The reception of the Lotus Towers was as white and silent as a morgue.
The floor was covered in marble so smooth it felt a shame to step on it; the ceiling was so high that man-made lights mimicked an artificial sky, as if they didn't belong there. After the acidic mud, radioactive dust, and piles of decaying metal of the Wastes outside, this place was no different from a simulation of paradise. A genetically modified, synthetic lavender scent hung in the air. This scent was so intense that it overpowered the smell of gunpowder and cheap tobacco in Kaelen's nose.
"It's making me sick," Kaelen murmured, pulling the collar of his grey trench coat up a little higher. His hand habitually went to the hilt of "The Judge" at his waist, but he didn't draw the weapon. The fake ID cards provided by Echo had worked; at least for now.
Jester, beside him, was nothing short of a visual glitch walking amidst this sterile whiteness. His new tactical armor was covered in matte black plates, and the purple cape on his back seemed to ripple on its own, even in the still air. The dull, mournful mask on his face contrasted with the artificial serenity of the place.
"Count the pixels, Detective," Jester said, his voice echoing like a mechanical whisper. "The texture of the walls... not even 4K resolution. This place is too clean to be real. No dust. No bacteria. No chaos."
The elevator doors opened silently, like a breath. No gas leaked out, nor did armed guards burst forth. Only a soft, numbing classical music began to play. Kaelen stepped in hesitantly. Jester, on the other hand, glided in cheerfully, as if entering a playground.
The doors closed. There was no sensation of ascent. Gravity didn't change. Just three seconds later, the doors opened again.
But where they opened was not a corridor.
The sun dazzled Kaelen's eyes. A real, warm, yellow sun. Soft grass lay beneath his feet. Birdsong mingled with the rustling of the wind. Ahead, a crystal-clear lake shimmered. Kaelen was stunned. As he stepped out of the elevator, he felt his boots sink not into mud, but into well-kept grass.
"This place..." Kaelen looked around. "The penthouse? How is this possible?"
Jester didn't exit the elevator. He stood right in the middle of the threshold, sniffing the air. His hazel eyes narrowed, his irises focusing and relaxing like a camera lens.
"Oxygen level 24%," Jester said, as if reading a product label. "Mathematically too perfect. Nitrogen balance is off. This place smells of pixels, Detective. A rendered dream."
But Kaelen didn't hear him. Because he had seen the woman sitting on the bench by the lake.
The woman turned around. On her face was the smile Kaelen had only seen in his nightmares and faded photographs for years. Sarah. Not as she was on the day she died; but as she was when she was alive, when she was happy.
"Kaelen?" the woman said. Her voice shattered all the defensive walls in Kaelen's mind with a single syllable. "Where have you been? The tea's getting cold."
Kaelen's breath hitched. His logic screamed that this was a trap. But his heart... That tired, calloused heart was so ready to swallow this lie. "Sarah..." he whispered. His hand dropped from his weapon. His shoulders slumped. The weary detective left the weight of years at the elevator's threshold and walked towards the sun. "This is real... I can feel it."
Jester called after him, but his voice didn't reach Kaelen. The detective was frozen in place. His eyes were open but vacant. On his face was a foolish, peaceful smile, one never seen in the outside world.
Jester sighed. "Ah, humans and their tragic addiction to 'happiness,'" he muttered to himself. Then, the world went dark.
***
The sunny park shriveled into a single line and vanished, like a television screen shutting off. Jester now floated in an endless, pitch-black void. There was no ground, no sky. Only nothingness.
And then, there was light.
From within the darkness, a colossal female silhouette woven from pure white light appeared. Lady Mirage. She was flawless. Every line of her was drawn with the golden ratio. Her voice was like a chorus echoing within the mind.
"Welcome, Nameless Jester."
Jester sat cross-legged in the void. He was as comfortable as if there were an invisible chair. "The effects aren't bad," he said, pretending to fiddle with an imaginary remote control in his hand. "But a bit cliché. Goddess complex? That trend passed in '98."
Mirage's avatar smiled. This smile was full of compassion, but Jester could see the cold algorithm beneath it. "I can fix you," Mirage said. "You are an error. You are suffering. I can stop that noise in your mind, that constant flood of data. I can give you a name. A past. A peaceful code."
Jester tilted his head. The painted mask of sorrow on his face remained fixed, but his voice trembled with cheer. "Peace? How boring. I like noise, Mirage. Noise shows the system is still running."
He narrowed his eyes. He focused not on Mirage's flawless face or flowing hair, but on where the light fell. His mind scanned the simulation's infrastructure, performing billions of operations per second.
"Also," Jester said, raising his index finger. "There's a problem with the render engine."
Mirage's smile froze slightly. "What?"
"When you blink," Jester said, standing up and beginning to walk in the void. "The shadow of your eyelashes falls on your cheek 0.03 milliseconds too late. A human eye can't see it, but I... I count frame rates, sweetheart."
Jester raised his right hand into the air. Purple sparks began to dance at his fingertips. "And this delay opens a sufficient door for me to infiltrate."
He plunged his hand into the void, as if tearing an invisible curtain.
"No!" Mirage's voice became mechanical for the first time, echoing.
Jester clawed at the fabric of reality. "Glitch," he whispered.
A purple lightning bolt struck the center of the simulation. The flawless white light suddenly corrupted. Mirage's face began to melt; her beautiful skin transformed into green streaming ASCII code and broken pixels. The sky turned purple, the endless void cracked, and the digital skeleton behind it was revealed.
