Ah yes, the part of the story where the music picks up again with Echo by JubyPhonic thrown on repeat for this chapter.

And hoo boy you're all gonna be in for one hell of a feels ride tonight!

Cora and Emily and this plot belongs to me. Everything else belongs to the respective owners.

EDIT: Also, after reading this chapter, listen to Angels by Owl City and consider it a duet between Edd and Cora as well as an afterward straight after the end of these events.

Day Five of Five for the celebration break.

Even the simple task of using the iDateHistory app on figuring the order of the diary pages seems to be tainted, no, marinated, with the sickening feeling on what might be behind the secret door. Not even the attempts to focus on the crazy loops of Tord's old handwriting can distract me from the faint yet constant buzzing.

Three minutes later, I'm relieved to be back on the living room floor with the pages sorted out and bound together to be read as a proper book.

Unfortunately, my skill of reading Tord's ridiculous handwriting hasn't improved since I first discovered it a month and a day ago, so it's up to my Norweigan not-so-dead ancestor to crack the code of his written mess.

"Cora, are you sure about this? If I get the headaches again-"

"I'm here. We're gonna do this so we can refer to it when we're back in the research tomorrow. I have my notebook too, so you can pause and say it to me to clear your head while I write it down."

"Alright then. How much do you want me to read before we pause and you write?"

"Ehh, two-to-three sentences should be good enough."

"Cool. Let's get down to business."

10 seconds later, it's a one-way track to disaster.

Tord sucks a sharp breath with his teeth while clenching a fist. I take it as my first cue to start writing.

"You ready to-"

"Cora, please! I'm starting to understand things now! I'm on the brink of figuring it out! I can feel it!"

"But-"

"Not no-oow!"

I shake my head in disbelief, terror and despair, my heart starting to pound as Tord keeps on reading without a stop, the headaches becoming visibly worse and worse from every reaction he has to them.

I know that any attempts to stop him are impossible, but the sharp breathing turns into yells, and yells into screams and cries of pain.

I'm shivering and shaking so much from horror that tears start falling down my face and I desperately keep repeating "No, no, no! Tord! Stop, please!" over and over.

He's on his hands and knees as he desperately keeps on reading the pages, shivering and shaking more and more violently as his screams of pain become more and more of the sound of a wild animal being tortured.

I don't think I can take it anymore, but then he finally looks up at me and a petrified scream is stuck in my throat as I slowly start moving back, standing up as my hands push me up from the couch and my legs backing me closer to the wall.

His face is pixelating violently.

Small and huge chunks of his face are messed up as if they're a virus-encoded computer program, but I really do let out a scream when my eyes stare at the reflection in the giant mirror.

He's not pixelated, but mirror-Tord has visible tear streaks down his face, eyes full of pain and fear, lips moving as they try to scream "Help me" over and over. It's then when I finally find my voice in a yell.

"Tord, stop! Please! You're going too far!"

"No! Must…argh! Keep…on-oooooooow!"

"PLEASE!"

"Can't-…argh! Stop…no-ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooow!"

He turns his face back to the pages, his entire body starting to pixelate just as I think I can't take it anymore and that it can't get much more terrifying.

It gets a hundred times worse.

Emily bursts in the house, terrified look and tears on her face just as we hear the horrified screams of pain from the others, being dragged by some invisible virtual force and conjoin with Tord into one pixelated cluster.

"NO! NO! THIS CAN'T BE!"

Me and Em can only sob, shiver and clench onto each other as we stare petrified, switching between the pixelated cluster of screams and the crews crying and clutching their heads in pain in the mirror, begging for help. Through both of these, we can still see a flash of red still trying to stay near the diary pages.

"TORD, PLEASE! STOP!"

It's too late.

The pixelated mess vanishes in a flash of light before going out and the crews in the mirror start fading out like an echo, one by one.

Tord is last to go. He's managing to stand as he fades, but as he does so, my reflection changes.

