3. What Do You Mean... Maybe I'll Regenerate?
Chapter 3: Ava Enters Sen Academy
Previously… Ava entered Senium to earn money for her dying brother, but woke up somewhere she wasn’t supposed to be. Rescued by an AI Guide named Rosie, she learned she’s apparently a student at Sen Academy and no matter how hard she tries, she can’t wake up.
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NEW MESSAGE:
[ROSIE.AI | 09-21 09:13 PM] Survival Guide Rule 1 (since you have not yet read my most generous present): There’s no secret door, escape hatch, or dramatic rescue coming. The only way out is through, Darling Dud. xx
A glowing white line of text “NEW MESSAGE” shimmers across my wrist like a tattoo. I touch it with one finger. Rosie’s full holographic note blooms in the air above my arm, obnoxiously cheerful.
The only way out is through.
Through what exactly—a cave of nightmares?
A chill slides down my spine. A towering rock face looms ahead, dark and slick like a waiting monster. Metal staples jut from the stone, pinning the mountain together. Halfway up, the rock turns unnaturally smooth. And far above, a single scrap of light. A possible exit.
Illuminating this cavernous horror show is a massive, blinking red countdown, the numbers big enough to crush me if they fell. So, that’s comforting.
This isn’t what a school looks like. There are no creaky blue desks, chipped posters, or gum-stuck floors like those of West Orange High. This place is dark. Like my life’s been deleted and replaced with a nightmare beta test.
A woman glides toward me, appearing out of nowhere. With her perfectly curled bob and long, slender frame, she reminds me of a walking Q-tip. But she’s smiling at me, which I take as a good sign.
I let out a small, nervous laugh. I’m going to have to tell this smiling stranger that I actually don’t want anything to do with this death-trap looking school.
“You must be Ava Lumen,” she says, her voice surprisingly high-pitched. “I’m Elia Custos, Head Guardian here at Sen Academy.”
She knows my name too, like she’s been expecting me. Maybe she knows how I got sent here. Maybe she can help me get out.
“Arrivals this late in the school year are highly irregular. You must know someone very important.” Her tone makes it sound more like suspicion than admiration.
“I don’t.” I bite my lip. Here goes nothing. “This is all a big mistake.”
Custos’s voice carries the weight of practiced skepticism. “A mistake?”
I eye her tidy demeanor. This lady screams Type A personality. She’ll fix this. She seems like the kind of person who meticulously plucks her eyebrows in real life, leaving no straggler behind. Surely she’ll see that I too don’t belong here.
“I think there’s some error with my implant. I’m supposed to be starting the new Workforce Program, but when I entered Senium, something strange happened. I got an error message and I ended up on the ferry with Rosie.”
Custos exhales slowly, the way adults do when they’re trying not to roll their eyes. “It’s completely normal to feel disoriented upon arrival. You’ve just been granted access to something much bigger than yourself. Every hero hesitates when the call comes.”
Why doesn’t anyone understand? I’m not disoriented or getting cold feet, I literally am in the wrong place.
I try again. “This is important. My brother’s in the hospital. My job in the Workforce Program is going to help him. I agreed to the implant for the paycheck. I need that job.”
Custos looks vaguely bored. “I see. Unfortunately, Sen Academy is a highly classified Senium institution. Once you’re here, you can’t simply leave. Only Levi Sen can authorize a transfer.”
“Is Levi Sen around? Maybe I can talk to him?”
My voice sounds pleading and pathetic, but I don’t care. The longer this takes, the longer Leo will go without the funding for the treatment he needs.
She laughs. LAUGHS. Like throws-back-her-head and laughs out loud.
“Mr. Sen is inaccessible.”
My stomach sinks. “So, I’m stuck here?”
“Until your sleep cycle ends. Eight hours, give or take. When you wake, you can file a formal report with Cloudkind and request a transfer. I should warn you, though, it’s never been done. They may decide to deactivate your implant instead.”
Deactivate my implant? I can’t do that to Leo, no matter how much I might want to get this glitchy tech out of my head. I need to find a way back into the Workforce Program.
But it looks like I’m trapped here for an entire night of sleep before this mistake can be fixed.
“Now,” she says, pivoting toward the cliff wall, “you’ll complete the Entrance Ascent.” She gestures toward the imposing rock face. “All students must complete it. Alone.”
She’s grinning at me with giddiness, like she just handed me a ticket to a popular thrill ride. Yeah, sure. Just climb the rock wall of death to the training academy I didn’t sign up for. That sounds like a great use of my time.
“Oh, fun,” I say, my voice flat. “But I really don’t think I should.”
She shrugs. “Then you may wait out the sleep cycle in this chamber. Your choice.”
I turn around to where the ferry was, where the cave opening was, but nope. Both are gone. So much for Rosie’s cute little message. The only way out isn’t through, it’s apparently up.
I turn back to face Guardian Custos, hoping to convince her to at least send a message to my dad, but she too has vanished.
“This is so stupid,” I mutter, glaring at the cliff.
I whisper a curse, gazing up at the impossible climb. How is anyone supposed to do that?
