| Generated by Google Flow text-to-video AI software, powered by Veo 3.1 |
Mandica awakens once more, but doesn’t open her eyes. There is something
wrapped around her head, and for a second, she forgets the trauma. Then it
all comes flooding back in. She’s lying in a bed, but obviously can’t see
where she is. Someone brought her here, but they could be bad or good. It
could be Cardinal Sin, not finished with her after mutilating her face. So
she just remains relatively still—not rigid so as to pretend to still be
asleep, but not getting up. She’s unmotivated, because what would be the
point of doing anything? It’s a miracle that she’s still alive, but she
feels no gratitude.
The bed jostles a little, and she feels something pressing against her leg.
“How are you feeling?” a feminine voice asks. “Are you in any pain?”
Actually, she’s not, so she supposes that’s another miracle. “Not right now,
but I’m eyeless. I don’t think you understand, they’re not going to heal.
I’m not going to transfer back to another body. Or if you’re just an NPC,
none of this means anything to you, and you’re either confused, or you’ve
been programmed to ignore anything which might break your interpretation of
the world around you. I really don’t care anymore.”
“I’m not an NPC,” the voice claims. “And you’re not eyeless.”
Mandica feels the woman’s hands upon her face, and flinches, but relaxes,
because it seriously doesn’t matter. Her life is over. She made a mistake,
and it cost her everything. The hands gently lift Mandica’s head off of the
pillow, and slowly unwrap the bandages. Shards of light appear before her.
How is that possible? Some kind of weird neural firing in her optic nerve?
People are supposed to have eyes, so maybe it’s not used to being without,
and is still trying to produce an image. As the bandaging becomes thinner
and thinner, the light becomes more uniform and even, until it’s all gone,
and she sees the ceiling above her, as well as the young woman’s face. “Did
I imagine it all?”
An old man’s face appears next to the woman’s. “My finest work,” he muses.
“This is Sigurd Olander,” the woman explains. “The best tissue regenerator
in the sim. Don’t worry, he’s clueless.” She looks at the man. “None of this
is real. You’re just a robot with skin. I could pull off your head right
now, and I wouldn’t even get in trouble.”
Sigurd doesn’t look at the woman, or acknowledge what she’s saying. He keeps
smiling proudly at Mandica. “I’m sorry, I may not have gotten your eye color
quite right. Unfortunately, I did not have much to work with. Your original
eyes were too badly damaged. I may be able to fix the color, though, if you
prefer. Can you move them?”
Mandica switches her gaze to the wall on the other side of the bed. She sits
up, and looks around the room. It’s pretty bare, probably because personal
lives don’t matter much to people pretending to be superheroes. There is a
nightstand to her left, a desk against the far wall, a metal rack of clothes
instead of a closet or wardrobe, and Jaidia. “Jaidia!” she cries. She
clambers to the corner of the bed, trying to use the blanket and pillow as
armor. “Get away from me! Get away!”
Jaidia holds her hands out. “Whoa, whoa, whoa. I didn’t do this to you.”
“No, I saw you!” Mandica argued. “You tore out my eyes!”
“That wasn’t me,” Jaidia insists. “I would never do that. Even to an NPC,
I’m not that sick.”
“Oh, you’re gonna tell me you put on that red costume, and you turn into a
different person?” Actually, that’s not that crazy of a scenario. Real world
technology would absolutely allow a player to shift personalities to more
fully immerse themselves into the simulation. That’s what they do in
Zombiedome. If you get infected, you can turn into a zombie, and—no, why is
she thinking about Zombiedome? It’s not relevant.
“No, it just straight up wasn’t me at all,” Jaidia claims. “It was a
shapeshifter. We believe that she didn’t design a regular body for herself
at all, but is composed entirely of interlocking nanites. This allows her to
appear as anyone or anything with the right amount of volume. I don’t know
why she made herself look like me, or why she targeted you, but I promise
that I had nothing to do with it. I’m sorry you went through that.”
When Mandica looks over at the other woman, she nods. “She’s telling the
truth. We came here to fight each other for fun. Mildred’s backstory, and
Cardinal Sin’s modus operandi; they’re just figments. She doesn’t actually
ever do any of that stuff. We time our battles so I show up before she can
go through with it. Morgana, on the other hand, is not a part of that. She
has her own plans; her own script. I genuinely had to fight her off. I
shouldn’t have won, though. She’s more powerful than anyone, so that tells
us she wants me to live, and she wants you to live too.”
Mandica sighs. “Morgan Le Fay was a shapeshifter in the stories, but
I don’t understand why Vanore would do this to me. We weren’t in love, but
we parted on decent terms, and I’m the one who should be mad at her;
not the other way around.”
“We’ll help you figure it out.” She offers a hand. “My real name is Elysia
MacNeil, but in here, I go by Alanis Morrissey. Unless I’m in costume, in
which case, I’m—”
“Ravensgate Rescuer. Yeah, I teased that out. Your masks don’t exactly
conceal your identities, you know that right?”
“We do know that,” Jaidia replies. “It’s tradition. Superheroes are
intentionally dressed in poor disguises so the movie stars playing them can
still be clearly seen.” She circles her own face with her finger. “No one
wants me to cover this up.”
Mandica nods, and begins to climb out of the bed. “Do you have a mirror?”
“We can bring you one,” Elysia offers.
“I would rather get up, and get moving around,” Mandica contends. “Just
point me to the bathroom.” Jaidia holds her hands out awkwardly as Mandica
is slowly making her way across the room, prepared to catch her if need be.
Mandica doesn’t need any help, though. Her body is weak because she’s not
eaten in a while, and she wouldn’t call what she was doing before
sleep, but all she needs is a sandwich. And to see what she looks
like. She flips on the light, and approaches the mirror. As the man said,
these are not her eyes. They’re the wrong color, and maybe shape? That can’t
be right. She turns her chin side to side for different angles. Can the
color of the irises make them look entirely different? Maybe she’s imagining
it. Or Morgana did damage to the rest of her face, so that had to be
reconstructed too.
“I’ll let you ladies help her acclimate,” the doctor says as he’s walking
towards the exit door. “I must leave for another appointment, but you have
my number if anything goes wrong.” He stops and stares at Mandica. “Truly my
finest work.” He leaves.
Mandica was going to thank him, but he wouldn’t get it anyway. He’s a
program with hands and feet. She turns back to the mirror, almost wanting to
smile, but this never should have happened, and won’t again. She is not fit
for this world. “Oh, shit.”
“What?” Elysia asks.
Mandica looks at her. “I’m unregistered. They had to give me spoof lenses so
I could move about at will. Now those lenses are gone, and I’m stuck here.
Forever.”
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