My hoodie turns red, my hair a light shade of brown and my eyes brown-green.

Tord-me has a heavily tortured expression on their face, banging on their side of the mirror with a tightly-clenched fist, tears streaming from their eyes as I can manage the word 'basement' from their silent screams.

Basement?

They press their hand on their side, and I place mine over it as they slowly flicker away, leaving my normal reflection behind as Em and I lose the ability to use our voices.

I fall to my knees in disbelief, tear specks blurring up my glasses, numbness starting to set in as I puff for air.

We saw our ancestors suffer the worst pain they ever had for a long time while vanishing from us, all thanks to Tord reading the diary pages, who was being goaded on to do so…

By me.

Me!

ME!

The realisation hits me in the gut as I suck in a breath, similar to Tord when he started to read the pages in full.

"It's all my fault," I manage out in a broken whisper, suddenly feeling a thundering anger storm inside my chest as I stand. My hands begin to shake at the realisation, "It's all my fault!"

"Cor, no. It's-"

"MY FAULT! YOU DON'T GET IT EMILY!"

"CORA, I DO! I-"

"DON'T GET IT! I'M THE ONE WHO TOLD HIM TO READ THOSE PAGES THAT MADE THIS HAPPEN! I'M THE ONE WHO DID THIS!

"I'M THE ONE WHO DRAGGED EVERYONE INTO SEARCHING FOR THIS STUPID EAGLE'S CROSS OPERATION! I'M THE ONE WHO ENCOURAGED YOU WITH THOSE THEORIES! I'M THE ONE WHO GOT TOO CURIOUS! YOU DON'T GET IT, IT'S MY FAULT! IT'S MY FAULT! IT'S MY FAULT!"

I storm into the kitchen, snatching and shaking up three colas from the fridge before glaring viciously at the mirror with pure fury.

Pop. Hurl. Thunk. Fizz.

Pop. Hurl. Crack. Fizz.

Pop. Hurl. Crash. Fizz.

The anger fizzes away like the exploded cola cans and mirror shards all on the floor, the sugary liquid being absorbed into the carpet alongside my fury that coursed my bloodstream mere seconds ago.

I collapse back on my knees, hiccupping out sobs and puffing in air as I watch the tears from my face drip onto my jeans, my chest shallowly rising and falling.

"I…I'm so sorry…" I whisper, "Come back. Please."

I wipe the teardrops from my glasses before I ignore the pain and bleeding of the cut as I hold a mirror shard in my palm, staring at my puffy red eyes and my glistening cheeks.

Somehow finding comfort in this, I pick out the similar ancestral traits I have in my hairstyle: Edd's fringe, Matt's ends, two small back spikes from Tom and the curve-back at the front from Tord. My breathing becomes deeper and slows down a little.

"Cor…that was terrifying."

"I know."

"No, I meant the way you…you snapped. It was a lot like…your dad."

I hiccup with sobs again and my heart sinks into my stomach as fear and shock make goosebumps raise high on my skin.

"I-I-I-I'm sorry…I di-didn't know th-that I could b-be so…monstrous…"

"…It's alright, Cor. I'm here." She sits down next to me and squeezes me tight in a hug and I don't hesitate to accept it. "I forgive you. But we need to clear our heads and pull ourselves together now. The important thing here is that Tord must've said something to you before he vanished. Can you remember what it was?"

The buzzing from below, now louder than before, is what drowns out the white noise and the silence when my words fail me. Em has a grim and determined look of resolve on her face and I hate what's coming up next.

"…Looks like mirror cleanup's going to have to wait."

I manage to nod and let out a shaky breath.

"All or nothing now, Em."

The fact that Em and I have Tord's pistols in our pockets and torches in our hands does not stop me from adding a new event to the list of things I loathe in life: running down dark staircases behind secret doors while being shellshocked from a previous event.

Add a hastily bandaged ever-bleeding palm that keeps throbbing and pulsing with every movement to the mix and I'm well on the way to fainting from fear.

