The ghosts had done a lot of exceptionally cruel shit since Alex had started playing this game, eight-or-so hours ago. They'd showed her death: emaciated corpses and shattered cadavers and bloated bodies from the bottom of the ocean, all images playing in the cinema of her unconscious mind, but, by the time she woke up under Harden Tower, she'd gotten used to that. So they upped it a notch. They started fucking with the people she knew; taking turns talking through Clarissa, Jonas, Ren. When trying to shove the square peg of 97 voices through the round hole of one mouth didn't work, they changed their tactics again. This time, they showed her the deaths of her friends. Ren's broken body on the rocks of the Towhee Woods, the utter lack of light behind Clarissa's eyes as they hurled her off of each and every available ledge (the ghosts really seemed to like that trick). But even when they'd dangled all that death in front of Alex's face, all the pain of the people she cared most about, she hadn't broken. So they'd found a trash can for her, a little dark corner of the universe where they could lock her up and not have to worry about her until she went feral and started clawing at the walls to take their offer.
This was, Alex knew, probably not the first time she'd been here, on the other side of the Source. The spacetime continuum appeared to be a broken record around Edwards Island, and she highly doubted that anything she did would be a truly original move. It was kind of weird to notice, at first, but even outside of what she could officially declare a time loop, there was an air of deja vu about her actions. Now that this deja vu had evolved, past the point of inexplicable familiarity with events she'd never done before into full-blown "saying sentences Jonas had said a thousand times before he'd say it for the first time", there wasn't even really a point in arguing that she'd never done any of this before. And this part of the void isn't too unfamiliar.
"You're not somewhere I go every time," Alex murmured aloud, "but I know I've been here before." Addressing the void was strange, but hey, it's not like anyone was around to question what she'd just done. For the first time tonight, Alex was completely, utterly alone. She appreciated it. Ever since Michael had died, she'd taken up a habit of introspection; before she took an action, she'd meditate on what its outcome would be, and it wasn't abnormal to take nearly an hour alone in her room thinking about what she'd done throughout the day, how she'd handle the situations she was in better the next time around, and the like. On the island, there wasn't exactly time for that practice.
Seeing as no one was around to question it, she pondered on the questions of the day aloud. "What do they-" she caught herself: it was likely that the ghosts were actually watching her here, even if from far away. "What do you," she corrected, "want with my friends? Why not me? Why not... why not Nona?" Alex placed her hand on her chin, sitting down. "Yeah, come to think of it, Nona hasn't been caught up in any of this shit, has she? Like, obviously you have fucked with her, to some extent. The thing with Ren, and her grandpa, and whatnot, but she's getting special treatment. She hasn't been possessed even once, has she?" The void did not respond. Alex pursued this line of thought a while longer. What did she and Nona have in common? They were both... female, presumably? But that didn't check out, just look at Clarissa, the ghosts are even more infatuated with her than anyone else.
The problem, Alex decided, with this question was that she really has no idea who Nona is. Or what the ghosts are/want. Well, they want to steal the bodies of healthy teens and live out real lives, which is understandable, but at the same time not something she's really going to accommodate. Especially when those teens are Alex's best/only friends and the ghosts' method is closer to terrorism than a lively negotiation.
Based on Maggie Adler's notes, the ghosts have regressed back into childhood. Considering their general disregard for human life, the game of hangman, and the way they'd pushed Maggie to put the notes over the island like a scavenger hunt, it seems logical that this is all a game to them. Especially if Alex's theory about time looping around the whole night is right, there's no consequences to doing anything wrong for them. They know what they want, they think they have a way to get it, and they'll do whatever they have to do, however many times they have to do it. Which is why this is so confusing to her. If the night's a cycle and the ghosts are aware of it, then to get new bodies and live a life can't be their only goal. If it was, they would definitely have found out how to do it by now, right?
"Hell," she breathed. "I kind of wish I'd taken that smoke right about now. Standing here doing nothing isn't getting me anything. Maybe I can find a way out of here."
