[COLOR=GRAY][CENTER][COLOR=8A9A5B][sup]____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________[/sup][/COLOR][url=https://open.spotify.com/track/1Cj2vqUwlJVG27gJrun92y?si=2e274cdb63e745c2][img]https://i.imgur.com/defFT2x.jpeg[/img][/url][/CENTER][indent][sub][COLOR=8A9A5B][B]Location:[/B][/COLOR] [I]Southern Plateau[/I] - [I]Pacific Royal Campus[/I][/sub][sup][right][COLOR=8A9A5B][b]Hope in Hell #2.014:[/b][/COLOR] [I]A Poor Imitation[/I][/right][/sup][/indent][COLOR=8A9A5B][SUP][sub]_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________[/sub][/SUP][/COLOR][indent][sub][color=8A9A5B][B]Interaction(s):[/B][/COLOR][I]Interactions: Lorcán- [@Lord Wraith]; Aurora- [@Melissa][/I][/sub][SUP][RIGHT][COLOR=8A9A5B][b]Previously:[/b][/COLOR][COLOR=GRAY][I]From Dawn to Dystopia[/I][/color][/right][/SUP][/indent] 

[i][color=#8a9a5b]Calliope…there’s two of her? [/color][/i]

Turning her head, Harper gazed at the figure sprawled on the ground, activating her ability just to be sure of what she was seeing. 

It was a jarring sight.

The usually impeccable and composed figure she knew to be Calliope…now a dishevelled heap of defeat. This was the woman who, just yesterday, had exuded confidence and defiance, ready to stand up to any formidable obstacle threatening her ambitions. The brunette blinked hard, as if to reset the surreal image, and shifted her focus across the room. There they were, Calliope and Katja, standing side by side, their appearances mirroring the ones she knew so closely it was uncanny.

But upon closer inspection, Harper noticed the subtle discrepancies—the eerily flawless rendering of their faces, the makeup and the grease paint that, ironically, screamed for the very attention Calliope was being mocked for.  It was as if the original was a masterpiece of art, while the other was a forgery lacking the essence that made the original so captivating, in the first place. Something vital was missing, an intangible quality that left the images feeling… diminished. But what was it? 

Her mind did not dwell on the question for long as she allowed her eyes to revert to normal, however. Because it didn’t matter. 

They were all stuck here. They were all going to die here. And it was her fault.
 
The darkness enveloped her then, suffocating her, a tangible entity that seemed to feast on her distress, wrapping around her like a shroud. Amid this oppressive blackness, Harper felt a sudden jolt—a primal surge of fear that electrified her from head to toe. The environment around her was alive with sounds that were both alien and terrifying. A grating noise, like the scraping of metal on stone, reverberated through the void, setting her teeth on edge. More disturbing, however, was the low, incessant buzzing that permeated the air—a sound that seemed to herald a change, a shift in the very fabric of the simulation they were currently ensnared in. 

Then, as abruptly as it had vanished, light returned. The flickering illumination was hesitant at first, as if unsure of its place in this domain of horror and shadows. But it grew stronger, casting light upon the chaos that had befallen the Blackjack team. 

They were scattered now. 

It was the first detail Harper’s eyes took in as they quickly adjusted to the light. She was not alone, however; Lorcán and Aurora were with her, their presence a small comfort in the vast uncertainty. They found themselves in a classroom—a space that was both familiar in its layout and alien in its details. The room’s door was sealed, a blast door that promised protection and yet also served as a barrier to their freedom.

The classroom was eerily sterile, with polished hardwood floors and rows of empty desks neatly arranged in perfect symmetry. At the front of the room, a chalkboard covered in nonsensical writing loomed, its surface still pristine and untouched. On either side of the room, floor-to-ceiling windows with thick panes of glass displayed the haunting blackness of the ocean outside. The ghostly glow of the underwater lights revealed schools of fish swimming obliviously by, their silhouettes casting eerie shadows against the glass.