My breath fogs in the air and I realize the cave is freezing, like someone just turned the temperature gauge down to zero. That’s when I hear the voices coming from the rock.
One by one, faces peer out from jagged crevices and shadowy openings. Students, I assume. Watching from above. Their eyes gleam, hungry for spectacle.
“This should be good,” one boy snickers, his voice echoing.
Another laughs.
I search desperately for one kind face in the crowd. Someone who might give me a nod of encouragement. But every gaze is sharp with ridicule. They want me to fail.
I stare at the greasy metal rungs. My breath comes too fast, too loud. The cliff is sheer, endless, lethal. My brain shrieks: I can’t do this. And my body already believes it. I wipe the excess sweat from my hands onto my black slacks.
But if I stay here, I’m stuck. Eight hours in this freezing cavern. Alone, yet gawked at by tens of sneering faces. While Leo lies in a hospital bed waiting for a paycheck I may never earn.
Fuming, I set down the survival guide and grab the first rung.
It’s slick as oil, but I manage to pull myself up and find a foothold in the rock. My foot slips, my knee scrapes hard against stone. Laughter erupts from above. My muscles are already trembling, my stomach a lead weight of panic, but I force myself higher.
Echoes of my own rigid breath push me along as I slowly inch my way up. It’s surprisingly realistic, this climb. My arms already ache. My legs quaver.
I can’t slip. I don’t want to fall down to my simulated death only to discover that it caused me to die in reality. What if I don’t get extra lives? What if I’m the one who doesn’t regenerate?
The voices grow louder and meaner.
Students lean out of their openings, shadows with teeth. One shines a strobe of bright light down at my eyes until spots dance in my vision. I blink furiously, fighting vertigo. The laughter that follows scrapes down my spine.
“Don’t look down,” someone sings.
Another pelts me with rocks that ping against the rungs. Sharp edges slice across my knuckles. More cheers.
“She’s already shaking!” another hollers.
Assholes. What is this, some sort of messed-up hazing ritual? I’m not going to feed into this lunacy. I tune them out as I continue on. If all those jerks made it, who’s to say I can’t as well?
Every sound ricochets inside me, louder than the pounding of my heart. My throat tightens, my breath too short, too fast.
There’s no mercy in the faces looking down at me, no friendly witness. Just a hundred bright eyes, delighted to watch me break.
Halfway up, I look down. Bad idea. I’m instantly dizzy. The cavern floor is way too far. I look up. Worse idea. The rest of the rungs are gone.
“Fall! Fall! Fall!” they chant, throwing more light, more rocks, as if the spectacle isn’t thrilling enough without my suffering in stereo.
I press my forehead against the stone, the nausea sharp, my arm quaking. My vision flickers from the blinding flashes. My hands are cut from the rocks, my grip is failing, and still they taunt, raining distraction and cruelty down.
I shouldn’t have started this climb. I should have just sat on the cold cave floor and shivered for eight hours. Would have been better than dying this way.
Leo’s face flickers in my mind—the beeping machines, the sharp antiseptic sting, Leo cracking dumb jokes through a haze of meds—those memories crowd me, press into my chest as if the cliff itself wants me to remember why I can’t fall. He wouldn’t stop here. And he wouldn’t let me.
I gaze up at the remainder of the climb. It’s impossible. There are no more rungs, just wet rock that juts out overhead. I’d have to defy gravity and hang upside down to climb over the edge.
“She’s never going to get it.”
“Fall already!” someone shouts.
I ignore them and try to reposition my grip. Every moment sends fresh fire up my arms and my muscles scream, but I cling to the wall anyway. I can’t die now.
Leo would think this is all some great adventure game. Entering a cave that looks like Batman’s hideout. Being tasked to climb some impossible cliff just to get inside. Use magic to conjure a dangling rope ladder.
And then, as if the cliff hears my thoughts, something shifts.
The exact thing I imagine unfurls from over the edge—a dangling rope ladder. I stare at it behind me, almost laughing.
“Who bet a creation?” someone shouts from above.
“Useless,” hisses another.
And it is useless because the ladder hangs too far away for me to reach, about five feet behind me. I’d have to jump for it and not only hope to catch it mid-air but be light enough that the ladder I manifested with my mind won’t snap on me and send me plummeting. With a shaky hand gripping the wall, I ready myself.
“...Okay. Here goes nothing.”
A glass-shattering scream escapes my lips as I leap through the air and windmill my arms, reaching and clawing for the hanging ropes like a desperate cat. But it swings away from my grasp. I snatch only empty air as I freefall.
I shriek, shrill and sharp. The world goes quiet.
In that endless second I realize I was never supposed to make it, because I was never supposed to be here.
I watch the rope ladder swinging, already shrinking as I plunge.
Down.
All the way down to my death.
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What do you think happens when you die in Sen Academy? 👀
So these kids are in an academy, they’re allowed to murder each other, and there are no adults or actual humans to keep order. What a nightmare. Will the story answer why this is legal?
Great cliffhanger! Looking forward to reading what happens next 😃