She took the radio from her pocket and fiddled with it. Somewhere in the 120 range, the radio shook with the telltale interference of the ghosts. She was getting somewhere with this. After a moment, the vibrations stopped, and the speaker just played static again. Upping it a little bit, the same event occurred at 124.3. This time, though, the radio didn't stop. The tremors got more and more violent, the speakers started screaming, and the radio floated out of her grasp. Alex leaped for it, but she was too late. The device exploded, just like a balloon. The pieces dropped to the ground, and Alex did with them.
"No..." she whispered. "No... no, no no." Her voice grew a bit louder with each word, a little more desperate. "No. No, no, no, no! No! No!" She crawled rapidly toward the pieces, trying against all logic to put them back together, as she had back as a kid, when the ocean had wrecked all her sand castles at the beach. It didn't work. All that happened from her scooping motions and jigsaw emulation was that the scattered scraps of charred metal were now a pile of scraps of charred metal. The reality of her situation hit her in an instant. She stood up, ramrod straight, pacing. The pacing didn't help, but it did give her legs something to do while her brain freaked the hell out about the fact that she was now stuck in an alternate reality with the ghosts that that alternate reality had driven insane. Alex didn't even really notice that she'd started crying until the tears hit her hands.
"Now... you... see..." they chimed, suddenly all around her. The voices of the sunken cried out. "This is our pain. This... is why we play."
Alex turned to find the source of the voice, but, when she noticed that the red eyes were all around her. "Why?" she shouted, her voice cracking under the pressure of her tears. "Why us? What do you want from us?"
"Silly girl," the voices menaced. "Leave... is... possible. We... will... leave. You... are our ves-sel."
The ghosts parted to make way for their favorite puppet, and Clarissa walked through the opening of the circle. The blackness of the void was suddenly replaced by a bluish-greenish light, and the scene of the USS Kanaloa played out overhead. A collision, a terrible wrenching noise, and a flash of light. Alex shielded her eyes, just like she'd been taught by her nuke-paranoid dad, as if that would really make a difference when the blast was close enough to rip your skin off, or separate your soul from your body. "So you can finally see it in all its glory," the ghosts said with Clarissa's voice. "It really is a glorious sight to behold."
"Why do you want me to see it so badly? This isn't the first time we've done this, I know that much."
"Ah, so she learns," the ghosts snickered menacingly.
Evidently, the ghosts in Clarissa's mouth had more tact, as they hushed the others. "This isn't the first time you've been here, no, but it is the first time you've gotten this far. Usually you tap out by this point, but hey, you don't have the radio anymore, so we guess that's not an option. You have to see this, you know. All of time is a cycle, this cycle is just coming back around."
"I... I don't understand," Alex said.
"It's okay. We don't expect you to, yet. You won't remember this in a few hours. It's hard to understand when you can't remember."
"Why would I forget this? I could never forget anything like this!"
"But you have, and you do, and you will. Do you remember the last time we talked here," Clarissa asked.
"No," Alex admitted. "Not exactly, but I remember that I've been in this place before!"
"That's better than we expected. Walk with me," Clarissa urged. Alex complied, and the edge that the ghosts had put in Clarissa's voice died off a bit. "Everything is a cycle. We've seen the universe's birth, life, and death one million times over. Humans are the same way. You are the same way."
"What do you mean," Alex asked. Clarissa gestured to the sky, and the darkness parted to make way for a scene to play out overhead. This time, it was not the explosion of the USS Kanaloa, but a different, much larger explosion. "What is it," Alex asked.
"Hush," Clarissa said, although it wasn't malicious, like Alex was so used to. "You'll see," she assured. Alex watched in silence, sitting down where the ground would be, if this weren't a void, and leaning back on her arms to more comfortably watch the scene play out. The explosion ceased after a long moment, although the heat left the particles glowing enough that it was easy to see rapid movement, and eventual condensation into clouds of dust. Alex realized after pockets of light started to form in the gas that she was watching the birth of the universe.
