The Fatemaker shook in the hands of the younger Margo Sandoval. There was confusion in her eyes, frustration, refusal to accept what the woman before her had declared. How long had she been there? Was she trustworthy? Or would she mutate into another abomination beyond comprehension?
"Prove it," the younger Margo said. "Prove we're the same person."
The present-day Margo cleared her throat and asked, "Where are your parents?"
The younger Margo squinted. "I'm not gonna tell you."
"What happened to Dad?"
The youngest Margo, the poor girl curled into a fetal position on the floor, covered her head with her hands. Her breathing worsened.
"Don't talk about that," whispered the younger Margo.
"Did he die?"
The younger Margo's eyes pierced deeper, cautious and disbelieving. She took a step back, the Fatemaker still shaking in her hands.
"What happened to him?" said the present Margo.
"Mine did," said the younger Margo, and she glanced down at the youngest self. "Although, we're waiting for hers to die."
Margo Present took a step forward, only to have her younger self exclaim, "Don't move!"
"Your name is Margo Olivia Sandoval," said the present-day Margo. "You're sixteen years old and attending Fincher High. Your mom's name is Karen, your dad's name is Ted, and you haven't seen him since that car accident that led to you guys joining the P3S and moving to a townhome in Whitman. You and Mom have also stayed in contact with the Psychwatch officer that rescued you guys, Carl Maslow, and you know he has dissociative identity disorder because he introduced you to Catalina while you were still lying in bed in the hospital. She wanted to test how much Spanish you knew."
The younger Margo lowered her gun by an inch, but her expression remained disoriented.
"Mom homeschooled you after the car accident because of the bullies, and neither of you didn't want to be alone, especially when Mom started exhibiting symptoms of PTSD. You had your hair cut short because you hated the way it covered your face and made you look reserved, and now you yank on it when you get frustrated or scared. You're not religious but still think something out there created the universe, and you also hate going to parties because you hate drugs and don't like how the quieter kids judge you for being too outgoing."
By then, the gun hovered by her side, and a sad relief, as if accepting a hard truth, washed right through her. "I guess you're me," she said.
Connecting over lies, Margo Present thought. Wonder if I should tell her the memories are fake. Or if the youngest me on the floor told her already. If she's said anything at all.
She glanced at her youngest self, hypothesizing she was the version of her that existed before Erase-and-Replace. "Can I talk to her?" she asked Margo Post-Erasure.
Margo Post, her teen self with the Fatemaker, nodded her head, and Margo Present approached her youngest self and knelt down to her level. She held out her hand, awaiting a glance from her.
"Your name is Margo Sandoval, too," said Margo Present. "You're ten years old. You live in a small apartment in Hunting Park with no air conditioning. Your dad breaks furniture and swears at you when he gets angry. Sometimes, when Mom isn't home, he'll beat you, too. But when Mom is home, she'll tell you to go down to the pool or the playground so you don't see what Dad does to her. You—"
Margo Present stopped when her Pre-Erasure self grabbed her hand and squeezed with all her might, as if to stop the memories from flooding back. When she finally looked back with watery eyes, all Margo Present saw was fear and embarrassment.
Better things. She's had it rough. Give her hope.
Margo Present cleared her throat, smoothed her thumb across the hand of her youngest self, and forced a small smile. "You like playing soccer with the neighbors, the Iglesias family, even though you trip over the ball sometimes. You like piano music, especially by Erik Satie and Claude Debussy. If you had to pick any superpower, you would choose the ability to read minds so you could figure out what people want for their birthdays. And...well, just know that you're gonna be okay. We're gonna be okay. Once we find a way out of here."
"How did we even get here?" asked Margo Post.
Shit, thought Margo Present. How do I explain this to any of them? Do they realize they're not real?
"Where did you come from originally?" she asked, but before her younger selves could reply, the PACER swept her away once more.
She'd landed in the Multi Man's body, sitting on the floor while his followers encircled her. They caught on to the replacement of old, menacing mannerisms with newer ones radiating panic, and they laughed at her.
Wait it out. You'll be back in the PACER any second now.
The masked men were still there, shifting around in place to watch her fumble around in the wrong body. She raised her hands before her chest, and the masked men laughed harder, taunting her, hoping to elicit a punch or some form of resistance. Would they kill the one person responsible for the thoughts that went through their heads? The one who'd given them blades and guns?
Any second now.
