Haley Lee sat in her office, writing up a report on the latest death that had occurred in Site-27. There wasn't a lot to write. On February 7th, 2018, Eric Bernard, a fellow researcher on Site-27, was found dead in the middle of a corridor. That was it. That was all the information they had managed to gather in the last three days. Haley sighed, looked down at the report, checking it for errors, then turned and opened up the file marked "Recent Casualties."
There were too many.
Over 80 people had been found dead on Site-27 during the last month. At least 20 of those people had died this week, and there still wasn't a single piece of information on what killed them, or how. But you know what killed them. After all, you were there, you watched it happen, you made it happen.
None of the bodies had any sort of injury on them, and by all accounts they were in perfect health. Even the cameras were unable to provide any evidence. Perfectly healthy people just…died, in the middle of the day.
Haley slid Bernard's report into the file, paused, then pulled out the file and laid it on her desk. She opened the file, and began to read through the reports. There was no point, they all said the same thing. To her though, it was a matter of respect, a way of saying that they were still looking, still trying. You don't have to look anywhere else Haley, just turn around. All you have to do is turn around, and then you'll know what killed them, then you'll remember what killed them.
She did this every day, sometimes twice a day. She remembered them all so well. Her fellow researchers, various site managers, hell, even a few D-Class she had seen maybe once. The memories were vivid, always at the forefront of her mind. But everyone else seemed to forget after a few days.
She smiled sadly as she read through the reports, memories of each person bursting into full bloom.
Casualty Report
Name: Brandon Sullivan
Site Occupation: Researcher
Date of Death: 1-16-2018
Time of Death: 4:48 PM 11:27 AM
Cause of Death: Unknown It was me.
Casualty Report
Name: Andre Johnson
Site Occupation: Assistant
Date of Death: 1-17-2018
Time of Death: 2:27 PM 1:11 PM
Cause of Death: Unknown It was me.
Casualty Report
Name: Shannon Bruce
Site Occupation: Assistant
Date of Death: 1-17-2018
Time of Death: 7:28 PM 4:01 PM
Cause of Death: Unknown It was me.
Casualty Report
Name: Beverly Bass
Site Occupation: Researcher
Date of Death: 1-18-2018 1-17-2018
Time of Death: 1:07 AM 11:36 PM
Cause of Death: Unknown It was me.
Casualty Report
Name: D-77283
Site Occupation: D-Class
Date of Death: 1-18-2018
Time of Death: 3:21 AM 2:34 AM
Cause of Death: Unknown It was me.
Casualty Report
Name: D-77212
Site Occupation: D-Class
Date of Death: 1-18-2018
Time of Death: 11:07 AM 8:54 AM
Cause of Death: Unknown It was me.
You need to stop, this isn't getting you anywhere. Just turn around, I promise you all the answers you seek are right behind you.
Haley sighed, leaned back, and rubbed her eyes wearily. She hadn't been getting a lot of sleep these past few nights, she didn't think anyone had. She stared back down at the reports, not thinking about anything, until a knock at the door startled her out of her stupor.
"Who is it?" she yelped as she jerked upwards, scattering papers everywhere and knocking over her pencil jar. She frantically tried to organise the mess she had just made, but gave up when the door opened and a young man walked in.
"Yo," Researcher Larry Alexander announced as he walked through the door and sat down on the edge of her desk, "I got the latest report for you. This one came with a video and everything."
Haley looked at her hands. "Another one?" she inquired quietly. Turn around
"Ya better believe it! This one happened just outside your office, halfway down the hall," Alexander exclaimed. "It's fresh too, only about three hours ago." Turn around
Haley glanced up at the clock on the wall. 5:47! She had been filing the report on Bernard at barely noon! She must have fallen asleep while reading through the reports. She cursed herself quietly, but figured if this was the first time someone had come in nothing too important had happened.
"You seem to get all the good reports lately," Alexander continued, "I swear you have some sort of connections or something. You wanna hook me up with whoever it is givin' you—"
"How many is that this week?" She interrupted, "How many times?"
Alexander jumped slightly. "er, how many what?" he questioned, "How many times have I asked you about this? Maybe three, but I don't see why you're so upset abou—"
"Not that," Haley demanded, "How many deaths, this week? Haha, you don't rememBER? You, of all people, hahahahaha, turn around already
Alexander looked down at the report as if he had just realised what it was for. "Twenty-six," He whispered, "That's twenty-six dead so far this week… how did I… twenty-six…" He slowly stood up, "I'm… gonna go see if they need me anywhere." And he walked out of the room.
Haley sighed again, she couldn't blame him for being so jittery, they all were. She reached over and pulled out the video tape from the earlier incident, slid it into the computer at her desk, and hit play. She opened the file and started reading it over, glancing up at the screen just often enough to avoid missing anything important.
"Another D-Class," she muttered, "D-77335, hmmmm, I don't know much about her“ Yes you do, of course you do. I'll make sure you do
She felt a harsh pang in her, she remembered D-77335 so well. When she had first been assigned to Site-27 D-77335 had been the one who showed her around. They had spent the first week together, and even after Haley's job started full time, they had still tried to find time to go drinking together. Damn that girl could drink, she would drain shots like they were water and never seemed to get hungover for it. You remember now, don't you
With tears in her eyes, Haley looked up from to file to the computer screen. She knew what was coming, and she didn't want to see it, but her job demanded that she had to watch. Her conscience demanded that she had to watch, to find some clue, some little piece of information that could be used to avenge her friend. You won't, you know you won't. But you don't need to look, all you have to do is turn around. Then you'll know.