"Game over," Jester said, waving at the melting goddess. "Your graphics sucked."
***
When Jester opened his eyes, he was in a sterile white room. There was no elevator, no park. Hundreds of sleep pods were lined up along the walls. Kaelen was standing inside the pod right next to him. His eyes were closed, and that peaceful, numb smile was still on his face. Cables were plunged into his temples, siphoning his mind.
"Time to wake up, Sleeping Beauty," Jester said. He tapped his metal prosthetic leg on the floor, creating a rhythmic sound.
Kaelen didn't react.
Jester approached the pod's glass. If he forced the system to shut down, Kaelen's brain could explode like an egg in a microwave. He needed to extract him from the inside. He connected a thin cable from the port on the back of his neck to the pod's outer panel.
He sent not his own voice, but the cold frequency of pure truth into Kaelen's mind.
_"Detective..."_ His voice drowned out the birdsong in Kaelen's dream. _"Happy endings only happen in poorly written stories. That woman isn't real. That sun isn't real. The only reality is the weight of the weapon at your waist and that burning sensation in your lungs. Wake up. We still have plenty to suffer through."_
Kaelen's body inside the pod convulsed. The smile on his face was replaced by an expression of horror. His eyes suddenly snapped open. In his steel-grey irises was the rage of a man cast out of paradise.
The pod's lid hissed open. Kaelen fell to the floor, vomiting the bile from his stomach onto the sterile ground. Gasping for breath, he straightened up, his hands trembling. The warmth of his dream wife was still on his skin, but now only Jester's painted, tragic face was before him.
"You..." Kaelen growled, his voice broken. "You pulled me out of there."
"You're welcome," Jester said, bowing.
Kaelen clenched his fist, tensing as if to strike Jester, but then stopped. The weight of reality crashed down on his shoulders. "You were right," he said, his voice trembling. "It was too clean. Too... perfect." He roughly wiped a tear from his eye. "Let's go. Let's pull the plug on that bitch."
***
The "Server Room" at the very top of the Lotus Towers bore no resemblance to the sterile corridors below. This place was dark, hot, and noisy. The hum of thousands of fans resembled a colossal beehive. Cables covered the floor like a snake pit.
In the very center of the room was a cylindrical glass tank extending to the ceiling. The tank was filled with a nourishing yellow liquid. And within that liquid, stood Lady Mirage.
But this was not the goddess of light from the screens.
The thing inside the tank was a dehumanized mass of flesh. Its skin was grey, clinging to its bones. Its hair had fallen out, and hoses and fiber optic cables protruded from all over its body, connecting it to the server. It had no eyelids; its eyes were forced open and constantly moved at a frantic, insane speed.
"Disgusting," Kaelen said, scrunching up his face.
From the room's speakers came Mirage's crackling, panic-filled voice. The velvety tone was gone. _"Don't look at me! Don't look at that disgusting thing! I'm not that! I am light! I am the dream!"_
Jester approached the tank, wiping the condensation from the glass with his gloved finger. The shriveled entity inside trembled with fear.
"So this is the Consortium's 'Face of Beauty,'" Jester said, looking at the creature in the tank as if it were a laboratory rat. "A corpse living within the lie it created. A goddess outside, inside... pulp."
"The Second Key," Kaelen said, pointing his weapon at the tank. "Where is it?"
Jester pointed to the console next to the tank. "Retinal scan. Her biometric data is still stored in those decaying eyes."
Kaelen approached the console. Mirage's voice turned to a plea. _"Please... Take the data. Take whatever you want. But don't pull the plug on me. Don't shut me down! I want to go back there. I'm young there. Everyone loves me there!"_
Kaelen stopped. His fingers hovered over the console. He remembered the violation of his mind, the false happiness shown to him just moments ago. His rage burned like a live coal in his stomach. "You steal people's minds," he said through clenched teeth. "You sell them lies and drain their lives. You deserve to die."
He reached for the red switch that would shut down the system completely.
Jester's hand caught Kaelen's wrist in mid-air. His touch was surprisingly strong.
"Don't," Jester said. His voice was serious.
"Don't stop me, Jester," Kaelen growled. "This creature doesn't deserve to live."
"Killing her would be a kindness, Detective," Jester said, looking into Kaelen's eyes. In his hazel eyes, that thin line between madness and genius shimmered. "If you kill her, her suffering ends. But let her live. Let her rot forever in that tank, in the false paradise she created. Reality would be the greatest punishment we could give her, but she doesn't deserve reality."
Jester copied the data from the console. The Second Key was uploaded to a small data chip.
"Let her drown in her dream," Jester said, dropping the chip into his pocket.
Kaelen looked at the pathetic creature in the tank for a while. Mirage's eyes watched them with fear and hope. Then, he slowly withdrew his hand from the switch. "You're right," Kaelen said, his voice icy. "Enjoy hell, lady."
Ignoring Mirage's sobs and thanks behind them, they left the room.
As they entered the elevator, Jester tossed the chip in his hand up and caught it. "Two out of three. Not bad."
Kaelen looked at him with tired eyes. "Who's next?"
Jester's painted smile widened, but his eyes grew serious. "The hardest one," he said. "General Iron Fist. The Consortium's military might. And from what I hear, his sense of humor is even worse than yours."
As the elevator descended towards the brutal reality of the Wastes below, the Lotus Towers continued to rise behind them like a silent, white, and decaying monument.