The gloves, the mask, the tattered suit that smelled of dried blood, it all remained hers to control. She look around, counting the weapons. Daggers, machetes, axes. Toward the back, masked men had armed themselves with firearms so powerful and complicated, Margo's Fatemaker looked like a water gun by comparison.
Why am I still here? What the hell's going on?
"Where is he?" she growled at the masked men, tensing up at the sound of a voice that wasn't her own. She reached a hand to her throat. The laughter had stopped. Curiosity took hold of the masked men.
She looked back up to find the albino twins standing together, the two of them armed with a dagger in one hand and a machete in the other.
"Where is my body?" she said.
Not a word from anyone, though Crimson pinned the officer down with a glare that burned with hatred. Blood seeped out of the incision stretching across her left cheek, darkly shaded like the red in her eyes.
Margo found the strength to leap from the floor. "Where the hell is my body?" she said, and the masked followers jumped back, readying their blades.
"It's dangling from a hook in a fucking meat locker," muttered Crimson. "Oh, wait, I'm sorry. It's being chopped up and fed to a woodchipper. You get out of the PACER, you'll have to live without legs. Or hips. Or—"
Margo lunged at the twins, startling the followers some more. Whitey caught her in the arm with his dagger, and she jumped back, a fresh gash treading across the Multi Man's left bicep. She felt his pain, felt the sting. She reached for her wound and dabbled it with her gloved hand, wincing at the sight of her red fingertips.
"Not too much damage," Crimson told her brother. "It's still early."
Come on, Margo thought. Get back in the goddamn PACER. Get back to my body!
A swift wave of darkness swallowing everything in sight. When it allowed light to return, Margo found herself on a bridge over a canal, a thin sheet of water traversing down the middle of a cement basin. A gray sky rested above her, and a shadowy forest awaited her on both ends of the street that stretched across the bridge. The air was cold, and the world was silent.
When she peeked back over the railing of the bridge, she saw the water in the canal turn bright red.
"Where did you go?" said Margo Post-Erasure, appearing beside the Present, startling her.
"Yeah," said another voice that rushed past her from every direction. Ellie. "Where did you go?"
"I thought you were gone," hissed Margo Present, and she jumped again at the sound of her youngest self, Margo Pre-Erasure, appearing right beside her, screaming at the top of her lungs as she leaned over the rails.
"Holy shit," gasped Margo Post, looking over the rails as well.
When Margo Present approached the edge of the bridge and looked down below, she saw bodies in the water. Arms, legs, heads, torsos, all floating into view weightlessly as if transported by a conveyor belt.
"I never forgot the first ones," said the Multi Man, his gravely voice rushing past the three parts of Margo.
"Who was that?" said Margo Post.
"Nobody good," said Margo Present. "Do you still have that Fatemaker on you?"
"Yeah, it's right here."
"Hand it over." When she got her hands on the gun, Margo Present glanced at her youngest self, the poor girl resisting a panic attack. "Honey, stay close to me. We'll be safe."
"We?" returned the Man's voice. "That's funny. You're only really protecting yourself."
"Let them go," said Margo Present.
"There's nowhere to let them go. They're you. You somehow get out of here, they'll be gone. They'll be you again."
"What is he talking about?" asked Margo Post. "Where are we?"
Margo Present rested a hand on her Pre-Erasure self's back, hoping to calm her down. She stared into the eyes of her Post-Erasure self and said, "I can explain, but you won't like what I'm going to tell you."
"I can handle the truth," replied Margo Post. "I have to."
Margo Present sighed, embracing her Pre-Erasure self. "I wish that were true," she said.
Margo Post tensed up. "How bad is it? How did you react when you first realized it?"
"The way you are right now. But worse." Margo Present smoothed her hand through the hair of her youngest self. "Do you know why we're all the same person? Yet our memories are so different?"
"You're not real," said Margo Pre, her voice shaky and childlike as she glanced up at Present. "You're not real. Right?"
"What?" replied Margo Present, squinting with confusion.
"Yeah," said Margo Post. "You're not real. You're just how we imagine ourselves looking in the future. Right?"
"No, listen to me. I hate to say it, but it's actually the reverse. You two...aren't real. We had our memories erased and modified when we were fifteen. One of you is us before it happened, and the other is us after it happened. That's why I remember both versions of our past."
Margo Post swallowed, anxious. "Which one of us has the fake memories then?"
Margo Present said nothing. Instead, she flashed a sorrowful glare at her Post self, knowing she was smart enough to connect the dots, whether she liked the full picture or not.
