too focused on pouring some of the amber-coloured liquid into her cup. A memory sparked somewhere deep in the back of my mind. She was drinking whisky. I wasn’t sure how I knew, but I did. The glasses were familiar to me, maybe.

The woman put down the bottle without bothering to place the stopper back into it and picked up her cup.

“Wow,” Dina breathed as we watched her down it without hesitation. “I guess she was really thirsty.”

“Yeah, I guess so,” I agreed as the woman began to refill her glass before finally looking at us.

“The world is dying,” she announced. “And there really is no easy way to say that. I mean, so many people have tried, and yet it never sounds any better. And somehow, despite all of the facts and how obvious it is, some people are still denying it. I thought we’d moved on from ignoring science, but here we are.”

She sighed heavily again, but the noise was less overwhelming that time.

“It’s climate change,” I told Dina.

“No, it’s not,” she argued hopefully. “There’s more to it than that. I know it!”

The woman took a long swing, seeming to savour the flavour as she stared into the distance, her expression almost disappointed.

“The planet is slowly freezing. We don’t have long until it will be entirely uninhabitable, and yet some idiots are still claiming that this is a hoax. How could they possibly think that?”

Dina groaned loudly.

“Fine,” she grumbled. “Maybe you were right. It’s just boring old climate change.”

“Sorry,” I told her with a grin.

Part of me was a little disappointed. It would have been so much more fun if there was more to what happened than that, but it seemed like the world was based on the surface. That had become unsafe for humans because of climate change, and there were a lot of similarities.

“But I refuse to sit back and let people die or give up on this planet and… take to the skies like those cults, as if that’ll be any safer!” the woman laughed, the noise bordering on manic.

“The skies…” I repeated.

“So, there were floating cities in the game world too?” Dina asked.

“I guess so.”

Dina hesitated before speaking again.

“What’s a cult?”

“I don’t know,” I lied.

I’m not sure why I did it. The words just came out before I could stop them.

“There’s more we can do,” the woman said, seeming to be talking to herself. “There has to be. That’s why I’ve taken over this lab. It was in the family before, but they weren’t doing anything useful with it. I mean, there’s no need to develop new diseases or toxins when there won’t be anyone left to use them on soon, if we don’t find a way to stop this.”

The image froze, and I glanced at Dina, seeing her shocked expression.

“What?”

“Is that what biological warfare is?” she demanded.

I wasn’t meant to know that in the world, either. That knowledge had come from elsewhere.

“Oh, I guess so,” I said, trying to sound just as appalled and taken aback as she looked.

“That’s horrible. That can’t have been a real thing on the surface, can it?”

The urge to lie to Dina washed over me again.

“I’m… not sure. Let’s keep watching.”

That felt safer. It had to be, but I didn’t know who I was trying to protect her from. It just seemed like there was some kind of danger. Like, if I let her know too much, something would happen to her, but lying felt wrong too. There was no good option.

Dina nodded, her expression distracted as she fiddled with the control ring until the projection started to move again. The woman on the screen held up a hand.

“No, not stop this,” she corrected herself. “There is no preventing the inevitable, but there has to be a way to ensure some people survive. If we can find a way to allow them to adapt to the extreme temperatures and the demands that the coming years hold, they’ll endure. I know they will. There has to be something, some small modification we can make to their genetic makeup, that will help.”

“Um… what?” Dina interrupted, but the woman just kept on talking.

“We’re already so close to the solution, I know we are. If we just keep working, we can do it. This lab is so much bigger than our last one. It has all of the equipment we need. I just hope we have enough time. And, if we don’t…”

She trailed off, lifting her glass to her lips and downing the contents again.

“If they don’t?” Dina whispered, as if trying to prompt her into continuing.

The woman sighed and shook her head before staring directly into the camera again.

“And if we don’t, then I just hope we don’t make things worse, and… maybe someday, people will be able to return to the surface again,” she said, her tone strangely wistful. “If there’s anything left for them here.”

