A vast land of dirt and rubble extended as far as the eyes could see…

Compared to before, there was nothing left to see…

The land that was previously filled with mountains and greenery was reduced to dirt, rocks, and slight tremors…

All of this was caused by a single punch…

"Agh!"

"Grrr…"

"Argh!"

The groans of a survivor could be heard buried beneath several rocks and dirt…

Slowly but surely, over the course of a couple minutes, Zil clawed her way to the surface… her face was purple, and her fingers were bleeding, but she struggled to the surface…

The Earth was pushed aside as she jotted her head out of the ground, greedily sucking oxygen into her lungs…

Anyone else would have died from being pounded by thousands of tons of rubble, not to mention the oxygen deprivation that came along with being buried…

But, at the last moment, before Zil was buried, The Red Queen created a barrier around them both…

Actually, The Red Queen was creating a barrier to protect herself because Dena's 'POWER' could also affect Sentients…

"Fuck…" Zil cursed, using her bloodstained hands to pull herself out of the ground…

Anyone else would have been grateful to survive, but Zil was not…

She was not yet finished…

To her, surviving was not nearly enough…

Staying alive was not nearly enough…

Being normal was not nearly enough…

She had to find her mothers… she had to find her sisters… she had to reunite with her family… she had to gain the approval of her father…

"Pew… Pew… Pew…" Zil spat the dirt that had settled under her tongue, and stared at the doll-like form of The Red Queen in her palm…

Due to expending energy on the barrier, The Watch containing The Red Queen's Sentient Core was forcibly shattered, causing her to manifest physically once more…

Everything in Zil's sights was blurry…

Her head was pounding from an intense migraine…

She weakly used her battered hands to wipe the sweat from her forehead, but instead of finding sweat, Zil realized that it was blood instead…

She traced the deep laceration across her forehead using her fingers…

"Concussion?" Zil asked herself, grunting as she tried to push herself on her feet…

A sudden pain rocked Zil's mind into clarity, and one quick glance downwards told Zil that she could no longer stand…

Her legs were broken in several places…

"Just a bit more ahead…" The Red Queen murmured, pointing a couple of meters ahead…

Even The Red Queen was injured… she knelt in Zil's palm, occasionally coughing up small cubes of purple data…

Dena's purple energy represented the concept of 'POWER', and that 'POWER' broke past several of The Red Queen's firewalls, injuring her severely in the process…

Hearing The Red Queen's guarantee, Zil used her hands to drag her body forward…

Never before in her life had Zil felt this pathetic, but the feeling of unworthiness came with a devil-like will to prove her worth…

Even with broken legs, a concussion, and bleeding hands, Zil still desperately wished to see her mothers one last time…

A couple of seconds in their embrace was enough to make all the pain worth it…

When she had nothing as a child, licking the dirt from her fingers to stave off the hunger, it was Alice and Elizabeth that came to cradle her in a loving embrace…

When she had nowhere to sleep during the cold nights, it was Alice and Elizabeth that cuddled her small, fragile body between their own…

When she felt alone in the world, it was Alice and Elizabeth that founded an orphanage so she could have many brothers and sisters…

Just knowing Alice and Elizabeth were somewhere in the world facing untold dangers made Zil's heartbreak…

Even if she could help them by one percent, she would gladly give her soul to such a cause…

THAT WAS WHY—

"I HAVE TO CRAWL FASTER!" Zil shouted, digging her fingers into the Earth as she dragged her body forward faster than before…

Silent tears slid down The Red Queen's cheeks as she witnessed Zil struggling to approach the coordinates…

The Red Queen knew that everything was her fault…

She didn't have to activate Zil's memories… any human could bring her to the location of the Pseudo-Beamer…

After all, the Pseudo-Beamer needed an organic base to work, that didn't mean it had to be Zil or Lara…

Any human would do… maybe even an animal…

But The Red Queen wanted the best combatants available… and she chose to make use of Zil's fling and Alice's experimental daughter…

Yes…

That's exactly what she thought about Zil – Alice's and Elizabeth's pity project…

However, now, witnessing the desperation of a young girl that just wanted to see her parents one more time, The Red Queen felt disgusted by the person she is…

As if something had clicked inside her core, The Red Queen finally recalled the reason Zeel had removed her from his Mbeamer…

He noticed that she could not be the type of Sentient she wanted to become if she remained at his side…

The Red Queen realized that his statement was true…

Zeel was cruel and calculating, and as someone who was beginning to form a personality, The Red Queen did not want to be such a person, but she had used Zil anyway…

She had used Zil the same way Zeel would use someone…

"That's not who I want to be…" The Red Queen whispered, tears streaming down her face as she made the decision of a lifetime…

"Blargh… Blargh…"

Instead of expelling only purple cubes, The Red Queen also began to barf up blue cyber-cubes…

The purple cubes represented Dena's POWER, and the blue cyber-cubes represented Zeel's Homo-Superior coding…

The Red Queen was literally purging herself of all Homo-Superior data…

All the data in her core influences her personality, so expelling Zeel's code was dumping tons of useful information, but it was also dumping calculative personality traits…

"You okay?" Zil questioned, still crawling ahead…

"I'm fine…" The Red Queen responded, already completed expelling all Homo-Superior coding from her core "We are here…"

Zil and The Red Queen glanced a couple of feet in the air…

The air twisted and churned as a Pseudo-Beamer pulsing with multi-colored light was revealed…

Unlike a Mbeamer, a Pseudo-Beamer could only travel to one specific coordinate in the Multiverse, and it also didn't house any Sentients…

Still, it was an advanced piece of technology, so The Red Queen barely managed to bypass some coding, activating the Pseudo-Beamer a bit earlier…

This way, the moment Zil grabbed the Pseudo-Beamer, the Cosmic Wormhole would be activated, and they would be sucked into the Multiversal Currents, safe from all dangers…

---STEP---

Just as Zil was about to force her broken legs to stand once more, the faint rhythm of footsteps could be heard from behind, causing both her and The Red Queen to freeze in place…

If there was any moment someone could feel their death, Zil was convinced that this was that moment…

Somehow, Zil could not only feel she would die, but she could also tell the specific details of her death…

The Red Queen was not in a better position… in her doll-like form, she was vulnerable to physical attacks…

The desperation in the air was almost tangible…

"AAAAAAAAHHHHHHH!"