The scene brought back memories of everything Haven had previously explained to Harper. The Foundation was situated deep within the ocean, which explained their current predicament of being confined beneath the immense body of water. 

The room was suddenly filled with the jarring sound of fracturing glass then, a sinister crack that raced across the wall, cleaving the thick pane with terrifying precision. The noise was a sharp, dreadful harbinger, a sound that seemed to resonate with the finality of their predicament, sending more icy tendrils of fear spiralling down Harper’s spine. In the corner, a red beacon burst to life, pulsing with an urgent, crimson light that washed over their faces in silent alarm, painting the entire scene with a dire urgency.

Yet, amidst the chaos, Harper’s gaze remained transfixed on the expanding fissure. The crack seemed to spread like a spiderweb, a visual echo of her fracturing composure. Despair began to claw at her, a whispering dread that this was the end, and it was her doing. 

They were all stuck here. They were all going to die here. And it was her fault.

[color=#8ecdb7]“There has to be a set of controls on the other side, a way to deactivate the fail-safe[/color][color=#a9a9a9]. [/color][color=#8ecdb7]I’ll teleport and unlock the door.” [/color]Aurora’s words made a small cut through the fog of Harper’s internal strife, her eyes moving to meet those of her best friend for a moment, then the aforementioned door. 

[color=#8a9a5b]“[/color][color=#8a9a5b]Okay, that sounds like a good idea. Just...be careful,”[/color]she replied, clearly still trapped in her head. Her voice was hesitant, her eyes distant as they rolled from the door, back to the ominous wall of glass slowly succumbing to the pressure of the ocean. 

They were all stuck here. They were all going to die here. And it was her fault.

[color=#8ecdb7]“We don’t have a ton of options here, Lorcán. I’ve got to try.”[/color] Aurora’s words were a beacon in the fog of Harper’s thoughts, but she couldn’t shake the feeling of impending doom that clung to her like a second skin. Her eyes drifted over to the two lovebirds once again, watching, almost detached, as Aurora squeezed Lorcán’s hand. She was glad they weren’t paying attention to her gaze despite the inevitable outcome of this place becoming their watery tomb. For if they did, they would see the storm of guilt and fear that raged behind her eyes.

Because they were stuck here. They were all going to die here. And it was her fault. 

Then, a moment of hope: [color=#8ecdb7]“I found the panel! Give me a minute, I—” [/color]Aurora’s voice, brimming with excitement, was a lifeline thrown into the churning waters of Harper’s despair. But it was snatched away as quickly as it appeared, replaced by a chilling laugh that seemed to emanate from the shadows themselves. The sound of the impact, though unseen, resonated with Harper, a visceral shockwave that reverberated through her very core. 

Lorcán stood frozen at first, his expression a mirror of Harper’s paralysis. His eyes, wide with horror, were locked on the scene unfolding before him, a tableau of despair that echoed the silent scream tearing through the silence of their shared helplessness.

And then Lorcán’s cry of anguish reverberated through the chamber, a raw sound of desperation that seemed to resonate with the very walls. Harper watched, transfixed, as he surged forward, his movements fueled by a cocktail of adrenaline and dread as his fists assaulted the blast door. Flames of plasma wreathed his hands, casting eerie shadows as he struck the door, the metal stubbornly resisting, bearing only the faintest traces of his fiery onslaught.

[color=#fe650d]“Baxter,”[/color] she heard his voice shout, her vision still blurred by the weight of her fears, his face just beyond the clarity of sight. [color=#fe650d]“Baxter, brah, whatever is going through your mind, ignore it, let the sea have it. We need you, and we need that big brain of yours.” [/color]

Harper’s eyes fluttered shut for a moment with his words, a silent plea in the deep depths of her mind for clarity now. 

Her best friend was hurt. Her remaining teammate and friend needed her. 

It was all she needed. 

