Level Three: Necrophobia

"I'm so happy it's not deep enough I'd need to give you stitches, but I'm so sorry, Ell," Blake lightly grazed my chin with the tip of his finger, forcing me to look upward, "like hella sorry," he said for emphasis, nearing in a bit closer. "Like super duper fricking sorry."

"Nerd. You're acting like you can't say it enough. I'm alive, I can function fine, and if you're referring to being able to do stitches if I did need them, I think I'm safe." I giggled.

It was to blanket the fact that the same person who had a knife at my throat could actually be this human in front of me, and I'll probably have to go through this shock every time it'll happen from here on. To steady that a little, questioning it for a better understanding seemed like the good path to take before my assumptions drove me wild. Being the only one that kept my injuries was already enough to make me insane, so it'd be best we didn't add to that, I'd guess.

"But I do wonder though," I trailed off. When I began, o started to change my mind. Whether this was the right thing to do or the the wrong thing, I almost felt guilty to want to ask when it did come out of my mouth, because it's as if the more I knew the more that went wrong. I had right to know everything that was going on in my own head, but was it a freedom worthy of taking advantage of? That, I didn't know, and I've never felt to know so little ever before. That says a lot too, because I'm not all that intelligent.

"What's that like?" I asked anyway, "you have memories of everything you do, including when you're about to take someone's life if you got the chance, but this is the real person you are that I know you as. You change fully into someone I don't know anymore. A full 360."

"That part of this task I genuinely despise. There's no word in any language that can express how much I hate it," he held his breath in his cheeks, passing it side to side like listerine being gurgled. "I remember everything, but that part of me that detects right and wrong changes. I have a new ambition, this new mission that strikes me, and I can't change it. This me has no control. The motives in that version of me make a new person. A serial killer if it wanted to be."

"Speaking of having no control," Shyrene said out of nowhere, sitting between the group we have formed in the middle of the floor, "How did you pass the last level? We were in craziness until the very last second, and we didn't have time to recover from that mode. You disappear into that room we couldn't get into and moments later the level is passed."

"I just, you know—," my fingers twirled in a circular motion, an awkward gesture, as I tried to come up with a description that wouldn't make her go nuts for the logic she presented to me before. "I came to terms with things."

Camdyn opened his mouth to speak, that I caught out of my side vision. I sent him a nudge to warn him not to say anything stupid when what happened between us meant nothing, but was for the levels sake. and after feeling that, his mouth shut again. Shyrene raised an eyebrow. That look of hers was becoming signature of her, that I wouldn't be shook to see again in the future. With Camdyn quiet, Shyrene took that empty slot to speak herself. "You came to term to things? I'm glad, but coming to terms with things hasn't ever been considered to be enough to pass a level. What are you? Some master hacker?"

"I must be," I shrugged.

She rolled her eyes. "Whatever, Ellie. You speak like you are a robot that can literally glitch. There's no hack to the human brain. It's the most advanced technology. All humans have been able to do is use it to copy and paste it into a rip-off version, that appears as something robotic. The brain is creation, not invention."

"I don't know what you want me to say, Shyrene."

"Alright, don't say anything then," She seemed angry but she didn't want it to show, and she was swallowing it back down into her body to be bottled there. "Just be aware that because we weren't recovered at the end of the last level, the next one isn't going to be very nice to you or Camdyn."

My saliva felt like a rock down my throat, and the sound of that scratchy voice was a much bigger slap in the face. "Level three, necrophobia, fear of death, start." It said, and suddenly I wished that I didn't take on the power of the sun, but that I could've been someone that could stop time, or at least skip the bad parts. Nothing sounded right about the challenge we had to take on.

NECROPHOBIA FOUND! LOADING GAME PLANS

PLEASE WAIT, COURSE WILL BEGIN SHORTLY

LEVEL LOADED 100%

"Who doesn't fear death? Isn't that natural? It's like an instinct. We eat to survive, sleep to survive, develop passion to survive. Our fear for death gives us the chance to make us who we are," I rambled on. Each step we made, there was a gradual adjustment to the last level, and from the bottom, up, we watched a house be built before our eyes in under ten seconds, as if constructed by God's hand himself, while we stood inside of it.

"Some people sincerely don't. Just because you don't kill yourself doesn't mean you fear death. It just means that a person isn't afraid of when life is supposed to end, or if someone wants to end them sooner. Maybe they think that the emptiness it brings is the rest they need, or that they'll go to a better place." Blake answered without hesitation. It's as if he thought about the topic before, deeply, and not only at the surface.

"I do fear it, though, I'm with you on that. I don't want to die. That's why I took this chance to live in your head. It's the last resort, but I also think that even if I do die, that there will be something more. This life was tampered with by the Devil, and everything got screwed up. Certain good things here and there were left behind, some pretty places and peaceful environments, but one day the highest power will come by and save us to live a real perfect life."

"Deep." Camdyn said, but by how he said it, it's like he wasn't impressed, or likely not even listening. His speed increased so much that he was walking at least a foot ahead of us, to the opposite side of the house that was nearing being fully built. He explored the household, skimming his fingers on the marble counters, and studying the pressure of the water from the faucet. It didn't make sense to me right away.

"But let's save your beliefs for later, deal?" He gulped, before he could form more to say. "This is my house, or was, when my mom first died and my dad and I moved back to his hometown in the Philippines from Japan until I moved out years later." He shut his eyes tightly, wishing the memory could go away. Like Shyrene told us about a bit ago, I was getting flashes of his thoughts in my head, as if I was the owner of them. He can't keep anything from me while he's here.

