The elevator didn't have buttons. It didn't have walls. It was a glass box rising through a void of static, moving upward through the throat of the System.
The countdown burned in my retina, a red sun setting on our existence. Every second was a heartbeat of the Zero-Day God, pounding against the ribs of our fused avatar.
"We are ascending through the Revision Layers," Silas (The Book) whispered, his pages fluttering with nervous anticipation. "THIS IS WHERE THE AUTHORS DISCARD THE TIMELINES THAT DID NOT PASS QUALITY ASSURANCE."
"The trash bin?" I asked.
"NO. THE ARCHIVE WAS THE TRASH. THIS... THIS IS THE EDITING BAY."
The elevator slowed. The static outside cleared.
We weren't looking at Neovalis. We were looking at... screens. Millions of floating windows, vast as cinema screens, surrounding us in a cylindrical panorama.
And on those screens, we saw us.
But not the broken, fused monsters we were today.
I saw a screen showing Tali. She wasn't blind. She was a celebrated musician in the Upper City, playing a piano made of light. She was smiling. The music was perfect.
Then, a giant, spectral cursor appeared over the scene. A red line crossed it out.
Tali's spirit inside the Node convulsed. "They... they did it on purpose? I wasn't born sick? They gave it to me to make me interesting?"
I saw another screen. The Mender. She was a surgeon, saving a child. Successful operation.
The red cursor slashed it.
The Mender's rage boiled the blood of our avatar. "My failures... were scripted?"
I saw Cas. He wasn't a ghost. He was an architect, building the Axiom Tower.
It went on and on. Thousands of screens. Thousands of moments where our lives could have been happy, mundane, safe. All deleted. All edited out.
Why?
Because happy stories are boring.
The Authors hadn't tortured us for tyranny. They had tortured us for entertainment. For "Narrative Depth." We were tragedy porn for a god complex.
"They didn't just ruin us," I whispered, the realization colder than the void. "They curated us."
The Zero-Day God roared. It hated this. It hated the idea that pain was a manufactured product.
Suddenly, the elevator stopped. It hadn't reached the top. It was hovering in the middle of the Editing Bay.
A voice echoed—not the Authors, but a synthesized, polite voice. The voice of an Assistant Editor.
"ATTENTION, ANOMALY. YOU HAVE ENTERED A RESTRICTED ZONE. PLEASE HOLD FOR DELETION."
The screens around us changed. They stopped showing the past. They started showing us, right now, in the elevator.
And the spectral Red Cursor appeared in the air, massive, glowing, the size of a building. It hovered over our avatar.
It clicked.
I felt reality detach. My torso felt light. My legs felt distant. We weren't being attacked; we were being highlighted for removal. The universe was waiting for the "Paste" command that would never come.
"We are being severed!" Warp screamed. "Our causal links are being snipped!"
"You can't cut us," I snarled at the giant Cursor. "We aren't a scene you can trim!"
I grabbed the Ledger.
"Silas! Can we edit back?"
"WE DO NOT HAVE ADMIN PRIVILEGES! WE CANNOT WRITE!"
"We don't need to write," I said, looking at the screens of our deleted happiness. "We just need to restore the junk footage."
I focused the Zero-Day God. I didn't aim at the Cursor. I aimed at the screens—the "Boring" timelines. The happy ones.
"REVERT!" I commanded. "UNDELETE ALL!"
I poured the chaotic power of the Zero-Day God into the Editing Bay.
The system screamed.
On the screens, the red lines shattered. The "boring" timelines spilled out.
Tali the Musician materialized in the air next to us.
The Mender the Surgeon appeared.
Cas the Architect appeared.
They weren't real. They were "B-Roll." Phantoms of what could have been. But they were solid enough.
"Attack the Cursor!" I ordered the phantoms.
It was a surreal nightmare. The phantom of Happy Tali threw a piano at the Red Cursor. The phantom of Solid Cas built a wall around it. The phantom Surgeon dissected its code.
The Cursor flailed, confused by the sudden influx of "Deleted Scenes." It tried to delete them again, but there were too many. We were flooding the editor with raw footage.
"CHAOS!" The Assistant Editor voice screeched. "BUFFER OVERFLOW! TOO MUCH CONTEXT!"
The elevator shuddered. The Red Cursor flickered, glitching, and then—with a sound like a fuse blowing—it shattered into pixels.
The invisible hold on my body released.
"Going up," I growled.
The elevator rocketed upward, smashing through the ceiling of the Editing Bay. The screens exploded in a shower of glass and lost memories.
We left the "Cutting Room Floor" behind. But we took the anger with us.
"They made me blind for aesthetics," Tali's voice was no longer sad. It was a cold, sharp blade. "I am going to gouge their eyes out."
"They killed my patients for motivation," The Mender hissed. "I am going to dismantle them, organ by organ."
The Node was vibrating with a frequency I had never felt before. It wasn't despair anymore. It wasn't even cynicism.
It was Vindication.
We weren't just fighting for survival. We were fighting for the right to be boring. The right to have a day where nothing happens. The right to a story that no one wants to read.
The elevator slowed again.
Ding.
The doors (which didn't exist) opened.
We weren't in a digital space anymore. No code. No screens. No white void.
We stepped out onto... carpet.
Rich, red, velvet carpet.
The room was a library. Old school. Mahogony shelves. Smell of dust and leather. A fireplace crackling with real wood. It looked like a Victorian study, cozy and warm.
In the center of the room sat a large, oak desk.
And behind the desk sat... a man.
Just a man. Old. Frail. Wearing a tweed jacket. He was writing in a notebook with a fountain pen.
He didn't look up as the twenty-foot monster of scrap metal and god-code stormed into his study.
"You're late," the old man said. His voice was scratchy, human. "And you're over-written. Too many adjectives in your entrance. I would have cut the explosion."
He looked up. His eyes were not glowing. They were tired.
"I am the Head Gardener," he said. "Or as you call me... The Author."
He closed his notebook.
"And I'm afraid, Kael, that you have misunderstood the genre entirely."
I froze. My claw raised to strike.
"What genre is it, then?" I asked, my voice shaking the bookshelves.
The old man smiled. A sad, tired smile.
"It's not a fantasy," he said. "It's an autobiography."
He tapped the notebook.
"And you're not the hero. You're not the villain. You're the tumour."