Next thing she knew, Leah was at a playground. The air smelled fresh. The sun was shining. And the world just felt… nice.

She realized her view was much lower to the ground. Looking down at her wrist, an unfamiliar watch stared back. Interesting. Getting off the swing, she realized something odd.

It was like she was ten years old again.

Nearby, a fellow child was whistling and watering the flowers. It appeared to be a pre-war simulation, a peaceful scene of the world before the war. But the colors felt… off. Something wasn't right, but she just couldn't place it.

And yet, it felt like a life she almost knew.

Though similar to the books she used to read in her vault library, seeing it in person was a whole other story. People walked about in the open with thin fabrics and no weapons strapped to their backs. Well-fed, healthy, happy people.

It was like she was back in the vault. It was safe.

The buildings around her were grand and their appearance helped solidify what those burnt husks of skeletons out in the wasteland were supposed to look like. She felt like she was about to weep from how beautiful this world was.

"Oh! Someone new to play with! What good luck I have lately." A girl sounded behind her. She turned to the imp who grinned widely and had an almost mean glint in her eye. A dog let out a sharp bark, urgent and needy. "Quiet, Doc."

Dogs had always been more a threat than a companion to Leah and she eyed the creature warily. She felt naked without Charon at her back but she scanned her surroundings for a nearby weapon to grab. She almost forgot she was in a simulation and she had to shake her head to remember. None of this is real.

"What is this place?" She asked, keeping herself grounded. She was looking for her father.

"Why, I was just starting to get bored." The girl that smiled back at her drove the hairs on the back of her neck up, tingling her skull. There was something off about the eyes, as though they didn't belong to a face so small and innocent. "What luck I have lately."

"Have you seen my father?"

"Oh, that was your father?" The child laughed with cruelty. "Let's play a game. If you win, I'll tell you where he is."

It felt like a dream. A strange, beautiful, and dangerous dream.

(Necro)

Unlike the Ninth Circle, which kept Charon busy enough that his mind rarely wandered, here in that quiet vault he had nothing to do but to confront whatever his brain decided to torture him with.

At that moment, willing himself not to think about Leah's current state of the present, he was confronted with the past.

It's this fucking place. I do not like the looks of this place.

It was too familiar, like the remnants of a terrible crime he tried to forget.

He had begun to explore the vault, hoping something new and unfamiliar would free him from the memories.

"You have shown significant resistance. It is a testament to your genetics."

He stomped his feet, the sound of the soles of his boots on metal jarred him as he entered one random room. It was another server room. There had not been a kitchen or living quarters in sight. Strange.

"Unfortunately, it is too late to turn back now. You agreed to these tests until the end. We have come too close to stop now."

He growled to himself, shook his head, and stomped through to the next space. It looked important, a central desk with a computer terminal. He wasn't much into terminals but he tried to access it. The password protection made him grunt in surrender. He wasn't going to try to hack into it. That was Leah's thing.

Fuck. The wave of anxiety that tightened the chords in his back and neck had him run back to the simulator bay, peaking into her pod. She was still breathing. Eyes blinked as they stared into the void of the screen. He clenched his fist and shut his eyes, hating this powerless feeling.

"You'll be happy to know this is your final test. We will be exposing you to concentrated levels of ionizing radiation, to observe the effects of the virus. From the past experiments, you've shown promise of survival."

"Fuck, come back, Leah. Please." He pressed his hand to the glass, knowing she couldn't hear him.

(Necro)

The child was evil.

This simulation, though not physical, felt real enough.

Leah stared down at the oozing blood pouring down her arm. She had taken a knife in one of the kitchens to cut into herself, to determine if Old Lady Dithers spoke a modicum of truth.

The pain was real. The blood felt real. She even put the dark liquid to her lips and tasted the copper. It tasted real.

It was safe for her to conclude that if she was experiencing such real effects, so were the other residents of this simulation. And that disturbed her as she remembered the duration of time the residents lived inside Tranquility.

Over 200 years, forced to be puppets for a sadistic evil bastard.

She already had an inkling of what went wrong. It always started with Over and ended with fucking seer. Power, in any form, corrupts absolutely. In a scenario where they achieved godhood, it was no surprise that they decided to go straight to dominance games. Predictable.

So she needed to get to work. To save the others.

The failsafe, Lady Dithers ranted of, had been relatively easy to trigger. She wasn't a fan of mass euthanasia but the alternative had taken its course. Two centuries is plenty of time to suffer this existence. And she allowed the invasion to occur.

As the neighborhood was gunned down, she went back to the swings to face Betty-Braun.

"No!" A male voice screamed, distorted by static and the simulation glitched briefly. "Do you realize what you have done?"

A door had materialized, the method of escape within arm's reach.

"Enough, Braun. You've had your fun. Now, it's time to collect. Where. Is. My father?" She grabbed the fellow girl by the collar, pulling at one of her pigtails, and pulled as hard as she could.

Braun screamed and the simulation distorted again, as though they were underwater. "You idiot. The dog! This whole time, you fool!"

She pushed the kid down to the ground, turned to the panting animal. The intelligence was unmistaken, the ears slumped with disappointment. "Don't give me that," she calmly scolded him. "I'm not the one that got trapped in here." She turned to Braun one final time. "Welcome to hell, Betty. Burn in it."