When her eyes opened, the world came into sharper focus thanks to her reactivated ability, Lorcán’s earnest tone managing to anchor her to the present and away from the swirling eddy of panic that had threatened to consume her. She inhaled deeply, the room’s frigid air filling her lungs, sterile and sharp, as if the cold itself could slice through the dread that had coiled around her psyche. With each measured exhale, she attempted to release the fear that had ensnared her thoughts.

Yet, as clarity began to seep back into her consciousness, Harper’s analytical mind kicked into overdrive. She grappled with the dissonance between the known and the unknown, the ally and the adversary, as the voice of the man who bore the face of Rory, yet lacked his essence, filled the room.

[color=#04cf3a]“Bro, take a chill pill, Borealis is fine. [/color][color=#04cf3a]Well, mostly fine.[/color][color=#04cf3a]”[/color]

The impostor’s voice was a twisted perversion of Rory’s usual warmth, each syllable dripping with venom. This cruel mockery of their friend stood over Aurora’s motionless body, his posture one of contempt rather than concern. The real Rory, the one they knew and trusted, would never exude such malice. 

His taunts were like daggers, each word meticulously crafted to cut deep. [color=#04cf3a]“Damn, bro, I still can’t believe you haven’t hit that,”[/color] he sneered at Lorcán, his tone laced with a toxic blend of scorn and disbelief. Harper’s blood boiled at the disrespect hurled towards Aurora, her fists clenching at her sides as she fought to contain the surge of protective fury that rose within her.

[color=#04cf3a]“Multiple times,”[/color] the copy added, laughing, his voice now echoing around the room after teleporting inside, a sinister soundtrack to the growing fractures in the window. Harper’s eyes flicked to the glass, noting each new crack with a sinking heart. They were running out of time. 

The impostor’s next words were a low blow, a vile suggestion about Lorcán’s feelings for Amma, and an insinuation about Harper herself. Harper’s mind recoiled at the vulgarity, even as Rory’s doppelgänger insinuated a grim fate for them all. [color=#04cf3a]“You’re gonna totally die in here,”[/color] he declared, his words echoing her earlier fearful thoughts.

But there it was again. Harper wrestled with the elusive sensation that had teased the edges of her consciousness—a persistent inkling that had surfaced earlier, now returning with renewed insistence as she observed the clone. It was a word, a concept, a key piece of understanding that danced tantalizingly close, yet remained stubbornly out of reach. 

[color=#04cf3a]“Oh, Harps, don’t look at me like that. W[/color][color=#04cf3a]e both know you’re not a virgin, just trying to make Rothy feel better about being the only one in the room,[/color][color=#04cf3a]”[/color]  the impostor sneered, misunderstanding her focused gaze for discomfort. His mockery, once potent enough to stir a flush of anger in her, now seemed to lose its edge as Harper’s resolve hardened.

[color=#fe650d]“That blast door,”[/color] Lorcán whispered urgently near to her, his voice barely audible over the clone’s incessant chatter. [color=#fe650d]“Should have a manual override. The access port likely isn’t obvious to the average pair of eyes but to you…”[/color] His words trailed off, but Harper understood. She was the one who could find it, who could see the things others often missed.

The doppelgänger’s voice grew louder, a smug assurance in his tone as he promised not to spoil her apparent secret for Gil. Harper’s jaw clenched; this was no time for games.

The tension in the air was like a tangible force, a pressure that seemed to squeeze the very breath from Harper’s lungs. Then, slicing through the thick atmosphere, a voice—a voice that should have been impossible here—rang out, chilling Harper to her core.

[color=#fb0207]“Heya, Sis,”[/color] it called, nonchalant and hauntingly familiar. Harper’s head whipped around, her eyes locking onto the door, where the unthinkable had materialized. Sierra, her sister, stood there with a grip on Aurora’s neck, her presence a surreal and horrifying revelation. Confusion and terror waged war in Harper’s heart, her thoughts now spinning out of control. 

This couldn’t be real; it was a deception, a sick joke.

But there she was. 

