The Ugly Doc hesitated for just a second, an unreadable look flashing across his grotesque face before he finally spoke.
"What is it?" he asked, voice laced with amusement and condescension, like a man humoring the last words of a dying rat.
Xander raised his brows, playing up his surprise. "Huh. Didn''t even think that would work."
The Ugly Doc snorted. "It doesn''t matter what a failure like you says. But I don''t have anywhere better to be, so I might as well spare a minute or two to hear your death throes."
Xander chuckled, the sarcasm dripping off his voice like venom. "How generous of you."
He took a breath and then started. "I gotta admit, this whole thing you guys designed? Pretty damn impressive. Right down to knowing my thoughts. Gotta give you credit for that."
The Ugly Doc arched a brow, genuinely surprised. Was XA-777 having a moment of functional thought? How amusing. Not that it would change the outcome.
Xander, however, cut off his musings before they could go further. "But honestly, you should''ve put that amount of planning into getting yourself a new face. Though I don''t even know if you guys can do something like that. You''re just too damn ugly."
The Ugly Doc scowled, his hand twitching upward as if preparing to give the order to shoot. But Xander didn''t scramble. He just kept going.
"Look, I know you''d know if I lied and said I expected this. And yeah, finding out kinda pisses me off. But not for the reasons you think. I always knew you guys had some way into my head. Figured it was mind control or some other bullshit. Didn''t think it was something like this." He gestured vaguely to the air, as if referring to the revelation of his lack of autonomy. "Despite how much of an absolutely phenomenal comedian I am, I do take time to think, y''know. And it just didn''t add up if you had no plans."
The Ugly Doc stayed silent, listening, and so Xander continued.
"But that''s not even what I wanted to say. What really pisses me off is how condescending you all are. Setting up goddamn red arrows like I''m some lost idiot. Every single one of you, from the Old Doc to the Fat Doc to you—hell, even these guards pointing their little toys at me—you all just look at me like I''m some broken thing you have to deal with." His eyes flickered as he spare them a glance, instantly scanning every face. "And yeah, that stings. At first. But I got over that sentimental bullshit when I was, what? Five? Six? I don''t even know how you bastards calculate days, I just counted up to four hundred and called it a year."
He exhaled sharply through his nose. "Instead, I figured something else out. People like you? You''re the problem. I don''t know much about the world beyond these dark, stupid halls, but I know that much. Even if there are worse people out there, they''re just bigger problems. And you know what I do with problems I see, Uggo?"
His voice dropped, the humor vanishing like a candle snuffed out.
"I solve them."
He tilted his head slightly. "I started with my problem of pain. It was hindering so I dealt with it. When hunger became a problem, I dealt with. When you fucks showed your selves to be problems. I dealt with you."
"I started with Old Doc. And I''m not planning to stop."
The Ugly Doc stared at him, incredulous. Then he let out a short, barking laugh. "You do realize where you are, don''t you? You''re standing in front of your termination, and you''re ranting about some future you''ll never have."
Xander finally turned to look at the guards directly. His face was unreadable. "Oh, I haven''t forgotten them. They''re a different kind of problem."
He looked back at the Ugly Doc, tilting his head. "But you called me something, didn''t you? A failure. And what are failures good at?"
A smirk curled his lips.
"Failing."
The air at the cliff''s edge shifted. A strange, uneasy feeling crept into the guards'' bodies as they gripped their weapons tighter. The Ugly Doc furrowed his brow, a twinge of something resembling unease creeping into his expression.
You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.
"And even among failures," Xander continued, "I''m the biggest one. So don''t worry, Ugly Doc. I''ll fail to die, too. But you?" He lifted his hand slightly, just enough to show an oddly arranged patch of crimson across his forearm. "You''re all about to have a grand success."
The Ugly Doc''s breath hitched. His eyes widened, locking onto the pattern of blood smudged onto Xander''s skin. It was not just some random blood.
Those were words.
On his skin.
There were words on his skin.
"Th-That''s impossible. He can''t read. He shouldn''t even know what the letters look like. Why did he..."
Recognition dawned on his face, and for the first time since he walked into this room, true panic gripped him.
"No," he whispered.
Xander grinned, teeth glinting like a predator about to pounce. As he raised his arm higher to convey what words were written in blood on his forearm.
''FUCK YOU UGLY BASTARD!''
"And wouldn''t it be dreadfully Cataclysmic if someone decided this moment was worth writing about?"