"Which one?" repeated Margo Post.
Margo Present sighed, then took a deep breath, smoothing her hands over her youngest self's ears. "A few months after we turned fifteen," she said, "Dad tried to kill us. He'd threatened to do that all our lives, ever since we moved to Hunting Park. But one day, he finally tried to do it."
"No," whispered Margo Post. She reached for her hair and squeezed.
"He almost killed Mom. He even assaulted Carl. Carl told us to run, but we couldn't move. We ran to the bedroom with Mom."
"No, please. This can't be it. This is a lie!"
"But he broke through the door, and...well, I honestly don't remember much after that. But we woke up in a hospital with bruises and cuts all over our face."
"Shut up! Dad died in a car crash! He never did any of that to me."
Margo Present closed her eyes. "They just made us believe that. Anything was better than believing that our own father wanted us dead. Better than having to explain to kids at school, kids who already couldn't care less about us, why we wore long sleeves or multiple layers on hot days when the sun was out. Better than having to borrow makeup and stay after school until the last teacher or custodian left, and we had no choice but to go back home."
Tears welled up in Margo Post's eyes, and Margo Present felt her Pre-Erasure self tremble in her arms.
"How about me, your other little surprise?" said Ellie. "Are you gonna spoil it for them? Or do you want to let them spiral the same way you did?"
Margo Present shook her head and took another deep breath. She rested her hand on the head of her Pre-Erasure self, pondering what to say or do next. But cognitive deviation made the choice for her, and she found herself inhabiting the Multi Man's body once again, the gash in his arm still burning fresh.
The masked men didn't laugh this time. They stood vigilant and prepared, knives at the ready. Margo did the same.
"I'll find my body again," she said. "One way or another. Even if it doesn't even resemble me by the time I get it back."
Whispers rippled amongst the masked men, and they paid no attention to the occupant taking their leader's form. Whitey and Crimson were her primary audience, a particularly angry one.
"I know your boss will try and stop me," said Margo. "But if he won't show his face, then I guess I'll do it myself."
Margo reached for the Man's mask. The moment she grabbed a hold of the chin, the masked lackeys charged toward her, screaming in harsh voices. She cared little for the danger approaching her until Whitey's dagger met her throat, the blade resting before the perfect spot for a killing blow.
"Let go," he said.
"I've asked you the same thing," said Margo.
Crimson stepped forward, and Margo detected anxiousness in her limp. "We can't see his face," she told Margo. "If we do..."
"I already have. It's nothing worth killing over."
Then the Multi Man's voice boomed through the crowd of followers. "You've only seen what I've allowed you to see. The full picture? Definitely worth all the killing."
A perfect replica of the Man nudged through the crowd and paused behind Whitey. He wore the same mask but perfectly clean clothes and gloves.
"Oh, I know you were just trying to scare me," she said. "You're completely insane, but you're also practical. There's no way you'd create some shroud of other people's skin. It's too ridiculous, even for you."
"Well, I'm glad to see that you've learned a few things from the PACER. We can say you'll die a wiser person."
"So what am I talking to then? A Sentient?"
"One of a handful," said the Multi Man's voice from another corner of the room. He nudged through his lackeys and stood by the first copy.
"Wow. Well, isn't that a very neat tr—"
WHOOSH!
Back into the PACER. Back with the walking fragments of her past memories. She stood in the middle of a vast wasteland dotted with the ruins of Philadelphia's skyscrapers. The scent of smoke emanated out of everything she laid eyes on. In the distance, she heard and saw helicopters bathing the desolate lands beneath them in searchlights.
"Margo!" said Margo Post-Erasure, running to her side. "Where are we?"
Taking one more breath, ready to be straightforward, Margo Present replied, "None of this is real. We're all trapped in a madman's head."
Margo Post's eyes widened. "Oh my God, are we in a PACER program?"
"Yes, but definitely not by choice. We gotta find somewhere that looks even remotely safe. Take her hand and follow me."
"So you are the real one." Margo Post took the hand of their Pre-Erasure self, their eyes distant and shoulders slouching. "Where can we go? There's nowhere around to hide."
"Maybe we should go home," said Margo Present. "Or try."
"Which one? Don't we all live somewhere different?"
"The townhouse in Whitman. It's the only place I can think of that doesn't have any trauma connected to it."
Margo Post sighed. "Our life really sucks."
"Yeah, well, let's make it better. Follow me."
