>>5940361<span class="mu-r"><span class="mu-s"><span class="mu-i">I think not.</span></span></span> It calls your bluff, reaching out with one freakishly long claw, as if to physically excise the memories from your skull.
Resolute, you widen your mental connection with Peedee to show you mean business. Her chaotic and juvenile thoughts begin to drown out your own — the howling white noise you experienced earlier while lost in her vast subconscious mind now funnelling into your comparatively tiny human brain. Barely, you can make out her shrill voice through the neural flashbang you’ve subjected yourself to.
<span class="mu-i">Dal, no! Peedee doesn’t… I don’t want to hurt friend.</span>
<span class="mu-i">It’s okay little guy!</span> You mentally shout back over the cacophony. <span class="mu-i">I need you to trust me! Guard will be forced to shut down the simulation, to separate us!</span>
<span class="mu-i">B-but… I don’t wanna go! Don’t wanna leave my C-Captain.</span> She wails. <span class="mu-i">Guard is mean, will make me sleep! HATE SLEEP! HATE STINKY GUARD!</span>
The pointed claw halts, wavering. The AI’s piercing scarlet orbs tracking back and forth between the two of you indecisively.
“Please. Peedee.” You grate out painfully, no longer able to keep the conversation confined to your overtaxed mind. “Remember. What. I promised you!”
“Ow, m-my head…” She whimpers, “I-I ‘member! Dal will t-teach Peedee and bring penuddbudder to Peedee’s box! You promised!”
Unable to watch anymore as both its ward and a member of the blood potentially give themselves brain damage, Guard lashes out with claws extended. They blur past your face with only millimetres to spare, nearly taking off an ear as they reach over your shoulder to grasp the glassy surface of Peedee’s visored face.
<span class="mu-i">Clink.</span>
The storm of sensations and icy chill of Peedee’s touch, abruptly vanish like a taut thread snapping — the backlash leaving you gasping in shock. You feel weightless, falling slowly through the darkness as if caught in a distant grav-well. Receding into the darkening void, you can make out the twisted shape of Guard’s assumed form dangling Peedee limply from her visor. Her digital eyes teary, she reaches desperately towards you.
“Promise you’ll find me!” She calls weakly, “Dal, promise m-”
Her wraithlike form and disembodied hands fade away as the visor blanks, then cracks, then shatters. Crushed by Guard’s impassive claws, the glittering motes of dust float away, filling the void like a pre-cataclysm star-field. Now only visible as a pair of distant binary red giants, you level a condemning finger like a ship’s mass driver to point right between the Guardian’s eyes. One final act of defiance as consciousness finally flees from you, you scream.
>5/9 