She began to reach for the whisky decanter with one hand, waving the other one without even looking at the camera. The black control ring on her finger glinted in the light as the image faded away, being replaced by the list of files.

Dina and I stared at the space where the woman had sat blankly, neither of us able to speak for a few seconds. What she had said had been so wild and terrifying, but there was something about it that just… pulled at me. It made me want to continue watching the videos and hear what else she had to say.

“So…” Dina started slowly. “They messed with people’s genetics?”

“I guess so,” I replied, feeling my eyebrows draw together. “That’s what the woman said, anyway.”

Dina nodded, her eyes wide and staring. She didn’t seem to be focusing on anything specific, and I could almost hear how hard her mind working.

“Do you…” she began before trailing off and starting again. “You don’t think that actually happened on the surface? I mean, do you think it would have if anyone was left behind?”

“Of course not,” I responded immediately. “People know better than to mess around with genetics. It’s too dangerous. And everyone was brought up here or to one of the other floating cities.”

I heard how sharp my tone was, but I couldn’t do anything about it. I didn’t even know why I was being so short with her; the question just annoyed me for some reason. It was silly, foolish. Genetic modification and people being left on the surface was just a… plot point in a video game. It wasn’t real.

Dina glanced at me, hurt blossoming on her features.

“Oh, right,” she muttered. “Of course.”

Guilt spread through me as I took in her dejected posture, and I bit my lip, trying to work out why I had been so rude. It was a reasonable question. I probably would have wondered the same thing if I didn’t know the truth. Fear fluttered in my chest, and I glanced at Dina as a memory floated to the surface of my mind. It had been locked away before, unable to be accessed, but I wasn’t sure why. Was it a conscious decision that I’d made in that world? Or had someone else.

I’d never told anyone else what I’d seen. My mom was the only one I mentioned it to. It was an accident. I didn’t go snooping; I just stumbled across the information. There was a problem with my chip. I had it replaced at twelve, just like everyone else, but mine was glitching. A few people had the same problem; the batch was faulty, but they couldn’t replace them straight away. They wanted to work out what had gone wrong first.

Sometimes, the system at home thought I was my mom. That was normally fine; I didn’t often try to access something only she would have access to, and I didn’t mean to on that day either. I was just doing some research for a piece of homework about the final days on the surface. Obviously, I’d learnt about it before, but I needed to double-check some details. I didn’t even know what I was reading at first. I still couldn’t wrap my head around it even after I’d read all of the reports on the system.

Mom got home not long after that. She got an alert about the files I was reading, and she rushed back using the transport system under the city so no one would know it wasn’t her who was accessing them. She could tell that I knew the truth, and she didn’t even try to lie to me about all of the people who were left to die on the surface. I almost wish she had. That would have made it easier, but instead, she answered every question I had without shying away from the gruesome details.

The people in the cities were chosen. Selected. They were deemed worthy of survival. There was a strict set of criteria that a person had to meet, and not many did. More were left behind, and families were split up. People choose to turn their backs on their loved ones and let them die alone. The cities lost contact with the surface not long after that.

I glanced at Dina again. She was fiddling with the ring, her expression somehow even sadder than before. The guilt churning in my stomach became almost unbearable, and I chewed the inside of my lip, trying to think of a way to make it better.

“Hey,” I said awkwardly. “You were right. It wasn’t just climate change.”

She looked up at me, a slight smile beginning to pull at her lips.

“Huh,” she replied softly. “I guess so.”

I hesitated, still grappling with shame. That wasn’t good enough. I needed to say something more. I couldn’t exactly explain, but…

“Sorry. I… I was rude, and it wasn’t fair. You didn’t deserve it.”

Dina’s expression brightened, and she bumped me with her shoulder.

“It’s fine,” she told me. “It’s not your fault. They’ve done something to the emotion manipulation in this game, right?”

A wave of relief crashed into me.

“Yes! I think so,” I agreed.

“They must have! I’ve been so anxious since I got in here, and I genuinely almost cried just then.”

