The Army
Two weeks after the Entity struck back.
Arden Vale stood in an abandoned warehouse in South Boston, near the docks. The air reeked of salt, rust, and forgotten machinery.
Fifty-three people watched her.
They were the freed players. Rescued from Stations, pulled from Games. Survivors who chose to fight instead of hide.
She didn't remember all their names—she couldn't remember most of them—but she knew their faces. She knew they were here, and that mattered.
Riley stood beside her. Seventeen, blonde, and fiercely determined. The girl Arden tried to save, failed, and then saved anyway.
"Report," Arden ordered. Simple, direct.
Riley stepped forward, clipboard in hand. Numbers. Data. War statistics.
"Seven Games are running simultaneously. Game 249 through 255. Three hundred twenty-nine players trapped in total."
She flipped a page.
"We've made contact with forty-seven of them. Instructions on voluntary entry, the paradox method, and how to kill fragments have been posted on the forum."
"How many believe us?" Arden asked.
"Twelve." Riley's voice was steady, delivering the facts without judgment. "The others think we're crazy, or Entity tricks. Or they're simply too scared to hope."
Arden nodded. Fear made sense. Hope was the harder choice.
"What about our resources?" Kael asked. He always stood behind Arden—close enough to catch her if she fell, far enough to let her lead.
She didn't remember his name anymore. She just knew he was vital. She trusted him. He mattered.
"We have seventy-three Codebooks," Riley confirmed, checking her notes. "Taken from players who died, or quit, or just left them behind."
"Seventy-three isn't enough," spoke Jin-Hwa, ever practical. "We need one per person minimum. Preferably two, for redundancy."
"We get what we get." Arden looked at the assembled fighters. This was the army she hadn't asked for, hadn't wanted, but couldn't refuse.
Most of them were young: teenagers and people in their twenties. All were damaged. All were traumatized. All chose to fight regardless.
"Training update," she said, moving to the next point. War waits for no one's grief.
An older man stepped forward, maybe fifty, scars crisscrossing his face, carrying a military bearing. Callum had recruited him: an ex-Marine who survived Game 203 twenty-two years ago.
His name was...
Arden searched her memory and found a blank space where his name should have been.
"Sergeant," she said instead, hoping it was right.
He didn't correct her. He simply nodded and accepted it.
"We've organized into seven squads, one for each active Game. Each squad has six to eight members, a mix of experienced survivors and freed players."
He gestured to a whiteboard listing names and assignments.
"Squad One handles Game 249, Boston-based: Station One, Castle of Blood. The original fragment died, but the Station respawned. New fragment: Lady Crimson version two."
"Respawned?" Kael's voice was sharp with worry.
"Confirmed." The Sergeant's face was grim. "The Entity isn't just multiplying Games; it's rebuilding Stations and regenerating fragments faster than we can kill them."
Silence fell, heavy and terrifying.
Arden felt the impossibility of it. The math didn't work.
They killed fragments, the Entity made more. They freed players, the Entity took more. They fought, the Entity adapted.
"Then we fight faster." Her voice sliced through the despair, clear and hard. "We hit multiple Stations simultaneously. Overwhelm it. Don't give it time to regenerate."
"That's suicide," a woman's voice cut in from the crowd. Maybe thirty. Arden didn't remember her.
"Maybe." Arden met her eyes and didn't blink. "But it's better than surrender. Better than hiding. Better than letting the Entity feed forever."
The woman looked away first.
"Squad assignments," the Sergeant continued, moving past the objection. "Squad Two: New York, Game 250, Station Three: The Neon Asylum. Squad Three: Los Angeles, Game 251, Station Five: Drowning City. Squad Four—"
"Wait," Jin-Hwa interrupted—a rare occurrence. "If Stations are respawning, how do we know which fragments are real and which are regenerated copies?"
A good question. A crucial question.
Arden had no solid answer, only desperate guesses and theories.
"We don't," she admitted, choosing honesty over false confidence. "We kill them all. Real or copy, it doesn't matter. Dead is dead."
"Unless they resurrect," Riley whispered. Quietly awful.
"Then we kill them again." Arden picked up a marker and walked to the whiteboard. "And again. And again. Until the Entity runs out of energy. Until it can't regenerate anymore. Until it dies."
She wrote on the board:
Status Report
FRAGMENTS KILLED: 4
STATIONS DESTROYED: 4
FRAGMENTS REMAINING: 43
ENTITY STATUS: Adapting
"Four down in two weeks." She underlined the number. "If we maintain that pace, we finish in..."
She couldn't do the math. She couldn't remember how to calculate. The numbers slipped away, meaningless.
"Twenty-two weeks," Kael supplied the answer, his tone gentle, never condescending. "Five months, roughly."
"Five months." Arden repeated it, committing it to memory. She hoped she'd remember it tomorrow.
She probably wouldn't.
"Can you survive five months?" the woman who called it suicide asked. "You're forgetting things. Losing yourself. Everyone can see it."
"I know." Arden didn't deny it. Why bother? "But I don't need to survive. I just need to finish. Kill the Entity. Free the players. End the cycle. If I'm Empty by the end, if I'm nothing, that's fine. That's the price."