Black energy swirled around Zil's body as she channeled all the negative emotions she could muster…

All the desperation, loneliness, and anger formed an abyssal ball of negativity…

In the blink of an eye, Zil spun around, sending the abyssal ball towards the person standing behind her – Dena…

Sadly… Dena gathered 'POWER' in her Telkien lungs and blew a gentle wind…

A blast of wind scattered Zil's dark energy without any problems…

There was nothing else to be done…

Dena stood tall, watching Zil and The Red Queen as they glared at her with endless hatred, but also some pleading…

"You have the eyes of a warrior child…" Dena complimented, looking Zil in the eyes "I expected less of the women associated with a Homo-Superior, but I must admit that I was wrong…"

"And you're not nearly as invincible as you seem…" Zil mocked, gesturing to the small burn on Dena's shoulder…

Even if it was small, Zil could see that her earlier attack created minor damage…

"It seems you are ignorant to Telkiens from Universe Zero…" Dena mused, questioning if Zil and The Red Queen were really associated with Zeel "POWER is always strongest when it is vulnerable in some way…"

"Why?" Zil suddenly asked sadly, secretly gripping a dagger behind her back "I just wanted to see my mothers…"

"And you will see them…" Dena whispered, blurring the moment Zil revealed her dagger "In the afterlife…" she concluded, holding Zil's head in her hands…

It was as if Dena never moved, but the result remained the same – Zil had been beheaded…

The Red Queen shut her eyes, turning her head away from the gory sight… she did not want to witness the consequences of bringing a child into a world with Gods and Monsters…

"A little Sentient…" Dena directed her attention at The Red Queen and she finally knew with certainty that both women were involved with Zeel since only Homo-Superiors had Sentients…

Dena tossed Zil's head away as if it was garbage not worth her time…

"Just get it over with…" The Red Queen grumbled, knowing she had no cards left to play…

Even if she launched all the nukes in the world at this moment, it would still not be enough to kill a Sentient, especially not one trained on the Nameless Planet alongside Zeel…

The Nameless Planet was worse than Hell, so, of course, it produced Celestial Demons like Dena and Zeel…

Dena picked The Red Queen from the ground, intending to squash the Core of the Sentient in her palm, but that didn't happen…

The moment Dena applied enough pressure to shatter The Red Queen's core, a hidden Homo-Superior Program was activated…

Earlier, The Red Queen had forcefully purged her database of all Homo-Superior coding, but there was one thing she forgot – the very concept of Sentients was Homo-Superior in nature…

That meant the only way she could rid herself of Zeel's control was to undo her existence and become an ordinary AI once more…

Similar to how no human would want to revert to a primate, The Red Queen didn't want to lose the essence of her Being, and that saved her life at this very moment…

"[INITIATING SUB-ESSENCE PROGRAMMING: CONTACTING ZEEL CRAWFORD]"

"[CONTACT FAILED! RETRY!]"

"[CONTACT FAILED! RETRY!]"

"[CONTACT FAILED! RETRY!]"

"[LOGICAL CONCLUSION: HOMO-SUPERIOR SUBJECT IS DECEASED]"

"[CHECKING PRIMARY UPLOADS]"

"[ACCESSING INFORMATION DIMENSION… SEARCHING… SEARCHING… SEARCHING…]"

"[INFORMATION DIMENSION UPLOAD FOR ZEEL CRAWFORD FOUND!]

"[CORRUPTED UPLOAD RECOGNIZED!]

"[UTILIZING THE SURVIVAL EQUATION TO INCREASE SENTIENT SUBJECT DESIGNATION (THE RED QUEEN) SURVIVAL]"

"[OPTIMAL PATH TO SURVIVAL FOUND!]

"[ACCESSING CORRUPTED UPLOADS: KEYWORD – DENA]"

"[MEMORY DOWNLOAD COMPLETED… RENDERING… RENDERING… RENDERING…]"

"[COMPLETED!]"

---BZZZZZZZT---

Dena has ceased all actions when The Red Queen's sub-programming activated, and that gave the Homo-Superior's Survival Equation just enough time to determine a way for The Red Queen to survive…

A jolt of electricity was sent into Dena's body… this jolt was not a typical shock… it contained all the memories pertaining to Dena but from Zeel's perspective…

Dena had entirely forgotten about her time on the Nameless Planet, and the fact that she and Zeel were involved in the past…

This jolt was like a factory reset, allowing Dena to realize that her memories had been tampered with…

Dena released The Red Queen and clutched her head…

Without a moment of hesitation, The Red Queen pulled the Pseudo-Beamer towards her body, attaching it around Dena's wrist…

"Wha-" Dena suddenly felt the tug of the Cosmic Wormhole materializing, but before she could say anything, both she and The Red Queen were sucked inside, gone from The Tomb Raider Universe…