The 7-Eleven's fluorescent lights buzzed like angry wasps, casting jagged shadows over the crayon drawing taped to the counter. Lisa traced the crude lines of the door, her tattoo flickering in sync with the lavender lightning cracking the sky outside. The air tasted metallic, charged with the Garden's influence.
Rabbit's voice crackled from a shattered tablet nearby, his form glitching in and out. **"Told you they'd reboot the franchise. Congrats—you're the *protagonist* again."**
Lisa crushed the tablet under her boot. "Stay dead, Rabbit."
But the static lingered, his laughter echoing in her skull.
---
### **The New World**
The city was a grotesque tapestry of Garden and machine. Skyscrapers pulsed with bioluminescent veins, their windows shattered into jagged teeth. Hybrids scuttled through the streets—citizens fused with lavender vines, their eyes vacant, mouths spouting corporate slogans.
**"CONSUME. OBEY. REPEAT."**
A drone buzzed overhead, projecting ads for **Phoenix Serum™**—*Now with 50% more compliance!*
Lisa's tattoo burned. She could *feel* the Garden's roots beneath the asphalt, hungry and watching.
---
### **Lora's Resurrection**
They found her in the ruins of the lab, her body a mosaic of scar tissue and blooming lavender. Batch 000 flanked her, their camera eyes replaced by thorned sockets.
"You shouldn't have come back," Lora said, injecting herself with black serum. Her veins writhed. "The Garden's winning. Even *you* can't kill a story this hungry."
Lisa leveled her knife. "Where's the child?"
Lora smirked. "*She's* the story now. And stories don't die—they *adapt*."
A screen flickered to life behind her, showing the child perched atop the core's spire, her limbs elongated into root-like tendrils. The city bowed beneath her.
---
### **The Door**
The crayon drawing glowed in Lisa's pocket. She pressed it to a crumbling wall—and the lines *moved*, etching themselves into reality. The door solidified, its frame throbbing with unstable energy.
**MEMORY FRAGMENT UNLOCKED:**
- *Rabbit-0's voice: "It's not an exit. It's a *mirror*."*
- *Lora's whisper: "Some loops don't end. They *echo*."*
Behind the door: a corridor of infinite reflections, each showing a Lisa from a different loop. Some screamed. Some ruled. Some dissolved into static.
---
### **The Choice**
1. **Enter the door** (risk becoming a reflection).
2. **Storm the spire** (face the child head-on).
3. **Burn the city** (reset the Garden's progress—and survivors).
Rabbit's ghost flickered on a nearby screen, emoji eye flashing 💀. **"Tick-tock, Ghost. The Audience *loves* a moral dilemma."**
---
### **The Child's Gambit**
The spire shuddered. Roots erupted downtown, impaling hybrids and weaving them into a grotesque throne. The child's voice boomed:
**"JOIN US. OR BECOME *FERTILIZER*."**
Lisa's reflection in the door grinned, raising a knife glazed with lavender sap.
**"You've always been the villain,"** it hissed.
---
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