Shame welled up inside of me, and I grimaced. My emotions had been all over the place, but that wasn’t why I’d snapped at her. Or it wasn’t the only reason, at least.

“Sorry,” I repeated.

“Don’t be,” she said with a laugh. “It’s kind of reassuring to know you feel the same way. I thought my hormone regulator was getting messed up again!”

“Really?” I asked. “Maybe you should get that sorted. They can cause a lot of problems if it gets—”

“Clea, it’s fine,” Dina cut me off. “It’s just the game messing with me.”

“Are you sure?”

“Well… no. I guess there’s no real way to know for certain, but it only started happening after we got here, so I assume it’s just that.”

I hesitated. Her answer made sense, but I still didn’t like it. It felt like too much of a risk.

“Maybe—”

“I’ll swing by the clinic tomorrow,” she interrupted, knowing exactly what I was going to say. “Happy?”

“I mean, I’d prefer you go tonight,” I mumbled, knowing the smile on my face made it obvious that I was joking.

It would be better if she went that day, but if her hormone regulator had just started malfunctioning, it wouldn’t cause any real damage for a few weeks.

“Shut up,” she laughed, nudging me again. “Want to want another recording?”

Reluctance pulled at me, trying to convince me to say no, but I forced myself to nod. Maybe I’d put in a comment about the emotion manipulation later. It was fun to have some, but they’d gone too far, and it was making it hard to keep playing.

“Yeah, let’s do it!”

“There are hundreds here,” Dina remarked as she scrolled through them again. “We can’t watch them all, right?”

“No, I doubt it. School’s got to be almost over. People will get annoyed if we’re hogging the machine and just watching things,” I agreed. “Look, the last few digits of the file name look like dates, right? Do you want to skip forward… a few months?”

“Oh, good spot,” Dina said, her eyes narrowing as she stared at the date. “Huh. Okay… how about this one?”

I stared at the file she’d suggested, glad that she didn’t say anything more about the year. The number was familiar to me. Everyone in the city knew when the city was founded and the surface became uninhabitable, but why had the devs chosen the same year? It felt wrong or insensitive. They could have picked any time or date.

Pushing the thought from my mind, I forced myself to focus on the file. There was no information on it other than the name and file type, but it was almost exactly three months after the first video. The woman seemed to have recorded one every day.

“Yeah, sounds good. If it’s boring, we can always turn it off and watch a different one.”

Dina nodded, her expression slightly worried, before selecting the video.

The room darkened for a moment before the projection began. The office looked exactly as it had before, but that time, the woman wasn’t sitting behind her desk. She was leaning against it. One of her arms was wrapped around her body, the other clutched the glass, holding it close to her face, and I couldn’t help but notice the tumbler was much fuller than last time.

Her eyes were shiny, though. In the last video, she had appeared glum and angry, but now she seemed much more animated, even before she began speaking. She couldn’t stand still. She fidgeted with the glass, turning it slowly back and forth in her hand.

“We started testing on animals today,” she announced. “We’re using the formulas I uploaded yesterday. They’re not perfect yet, obviously. Too unstable, but we need to move fast. If even one of them can produce promising results, it could help point us in the right direction.”

“They started testing on animals without having a finished product?” I muttered.

“That seems… barbaric,” Dina said, and I found myself nodding in agreement.

I knew it happened sometimes on the surface. People got desperate, but it was still hard to hear. The scientist didn’t seem too fazed, though.

“None of the animals survived, which wasn’t really a surprise to any of us. We expected that, but their reactions were… interesting,” she noted. “One triggered an immune response and entered anaphylaxis, which is worth noting, but the others… they all had different responses. I’m most intrigued by the rhesus. We tested on a range of animals, of course. The full report should be attached to this file, but… it didn’t react at all at first.”

“At first?” Dina repeated, her voice horrified. “Then what happened?”

“Within four hours,” the woman continued, seeming to almost be replying to Dina, “it became enraged. Nothing appeared to trigger it; it was in its cage as usual, and it began trying to get through the bars. It murdered two lab assistants who made the mistake of getting within range and was hit with enough tranqs to take down an elephant, but it didn’t stop fighting until the brain was removed.”

