Digital Mutation (Book Five)

Chapter 31: Words Thrown Back

How long has it been now? Annalise wonders. Minutes? Hours? Days? Everything is blurring together and no matter where she goes, she's stuck with her double.

Whenever she runs out of her house and races down the street, her double reappears ahead of her. She is always smiling but her eyes are glassy and dead.

"Where are you going?" she asks. "Are you trying to leave me? Why would you leave me? Isn't YouTube good enough for you?"

Annalise can't get out.

Circa's abandoned body stares at her from every angle, always watching blankly, always smiling, mocking in her silence. Annalise tries to hide, tries to keep her grip on sanity, but with every doppelgänger that appears, she feels herself slipping.

"I just want to go home," she whimpers. "Please, just leave me alone."

"This is your home!" Fake Annalise laughs. "It's better than your home! You can spend your days making videos for your adoring public without all the stress of school and your mom and friends!"

"I want school! I want my friends and my mom!" Annalise insists.

"No, no, you really don't get it," scolds the copy. "What you want is YouTube. You kept Circa out with that antivirus wipe so long ago so obviously, you love it enough to stay." She reaches out to hug Annalise. "I'll be your new friend, your new family! All you need is yourself!"

Annalise shoves her away. "NO!" she shouts. "No, I need others, I...I-I need my mom! I need Mikey..."

Fake Annalise's face crumples with anger. "You...don't...need...them..." she repeats as she snatches Annalise's arm, dragging her closer to her with an iron grip.

"L-Let me go," Annalise pleads.

"We're happy here, together," she whispers. "Come and play with me some more."

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"No!"

Leonardo crosses his arms over his plastron, shaking his head vigorously from side to side, and Sarina mimics his body language. She sizes him up, eyes flashing.

"Leonardo, this is the only way. I swear, I can do this," she says, an edge of a whine lilting her tone.

"We already lost Annalise in there," he retorts. "We can't lose you too."

She tilts her head back to the ceiling. "My, none of you have even an ounce of faith in my abilities," she says.

She looks back at the gathered group. Leonardo keeps his stern expression. Raphael, Destiny, and Diaval linger in a group, stuck in varying states of conflict, and Donatello lingers at Sarina's side, less than pleased. Michelangelo stays off to the side, t-phone clutched in his hand, and Master Splinter strokes his beard and observes in silence.

"Not like that," Diaval says. He looks between his hands as if they're two sides of a scale. "Just sounds...'mpossible."

"What is so impossible about plugging me back into the teleporter and allowing my subconscious to travel back into Youtube with Circa?" Sarina asks. Nothing but defiance lingers on her face and Diaval blinks in confusion. "Without my subconscious mind, I should remain in a comatose state. Then, when I rescue Annalise, I destroy Circa once and for all, return home, and..." She gestures like a performer during the casting call. "Voila! Two birds, one stone."

"And if the whole thing bombs?" Raphael asks. "If Circa destroys whatever 'you' is in cyberspace, then what? We leave you on a table to sleep forever?"

"No. I imagine I would waste away, being effectively brain-dead. There are probably chemicals that would prove fatal should they be injected—"

"Hey, woah! Slow the hell down," Destiny barks, making Diaval startle. The wolf-raven's eyes narrow as she takes a step towards Sarina, wings spreading. "You can't ask us to do that. We can't kill you."