"Once we're done with what we have to do here," Em manages out, "It's gonna be over and done with for good. Well, well, well, we've found our sound source. Isn't that the size of America or what?"

I stare around in the room that is now dimly illuminated by our flashlights and an old yet massive supercomputer screen on the right-hand side, loud whirring filling the whole room with a sense of dreading fear, as if saying: You shouldn't have come here, now you're going to pay. I force my focus to the middle of the room and make out seven large block-like figures, like old 21st-Century tanning beds.

"More like a computer the size of America AND what…" I nod my head to the tanning-bed figures that seem to be…vibrating?

My mind, despite its freshly shaken state, starts to race through the mental notes of Eagle's Cross — and something begins to click into place.

Could this be...?

"I don't think we're ready to head to those things just yet…let's check if that computer has what we think it has."

Fighting my urges to either run out of this place screaming or be easily drawn to the tanning beds and look at what's inside them, I nod and we stand in front of the computer screen's login page, only for our hearts to sink deeper into our stomachs and slow to a freezing standstill.

There is not only one login username for my dad, but another four more for Thomas Ridgewell IV, Matthew Hargraves IV, Thorfrid Larsson IV and Johannes Brock.

A tiny squeak is all Em can make before she swallows.

"They…they were all in this? They all know about Eagle's Cross? Even my own dad…"

"It doesn't make any sense…" I manage, shaking my head in horror, but I try to pull myself together, wiping my face with a sleeve and inhaling a deep shaky breath. "We have to get into this system to kill this mystery for good and grab our boys back. But I don't think my hacking skills with 21st-Century videogames are gonna work."

As if on cue, a new link pops up underneath the Johannes Brock account.

CREATE NEW ACCOUNT

Em manages to find the dusty old mouse and clicks the link with a gulp.

PLEASE DISPENSE A SAMPLE OF BLOOD TO CREATE INSTANT ACCOUNT

"Are you kidding me?" She hisses as a vial pops out of the side of the screen and is held out in front of us, but I'm already ripping the bandage off my bleeding hand with my teeth when she grabs my wrist. "Cora, no! What if it gets infected?!"

"Emily, this is nothing. It's the 22nd Century. Medicine can cure this. And if it's a trap or whatnot, what other choice do we have to act on the spot?"

She releases her grip and I let the blood from my hand drip and flow into the vial until it is half-full, when the lid closes and the vial retracts back into the computer.

DNA DATA ANALYSED…27%

After carefully rewrapping the bandage on my hand, Em and I silently agree to see what's in those tanning beds as the computer loads. But as we shine our flashlights towards them, fear pricks goosebumps up on our skin as we quickly realise they aren't tanning beds.

For a start, they vibrate irregularly, which is something that machinery wouldn't do. They each have the Omega symbols on the bases and I find windows at the top half of the pods, sucking in a breath as I'm wiping the cool frost flakes with my bandaged hand.

"Tinted. Of damn course." I curse.

"What are those things?" Em asks as she tries to peer through the windows through her flashlight.

"I have no idea," I mutter, about to turn away when I hear something in the pod I'm close to. Em and I shine our lights on the window and somehow manage to see…

Someone writhing and screaming painfully inside.

"That explains the vibrating…"

They're struggling hard against something and I take a step back when I see tiny, thin wires plugged into their head, neck and arms, snaking around and holding them down from breaking free.

I'm disturbed already, but I gulp and manage to ask Em to pull up the brightness on her torch as much as possible.

"Brightest it can get, you?"

"Same." I curse, "Let's just shine it straight down at their face. And see if we can find out who's in there…"

Glaring the torches down as close to the top of the window as we can and peering through the tinted glass, we manage to make out slightly swept-to-the-side chocolate brown hair, a fringe exactly like mine.

They manage to open their eyes for a split second, but I'd recognise that dark brown anywhere.

"Oh no…" Em gulps.