There was no remorse or emotion in her voice as she spoke about the dead assistants. Her tone remained perfectly even and thoughtful, almost like that was a promising result.

“That’s horrible,” Dina muttered, and I nodded, my eyes fixed on the woman.

“We need to test that serum again to identify exactly what happened. Was the amygdala stimulated somehow? Or perhaps the hypothalamus? Could it have been hormonal?” the woman guessed, her eyebrows drawing together as she considered the possibilities. “I’m not sure, but I want to find out. The decreased response to physical pain is interesting. It may be useful for surviving natural disasters, but we need to find a way to assess the associated risks. The subjects could be at a greater risk of injury to extremities, leading to infection, tissue loss, and potential sepsis, similar to that seen in leprosy.”

I jerked back, the mention of leprosy taking me by surprise. I’d not thought about that disease in a little while. Not since I was on Spinalonga with Mitch. Longing gripped my heart so tightly I couldn’t breathe, and dizziness sent the room spinning around me.

“Is that blood?” Dina asked, her alarmed voice cutting through my vertigo.

“Blood?” I repeated weakly, squeezing my hands into fists and biting down on the inside of my lip in the hopes of anchoring myself in that world. “Where?”

“On her sleeve. Look, her right arm.”

Forcing myself to take deep breaths, my eyes scanned the image before us, struggling to focus. Slowly, it became clearer, and I watched as the woman lifted the glass to her lips, clearly displaying the stain on the underside of her arm. It appeared almost as if her sleeve had been dragged through a puddle of blood. Was it one of the lab assistants?

“I need sleep,” the woman said. “I’ve uploaded the data to every satellite my family has access to. If our experiments don’t work… well, maybe at least some of our findings will be useful to someone. Perhaps some of the freaks on those doomed floating islands will be able to do something with them. I don’t know. I doubt they’ll outlast anyone on the surface. Three islands have crashed back down within the last week. More will follow.”

She let out a sigh as she shook her head, seemingly disappointed, and I wasn’t sure if she was sad people had died when the cities fell or if she was sad that the technology had failed. Both seemed equally likely for her.

“Three cities fell,” Dina said as the video ended. “Didn’t they? In real life, three of the cities fell from the sky shortly after they ascended.”

“Yes,” I confirmed, barely able to get the word out.

It was just a coincidence, I told myself. There was no way what she was saying was true. Some of it was, but they didn’t actually experiment on animals. Not like that.

“But no more fell after that, right?”

“I don’t know.”

That was the truth. We’d been told that they hadn’t, but I was starting to doubt it. Too much of the game was based on the truth. It was things the devs shouldn’t have known. The information was only available to a select few, to the people who ran the city and had to know about it. There was no way the update would have been approved if it contained that information that was meant to be hidden. Unless it had never been approved.

No. It had to be. How else would we be playing it?

“Should I put another on?” Dina asked nervously.

I glanced around, feeling the urge to disconnect and scan the arcade to make sure we were still alone, before nodding.

“Yeah. Skip forward another few months, maybe?”

“Okay,” Dina said, finding a video and clicking on it. “Whoa.”

I stared at the image in shock, my brain struggling to process what I was seeing. The woman, the scientist, was seated again, but that seemed almost necessary. I wasn’t sure if she would have been able to stand if she tried. She was too… frail. She had never looked weak before, but suddenly, she did.

It hadn’t been long since the first video or even the second one. Six months had passed since the initial file, but she had changed so much. Her cheeks were sunken, and bags had appeared under her eyes, the colour so dark, they looked like bruises. Her once glossy hair was limp, greasy and scrapped back, and she was slumped in her chair. It seemed like the weight of her body was too much for her to be able to hold upright unassisted.

But the whisky glass was still in her hand. There was no ice and barely any liquid, but it seemed like it had been full just moments before.

