False parked the truck in the empty lot by her house. Hey, good thing about no more citizens, we don't have to worry about parking. Her other personality pointed out jokingly. "We never had to worry about that," False frowned. Yeah, I know, just trying to lighten the mood a little.
False sighed and crawled into bed. "Sleep and let me out?" She asked sweetly. "No." False answered at once. "I'm sleeping because I'm tired so don't make me even more tired by sleepwalking or sleepmurdering or whatever you call it. And there's no one around to hurt anymore anyway." Fine.
She fell asleep almost immediately as her eyes were closed shut. Then she opened them again in the blank white room. "Not again!" She shouted. "Yes again, unfortunately." Her other personality said in disgust. "But we escaped! We escaped." False said hollowly, feeling a sense of dread wrap her up like a noose.
"Yeah, but unfortunately she's never going to leave us alone. You know that. I know that. She knows that. We all know that." The crazy False stated, scratching the ugly caked blood off of herself. "I hate it when it does that. Can't it stay liquid forever? I like it when it's liquid. And red. Not this rusty brown."
"If you didn't kill so many people you wouldn't have to worry about the blood." Hermit False's projected voice suddenly spoke up. "Great, now all of us are here." The other False mumbled, casting the flakes of coagulated blood onto the pristine white floor and smirking as she did so. "Well done, you're making me clean up your mess again. Are you happy now?" Hermit False asked sarcastically.
The crazy False laughed manically like all crazy people and said something else, but False didn't catch it. She was staring out of the corner of her eye at this shadow in the room coming from somewhere behind her. She shot an uneasy glance at the floor and at her own shadow, or rather the lack thereof. There are no shadows in False's perfect world. But then who is that? That shadow feels... alive. When she looked back, she saw no one, but caught a glimpse of something blue.
Blue. False thought to herself. Everything in this room was important and she needed to not forget it. She glanced at her surroundings again, ignoring her other personality jumping around and making a mess of things, wondering what hermit False was going to throw at them this time.
"You're learning." The other two Falses said simultaneously as they caught her gaze. "But you need to be sneakier," Her crazy self added at the same time as hermit False said, "But you need to accept your fate." Everyone stopped talking to look at each other. "Just go on with the test already." False said, gritting her teeth. "The sooner I'm done the sooner I'm out of here." "Wrong." Hermit False said.
There was a barely audible click from somewhere and the white room was transformed into a landscape of different flashing colors. One by one, the walls, ceiling, and floor slowly flashed red, green, and yellow. It was rather jarring. But there's no blue, False noted. A suspicious fact that she filed away for later. If she even remembered it anyway...
Then the gravity turned off and both Falses began to float uncontrollably. "This is weird." One of them said. "Let's see you dodge my projectiles now." Hermit False's triumphant voice echoed through the room that was rapidly flashing through red, green, and yellow. It was making False dizzy. Then she remembered. Projectiles?
Just as the room flashed yellow the wall to her right opened up a bunch of holes that fired meteor-like rocks at her. The Falses trapped in the test scrambled to dodge but the lack of gravity threw them off balance. She yelped as a particularly sharp rock clipped into her shoulder and drew blood that continued to stay in the air, suspended.
"Finally, it's wet." The other False said, touching it somewhat hungrily. False ignored her and looked at the rocks that were now colliding into the opposite wall from which they came. But instead of indenting themselves into it or making cracks, the wall simply swallowed them up like they'd never existed. On a whim she whirled around to the right to see that the holes where the meteors had originally came from had closed up.
"She's made some changes after the last test." The crazy False said. "Did you think I wasn't going to do something about you two?" Hermit False asked as the room turned blood red and then rocks started to fly from the other direction. The other False grabbed False's hand and together they tried to maneuver around them.
"Why is this even happening?" False asked. "This dream again? Why is she in my head again?!" "I'll never be able to leave." Hermit False said quietly. "You'll never escape me. We're stuck with each other forever, False. That's the plain simple truth." "But I escaped!" False shouted as a rock nearly took her head off but the other her managed to push it away in time. "You will never escape your fate. You're doomed to always have someone watching over you. Now continue the test."
All the rocks hit the opposing wall and again they vanished. "How do we escape this time?" False asked her other personality. "Why are you asking me?" She asked as the room flashed a sickly shade of green. They looked left and right for the rocks but they couldn't see any. "Where did they go-?"
Suddenly there was a sharp pain in her foot as a meteor struck it from the bottom. Muffling her shriek, False glanced down to see more rocks firing upwards from holes in the floor that certainly weren't there before. "Move!" It was the crazy False that moved first. Grabbing her other hand as well, she kicked off of the rocks heading upwards toward them and they escaped to the upper right corner, watching as the rocks sank into the ceiling and disappeared.
"Shocked?" Hermit False asked with a hint of annoying triumph in her voice, and the other two Falses imagined her rubbing her hands with glee from whatever control room she was sitting in. "Well, you're not the only one who can control chaos. Because I'm the order to your madness, and I'm the only one who can keep you in line."
