RUN. RUN. RUN.
I NEED TO RUN.
Her breath came in ragged gasps, torn between panic and exhaustion. Each inhale scraped her throat raw.
Her short black hair clung to her dirt smeared forehead, soaked with sweat and ash. Her brown eyes...wide, frantic, alive...darted across the devastation with a hunted animal's desperation.
The air itself burned. Smoke and scorched concrete stung her lungs. Beneath it all was another smell, heavier, crueler...the stench of burned flesh. Around her, Mesodonea City had become a graveyard. Towers lay flattened into jagged skeletons of rebar and glass. Flickering fires painted the gray ruins in trembling orange light. All her clones that were tasked to witness the battle died so easily.
Chloe's hands were ruined...bleeding, shaking, her fingernails cracked and torn from scraping through layers of rubble. Shards of glass embedded in her palms, warm blood dripping between her fingers. But she didn't stop. She couldn't.
Every piece of debris she flung aside carried a silent prayer.
Please… be alive. Please still be there.
Her arms trembled as she pulled away a collapsed slab. Beneath it, pale skin glimmered through the dust...a limp arm, motionless.
Jessica.
A strangled gasp escaped her lips. Her throat burned as she swallowed a sob. She reached out with trembling fingers, brushing away ash from the cold skin.
Jessica's body was broken. Her head was gone, one arm missing, her chest crushed under the concrete. Yet Chloe still cradled her like something sacred. Blood smeared across her arms as she lifted her...dead weight, but precious.
There was no breath. No warmth.
But there was still a promise.
She rose, staggering under the body's weight, and began to run again. Jessica's form bounced with every desperate step. Chloe didn't allow herself to feel. Not grief. Not horror. Only motion.
Because behind her, the monster followed.
That man.
Me.
*
*
*
After my fight with Jessica I watch this...doll frantically searching for someone, Jessica's body, well I could probably follow her towards the...president
"Where do you think you're going?"
I said softly, pacing down the cracked street with the unhurried grace of a predator. My shoes crunched on broken glass. My reflection shimmered briefly in a pool of blood before vanishing under dust.
'No need to panic,'
I mused. My hands were in my pockets. My smile was faint.
'Wherever she runs, she'll lead me right to the real target. The mastermind.'
Suddenly, her body split. One became two. Two became four. Four became dozens.
Within seconds, the street overflowed with copies...hundreds of black haired, brown eyed girls standing between me and my prize.
They didn't speak. They didn't need to.
It was a hive mind. A living network of thought.
Eerie… yet elegant.
The original Chloe bolted toward a ruined tower...the old Mesodonea Government Complex, once the heart of the city's AI administration. Sparks crackled from shattered servers as she disappeared inside with Jessica's corpse.
The rest stayed behind.
"Wow,"
I murmured, scanning the rows of identical faces.
"You all really do look the same. Are you all even human?"
They didn't attack. They don't need to at least not yet. They were stalling.
One of them stepped forward, eyes glimmering with defiance despite the fear trembling in her jaw.
"We may be clones,"
she said evenly,
"but we still have feelings."
I tilted my head.
"Oh? Then what's your name?"
"Chloe."
She replied.
I pointed to the one beside her.
"And hers?"
"I'm also Chloe."
"See?"
My grin widened.
"That's not how humans work. You're not people. You're dolls."
The air shimmered like a mirage. Flesh turned to fabric, joints to wood. Porcelain faces replaced skin. Hair dulled into synthetic strands. Dozens of them transformed before my eyes.
But it wasn't an illusion.
It was reality being rewritten.
They had always been dolls...because I said they were.
Their collective gasp broke the silence. A wave of dread passed through them, not because they believed my words, but because they knew what I was capable of.
They were human...or near enough. Clones, yes, but flesh and blood, hearts beating, lungs burning, skin that bled when torn. They felt. They could dream and think for themselves.
But my voice had power.
Not metaphorical...literal.
Every word I spoke could twist existence. My declarations carved into reality itself.
That was my gift. My curse.
A voice that could define truth.
When I said, 'You are dolls' , the world obeyed.
They shook with terror but did not run because they had a mission...and they would die for it.
Clones multiplied again, replicating like wildfire. The street vanished under a storm of identical bodies, shoulder to shoulder, breathing in unison.
"Sigh,"
I sighed, dusting off my coat.
"I don't want to be seem like I'm bullying the weak… but you've left me no choice."
I snapped my fingers.
Silence.
Then pressure...like gravity itself had been crushed and released.
Every clone in sight disintegrated at once. No screams. No time. Only red mist raining over the ruins.
Blood dripped from shattered windows. Smoke rose like incense from the bodies that no longer were.