A loud sigh slipped from her mouth, the sound heavy with exhaustion.

“What happened to her?” Dina asked, glancing at me. “Is she sick?”

I didn’t have an answer to her. I should have known. I’d done some medical training and voluntary work at the hospital, but I had no clue what could have happened to her to cause her to deteriorate so quickly.

“I think so.”

“We started human testing today,” the woman said, her voice soft and rasping. “It was too soon. I know it was, but what else were we meant to do? Every single avenue of our research has reached a dead end. The animal trials aren’t helping either. They don’t make sense. Each one produces a different result, and I don’t know why!”

She slammed her fist down onto the desk as her voice rose to a shout, and I flinched, not expecting such anger. The emotion seemed to drain out of her quickly, leaving her even weaker than before. Her hand shook as she reached towards the decanter, barely able to lift it from the table.

“They started testing on humans before they produced consistent results on animals,” I breathed in horror. “Why would they do that? How many people did they kill?”

“We had no alternative,” she continued, seeming to stare directly at me. “Word got about about what we’re trying to do here. I don’t know how, but… there are too many people camped outside the lab, despite the storms. We’ve had to start sleeping here. It’s impossible to get through the crowd, and they killed Jemma last week. They thought she might have had the serum on her.”

“They murdered a scientist for that?” Dina muttered, her tone fearful.

“They were desperate,” I explained. “They must have been willing to do anything.”

“We told them the risks,” the woman continued miserably. “We said the serum wasn’t perfected and that they would likely die, but the screams—”

She pressed a hand to her mouth to stifle the sob that cut her off, and I felt my heart break. I wasn’t sure if I was sad for her or everyone else on the surface. Or in the game. If that was all the story was… they’d done amazingly, but if it wasn’t… I wasn’t sure what would happen.

“I don’t know if I can watch this,” Dina admitted, her face pale.

“Not a single person survived,” the woman said before I could reply. “I must be missing something. I just don’t know what. If I have another look at the data, maybe I’ll see something. Perhaps, there’s—”

“Amelia,” a voice called from off-screen, and Amelia’s head snapped up as panic flitted across her face before the image disappeared.

“Who was that?” Dina asked.

“I’m not sure, but… I guess now we know that’s definitely Amelia,” I responded. “Do you… want to watch another?”

Indecision warred on Dina’s face, but I knew what she was going to say. She was too curious. Despite how hard it was to hear about the experiments going badly, she would want to keep watching.

Part of me hoped that things were going to get better. That Amelia’s experiments would start to produce good results, promising ones, before it was too late. If it wasn’t already.

“I think so,” Dina said unsurely.

I nodded.

“If it becomes too much, we can turn it off,” I told her.

Dina’s shoulders rose and fell as she took a deep breath before beginning to scroll.

“Oh. The final video is only two months from that one,” she pointed out.

I stared at the file. There was nothing particularly unique about it. It was titled the same way as the rest of the videos, but it was the last one. It had to answer some of the many, many questions I still had about Amelia and everything that had happened, but I wasn’t sure if it would.

“I guess…” I said, my voice quiet from apprehension. “We’ll just watch that one then.”

“Okay,” Dina muttered.

The office had changed a lot in those two months. The once neatly spaced items displayed on the tables around the room were in disarray, and most had been replaced with lab equipment. A fridge containing samples of blood and brightly coloured liquids hummed on the table closest to Amelia, and I found myself glancing across at the table on the far side of the office.

“Dina,” I said, my head whipping around. “Are you seeing this?”

“Yes,” she confirmed, stumbling backwards and slipping her hand into mine for support.

The room seemed to be changing around us. The dusty and broken remains of the decorations had begun to shimmer slightly before transforming to match the room in the projection. I stared at the items, trying to work out what they were. Most were vaguely familiar, but they were in such a state of disrepair and decay that it was hard to know what they were for certain.

Even Amelia’s desk is different. There are two glasses on it. One empty one, and one full.

