The bike slowed to a stop near the Boardwalk's bus terminal, the chain clicking quietly as Isaac braked. The last bus home was already idling at the curb, its doors open and a few passengers shuffling aboard.
Taylor slid off the back rack, her feet hitting the pavement with a soft thud. She stood there for a moment, one hand tucking a strand of hair behind her ear, the other hanging uncertain at her side.
"Thanks," she said. "For today. All of it."
Isaac kicked down the bike's stand and straddled it, one foot planted on the ground. The streetlight caught the angles of her face, revealing exhaustion that went deeper than the physical.
"Don't mention it." He kept his voice warm, but measured. The hard part was still ahead of her. "Get home safe, okay?"
Taylor nodded. She turned toward the bus, took three steps, and stopped.
Isaac watched her hesitate. Saw her shoulders tense and her posture lock up. Taylor was up to something, but he couldn't guess what.
Then she spun around, strode back to him, and threw her arms around him in a hug.
Isaac went rigid, his hands hovering in the air at his sides. The gesture was unexpected but not unwelcome. It had been a while since he'd gotten a hug from someone who wasn't a mental construct of void energy.
His arms came down around her. Holding her firmly but carefully, mindful of the bruised ribs she'd been nursing. He could feel her heartbeat against his chest, rapid and unsteady, and the way her fingers curled into the back of his jacket.
She was nervous.
"You've got this," he murmured.
It was one last piece of encouragement for the night.
He felt her squeeze tighter, then pull back. Her face was flushed and her eyes behind the glasses were avoiding his.
"See you tomorrow," she managed, her voice slightly uneven.
She turned before he could say anything and jogged toward the bus, climbing the steps just as the driver was reaching for the lever. The doors hissed shut behind her.
Isaac watched her find a seat near the back, pressing her forehead against the cool glass. The bus lurched away from the curb, and he stayed where he was — one hand resting on the handlebars, the other hanging at his side — until the vehicle turned the corner.
The hug lingered in his mind.
Taylor was clearly making progress on opening up, trusting people again. That was good. Building connections, strengthening her support network. It would make her stronger in the long run, both as a person and as an operative.
Isaac nodded to himself, satisfied with the assessment.
She'd seemed flustered, though. Probably still emotional from everything she'd shared. The conversation about her mom, the bullying, her dad — that was a lot to process. He was glad she'd felt comfortable enough to talk to him about it.
He'd check in on her tomorrow. Make sure the conversation with her dad went okay. If it didn't... well, he could figure something out.
His mind drifted back to the costume shop. The green dress. The way she'd looked at it and how her fingers had lingered on the fabric before she'd put it back on the rack.
She'd refused to let him buy it. Pride, probably. Or a sense of debt she didn't want to accumulate. She didn't owe him anything, but explaining that to her probably wouldn't work. Taylor was stubborn like that.
But a birthday gift was different. That wasn't charity. That was just... being a friend.
Isaac frowned slightly as a thought occurred to him.
He didn't actually know when her birthday was.
He'd never thought to ask, and it hadn't come up in conversation.
He'd have to figure it out. Ask around, maybe. Or just ask her directly at some point when it wouldn't seem weird.
But all that was for later.
He had a bike to return and the rental stand was only a few blocks away. He could make it with time to spare.
Then he'd take his own advice and talk to someone he'd been avoiding.
--------
The church smelled like old wood and incense.
Riley sat in the front pew, neck craned back, staring up at the crucifix. Jesus looked down at her with painted eyes — arms spread wide, chest caved in, ribs rendered in carved wood that didn't quite connect the way real anatomy should. The positioning of the organs would've made survival impossible past the first few hours.
She wondered if the sculptor knew that. Probably not. People who made religious art rarely understood the body beneath the skin.
Behind her, a few rows back, Father Michaels was speaking with her parents. His voice was low and sonorous, the cadence of a man used to being listened to. Something about guidance. Something about healing. Something about the Lord's plan.
Riley tuned it out.
She'd heard it all before. Not from this church, but from others. In particular, she remembered a priest from Ohio with fat fingers and a soft voice. He'd also had a basement full of children with scars and bruises across their bodies. Back then, Bonesaw had been very proud of the art she'd made of him, and to an extent, so was Riley. His screams for his lord to save him had made for wonderful music.
However, the memory was soured by recalling that the Siberian had eaten the children afterwards.
Riley was sad she couldn't let them go. But it just proved what she already knew about the world.
God was a coping mechanism for people who couldn't accept that their existence had no grander purpose than a bacterium's, and he wasn't saving anyone. But her parents believed. So here she was, sitting in a pew that creaked every time she shifted, staring at a wooden man dying on a cross.