Yet more emerged, climbing from the wreckage, sprinting toward me. Their faces...expressionless but determined...blurred into one moving mass.
"You don't understand,"
I said softly.
"It's futile."
One clone stumbled to her knees yet looked up at me.
"We know,"
she whispered.
"We know we'll die. But if we keep stalling you… if we keep coming… someone will find a way to stop you."
I laughed. Loud and unrestrained.
"Hahaha! What is this—some internet joke? A billion ants versus a god? You think quantity matters? Do you think you all are a bacteria with numbers to billions and trllions you could eventually shut me down ".
The ground trembled with each step I took. Even the air bent around me.
"No. Even if there were infinite of you… you'd still lose."
My words cut through their will like razors. Yet one by one, they still ran forward. Because they had to.
Like moth to flame.
We're afraid, the hive thought echoed faintly, but even so… we must stop him.
The front line reached me...
...and vanished in a blink, reduced to nothing.
"This is getting boring," I sighed.
I raised my foot and brought it down.
The impact shattered the city. Asphalt cracked, skyscrapers folded like paper, and shockwaves split the air. Mesodonea...the once proud technological jewel...ceased to exist.
Silence remained.
Only smoke and the echo of destruction.
*
*
*
Far away, the last remaining Chloe burst through a fire exit and sprinted across a makeshift landing pad. A black helicopter waited, rotors spinning furiously.
"Go! Start it!"
she screamed.
The pilot...a soldier with ash streaked armor...nodded and pulled the throttle. Chloe climbed aboard while cradling Jessica's corpse against her chest.
The helicopter lifted, buffeted by burning wind. Below, the crater that was once Mesodonea glowed faintly red, reduced to nothing but rubble.
"That monster…"
she whispered.
"I hope we never see him again."
But I was already watching.
High above, standing on the skeletal remains of a distant skyscraper, I gazed through the dust, coat fluttering in the ruined wind.
I could see the helicopter. I could feel its engine vibrations through the air.
I knew exactly where they were going.
"To the President,"
I murmured.
"Of course."
A grin crept across my face.
"I can't wait to meet him… to thank him for what he did."
The city's bones whispered in the wind as I stepped forward...and vanished. Not a sight remain. Whether I teleported or become invisible is a mystery.
*
*
*
Chloe kept her eyes shut tight. She clutched Jessica's body closer, feeling the coldness seep into her own skin. The rhythmic chop of the rotors was the only thing keeping her sane.
Images burned in her mind as her sisters dissolving into red mist, his laughter echoing through the smoke, that single stomp that ended a city.
She wasn't human. She already knew long ago. But she felt human. And that was enough.
Jessica's body shifted slightly as the craft hit turbulence. Chloe held her tighter, whispering shakily, "Don't worry. We'll reach the capital. We'll make things right."
She didn't know if she spoke to Jessica...or to herself.
But deep down, she knew.
He was coming.
*
*
*
Deep beneath the Earth, in the fortified complex known as The Pentagram, the President of the United Nations sat at the head of a holographic table as blue light washed over his weary face.
The room is filled with chaos as generals shouted, scientists argued and advisers talked over one another. At the centre the screens flickered with satellite footage...one moment a thriving city, the next, an expanding crater.
Mesodonea was gone.
"He...erased it,"
muttered one scientist, voice trembling.
"Not destroyed. Erased."
Another slammed a report onto the table.
"Our AI projections underestimated his vector output. His reality field extends kilometers now."
The President said nothing as he stared at the main display...a black void where coordinates used to be. In the center blinked a single word
OBLITERATED.
"Sir,"
said a young officer,
"one Chloe unit escaped. She's inbound to Capital Command with the body of Subject-01… Jessica."
At that, the President finally moved. His hands clenched. His eyes softened.
"Jessica…"
he whispered.
"So she's still intact."
The room fell silent.
"Then there's still a chance,"
he said.
"A chance for what?"
the general asked quietly.
"To stop him."
No one dared to question further.
*
*
*
Minutes later, the helicopter pierced through the storm clouds toward the gleaming walls of the Capital. Below stretched a city of glass and gold...clean, orderly, alive. Anti aircraft turrets tracked their path, while drones flanked them like hawks.
"Authorization code Alpha,"
the pilot transmitted.
"Priority clearance for Operation Salvation."
The gates opened.
Chloe exhaled for the first time since the nightmare began. She looked down at the massive walls and whispered a prayer not to any god, but to the idea of hope itself.
"Please,"
she said softly,
"let this place survive."
But above her, invisible and silent, I followed. The air rippled faintly as I glided just behind the helicopter's path, unseen by sensors, untouched by wind.
I smiled.
The game had only just begun.