“Still no progress,” Amelia announced, her hoarse voice matching her feeble and sickly appearance. “Just like yesterday, the day before that and every other day since I started working on this thing. We’re still testing on humans. We’ve had a couple of almost positive results, but… we’ve given up on the animal testing, released all of the ones we had left into the wild. They won’t survive for long out there, but I can’t watch another creature die. None of us can; it’s making this all seem so…”

She trailed off and stared into space for a moment, entirely motionless. She wasn’t even blinking.

I glanced across at Dina in confusion.

“Did you pause it?” I asked.

She looked down at the control ring, tapping a few buttons before looking back up at the screen.

“No. I don’t know what— ”

Amelia blinked suddenly and sucked in a breath, making me jump.

“The weather is getting worse by the day. Another hurricane tore across the east yesterday, destroying one of the other labs and years of progress. They had everything backed up, of course, but the samples were destroyed. I don’t even know how many people they lost,” she murmured, concern crossing her haggard face. “I can’t make sense of their data, though. There’s even more on the satellite than they shared previously, and I don’t understand. I thought they gave up on the weapons, goddammit!”

“They were still making weapons?” Dina muttered, her expression horrified.

“Why isn’t this working? Why isn’t any of this working?” Amelia growled before her expression turned blank, and she lifted a hand to her nose. “Dammit, not again!”

“What’s happening?” Dina asked as Amelia grabbed a stained cloth and pressed it to her face.

“Nosebleed,” I said softly. “It’s probably just stress or dry air or… that.”

We watched in silence as Amelia lifted a device towards her nose and inhaled deeply, her expression turning peaceful for just a moment.

“What is it?”

“I’m not sure, but…” I trailed off as Amelia lowered the device and examined it.

“Early results of the aerosol delivery system seem promising. More of the active compound appears to cross the blood-brain barrier, which should mean it can start working sooner, but…” Amelia paused and shook her head. “We still don’t know the ideal dose. Computerised trials seem to indicate that this should be enough, but if it’s not… I don’t know. I’ve uploaded all of my data and results. If the recordings randomly stop one day, I guess then you know that this was not a safe dose. Either that or a storm killed me.”

“Which one do you think it was?” Dina asked, her voice barely audible.

I watched as Amelia reached towards the ever-present whisky decanter on her desk, but she couldn’t lift it. Her hands were shaking too much, and she had become too weak.

“The serum,” I decided softly, aware that I was watching a dying woman.

Finally, she managed to lift the bottle, but it slipped from her grip, tumbling onto the desk. She just stared at the liquid flowing up without moving, seemingly no longer caring about the alcohol.

“I’ve done a lot since I took over this lab. A lot before then too. I changed a lot of lives, some for the better, but more for the worse,” she said, her voice quiet. “I wish I’d come around sooner and realised what we were doing. That we were ruining the world, but I was too arrogant. Too power-hungry, and now it’s too late. We have all of the power we could ask for, and what is it good for?”

She broke off as hacking coughs wracked her body and left her gasping for air.

“This is horrible,” Dina muttered, but she made no move to turn the video off.

“The final plane went up to the city yesterday. Simon tried to convince me to go. My family asked him to. I know they did, but I can’t leave this place. I don’t want to live in the sky, waiting for the ground to fall out from under me. I want to stay here where…”

We waited for her to continue, leaning forward in anticipation, but she remained silent.

“What’s happening?” Dina asked.

“She can’t breathe properly,” I said, watching the jerky movements of her chest as she tried to suck in enough oxygen.

Amelia lets out another painfully dry-sounding cough before reaching out towards the glass sitting on the far side of the table. She moves it closer, lifting it towards her face and appearing to sniff it.

“How did he not think I would notice this?” she muttered. “I assume it was part of the plan. A mild paralytic that Simon planned to give me so he could get me onto the plane. They probably had the antidote on there, but it’s too late for that. It’s long gone.”

“She’s not going to drink it, is she?” Dina asked, staring at Amelia as she lifted the poisoned drink towards her lips again.

“I don’t know.”

She simply sniffed it again, a slight grimace appearing on her face.

