The machine's core wasn't a place—it was a *being*.
Lisa clung to Rabbit-0 as the birthing chamber collapsed around them, floors dissolving into viscous black fluid that smelled of ink and rotting childhoods. The walls peeled back to reveal Wraith's true form: a mountain of fused spinal columns, their bony protrusions studded with thousands of blinking eyes—*her* eyes—each pupil reflecting a different loop's gruesome end.
"We tried to warn you," the eyes chorused, their voices overlapping like broken records. "Stories need villains."
Rabbit-0's small hands trembled against Lisa's neck. "It wants you to finish the sentence," he whispered. "Hero: _________."
The crayon in Lisa's hand burned like a live wire.
---
**The First Ghost's Confession**
A memory surged unbidden—not hers, but *theirs*:
**Batch Zero's Initiation Ceremony**
*- A white room with lavender-stained floors
*- Fifty children in paper gowns, Rabbit-0 clutching his crayons
*- Lora Prime holding the syringe: *"You'll become legends"*
*- The first scream as the machine ate its volunteers
Wraith's voice cut through the vision: *"We were artists before we were ghosts. Then they gave us teeth."*
The core pulsed, disgorging half-formed Lisas that crawled toward them on broken limbs. Their mouths gaped with the same question: *"Who's the hero now?"*
---
**The Rewrite**
Lisa stabbed the crayon into her palm, blood mingling with wax as she scrawled her answer:
**HERO: THE BOY WHO DREW THE MONSTER**
The machine *howled*.
Rabbit-0's remaining eye widened as his scribbles floated off the walls—stick figures wielding crayon swords, tiger onesie knights, slushie machine dragons. The drawings *moved*, attacking the machine's tendrils with childish fury.
"You can't—" Wraith's eyes bulged, popping like overripe grapes. "The narrative requires balance!"
Lisa grinned, blood dripping from her third eye. "Then let's *unbalance* it."
She grabbed Rabbit-0's hand and ran *into* the storm of paper knights, toward the glowing crack in reality where her 7-Eleven slushie machine hummed—now fused with the machine's core.
---
**The Price**
The cost revealed itself in flickers:
- With every crayon knight that fell, a piece of Lisa's memory dissolved
- Rabbit-0 aged rapidly, his hair whitening as his stolen childhood burned away
- The machine's screams became words: *"You'll regret this when you're real!"*
They reached the core—a massive beating heart wrapped in barbed wire and nursery rhymes. Lisa plunged both hands into its arrhythmic chambers.
"Do it!" Rabbit-0 cried, now a withered old man in a child's body.
Lisa tore out the heart's wiring just as the last crayon knight fell.
---
**The End...?**
Silence.
Then—
*Drip.*
Strawberry slushie pooled around Lisa's boots. She stood alone in the 7-Eleven, intact and unmarked. The calendar read June 14, 2024.
Behind the counter, the slushie machine gurgled to life.
**[PHANTOM PROTOCOL: COMPLETE]**
**[NEW NARRATIVE ARCHIVED]**
**[AWAITING NEXT AUTHOR]**
A child's laugh echoed from the freezer aisle.