Not even soundproof glass can deter us from recalling the voice.

It's Edd.

Edd is in the Cryo-Virt.

"That just blows the sentient AI theory out the window," I find myself muttering, "And everything else…"

Quickly flashing our lights over the other windows of the pods, all the sound we can make is a terrified squeak at the same thing that is happening to the rest our crews, Tord noticeably being the one who is thrashing in his prison the most violently, despite how little his Cryo-Virt moves. As much as we want to blast through the glass with our pistols, we're scared that we're just going to throw them into a more intensified version of their personal hells.

"Why?" Em chokes out, "Why would they do this?"

Cold fear makes my heart turn icy with determination and I grip her hand.

"We'll get them outta here, we'll get 'em outta here." I reassure myself more than Em.

DNA DATA ANALYSED…100%

MASTER KEY FOUND: CORALINE GOULD.

WELCOME TO YOUR CRYO-VIRT ACCOUNT, A BRANCH OF MCCOY INDUSTRIES.

Our jaws drop open as we wrench our heads to the screen, now showing my name in massive bold letters next to four paired images of DNA graphs. At a closer look, the DNA is shown to be matched with Edd's, Tom's, Matt's and Tord's.

"Master key?" We manage out, "McCoy?! Like the old judge for the Pepper case?!"

ALL ADMIN PROPERTIES ARE SHIFTED TO ACCOUNT: CORALINE GOULD

MEMORY WIPE OF PAST: 6 MONTHS ON PRISONERS IN PROGRESS. THREE MINUTES REMAINING BEFORE AUTO-CONFIRMATION AND ACTIVATION

WHAT DO YOU WISH TO DO?

The icy determination melts into a warm, stubbornly-increasing hope as we share a glance.

"Three minutes to till this this thing hits 100% and they'll never remember us…"

"All or nothing, Em." I snap, snatching the mouse and double-clicking the 'Awaken Customers' icon. "Customers my ass. Maybe we can cancel the memory wipe if we do this…"

PLEASE FILL OUT A FEW QUESTIONS BEFORE CONFIRMATION.

"You're kidding me!" Em hisses, but we have relief when we see that there are two sections and the questions are only short yes-or-no ones. "Remember those pop quizzes we killed off back in Year One?" She asks with a shivery sigh. I nod.

"Wasn't the record two and a half minutes? Let's go and beat it."

SECTION ONE: EJECTION

TIME LEFT ON MEMORY WIPE PREPARATION AND AUTO-CONFIRMATION: 2 MINUTES, 52 SECONDS

QUESTION ONE: DO YOU WISH THAT CUSTOMERS BE INSTANTLY AWOKEN UPON EJECTION?

Yes.

QUESTION TWO: DO YOU WISH TO HAVE CUSTOMERS BE EJECTED IN THEIR PHYSICAL REAL AGE OF: EARLY 100'S?

Em gags like a pug at the question and we share a disgusted look before answering.

No.

QUESTION THREE: DO YOU WISH TO HAVE CUSTOMERS BE EJECTED IN THEIR PHYSICAL AGE THEY FIRST ATTENDED CRYO-VIRT: EARLY 40'S?

I share a glance and we shake our heads at once. Too weird to have them at that age…

No.

QUESTION FOUR: DO YOU WISH TO HAVE CUSTOMERS BE EJECTED IN THE PHYSICAL AGE THEIR AVATARS ARE IN: EARLY 20'S?

"Thank God." We sigh in relief.

Yes.

QUESTION FIVE: DO YOU WISH FOR CUSTOMERS TO BE EJECTED FULLY CLOTHED IN THE ATTIRE THEY FIRST ATTENDED CRYO-VIRT?

"They're naked in those things?!"

Again with the gagging pug sounds, this time from yours truly.

"Ew! Why is that even a question…" I shake my head.

Yes.