The other False snorted as the room slowly flashed yellow again. Then a rock crashed from the wall they were leaning against into her head, causing a spurt of more blood to float around suspended in the room. Slightly dazed, she shook her fist angrily at the rock and then pulled False to another safe spot.
"Are you okay?" False asked, carefully touching her head and trying to stem the blood flow. "This is in your head, remember?" Her other personality said. "I'll be fine." Then she looked determinedly up at the walls, trying to glare at hermit False but of course being unsure as to where she actually was.
"You think you're so smart, huh? But if you're order and can stop our chaos, you're doing pretty bad at it. And since you're order, don't bother trying to create chaos to combat ours. Because this 'chaotic' test, this room... I've found order in it." There was silence as the room flashed red like the blood in the air.
False realized that she was right. Of course. The colors, the rocks coming from different directions, the gravity... it's all supposed to keep us unbalanced, but there's order to it. Hermit False is terrible at chaos. She tries to understand everything but she can't understand us, even if she thinks she does. The colors are important... She suddenly spun around and kicked a rock that had just launched out from the left back into the wall it came from.
"Good, you found the order too," The crazy False said. False nodded then turned to look at the room just like she had, looking for the third False. "So, you're order, huh?" She smirked as her other personality let go of her hand to knock away the other rocks into the walls where they sank into the red coloring. "The thing about chaos and order though... it doesn't take long for everything to break away into chaos."
There was something flashing in the corner of her vision and False half turned to see the blue shadow again. Her pulse quickened. Who is that? She tapped her other personality on the shoulder to point it out and she saw it too. <You will be perfect.> An unfamiliar voice suddenly whispered, as if to himself. "Who's that?!" All three Falses asked at once. There was a quiet gasp as the voice seemed to realize that all three of them had heard it. And just like that, the room dissolved and False was back in her bed.
"Ginny, who was that in my head?" False asked the cat which was tugging at the edge of her pants. "I don't know." Her other personality answered at the same time Ginny meowed her confusion. False found herself checking the multiple clocks on the wall for the time, simultaneously noting how they ticked in perfect synchronized order.
Order. Suddenly False wanted to tear the clocks off of the wall and shatter it to pieces to stop that perfect ticking. How did I ever stand that ticking? It sounds like a bomb... "Here's an idea." False answered herself. "Let's just take it apart. All of them. And then fix it back together. Again."
False started to take the clocks down and deactivate them. Little by little, one by one, each clock stopped ticking and the sounds died down until there was nothing in Cogsmeade but silence. It was honestly a bit unnerving; False had gotten a little too used to the constant ticking. But now it's time to fix it. Disrupt order. Spread a little chaos.
---
Jimena knew that False was awake when she heard the loud tickings of the many clocks slowly die away. Only False would take them down and deactivate them. And she needed False right now. She rushed out of her room and ran to False's, who she found sitting at a table by a pile of dead clocks prying one of them open.
"False!" Jimena said, sitting down at the same table and knocking a clock down by mistake. The timepiece slipped and fell off the table, knocking another down with it. Then that clock collided with another and brought a few more down. Soon the domino effect had whole pile out of control and off the table.
"Sorry, False," Jimena said quickly, trying to pick them all up and stack them in a neat order on the table again, but she felt the tinkerer's hand on her wrist and she stopped and looked up. "Don't worry." False said with a smile. "A little chaos is needed over here."
Jimena sat back down, a little unsure but obedient. If only you could do that with Qiron. Herodias said dryly and Jimena stiffened visibly. False put down her screwdriver to look at her in concern. "What's wrong?" She asked, as perceptive as if she was a Watcher as well. "False..." Jimena's mouth was dry, wondering what to say.
I've got another personality too. She wanted to say, except Herodias was firm. I'm not another personality. I'm who you're supposed to be. Now don't say a thing; 2 doesn't want it. "False!" Jimena said again, sounding panicked. False immediately got up and walked to her, caressing her worriedly.
"Jimena, what's wrong?" She asked. "There's someone else in here!" Jimena managed to say, pointing at her head. False's expression changed and Jimena knew by now that it meant the other her was in more visible control. "You mean you've got someone like me in there?" She asked. "My name is Herodias." Jimena found herself saying haughtily. "And I'm not like you."
"Herodias... isn't that your Watcher name?" False asked, and then she blinked as realization clicked in her mind. She slowly turned to stare in Jimena's clear purple eyes. "What did that other Watcher do to you?" She asked firmly, and Jimena could feel her hand on her shoulder shaking slightly. "Just fixed me." Herodias said.
Slowly False let go and sat back down, her ocean blue eyes still watching Jimena's void purple ones. "Herodias." She said. "Yes?" Jimena answered for her. "If you do anything..." False let the sentence trail off darkly. "I understand." Herodias responded clippedly.