"I appreciate you speeding time up like this," the teal-haired girl commented.
"Of course," Clarissa purred. "We don't have time for you to watch it all like we did."
As the formation of stars and galaxies, as well as the ever-expanding pockets of darkness between them, continued, Alex asked incredulously, "You watched the lifespan of the universe in real time? But... you've only been out - well, dead, I guess - for, like, sixty or seventy years! How is that even possible?"
"Time... is... illusion," the ghosts responded, not bothering to talk through Clarissa this time. "Does not... work. In the void."
"This is the important part, so shut up," Clarissa said. The ghosts were happy enough to comply, so so was Alex. Above, the lively hues of all of creation began to mellow, from a bright blue to a soft yellow, to eventually just a dim red. And then, suddenly, one of the galaxies in the middle of the universe petered out of existence. The darkness that was left in its place began to spread like a hungry plague, mostly following a path away from the first galaxy to die off, but also popping up in smaller pockets in the further-out edges of the universe. As a general rule, the far rim stayed alive the longest, but even it eventually fell victim to the great darkness. After the last star had died, Alex, Clarissa, and the ghosts sat together in silence. "That's it for everything you can ever comprehend existing," Clarissa said lightly.
"Seriously? I always imagined it'd be, like, cooler," Alex admitted.
This seemed to anger the ghosts inhabiting the older girl. "Cooler? You just watched everything that ever lived die in front of your eyes, the hospitable universe be replaced by a cold, dark, uninhabitable wasteland, leaving every civilization to ever possibly exist floating in emptiness until they eventually starved, and your critique is that it's not cool enough?"
"Well," Alex responded, a little testily, "I suppose that's one way of putting it, sure. I just expected that the death of the universe would be more, like... climactic, you know? God, I feel dumb admitting this, and I swear to god that if Clarissa can actually hear this and give me shit about it later, I will hunt you down and end you, no matter what happens here, but... I kind of expected some giant showdown. The forces of good and evil, or whatever, god, satan, you know? That kind of thing. Something to give the whole mess that is life a purpose."
"It doesn't really matter if she can hear this," the ghosts said through Clarissa. "She'll never have the time to give you shit. Or, at least, you won't be there. Even if she does remember this, and even if there is an after to this night for the people who take part in it - we're not sure, by the way - you won't be there. We've dealt with your soul a great many times. We can tell that you are always the same you."
"Well, that sure is depressing."
"Do you want to know how we know?"
"Not really, but do I have a choice?"
"Ha, no."
The rest of the ghosts began to chime in to tell this story. Alex decided they had an odd, seemingly random sense of timing. "Adler... Maggie. You are so like her. Time... cycles. Regret. We can... smell... it on you... like a badge you try to hide. We are... familiar."
"Yes," Clarissa followed up. "We know regret well, and we know each individual's type of regret. No two souls regret quite the same. So we know it's still you, and not anyone else. But your regret is so familiar. Margaret regretted nearly the same way. How fitting, that the Adler dies and the Alex rises to replace her. Come to think of it, we sense another Anna, too."
"Anna? Anna Shea? Maggie's friend? Who got caught in the void with you," Alex asked.
"First of all, Anna was certainly a lot more than just Maggie's friend. Poor girls, they lived a couple of decades too early. Anna's still out there, somewhere in the darkness. She hasn't moved on yet. But yes, the other girl is Anna's parallel. It's not quite as strong as your closeness to Margaret, but it's definitely noticeable," Clarissa said.
"So... I'm like Maggie, and Nona's like Anna? And Maggie and Anna were in love, or something like that?"
The ghosts laughed, both the ones inside of Clarissa and the ones outside. It was dry, more a scoff than a real laugh. "Are certain feelings starting to make sense now?" Alex blushed. "Ah, so her hair is blue, but her face goes scarlet. Someone should write that into a poem. A shame it'll never happen though." Alex rolled her eyes, acting as if she was still there, but her mind was elsewhere, and the laughing sure as hell wasn't helping her think. She pulled her legs into her chest, threw her arms around them, and put her head deep into the crevice it'd created.