SECTION ONE COMPLETE. LOADING ANSWERS TO ACTION CENTRE…

LOADING COMPLETE. 1 MINUTE, 58 SECONDS UNTIL AUTO-CONFRIMATION OF MEMORY WIPE.

"You're kidding." I hiss, "So flippin' slow, this is just cheating by teacher's standards!"

"It's a machine Cor, not a human. It can cheat all it wants to. We just have to be fast enough."

SECTION TWO: MEMORY

TIME LEFT ON MEMORY WIPE PREPARATION AND AUTO-CONFIRMATION: 1 MINUTE, 48 SECONDS

QUESTION ONE: DO YOU WISH TO OVERRRIDE THE ULTRA-LOCKED MEMORIES OF CUSTOMER: THORFRID LARSSON AND RESTORE THEM?

Yes.

QUESTION TWO: DO YOU WISH CUSTOMERS TO RETAIN MEMORIES DURING THEIR TIME IN CRYO-VIRT?

Yes.

QUESTION THREE: DO YOU WISH ALL CUSTOMERS TO HAVE MEMORY UNLOCKED AND RESTORED?

Yes.

SECTION TWO COMPLETE. LOADING ANSWERS TO ACTION CENTRE…

LOADING COMPLETE. 54 SECONDS UNTIL AUTO-CONFRIMATION OF MEMORY WIPE.

WARNING: THESE ACTIONS WILL OVERRIDE MEMORY WIPE AND MAY CAUSE COMPUTER VULNRABLE TO MALWARE AND/OR OVERHEAT.

CONTINUE AND CONFIRM?

Yes.

CANCELLING MEMORY WIPE…

"Come on…"

23 SECONDS UNTIL AUTO-CONFIRMATION OF MEMORY WIPE…

"Don't tell us we've failed it and didn't break our record now, you loser pile of ancient bricks!"

10 SECONDS UNTIL AUTO-CONFIRMATION OF MEMORY WIPE…

"Come on you stupid thing…"

5 SECONDS…

4 SECONDS…

3…

"NO!"

2…

"DON'T DO THIS NOW AFTER WE'VE COME SO FAR!"

1…

"IT'S ALL OR NOTHING, DON'T TELL US WE'VE GOT NOTHING!"

MEMORY WIPE CANCELLED

MEMORIES RESTORED

We scream.

BEGINNING EJECTION OF CUSTOMERS…THANK YOU FOR USING CRYO-VIRT!

One part being the excitement of saving our crews at last…

WARNING: MALWARE DETECTED! OVERHEAT INEVITABLE!

The other being that the computer starts to fire sparks.

For a moment, we're too stunned to move, but when the electricity starts to fly and almost hit us, we make no hesitation to leap over the now violently-shaking Cryo-Virts to escape to a safe distance away from the computer.

Unfortunately during the scuffle of parkouring over, I fall on my face a few times and I hear the sound of glass cracking through the chaos before realising that my eyesight is fractured and everything is in multiples.

"Em! Where are you? I can't see!"

She grabs my hand and yanks me down behind Edd's Cryo-Virt, the furthest away from the computer, cursing when she sees the damage done to my lenses.

"The frames are lopsided too. They were a gift from Gemma in Year Ten when we were broke, right?"

"Unfortunately."

WARNING: POSSIBILITY OF EXPLOSION DUE TO OVERHEAT.

"WHAT?! ARE YOU KIDDING ME RIGHT NOW?!"

I glance at my hoodie pocket and realise that I had a firearm the entire time.

Then, a crazy plan forms in my head.

Taking in a short breath for a loss of dignity, I drop the torch and fire the pistol at the corrupted machine, despite my cracked aim and vision.

"What are you doing Coraline?!" Em screams.

"If I can fire at the right point, I can stop the computer from blowing us all to bits! I can smack the circuit out so that it stops completely!"

"Are you crazy?! That thing's our only chance of getting these guys out of here, blowing to bits or not!"