"Shoot! SHOOT!" the Ugly Doc roared, his voice breaking with urgency.
The lead guard reacted instantly, as he immediately pressed the trigger on his rifle.
The bullet flew with speed and blitz that it could not be seen.
At least at first.
The world seemed to slow down, and the bullet was no exception.
They all watched as it approached Xander''s head in a rapidly slowing manner.
Then the bullet finally pierced Xander’s forehead.
But it was to late and time fractured to let it be known. Not stopped. Not frozen. Fractured.
The world did not halt; it merely collapsed into a sluggish crawl, stretching out every detail, forcing every soul present to watch, to see, to comprehend the unthinkable in excruciating, eternal slowness. The bullet’s tip, slick with the blood it had claimed, pushed deeper into Xander’s skull.
His skin warped inward, the force rupturing flesh, carving an entrance that cracked through bone with deliberate cruelty. A shuddering ripple coursed through his head, blood spurting outward like droplets of rubies, but even those hovered, drifting as if unsure whether to fall.
It should have been over in an instant. But it wasn’t.
The Ugly Doc could not breathe. His throat locked, his body refused to move, as the slow, wet sound of bone fracturing echoed in his ears. His own heartbeat thudded in deafening contrast, frantic against the stillness that bound everything else.
Then it began.
A letter—small, sharp, wrong—flickered into existence before him. It hovered in the air, glowing red, a jagged glyph that should not exist.
Fear. Immediate, primal fear.
It was absurd. It was just a single, floating letter. Yet every instinct, every nerve in his body screamed at him, writhing in terror that had no explanation. The letter flickered, glitching, shifting, its edges jagged as though it had been torn from reality itself. His eyes locked onto it, and with horrifying clarity, he realized:
The letter was not just a symbol. It was a word.
A I R
The realization made his mind twist upon itself. That word—it had not simply appeared. It had been pulled from something. The very air around him, as if reality itself had been forced to explain what it was.
Then another letter appeared. Then another. Then another.
From the ground, black letters formed, pulsing and wrong. They hovered like parasites, their jagged forms flickering. He recognized them—D I R T, R O C K, D U S T—as if the very ground had been forced to name itself. More spawned upon the sky, tearing free in unnatural slowness.
Then, the letters on XA -777’s forearm began to move.
His own blood-written words lifted from his skin. They tore free like strips of flesh peeling away, hanging in the air, trembling as if deciding whether to remain or escape. The red-stained words drifted upward, merging with the others, bleeding into the chaos above.
The elder guard exhaled sharply, the sound sickeningly drawn-out. His lips barely moved, but his pupils shrank in abject horror. He was watching it too—watching as the world itself started to separate. The words that hovered were not just made of letters.
They were made of words within words.
The letter A in A I R was glitching, shifting, splitting—flickering between components, between elements. O X Y G E N. N I T R O G E N. A piece of a reality that was never meant to be seen, now forcing itself into their sight. And it wasn’t stopping.
The realization was so slow yet so immediate.
Another ripple. Another second stretched beyond comprehension.
The letters rose higher.
The bullet inside Xander’s skull was still pushing through. Blood, impossibly suspended in the air, trailed in droplets that also formed words. B L O O D. H E M O G L O B I N. His head jerked back, but even that movement remained trapped in the slowness, his expression caught between agony and something else.
Madness.
His mouth was still twisted in that same grin, his teeth bared in a defiance too absolute, too wrong to belong to a dying man.
His body tilted backward, his feet beginning to lift—falling, yet not falling, descending yet lingering. The cliff’s edge approached. The abyss behind him yawned open, vast and endless.
The Ugly Doc wanted to run, to escape this abominable nightmare. He was not the only one, as all the guards including the older guard wanted to do the same.
Unfortunately for them. The world could not let them escape. It could even if it wanted to. After all, it was being held hostage as well.
And almost like the death toll except there was no sound.
The letters converged.
They swirled, tangled, a growing, writhing mass of words and meaning and uncreation.
And finally—
The sphere was formed.
A catastrophic convergence of glitching, fragmented letters fusing into a swirling, pulsating mass of impossible knowledge. The air screamed. A hum, deep and incomprehensible, reverberated across their bones, drilling into their minds.
The sphere pulsed.
The Ugly Doc screamed.
The guards weeped.
Xander laughed.
Then it expanded.
Reality broke.
And the Cataclysm descended as Xander had finally fallen.