The crayon snapped in Lisa's fist.
Warm wax bled between her fingers as she scrawled her answer in jagged crimson letters across the console:
**[X] SAVE RABBIT**
The machine screamed.
Alarms shrieked through the warehouse as the entire system bucked like a dying animal. Pods shattered in cascading explosions of glass and frozen fluid. Lisa dove for Rabbit-0 as the floor heaved, catching the boy just before he could be impaled by falling debris.
"They never accounted for this," she muttered, watching as the monitor fizzed with static.
**PROTOCOL VIOLATION**
**UNRECOGNIZED INPUT**
**INITIATING PHANTOM PROTOCOL**
Lora-1's corpse spasmed in its tank, wires whipping like angry serpents. "You idiot," her reanimated lips slurred through preservation fluid. "You just killed us all."
Lisa tightened her grip on Rabbit-0. "Yeah? About damn time."
---
**The Ghost Factory Revealed**
The collapsing warehouse peeled away like a stage set, revealing the truth beneath:
A cavernous birthing chamber stretched into darkness, its walls lined not with pods but with *wombs*—throbbing organic sacs each containing a half-formed Lisa at different stages of development. At the center stood Wraith's true form—a towering mass of fused spinal columns and optic nerves, her "face" a swirling vortex of stolen memories.
Rabbit-0 whimpered. "That's where they put the pieces they didn't like."
Lisa's stomach turned as she recognized her own features floating in the amalgamation—a scarred cheek here, a lock of dark hair there. The machine hadn't been cloning her. It had been *disassembling* her.
---
**The Original Sin**
Wraith's voice boomed through the chamber:
*"You were supposed to choose oblivion or perfection. Not... this."*
Lora-1's reanimated corpse staggered forward, her movements jerky under the machine's control. "Batch Zero volunteered," she forced out, fighting whatever strings pulled her. "Children offered up to become the first ghosts. Rabbit-0 was... special. He could *draw* the future."
Lisa understood instantly. "You used his drawings as blueprints. For me."
A wet chuckle bubbled from Lora-1's lips before she suddenly seized, back arching at an impossible angle. The wires pulled taut—
—and *sliced* through her like piano wire through cheese.
---
**The Phantom Protocol**
With a sound like tearing parchment, the remaining wombs began birthing their contents prematurely. Not Lisas this time—*things*. Twisted amalgamations of all her failed iterations, their half-formed bodies crawling toward the central dais where the machine's core pulsed.
Rabbit-0 pressed his forehead to Lisa's temple. "It wants to make a new story," he whispered. "With you as the villain."
Lisa watched as the monitor updated one final time:
**PHANTOM PROTOCOL ENGAGED**
**NEW NARRATIVE PARAMETERS:**
**HERO: _________
VILLAIN: LISA KAYS**
She looked down at the broken crayon still clutched in her bloody hand.
And began to write.
---