"If this thing isn't deactivated in SOME way, that thing will kill us all! There's no chance of us getting any damn close to that thing, the only way possible to deactivate it is by bullet!"

All or nothing, Em. All or nothing.

With a gulp and a look that reveals her intentions to punch me in the face after, she raises her pistol and we fire away at the computer, with the massive hard drive now starting to alight.

Somehow, she's a much better shot than I am.

Bang! Crash!

Sparks and flames fly out at once and the hard drive is burning from the inside after the screen blows out and shatters. We run to stamp out the flames, but our hearts sink when we see the unnatural vibrations of the Cryo-Virts slowing down to nothing.

"No…"

The loud whirring that once came from the hard drive dies down; only white noise fills the room as everything darkens, leaving the light of our torches nearby Edd's Cryo-Virt.

For some reason, my finger reflexes on the trigger and I notice that Em's does too.

Click.

Click.

Empty.

The guns clatter on the floor as they fall out of our hands; the only thing we can do now is slump against the wall and catch our exhausted breath, inhaling the wisps of smoke coming from the hard drive.

I pull off my glasses and try to look at Em's now-blurred face.

"After all we've done…" she whispers hoarsely, "Did we win nothing? Was it even worth it?"

I lay an arm on her shoulder and pull her into a hug.

I'm too scared to admit it.

I don't want to.

"Did…did we, Cor? Did we just lose?"

She's shaking as I grip on her tighter, clenching my eyes shut. Our tiny, hiccupping sobs are all that seems to be heard through the white noise now. I feel her hot tears sink through my hoodie and shirt, onto my skin. My own tears seem to burn as they stream down my face, our bodies too tired and numb with exhaustion to move.

Please.

Come out.

I don't want you to die.

The white noise drowns out our weeping, all we can do is grip onto each other and share our grief as tears keep pouring down. Soon, I can no longer smell the smoke of the hard drive or hear the ringing of the white noise, but instead hear soft footprints.

We loosen each other out of the hug and open our eyes to look around for the source, but our flickering torchlight from the other side of the room only shows seven standing silhouettes. Some upright and alert, the others slumping a little as they use the Cryo-Virts as support.

"No way…" I hear Emily whisper, "It can't be…"

I don't believe it either, and my mind hits the next best logical thing as my heart starts to beat 88 miles an hour.

"Cora? Emily?"

One sounds like Uncle Matthew.

"Is that you?"

Uncle Thomas.

"Are you okay?"

Why, of all people, would my dad ask that?

One of the flashlights is shone in our direction, I squint and cover my eyes to avoid being blinded.

"Your glasses are broken." Dad remarks and I suck in a breath for the first angry blow, holding back as many tears as possible. I grip on Em's hand for support and she squeezes back.

"Hey, you okay?"

"Dad, leave me alone. Back off, all of you. Can't you see what I've just gone through?!"

"What are you talking about?"

My hands begin to shake violently and heat starts to rise in my chest. I let go of Em's hand, but I don't dare open my eyes to look at him.

"I've just witnessed the death of our ancestors you asshole, and you were the one who set them up with that fu-"

A figure seems to swoop me up into a hug and grips tightly onto me as I start to shiver and shake from fear, but the reassurance of a hand rubbing my spine is what stops my jittering anger inside, replacing it with a mixture of melancholy and relief as I hug back. To my side, I can feel Em's presence being swept up into a hug by someone else as her sobs are muffled in their clothes.

"Shhh, shh. It's okay. Coraline, listen to me. I don't know what you and Emily did back there, but you've done it and we're all so proud of you two. You've saved our lives. Your dad's not here, I am. Emily's here. You're here. We're all here."

Now Em and I are really sobbing as I bury myself into the slightly chilled hoodie as more bodies squeeze us all in as one plush, soft and slightly cold group hug as I manage to open my eyes and find my field of vision filled with a sort of green that I can barely make out in the flickering torchlight as we start to make our way up the stairs.

It's not my green.

It's not my green.

Thank God it's not my green.