The past few days had been a blur of fluorescent lights and uncomfortable chairs. Doctors with clipboards asking about her feelings in small voices. A therapist with kind eyes and too many questions about what she remembered, what she felt, what she dreamed about. Her parents hovered constantly, watching her like she might shatter or vanish, but that wasn't anything new. Evan was sharing her bed because she'd asked him to. Buttons curled against her legs like a watchdog.
She'd cried a lot. Slept less. Woken up screaming from nightmares about Jack finding her. Her family had held her each time, rocking her like a baby or letting her hug them until the stifling fear subsided, and Riley had let herself be small.
It was pathetic.
It was also good, in a way that made her chest ache. Because did Bonesaw, with her mountain of corpses and victims, deserve this second chance?
"Father Michaels?"
A voice cut through the church's stillness. Riley turned, the pew creaking beneath her.
A teenage boy stood in the aisle — maybe sixteen, wearing the plain clothes of a church volunteer. Normal enough, except for his eyes. They caught the stained-glass light strangely, milky and faintly luminescent, like cataracts. But he moved like someone who could see perfectly fine.
Riley frowned.
She'd been cataloging everyone in this town for a month. Faces. Names. Patterns of movement. She couldn't help it — even if she didn't care about leaving anymore, the curiosity about what this world was still clawed at her mind. And despite being regressed in age, that mind was still sharp.
She knew the cashiers at the grocery store. The mailman with the limp. The old woman who walked her poodle every morning at 7:15. She even had vivid childhood memories of going to Sunday school in this church.
Yet, beyond a shadow of a doubt, she knew she'd never seen this boy before.
Not once.
"If you'd like to speak privately with the family," the boy was saying to Father Michaels, "I can watch the young one for a bit."
The priest hesitated, glancing between the boy and Riley's parents. Her mom and dad exchanged one of those familiar worried looks, fingers interlacing.
"Riley, honey?" her mom asked. "Is that okay?"
Riley looked at the boy. Those wrong eyes. That easy, unbothered posture.
Something about him made her skin prickle and her curiosity pique .
"It's fine," she told them.
Her parents hesitated a moment longer but followed Father Michaels toward a side office, their footsteps fading into the church's quiet. The heavy wooden door clicked shut behind them.
Riley turned back to the crucifix.
A moment later, the pew across from her creaked.
She didn't look up.
The silence stretched.
One second. Two. Five.
Then he spoke.
"How are you enjoying your new life, Bonesaw?"
Riley's entire body went rigid.
She looked toward where her parents had disappeared, fear spiking at the thought that they had heard, that they would know of her sins. When she realized they hadn't, fear gave way to anger and old instinct.
"Don't call me that," she growled.
Her hands curled into fists on her lap as she glared at him. Her eyes promised gruesome violence as her mind raced through ways to silence this boy before he could get to her parents.
The boy didn't flinch. Didn't react to the threat in her voice at all. He just watched her with those milky, seeing eyes, head tilted slightly like he was studying something interesting.
"My apologies," he said simply, dipping his head. "Riley. How are you enjoying your new life?"
She stared at him as her mind began registering all his words.
Then the pieces started clicking together with horrible, inevitable clarity.
"You're the one who made this place."
It wasn't a question.
The boy nodded, unhurried. Like her accusation was simply a fact he saw no reason to deny.
"What is this?" Riley heard her own voice go smaller.
"This is an alternate reality," the boy said, "comprised entirely of data. Constructed from what I and my companion call the Weave."
He gestured vaguely at the church around them — the pews, the stained glass, the crucifix with its inaccurate anatomy and painted suffering.
"More specifically, this is part of the weave called Captura. Think of it as an environmental simulator designed to perfectly recreate any location. Simulating an entire reality was never its intended purpose, but it serves well enough."
Riley absorbed this.
An alternate reality. That explained why her powers were gone. But one that could make a simulation this real was almost unbelievable.
"Why am I here?" The question cracked out of her in a pathetic way she instantly hated herself for. "Is this your revenge? Giving me everything just to rip it all away?" She looked at his clothes, the church around her, and remembered the jellyfish face's words. "Or maybe you think I can be 'redeemed.'"
The boy was quiet for a moment. Those strange eyes stayed fixed on her face, his expression as passive as it was unreadable.
"No," he said finally. "You're here because someone once saved me when I didn't think I could be saved. I wanted to extend that same courtesy to you because it's what she would have done."
He leaned forward slightly, elbows resting on his knees.