"So this level is—," we said, our words matched up that proved it, and when we noticed we didn't let ourselves finish. We both knew, and by now Shyrene and Blake knew too, that this level was targeting him. Again.

The idea made him pale in the face, like he's just seen a ghost, and for a moment I felt pity for him to have to go through it twice, but I couldn't for long. Unexpectedly, I ended up having to worry about myself first because the pain from my level returned in my temples. I was back to the floor like where I ended up before. In this world in my brain, I was meant to make home on the ground.

Using my last bit of strength to focus elsewhere, I found him still standing there, like a statue, appearing as life had been sucked out of him.

Apparently that's exactly what happened.

Something was different. I couldn't tell what, but something was. As I searched my surroundings, there wasn't a trace of any detail out of the ordinary. I was in the closest city from my village, passing by a little dessert shop that I never entered before, but that I went by all the time I somehow felt familiar with it.

Unlike usual, I was carrying this heavy burden on my back. My feet seemed to drag along like they weren't part of my body, and I didn't know if my face was moist in sweat or in tears. Or both. Because I didn't understand, I couldn't genuinely, deep down in my heart, feel the pain of the scenario. I just had the feeling I was supposed to be.

"Don't be irrational, Ell. Those memories aren't yours." Shyrene hollered, swinging my body so that it wouldn't keep still. It brought me back to some sort of awareness of this world, and had awaken me out of my thoughts when I didn't know I had fallen asleep. "If you tweak it, it can change a lot that you couldn't even guess, including drastic things like the members of your family, and you'll be the only one aware of the change. Live the way it's guiding you, don't overdo anything, and try to feel nothing since Camdyn already had emotions reserved here, so only feel his emotions. This is important because if Blake and I get out of line, and we will because of those reserved feelings already existing, you and Cams can't help each other. These levels affect both of you at the same time."

Blinking and squinting to adjust to seeing her face in the middle of a house that was somehow getting more familiar looking, I still couldn't bring myself to understand what kind of concept she could possibly be referring to. Camdyn was locked in his position, like he was too stunned to make any movements, too out there to respond to the mention of his name.

I laughed, but from how much of a daze I was in, it came out drunken, like I was fresh from a party. "What do you mean it affects both of—."

I held my hands out in front of me — though they didn't look like mine — realizing the mess they were covered in; vanilla ice cream and the dust of the nearby road, the weirdest combination I can fathom.

It reminded me of what I've once heard from Camdyn about his story of when he first got to the Philippines, and his father and him couldn't stand to be around each other because his mom who passed, was the glue that kept their family together. He had barely any pesos that day but he took off running out of the house, and when he scrounged together enough for a cone, he dropped it in the middle of the street because of a car rushing by. With as depressed as he'd been, he was too careless to not pick it up off the ground and eat it anyway.

I'll never forget that. It's too disgusting to forget.

I continued forward, heading wherever my legs would decide to carry me, when I got a glance of myself in the nearby window. To confirm it to myself, I had to touch the short locks that had length to the end of my neck, the thicker brows, and the luscious lips, that I wasn't me, as in the Ellie Reyes I've known myself to be. Not right now, at least.

Right now I am Camdyn Sacar.

That made the undeniable pain floating around understandable and a clear given, really, but it showed me how out of my perspective Camdyn's life has been all these years. I knew a lot of what he's had to go through, but it didn't mean I understood it. Here, I had to. I had to feel every ounce of his pain.

Walking on forward, a literal ball of grief, a sprinkle began to fall from the sky. It was light, but almost more irritating than if it came down as all or nothing. I took cover beneath a store front, taking the unconvinced moment as a chance to get a hold of myself, or to try to. As I did, there was a loud, yet young-like meow of a kitten nearby, clearly helpless and shivering as it got increasingly chillier. I felt for it automatically, as if instructed to, and on top of all the depression, betrayal, guilt, and pain that I felt, I was feeling worry suddenly too.

I opened my eyes, refusing to go on with the rest that was forcing its way into my throat. I couldn't live with this mourning that was eating up my organs, and yet he's made it all these years. I felt the need to beg to whatever could hear me. Whoever. "What the heck did you go through that day, Cams? I can feel things continue to go downwards. Please tell me that's the end. Please tell me that this hurt doesn't get worse."

"I'm sorry, Mars. It's probably barely getting started. Give me my mind back, I'm sure you can, and I'll take it on myself. It gets a lot worse." Camdyn apologized, coming back to his body when I came back to mine. Going into his head meant taking away his ability to do anything, and fully returning back to my present self meant him getting ahold of his own.

"I'm not letting you go through that again. No living thing deserves this kind of aching once, but definitely not twice."

"I know this isn't the time to argue with you, so if you're not going to hand it back, then let me have your mind, Mars," Camdyn said, without having to think about it. He had such an easy time to accept the truth. I envied that. "I don't get this world, but I do know that if you're really going to take that on, you'll be too preoccupied to use your own abilities in your own body. Let me borrow your brain. It's a compromise. I'll protect you here by the tactics you'd use if you're gonna go into my past."

I had to agree. Time was limited and choice was too.

"Okay." I said, and with that permission, I went not only back into his mind, but into his body too, leaving my own to be filled. It's true what Shyrene said; that I can read his mind and that he can't read mine, but like the general rule of anything, this is my subconscious. I make the decisions.

The fate of us is up to me.