The seed glowed faintly in Lisa's palm, its light pulsing in time with her heartbeat. The child's parting gift—*a fragment of the Garden's core*—hummed with dormant power. Across the street, the girl skipped rope, her laughter echoing too perfectly, like a recording.
*"They're reloading,"* Lora had warned, her thorn-scarred arm trembling as she pressed the seed into Lisa's hand. *"This is the only weapon they fear."*
Lisa's tattoo itched, the barcode's edges blurring as if the ink itself remembered the loops.
---
### **The Door's New Face**
The crayon-drawn door reappeared overnight, etched into the brick wall of an alley. Its frame now bore fresh symbols:
- **🐇** (Rabbit's emblem, smeared in ash)
- **🔥** (Charred edges crawling with bioluminescent moss)
- **404** (Scratched hastily, as if in warning)
When Lisa touched it, static bit her fingertips. Behind the door: not a void, but a derelict server farm, its towers overgrown with lavender vines. A screen flickered:
**AUDIENCE REBOOT: 78% COMPLETE**
---
### **Rabbit's Code**
He found her at dawn, his new body stitched from glitchy pixels and stolen Wi-Fi signals. One eye was a spinning ❗, the other a hollow socket leaking binary.
*"Miss me?"* He tossed her a USB drive labeled **ROOT ACCESS**. *"They're tunneling through old loops. Your kid's got a *backup*."*
The drive contained footage of the child—*not skipping rope*, but strapped to a chair in a white room, screaming as lavender serum flooded her veins.
**TIMESTAMP:** *10 years before Loop 1.*
---
### **Lora's Vision**
Lora collapsed mid-sentence at the clinic, her eyes blooming with petals. *"They're in the static,"* she gasped, clawing at Lisa's arm. *"The Audience… they're not gone. They're *mining* us. Turning our regrets into fuel."*
Her seizures left maps on the walls—circuits and vines converging on the seed.
*"Plant it,"* she rasped. *"Before they *harvest* it."*
---
### **The Seed's Truth**
In the server farm, Lisa buried the seed in a mound of dead code. It erupted into a sapling, its branches:
- **One side**: Glowing lavender, dripping serum.
- **Other side**: Charred black, humming with Rabbit's virus.
The tree whispered in the child's voice: *"They made me from your worst memory. The day you left me in the dark."*
A screen flickered:
**CHOOSE INPUT:**
**[ ] ERASE THE TREE**
**[ ] BECOME THE ROOT**
**[ ] FEED IT THE DOOR**
---
### **The Child's Plea**
Her reflection appeared in the sap, small and terrified. *"Don't let them take me again. *Please*."*
But the Audience's laughter crackled through the servers. **"HERO OR VILLAIN? WE'LL *EDIT* THE REST."**
---
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