"It's not fine," Kael said, his voice quiet and broken.
She turned to look at him. The man whose name she couldn't remember, whose face she knew, whose presence was everything.
"You told me once," she struggled for the memory, finding only fragments. "You told me I'd forget, and you'd remember. You'd carry the memory. Tell me who I was."
"I did," he replied, his eyes wet. "And I meant it."
"Then that's enough." She turned back to her army, back to the war. "I fight. You remember. We win."
The Sergeant cleared his throat, pushing them past the emotion and back to tactics.
"Timeline. We coordinate simultaneous entries. We hit all seven Games at once. This weekend. Saturday. Midnight. Seven squads. Seven Stations. Seven fragments."
"That's too fast," Jin-Hwa shook her head. "We need more preparation, more training, more—"
"We don't have time," Arden cut her off, not with cruelty, but with simple fact. "The Entity is adapting, learning, and getting stronger. We hit it now, while it's still stabilizing, while the regenerated fragments are weak. Or we lose."
"How do you know they're weak?" the challenging woman persisted.
"I don't," Arden shrugged. "But it makes sense. Copies degrade. Regeneration costs energy. The Entity can't rebuild perfectly this fast. So we exploit the weakness before it patches it."
The logic was sound. Probably. Maybe. Arden could only hope.
She couldn't remember if she was right. She couldn't remember where she learned strategy. She couldn't remember anything except this: now, the war.
"Vote." She looked at the crowd, at the army. "Everyone who wants to attack this weekend, raise your hand."
Slowly, hesitantly, hands rose.
Riley, first. Always first. The girl who was taken, who was saved, who chose to save others.
Kael, second. He would follow her into hell. He had, multiple times.
Jin-Hwa, third. Practical, logical, yet loyal.
The Sergeant. Callum. Olli. Others. One by one.
Not everyone—maybe forty out of fifty-three—but enough. A majority.
"Forty votes." Arden counted. "That's a go. We attack Saturday, midnight. Seven squads. Coordinate through the forum. Kill seven fragments."
She capped the marker and stepped back.
"Dismissed. Rest. Prepare. Train. Saturday we go to war."
The crowd dispersed slowly, talking, planning, nervous energy filling the space.
Arden walked outside into the cold Boston November. Winter was coming.
Kael followed. Always.
"Are you okay?" he asked.
She thought about it, searching for the truth.
"No," she answered. Simply, truly. "I'm forgetting faster. Losing more. Soon I won't know who I am, won't know why I'm fighting. I'll just exist. Empty. A weapon."
"Then I'll tell you." He took her hand. She let him. She didn't remember why it mattered, only that it did.
"Tell me what?"
"Everything. Who you were. What you loved. Why you started this. I'll tell you every day, every moment, until you believe it. Even if you can't remember."
"What if you forget too?" She looked at his familiar eyes, his unknown face.
"Then someone else will remember. Riley. Jin-Hwa. The people we save. They'll carry the story. They'll carry the truth. You won't be forgotten."
She wanted to believe him. She wanted to trust him. But she knew the math.
Five months. One hundred fifty days. More Codebook uses. Likely complete memory erasure.
She would be Empty. She would forget everything and become nothing.
But the Entity would be dead. The cycle broken. The players freed.
Worth it. It had to be worth it.
"What's my name?" she asked, testing, checking.
"Arden Vale," he said instantly, without hesitation. "Horror novelist. Survivor. God-killer. The woman who wouldn't stop counting. Until she did."
"And yours?"
He paused for just a moment, then smiled. Sad, real.
"Kael Draven. Former Conductor. Former bound soldier. Current free man. The man who loves you, even when you don't remember me."
She processed it. Filed it away. Knowing she'd forget by morning.
"I should write this down." She pulled out her phone, opened her notes, and typed:
MY NAME: Arden Vale
HIS NAME: Kael Draven
WE ARE FIGHTING: The Entity
REASON: To save people
COST: My memories
STATUS: Worth it
She saved the note, locked the phone, and put it away.
"Will that help?" Kael asked.
"Probably not," she was honest. "But it's something. Better than nothing."
They stood outside the warehouse in the cold—two people fighting a war against a god.
One forgetting. One remembering. Both determined.
"Saturday," she said. "Midnight."
"Saturday," he agreed. "Midnight."
"Seven fragments."
"Seven fragments."
"We win."
"We win."
Simple words. Desperate hope. Impossible odds.
But they'd beaten impossible before. They'd do it again.
Or they'd die trying.
Or they'd forget why they were trying.
But they would keep trying anyway.
Because that's what survivors do. They survive. They fight. They win.
Even when winning costs everything. Even when survival means becoming nothing. Even when the only thing left is the fight itself.
Arden Vale walked back inside, back to the war room, back to the planning.
Kael Draven followed. Always following. Always remembering.
And somewhere in the multiverse, forty-three fragments remained. Waiting. Watching. Regenerating.
The Entity laughed. It learned. It adapted.
But it hadn't won yet.
And as long as Arden Vale was standing, walking, breathing, fighting:
It wouldn't.
Saturday. Midnight. Seven squads. Seven fragments.
Let the Great Game continue.