Suddenly, the darkness was gone, and the ghosts were too. Or, at least, pushed (a bit clumsily) to the side for the time being. Alex was back in the Adler house, although she knew it was really just a facsimile of the real thing. She sat in Maggie's old chair in the living room, and was a bit surprised when Clarissa pushed through the door with two teacups and a kettle.
"Relax, Alex, I'm real," Clarissa assured before Alex could even ask the question. "We've got a bit of time here. I'd offer you a smoke, but the ghosts got rid of them. Told me it was bad for me. A weird, selective sort of conscience, they are." She set down each of the cups, placing a teabag in both, and poured some of the steaming water. Her actions were a little hurried, as if there was a time constraint, but not too much. She picked her cup up and sipped tentatively at it, gesturing for Alex to do the same.
"Damn," Alex muttered. "This is really good. Since when were you a tea connoisseur?"
"Me? Never. Henry Griffin loved the stuff, though, so I guess this little house that I carved out of the void got that stamp on it. Fine by me, I don't mind the stuff when it's like this." The two sat in silence for a moment, and Clarissa was not the first to break it.
"So... sorry about getting you possessed."
Clarissa shrugged. "It's annoying, and I'll fight you over it if we ever get out of here, but right now there's not a whole lot that getting pissed does, constructively speaking." She took another sip from her tea. "And, I know, I know, 'since when did you need a constructive reason to get pissed, 'rissa?'. I know it's fucked up and all, but being pissy toward you... helped... after Michael died. And although I always knew it wasn't your fault, it was just kind of something I did. And I'm sorry about that."
"Hey," Alex said. "You never flat-out said it was my fault, which I appreciate. And... it's okay. When Mike died, it all kind of fell apart, you know? And we all did some crazy shit to try to get over it. My dad full-on deserted to try and escape the memory, my mom decided to marry some guy after her first interaction with him was getting mistaken as a friggin' Disneyland employee, or whatever Jonas said the story was, and I wasn't exactly fair to you, either." The two sat in silence for a long moment, neither really sure where to go from there. Alex decided to change the subject altogether, as, despite the re-conciliatory nature of the conversation, Mike was still a touchy topic that neither of them really wanted to broach. "You said that that guy who possessed you, Henry, or whatever his name was, imprinted his tea on you, or whatever, right? Can you tell me anything more about them? What they remember? What this all is?"
Clarissa sighed. "Only a little. This is all definitely a loop, and you never have managed to escape it. You might be able to eventually, but you haven't yet. And I also remember... so. You and Nona, huh?" Alex spat out her tea a little bit. Before she could respond, the redhead laughed. "Deny it if you want. It's fair to say that the ghosts might be wrong about it. Despite what they'd have you believe, they're far from omniscient. They're just aware of how many times, exactly, they've done this, and how you're predisposed to react, so they read you like a book. Ah, I'm getting sidetracked, though. If we-" she took another sip of her tea. "If you ever get out of here, with or without me, just know that you've got my official, one-hundred-percent blessing with Nona."
Alex avoided answering Clarissa's point, redirecting the conversation. "Why are you telling me this? How did you even get away from them? The ghosts, I mean."
Clarissa racked her brain for a long moment before tentatively responding. "I'm telling you this because... hm. Because the ghosts left the memory of this night a thousand times on me, and I know, because they know, that you never really remember this. But there's another one, another ghost, tonight, as opposed to all the other times, and it's, like... helping? I think? It wants you to get out of here. And I think, because this new ghost thinks, that this time is different from all the other times, and that maybe you'll remember this time next time." Alex was going to protest that that made absolutely no sense whatsoever, but Clarissa pushed up her sleeve to check her watch. "Ah!"
"What?"
"It's time for you to go. I won't remember this, but I sure hope that you do."
"It used to be a military base."