“I don’t deserve to go up there. I know they’d probably be able to heal whatever damage I’ve done to myself whilst working on the damn serum, but… I brought these mutations into the world. The creatures we released. I thought they’d die out in the wild, but they’ve adapted too quickly. They’re evolving faster than we ever could and hunting down humans with a viciousness my family could only ever dream of. Maybe it’s just a matter of time before…” Amelia sighed. “Well, if anyone does survive… you have my research. I hope it helps bring them down, and… if not? Well. Here’s to the end of the world.”

“No!” Dina screamed as Amelia threw back the poisoned drink. “Why did she do that?”

I didn’t answer her. I couldn’t. All I could do was watch as Amelia struggled to swallow.

“In case, by some miracle or the grace of God, someone finds these videos. If you find a way to eradicate the animals and fix the planet… I don’t know,” she said, pausing to catch her breath. “It means nothing anymore. I know it doesn’t. My family don’t care, but I still want to… formally apologise on behalf of myself, my family and every branch of our company, Sterling Enterprise. I hope some of the information and research we did in this lab survives what is coming and can be of use to protect the future of mankind.”

Something inside of me shattered. I stumbled back, my head spinning as I stared at the dying woman.

“No,” I muttered. “No, no, no.”

“What is it?” Dina asked, sounding panicked. “Clea, what’s wrong?”

But I couldn’t answer her. I could only shake my head as my breath came in gasps.

It was a coincidence, nothing more. It wasn’t a particularly common name, but that didn’t mean it was the same company as the one in Mitch’s world. It couldn’t be.

He said they were everywhere. They could have a biological warfare lab. They could be working towards the end of the world. When was Ascension Day? How long did we have until they destroyed everything?

I couldn’t remember. I couldn’t recall the date. My vision was blurry. I could barely even see Dina standing in front of me, her hands on my shoulders as she tried to get through to me.

“Clea, what’s going on?”

The shout came from far away, and I tried to push her away, needing to see the date on the video file. My limbs barely responded to me. I felt weak, shaky, and dizzy, as if I were the one who had just drunk the poison, not Amelia.

I needed to warn Mitch. He needed to know. If he was even still alive. I started to reach out, searching for the dizziness I’d been avoiding for so long. A vague, distant shout echoed through my mind.

“Get down on the floor!”

Panic sparked in my chest. I didn’t know which world that was in. It could have been any of them, including his. I dove towards it, my gaze sharpened just in time to see Dina’s terrified face staring back at me.

“Clea, what’s going on?” she whispered as the world around us turned dark.

A badge appeared at the top of the screen, and I glanced at it, even as I searched for an escape.

‘The truth’. That was all it said.

A gun. Someone was pointing a gun at me. That was the first thing I noticed as my vision cleared. We were in the arcade still, but there were people surrounding us. Every single one was dressed in purple uniforms. Officials. Beside me, I could hear Dina’s rapid, panicked breaths, but I couldn’t stay. I had to go and warn Mitch.

“We’ve located the terrorists,” I heard someone say as I finally found the dizziness I had been searching for.

“I’m sorry,” I whispered to Dina as I gripped it, allowing it to pull me away from the world.

Panic fluttered in my heart, and I could feel myself shaking as I was dragged through nothingness towards the world where I knew Mitch was. I was close, so close. All I needed to do was speak to him and tell him about Amelia and the Sterlings and what they did. There had to be a reasonable way to explain it to him. One that made sense and didn’t make me sound insane. I couldn’t think of it. I could barely string a single thought together, but I’d think of something. I knew I would.

I fell still. Dizziness was wrapped tightly around me, making it hard to breathe, but I was there. I knew that without even opening my eyes. I was in the same world as Mitch. But before I had the chance to do anything, before the dizziness fully disappeared, I was jolted backwards, ripped from the world.

The tyres skidded as my mom stamped on the brakes, and I opened my eyes in fear, my gaze darting around as I waited for the inevitable collision.

“Why is their car here?”