The three Margos jogged through the empty street. Every inch of the horizon reeked of smoke and burnt material. Rubber, rocks, metal, all toxins that probably would've incapacitated them in the real world. Familiar buildings rose only two or three floors from the ground, reduced to crumbled ruins by an unseen disaster Margo believed to be orchestrated by the Multi Man.
"Where are you going, by the way?" said Margo Pre, her voice small and shaky.
"I already said, honey, we're going to our house in Whitman," replied Margo Present.
"No, I think she means to ask, where do you go every couple of seconds?" said Margo Post. "One minute you're here, and the next, you've teleported somewhere else."
Margo Present sped up her walk, and her younger selves did the same.
"Hey, did you hear me?" asked Margo Post.
"I did," said Margo Present. "You're not gonna like my explanation, though. It's horrible."
"Worse than us being abused all our lives and then having our memories modified?"
Margo Present winced, gritting her teeth at the bluntness. Wow, our life really does suck.
But she cleared her throat and said, "Well, like I said earlier, we're trapped in a PACER program that's not being regulated by a Psychwatch officer in the real world. When a program isn't regulated, that means cognitive deviation can happen. Either of you know what that is?"
"No," replied Margo Pre.
"Sounds familiar, but I don't know," said Margo Post. "It's probably not good, right?"
"It involves either the two minds in the program swapping bodies, or it'll melt their brains."
"So it's fucking horrible, is what you're saying!" barked Margo Post. "How do we stop it?"
"It can't be stopped, just avoided. That's why another doctor-cop has to be on watch when someone runs a PACER program. Once we've reached one hundred percent, that's the end."
"Fuck! How much time do you think we have left?"
Margo Present looked back at her Pre-Erasure self. The girl could hardly comprehend a thing. Her mouth remained agape, and her eyes stared off into nothing.
"Let's save that for when we reach the house," Margo Present decided, though she'd never reach it, as cognitive deviation returned her to the Multi Man's body.
The gash on the Man's arm felt numbingly cold, sending goosebumps across his skin. When Margo looked down, she saw an icy-white surface layered over it. In front of her, two Sentient copies of the Multi Man stood vigilant, enveloped by the rest of the masked men. One Sentient held a surgical device shaped like a small firearm, the tip of the device breathing steam.
"Welcome back," said the Sentient with the device. "Seems like you're finally getting the hang of his body. We can't have him endure too much damage."
Margo reached for the Man's mask again, only to rile up the followers once more. The Sentients grabbed her hands and pinned them to the wall, and the one with the surgical device planted its tip in the palm of her left hand.
"Don't test us, Margo," said the Sentient. "He may prefer minimal damage be done to his body, but he's still a very resourceful individual. Do you really want to find out what he can and cannot live without? Because there's a lot more that he can live without."
Margo caught sight of a door beside them, leading out into a hallway.
"What's the goal of all of this?" she said. "I've heard a hundred times that we won't be around to see it. So there's no harm in telling me."
"You haven't figured it out yet?" said the unarmed Sentient. "Despite all that time you've spent inside his head?"
"Oh, no, I've figured that out. Pain. Destruction. Death of innocent people. I'm just asking how you think you'll accomplish all of that. You want to destroy Psychwatch and then the city? Or both at once? Or some other way?"
The surgical device forced deeper into her palm. "How about," said the Sentient, "you tell us what you've seen in there, and we'll confirm it for you?"
"I wouldn't be able to describe the things I've seen in a million years. All I can say is that everything was worse than the last, and you are beyond repair."
The Sentient curled its finger around the trigger of the surgical device. Should Margo say the wrong thing, her hand would freeze solid. No doubt the Multi Man's Sentients would crush it into smithereens not long after that.
"You've killed too many people," she said. "Most of them were begging for their lives."
"Most," said one of the Sentients, "but not until I was yanking life away from them. Not until their blood splashed the floor. Up until the moment they started crying and screaming, I was putting them out of their misery. Before the knife made entry, all they did was beg for the end, and I gave it to them."
"Holden wanted to live. Dottie wanted to live."
"And I wanted silence," said the other Sentient. "Little by little, I'm getting exactly that. Because I have the willpower." The robotic clone leaned in close. "Where is your willpower, Margo Sandoval?"
"It comes. And it goes." She clasped her fingers over the surgical device. "But now, I think it's here to stay."