"If you want redemption, you won't find it with me or in this world. But if you don't desire it, that's fine as well. I'll let you stay here. Live this life. The world is stable enough that you could spend an entire lifetime here without ever knowing the difference." He paused. "Or you can return to the real world and continue your rehabilitation there. To try and truly make amends for what Bonesaw has done."
Riley stared at him like he was insane.
"Why would I leave?" She gestured around her — at the church, at the world beyond its doors. "You said it yourself. I can stay here forever." Her voice cracked. "I can have them back."
Everything Jack stole from her.
Everything Bonesaw destroyed.
Her family.
Safety.
Love.
"Why would I trade this for what… A cell? A laboratory? A world where everyone hates me."
"It wouldn't be a cell."
"It wouldn't be this."
The words hung between them. The boy regarded her quietly, and something in his expression shifted. Calculation, maybe. Or assessment.
Then he tilted his head.
"Do you think your parents would approve?"
Riley froze.
"Your real parents," he clarified. "Not these recreations. Do you think they'd want their daughter living inside a simulation, hiding from reality forever?"
Heat rushed to Riley's face. Her hands clenched in her lap.
"They're dead," she said thickly. "I'll never know what they would've wanted. So it doesn't matter."
"Wouldn't be so sure about that."
Riley's head snapped up. She stared at him, at those milky eyes and that calm, knowing expression.
"I'm not certain heaven exists," he said as he leaned back, looking up at the crucifix. "But I know souls do. So there's a non-zero chance that when your time on Earth is up, you'll meet them again."
Riley barked out a short laugh. The sound came out harsh and ugly.
She couldn't believe this was what he was going to use to try and convince her to go back to Earth Bet.
"You can create entire realities from data, and you believe in souls?" She shook her head. "I didn't expect delusion from someone with your capabilities."
She paused. Considered him, his goals, and what he'd done to her.
"Then again," she added, her voice sharpening, "building a simulated world to play house with a mass murderer is exactly the kind of thing a delusional person would do."
The teen smiled.
It was a knowing expression, tinged with something almost like amusement. Like he'd heard worse insults from worse people and found her particular brand of venom almost charming.
"There's nothing delusional about what I'm saying. Or religious, really." He leaned forward again, and something in his voice became more certain. "Souls exist, Riley. I can prove it. Scientifically."
Riley went still.
Then she laughed again. But this time it came out wrong. Too high and too fast. The kind of laugh that was trying to hide something else underneath.
"You're lying," she accused.
"I'm not," he denied.
"Yes you are! You're trying to manipulate me. Just like him!" She stood abruptly, the pew creaking as her weight left it. "Did you really think I'd buy into that nonsense? Souls." She scoffed again at the very notion. "You expect me to believe that?"
She jabbed a finger at him, her voice rising.
"Consciousness is emergent biology. Electrical signals and chemical gradients. Neurons firing in patterns that create the illusion of self-awareness. When the brain dies, the pattern stops. That's it. That's all the 'soul' is."
"Riley—"
"No." She cut him off, her breath coming faster. "You don't get to come into my—"
She caught herself. Stumbled over the word 'my.' Because this wasn't hers. This was his. All of it.
"You don't get to come into this place and lecture ME about biology," she shouted. "I spent years cutting people open. I mapped every nerve, organ, and chemical pathway. I've even brought some people back from the dead and they always come back wrong. There's no soul in there. There's no magic spark. It's just meat."
The boy didn't even flinch at her outburst.
He just watched her with those calm, wrong eyes, utterly unbothered.
"If that's true," he said quietly, "then why are you so angry?"
Riley opened her mouth to refute.
Then closed it.
The question had landed somewhere soft and unprotected inside her.
"Because you're lying to me," she said, but her voice wavered on the words. "Because you want to 'rehabilitate me,' and you think wrapping it in fairy tales about souls and heaven will make me comply."
"Manipulating you would be easier," he breathed out, like he was tired of it all.
Riley went still.
"Like I said earlier, this is a digital reality. Everything in it is data. And right now, so are you. If I wanted obedience, I could alter the data that comprises you directly. Remove the parts of you that resist change."
His eyes settled back on her.
"I could make Bonesaw disappear and leave only Riley behind. It was even one of my original plans for you."
Riley's stomach twisted. Fear and elation at the idea bubbled up all at once.
Because some part of her wanted that, even as she feared it. If she wasn't going to return to Earth-Bet, wouldn't it be better to just spend the rest of her life in this world in blissful ignorance?
"But I haven't," he continued. "Because that wouldn't be you. And that wouldn't be redemption. Just escape."