The taunts that spilled from Sierra’s lips, each accompanied by a grotesque pantomime of drowning, struck Harper with the force of a physical assault. They were venomous stings, each word and gesture a deliberate act of cruelty designed to tear at the very fabric of her being. The face of her sister, once the epitome of familial love and a repository of cherished memories, was twisted into a grotesque mask of malice. These were the expressions that had haunted Harper’s nightmares, the dark possibilities she had never allowed herself to truly consider, not about Sierra, the one person who was supposed to be her anchor in a world of uncertainty. Her only remaining blood relative. 

[color=#fe650d]“Go!” [/color]

The urgency in Lorcán’s voice pierced the tumultuous haze that had clouded Harper’s senses, his command a distant thunderclap against the storm raging in her chest. His figure erupted into a spectacle of fury and light, his fists becoming blurs of incandescent plasma as he unleashed a relentless assault on the impostor Rory. The air crackled with energy, the light from his attacks casting stark, dancing shadows across the walls of the classroom. 

[color=#fe650d]“I’ll cover you!” [/color]Lorcán’s voice boomed again, a desperate plea that broke through Harper’s inertia. She stood rooted to the spot at first, her body refusing to obey, her mind still a whirlpool of shock and disbelief. The image of Sierra, her sister, the one person who was supposed to be her haven, was now a spectre of betrayal, sneering down at her with cold amusement.

It was a battle within herself, a struggle to marshal the scattered fragments of her will. With a monumental effort, Harper summoned the strength to break the chains of paralysis, to set her limbs in motion, not even bothering to look behind her. She trusted Lorcán. She trusted him to have her back. 

Her mind sharpened, laser-focused on the task at hand once she got to the door. She needed to find that override, to turn the tide of their grim fate, even as the sneer on Sierra’s face haunted her, watching her every move, her hand still gripping Aurora’s neck. Her sneer, a twisted caricature of the sisterly smiles Harper remembered, loomed in her peripheral vision, a constant, silent tormentor. It was a look that seemed to revel in her panic, to feast upon her fear.

Yet, Harper steeled herself against the psychological onslaught, her internal monologue a chant of determination. She told herself that Sierra’s presence was just another layer of the simulation’s cruel game, a test of her resolve. If Sierra had truly intended to harm Aurora, to rip her away from their makeshift family, she wouldn’t have hesitated. This realization was a cold comfort, but it was enough for her. 

Harper’s eyes began their meticulous descent from the top of the door, where the metal met the ceiling in a perfect, unbroken line. To any casual observer, the door was nothing more than a monolithic slab, devoid of any feature that might suggest a weakness. But Harper’s gaze was anything but casual; it was the scrutiny of a seasoned operative trained to notice the imperceptible. The details of the door’s construction, invisible to the untrained eye, became apparent to her: the micro-grooves that segmented the panels, the almost imperceptible depression signalling an access seam, and the faintest protrusion betraying the presence of the manual override mechanism.

Her fingers, steady despite the adrenaline coursing through her veins, traced the contours that only she could discern. The outline of a concealed panel, masterfully integrated into the door’s design, was now unmistakable. A latch, minuscule and cunningly disguised, awaited her touch at the panel’s edge. She pressed down, and the panel yielded with a soft, reassuring click, swinging open to unveil the compartment that housed their hope for escape.

Before her lay the manual override—a nexus of gears and switches, each component engineered with precision. The crank, a solid piece of metal designed to counter the door’s automated lock, beckoned her hand. She wrapped her fingers around it, feeling the cold bite of the metal, and began to turn. The mechanism resisted, each turn a battle of wills between her and the door, but she could sense the movement within, the locks retracting one by one.

She then turned her attention to the levers, her acute vision picking out the correct order amidst the complexity. One lever, when pulled, hissed as it released the hydraulic tension. Another, when pushed, clicked as it disengaged the secondary locks. A third, when rotated, whirred as it reset the emergency protocols. Each action caused the door to respond, a symphony of mechanical compliance that sang of progress.

