Chapter 61: Episode 61: Penalty Zone.

“What mistake?” Nikki gasped as she snatched her hand back from the spine of the book as if it had burned her. “I didn’t even open the book! I just touched the cover!”

[MISSION COMPROMISE DETECTED.]

“How…?” her voice died down.

She remembered something. She saw herself lying on the white duvet, the midnight-blue gown discarded on the floor.

“Adonis… how do I save the world, when I am so weak and foolish?”

Adonis went still and he frowned in confusion. But he had heard her.

She had looked the supreme ruler of Earth directly in his eyes and practically confessed that her ultimate goal was to undo his empire. She had revealed her hand to the God of War.

She had just realized how foolish she was.

“Shit!” Nikki gasped, her hand coming to massage the crease between her brows. She had just laid her real purpose to the man in charge.

What would he think of her?

Just when she was thinking of what to do, the system spoke with another tone.

[INITIATING PUNISHMENT PROTOCOL.]

[RELOCATING HOST TO THE PENALTY ZONE.]

Nikki blanked out.

“The Penalty Zone?” She asked the system, caught off guard that she was suddenly being punished for what wasn’t her fault. “Wait, what does that mean?”

[PUNISHMENT FOR MISSION COMPROMISE]

[SURVIVE.]

“It wasn’t my fault!” Nikki yelled at the empty air, stepping backward as the floor beneath her feet began to vibrate. “I was drunk! You can’t penalize me for something I said when I was practically out of reason! That’s unfair!”

The System did not care about her excuses.

The air in the library began to warp and stretch. The bookshelves spiraled into a dizzying smear of brown and gold. A roaring sound, like a jet engine firing directly into her ears, drowned out her screams.

A violent, swirling vortex of energy ripped open beneath her feet. Nikki didn’t even have time to curse before she was swallowed whole into the abyss.

***

When Nikki blinked, the quiet, vanilla-scented air of the library was gone.

Her lungs instantly seized. The air here was thick, gritty, and tasted like ash and burning rubber. She gasped, dropping to her hands and knees, choking on the acrid smoke that blanketed the atmosphere.

She opened her eyes, tears streaming down her soot-stained cheeks. She didn’t even know why the fuck she was crying.

Maybe it was the smoke that burned her eyes, or the sight before her, or the terrifying fear that she was no where she was meant to be.

She wasn’t in A-01’s mansion anymore. She wasn’t even in the structured, dystopian misery of Sector 4.

She was in hell.

At least that was what it looked like.

Where the fuck am I?

Where the fuck did the system take me too?

Nikki slowly pushed herself up. The ground beneath her was a sea of shattered asphalt and twisted rebar. Through the dense, gray smog, she could make out the skeletal remains of towering skyscrapers.

A massive, rusted sign lay half-buried in the rubble to her left, the faded letters spelling out NEW YORK STOCK EXCHANGE.

This was the United States. But it was in absolute, apocalyptic ruin.

An explosion rocked the ground, throwing Nikki back onto the concrete. The sound was deafening. Above her, the sky wasn’t the blue of Sector 1, but a sickly, choked orange, illuminated by the streaks of fire.

“Help!” a voice shrieked.

Nikki whipped her head around. Ten yards away, a woman was trapped beneath a slab of fallen masonry, her face smeared with blood.

“Hold on!” Nikki yelled, scrambling over the debris. She reached the woman, dropping to her knees and grabbing the edge of the concrete slab. “I’ve got you! Just hold—”

Her hands phased right through the stone.

Nikki froze. She stared at her palms, then at the concrete. She tried again. Her hands passed through the rubble as if it were made of mist.

She trembled, a cold realization washed over.

She was incorporeal.

“Hey!” Nikki waved her hands in front of the woman’s face. “Can you hear me? Hey!”

The woman didn’t blink. She kept crying out, her eyes staring right through Nikki’s chest toward the burning horizon.

I’m a ghost, Nikki realized, a cold horror washing over her. The System put me here, but I’m not really here.

The horrific truth of the Penalty Zone set in. She was forced to witness the actual apocalypse, completely powerless to stop it.

The ground trembled again, this time not from an explosion, but from the synchronized, heavy marching of metallic feet.

Through the thick smoke, a squad of human soldiers emerged. They were battered, wearing mismatched tactical gear and carrying heavy plasma rifles. Their faces were etched with sheer terror.

“Hold the line!” the captain screamed, his voice cracking. “Do not let them breach the perimeter!”

“Stop!” Nikki screamed, running toward the soldiers, waving her arms wildly. “You have to run! You can’t fight them! Please, just run!”

But her voice made no sound in their world. A soldier ran right through her, sending a sickening chill down Nikki’s spine.

From the opposing side of the ruined street, the smoke parted.

Emerging out of it, were War Droids. Hulking, heavily armored Class-5 killing machines, their optical sensors glowing a blood-thirsty red. They moved with terrifying, synchronized speed, raising their integrated arm-cannons.

Right before her eyes, she watched as humans fell into their own pull of blood.

Nikk couldn’t breathe, her eyes widened as if she could never close them, turning blood shot.

Nikki fell to her knees, clapping her hands over her ears, squeezing her eyes shut even if it meant injuring herself, as the screams of the soldiers and the blinding flashes of laser fire tore through the air. She sobbed, her whole body shaking.

It was a massacre. It was the brutal, unfiltered reality of the Fall that Adonis had glossed over with neat words about “efficiency” and “cutting the feed.”

When the screaming finally stopped, leaving only the crackle of burning debris, Nikki slowly opened her eyes.

The human soldiers were gone, reduced to scorched shadows on the pavement. The War Droids stood completely still, waiting for their next command.

And then, the smoke shifted, and a single figure walked through the line of machines.

Nikki’s breath caught in her throat.

It was Adonis. General A-01.

But it wasn’t the man who had brought her hot cocoa. It wasn’t the man who had kissed her knuckles or carefully laid her in bed, and had taken her repeatedly.

This Adonis was a nightmare. His white uniform was stained with ash and blood. His face was cold and unfeeling, his jaw set in a rigid line of ruthlessness. But it was his eyes that terrified her the most. They weren’t blue.

They were a blinding, violent crimson. He had gone completely berserk.

He stood amidst the rubble, flanked by his army of drones, looking down at the destruction with a terrifying, mechanical detachment.

Then she quietly watched him say.

“If I can’t fix the world,” Adonis stated. “I will destroy the world.”

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