Silence stretched between them.
"Then prove it." The words came out like a challenge, desperate and sharp. "You said you can prove souls exist scientifically. Do it. Show me. Right now."
The boy regarded her for a long moment.
The church was silent around them. Dust motes drifted through the colored light. Somewhere in the distance, a car passed on the street outside.
"I could," he said finally. "But anything I do in a world I can manipulate would be suspect to you. Besides, you're not asking for proof because you want to understand."
He tilted his head.
"You're asking because you need me to be wrong."
Riley flinched.
The words cut deeper than any knife she'd ever held.
"Because if I'm right," he continued, his voice soft and terrible, "then every person you cut apart, every victim you reduced to 'meat and nerves' — they weren't just biological systems or animals with intelligence."
He let the silence stretch for one heartbeat.
"They were people. Irreplaceable, unique people. And you didn't just destroy their bodies."
The words hung in the air like smoke.
"You scarred their souls."
Riley's breathing went shallow.
Her hands trembled at her sides. She could feel her pulse in her throat, in her temples, in the palms of her hands.
She wanted to scream at him. Call him a liar. A manipulator. A monster wearing a boy's face.
She would know. She was one.
But she couldn't.
Because when Riley looked around, when she breathed in the incense-heavy air of the church or felt the warmth of sunlight through stained glass against her skin, she understood something terrifying.
He didn't need to lie to her.
This world alone proved that.
The people here laughed, cried, dreamed. They felt real because, in every way that mattered, they were. The air tasted real. Pain felt real. Love felt real.
And the boy sitting across from her had made all of it.
Not only that, but he could change it whenever he wanted. Change her whenever he wanted. And his knowledge of reality, even if it was tinker jargon, likely exceeded hers by leaps and bounds.
And despite that, he spoke about souls with the same quiet certainty people spoke about gravity.
And that scared her more than anything else he'd said.
"What happens to me if it's true?"
Her voice came out very small.
"If souls are real... if people really continue after they die..." She swallowed hard, fingers tightening against the fabric of her sleeves. "Then what happens to someone like me?"
Her eyes lifted to his, wet with tears that slid slowly down her cheeks.
"What happens to Bonesaw?"
The boy's expression shifted.
Something almost like pity flickered across his face — or maybe it was understanding.
He stood, brushing off his clothes. He looked down at her with those milky, seeing eyes, and his voice softened.
"I don't know that either. But if you ask me, the question isn't what happens to Bonesaw. It's: are you going to spend your second chance becoming someone who could look your parents in the eye?"
He held her gaze for a moment longer.
"Think about it, Riley. You don't have to decide today or tomorrow or next month. But don't take too long — even paradise can become a cage if you stay long enough."
Riley opened her mouth to respond, but before she could find the words, the side door of the church opened.
Her parents stepped out, Father Michaels following close behind. Her mother's eyes were red-rimmed, her father's arm wrapped around her shoulders. They looked lighter somehow, like a weight had been lifted — or at least shared.
The teen turned smoothly, offering them a polite nod as he stepped out of the pew.
"Father Michaels. Mr. and Mrs. Davis." His voice was warm, easy, utterly at odds with the conversation that had just ended. "Your daughter's been very patient. Though I'm afraid I made for poor company — she seemed rather upset by the time you returned."
Riley's mother looked between them, a flicker of gratitude crossing her tired face. "Thank you for keeping her company, young man. We appreciate it."
"It was my pleasure." He smiled — normal and boyish, though it didn't quite reach those strange eyes. "She's a good kid."
He glanced back at Riley one last time. The smile faded into something more neutral.
"Take care of yourself, Riley."
Then he was moving, walking down the aisle toward the church doors with the unhurried gait of someone who had nowhere in particular to be. The heavy wood swung open, letting in a brief wash of afternoon light and the distant sound of traffic, before closing behind him with a muffled thud.
Riley sat frozen on the pew.
Her parents approached, her mother reaching out to brush a strand of hair from her face.
"Sweetie? You okay? You look pale."
Riley looked up at her mother's face, saw all the love and worry in her eyes, and couldn't bring herself to think of her as fake.
"I'm fine," she heard herself say. "Just... thinking."
"About what?"
Riley's gaze drifted back to the crucifix.
"Souls," she said quietly.
Her mother's brow furrowed, but she didn't push. Just sat down beside her and took her hand.
Riley let herself be held.
But inside, she was still hollowed out, still turning over the boy's words like a knife in her hands, wondering what eternity looked like for someone like her.
And whether there was even enough left of Riley's soul to save.