With a final, determined rotation of the crank, Harper felt the mechanism give way. The door, once an immovable barrier, now trembled as the last lock disengaged. It began to slide open with a slow, deliberate motion, as if reluctant to reveal the secrets it guarded. A gust of cool, dry air swept into the room, a welcomed contrast to the stifling, panic-laden atmosphere they had been subjected to. It was a breath of freedom, a sign that they might yet survive this ordeal. Harper stepped back, allowing the door to reveal the path forward, her heart pounding as she came face to face with [i]hers. [/i]

Sierra’s fingers, tipped with nails that seemed as sharp as talons, hovered menacingly over Aurora’s pale skin. Harper’s own hand rose instinctively to her mouth, her teeth finding the soft flesh of her lip. The scowl etched across Sierra’s face was a grotesque mask, one that twisted her sister’s features into something unrecognizable, something monstrous. But it was the eyes—the deep brown eyes so like her own hazel ones—that held Harper captive. 

Her power. Her curse. Her gift. It was there, in those eyes, a swirling vortex of potential that Harper had always felt was hers alone. Her birthright. 

[color=#fb0207]“That’s right. All mine,” [/color]Sierra’s voice was a venomous hiss. She knew, somehow she knew, how deeply this revelation would cut Harper, how it would rend the fabric of her reality.

Everything had changed now. If this doppelgänger bore even a fraction of her sister’s cunning, then Harper’s role here was not just as the victim, but as the slow strategist. Her actions, her very thoughts, had to be cloaked in layers of deception, unreadable as the deepest secrets of the ocean they were stuck in. 

[color=#8a9a5b]“Please… put her down,”[/color] Harper’s voice broke through the tension, a plea wrapped in the velvet of vulnerability. She despised the tremor she heard in her own words, but it was necessary. Aurora, her friend, her confidant, needed to be safe, needed to be removed from the clutches of this nightmare.

Sierra’s head tilt was deliberate, a theatrical pause as if she were weighing Harper’s words on the scales of her amusement. Then, with a shrug that spoke of indifference to the gravity of the situation, her lips curled into a smirk, a silent, mocking agreement.

[color=#fb0207]“Okay,”[/color] Sierra responded, her tone light, flippant as if the life she toyed with was no more significant than a ragdoll. With a careless flick of her wrist, she released Aurora, sending her tumbling to the ground with a thud that echoed like a gunshot in Harper’s ears. Harper’s body tensed, a silent scream lodged in her throat as she watched Aurora’s limp form collide with the unforgiving floor. Her hands instinctively curled into fists behind her back, digging into her palms, the sharp pain a necessary anchor to keep the rising tide of emotions at bay. She needed to stay calm, to cloak her true feelings in a shroud of impassivity, waiting for the opportune moment when Sierra would draw near. 

Lifting her gaze to Sierra’s face, Harper’s eyes bore into her sister’s, disbelief etched into her features as a profound realization began to take root deep within her psyche. The bond they shared, woven through the years with threads of shared laughter and tears, joys and sorrows, was too intricate, too deeply rooted to be undone by a single display of hatred, no matter how visceral or terrifying. This bond was a tapestry of their lives, rich and multifaceted, capable of withstanding storms of emotion, including this overwhelming fear that now gripped Harper’s heart at seeing her form standing in front of her. 

The sensation that had been nagging at her, elusive and persistent, now crystallized into a word that hovered on the brink of utterance. The Sierra before her, with her sneering countenance, was a mere shadow, an imitation devoid of the shared history and understanding that defined their true relationship.

An incredibly poor imitation. 

[color=#8a9a5b]“You are so…”[/color] Harper’s voice was a low growl, her fists uncoiling from behind her back with the swiftness of a viper’s strike, connecting with Sierra’s face in a satisfying impact.

[color=#8a9a5b]“...fucking ugly.” [/color]

[/color]