She forced the device away from her, clenching her eyes shut as she prepared for the freeze. Before she knew it, the device was on, and the Multi Man's fingers froze solid. She'd felt as if glass had shattered beneath the skin, the shards jabbing her and tearing through from the inside. A small sacrifice to make for an effective distraction, as she used her free hand to retrieve the Man's dagger from his suit. She slashed the throat of the closest Sentient to her, and black fluid spewed from the fresh wound.
Then a rhythmic beeping commenced, emitting from the Multi Man's wounded Sentient. Margo gasped when she realized it was a countdown.
"You know what to do," said the remaining Sentient, and the one with the slashed throat nodded its head before racing out of the room, disappearing down a shadow-ridden corridor as the beeping grew faster and faster.
The distant Sentient vanished in an enormous explosion.
The building shook and rumbled, and the masked men in the other room gasped and screamed. Lights flickered as the blast reduced the walls and floor at the far end of the hallway to dust. Resisting the tremors in the building, Margo jumped out of the room and bolted in the opposite direction of the explosion, glancing back to see the remaining Sentient watch her depart, the machine as still as a statue.
Margo didn't get far once again. The shaking building sent her tumbling to the floor, and the frozen hand she'd borrowed shattered to pieces against the ground. She screamed with a voice that didn't belong to her, scurrying away from the dark red chunks of ice splattered across the floor until she bumped into the wall and stayed there. The tremors sent a crack across a window three feet above Margo, and the faint rays of the setting sun shined over the remains of the Multi Man's obliterated hand.
Screaming in her head but still crying in pain at the level of a whisper, Margo tensed up as the other Sentient approached her with a mechanical gait, pausing before her to look down. He stared at her. It stared at her, waiting for her next reflex to work against her.
"If you're going to explode like the other one," she said, still wincing it pain at the loss of the hand, "you should do it already."
"I can only explode once I take a precise amount of damage," said the Sentient. "That includes the effects of EMP devices and Fatemakers, even at their least harmful setting."
"So that's how you plan on bringing this city down, huh? Like I said earlier, you're fucking irreparable."
"As is the rest of this city."
The Sentient glared out the window as the wailing of incoming sirens reached its ears. Police sirens. Psychwatch was on its way at last.
"It's happening sooner than we expected," said the Sentient. "But I guess it has to."
"Yeah?" said Margo. "Well, tell your boss I said 'Good luck.' This should be harder with one hand missing!"
"Margo, have you considered the idea that the next Sentient that goes out in an explosion will take your body with it?"
Margo felt her lungs shrink. Nausea boiled. Her head spun. Imminent consequences from getting too overconfident were on the way.
"You don't know where it's being stored," said the Sentient, turning its back toward her. "You don't know if it can even move should you get it back. Consider yourself lucky I let you know that it's in this very building. But with Psychwatch on the way, coming full force and bringing their old habits with them, you now have several more obstacles to overcome."
The halo, Margo thought. The patient needs to wear one for the PACER program to run at all. He's wearing one! I feel it underneath the mask!
The Sentient walked away as Margo grabbed the mask. But before she could pull it off and expose the halo that sealed her in the mental prison that was the Multi Man's mind, the PACER program swept her away. She stood by her younger selves once again, the three of them bathed in the spectral glow of a singular streetlight on a barren road.
"ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME?" she shrieked, and she dropped to the pavement on her knees, smacking the ground with her left hand. Tears welled up in her eyes, and anger poisoned her, squeezing her brain, roasting her alive from the inside.
"Margo!" said her Post-Erasure self, running to her side. "You were gone a long time. What happened out there? Are we gonna be okay?"
"I don't know," cried Margo Present. "I don't fucking know anymore. We're..."
"We're what?"
"We're...insane. We're gonna die alone and crazy and my body...It's all my fault."
The streetlight flickered above them with a disarming hum.
"Someone's coming to help us, right?" said Margo Post. "You work for Psychwatch now. They should be coming to help you, right?"
Margo Present said nothing. She tried her best to shrink out of sight, bent over on her knees, fists pounding against the pavement, cursing herself. Margo Pre-Erasure rested her hand on her older self's shoulder while Margo Post looked around at the unforgiving darkness surrounding them.
"I'm not sure if this will help," said Margo Post, "but Mom once told me things get worse before they get better. You kinda said it earlier, too."
The streetlight softened with each passing second. Each flicker left Margo's fragmented selves in more darkness than the last. And before the light offered its last breath and left the three of them stranded in a starless void, Margo Post uttered one more thing in a shaky voice.
"Maybe we can make things better soon."