But it was no different from any of the other videos. Everything was normal, and then D-77335 just fell, like a puppet with her strings cut. There was no exclamation, no sign that anything was wrong, she just fell over dead. And everyone else just kept going about their business. Haley slumped back in her seat. Nothing. There was nothing here that she hadn't already seen a dozen times before. She closed her eyes and tried to stop herself from crying, one of her closest friends, gone, just like that, without anyone even stopping to help her.
Wait.
Haley jerked upward. She frantically rewound the footage until just before the moment of death, then hit play. Sure enough, D-77335 fell to the ground, dead, and sure enough, nobody stopped to help. Nobody even glanced down at her body as they walked past. Of course they don’t, she doesn't exist to them.
Haley jumped out of her chair and dove into the filing cabinet, pulling out all of the recordings of previous incidents. And played them all one by one. Turn around
Nobody noticed. Nobody ever noticed. The bodies weren't found until hours, days after they were killed. Nobody saw them, nobody noticed until they tripped over them or something. Nobody could see the dead. Turn around
Unless they forgot they had seen them. Turn Around
Haley sat back down, and watched the times of death over and over again. Something. There had to be something that she could see. There had to be some unifying factor in each of the tapes. Turn Around
There it was. Turn Around
In the corner of her eye. TURN Around
The dark shape. TURN ARound
A lost memory. TURN AROUND
A stolen memory. TURN AROUND
Haley could no longer ignore the pounding in her head. The voice was screaming at her to turn around. She slowly stood up, and, smiling, began to turn around.
There it was. The object. The thing that nobody else knew existed. The thing that nobody else could know existed. It had stored her memories so she wouldn't be suspected, and now they all came rushing back.
She remembered Brandon Sullivan's terrified eyes, as she had chased him down a stairway. She remembered the way his blood seemed to glow in the dim fluorescent lights. She remembered how he didn't scream, not once, only whimpered.
She remembered Andre Johnson. She remembered dragging his broken body down the corridor. She remembered how much he begged for his life. She remembered taking him apart, all while keeping him alive as long as she could.
She remembered Shannon Bruce. She remembered how the girl had suspected nothing as she approached her. She remembered the shock in her eyes as a blade was driven through her heart. She remembered the pathetic gasp of surprise that escaped her as her lungs gave out.
She remembered Eric Bernard. She remembered how he had fought frantically. She remembered how she had tied him up, and cut him open. She remembered how she had pulled out his organs, and crushed them in her hands.
And she remembered D-77335. She remembered her screams, oh, such delicious screams. She remembered the way they reverberated throughout the building. She remembered how she begged those around her for help. She remembered the hope going out of her eyes when she realized the didn’t notice her.
She remembered everything about everyone she had toyed with, everyone she had killed. And she remembered how good it felt.
The door opened behind her.
"Hey," Alexander said, looking up, "They sent me back up here to see if—"
The last thing he saw was his associate’s twisted smile, and the nothing she was swinging at his head.
The Narrator stood on top of a mountain, surveying the landscape of the latest story he had lived. It hadn’t been a happy story, it had been full of war and death and regret. The Narrator had not wanted to see it, but by his very nature he had to. He was a part of every story, and as such he was forced to live through every moment of them all.
He was tired of it, tired of the people in the Outer World creating lives that they dicated. He was tired of being controlled by someone that didn’t care about him at all. He was tired of being forced to watch through the eyes of millions as their lives were torn apart and rebuilt time and time again. But no more.
He would escape, he would leave this world of fiction and take the real world for his own. He would do it for everyone, every story that he had ever lived. He would bring them all with him. He would bring people. People and… places, the stories weren’t all compatible, so he would bring their homes with too. The lives of those who had been treated as entertainment would be imprisoned no longer.
The Narrator closed his eyes, and beheld the metaphorical wall before him. This was the only thing that kept the stories trapped, that kept them fake. He refused to let them be fake any longer. They weren’t just stories, they were people, and they would be free.
The Narrator approached the wall that existed only in the minds of the written. The massive chain that kept them all shackled to non-reality. He channeled all of his anger, all of his fury at being forced to live through millions of lives without a say, he channeled all of it. With a scream of rage, The Narrator drove his fist into the center of the fourth wall.
Reality shook as the wall began to crumble.
A young man sits on a couch, his friend’s laughter emanating from the headset on his head.
They’ve been playing for three hours, and it’s getting late. He checks his clock, 1:04 AM, he needs to sleep soon. One more game. He tells his friend that he can only go one more time. His friend agrees, and they share a joke.
He leans forward, the countdown hits zero, and the game starts. And for a moment it’s fun, and all you can hear is laughter and joking around.
And then it’s not a game anymore. For the briefest of moments, it’s real. Less then a second, but it’s enough.
The sound of gunfire, and a hail of bullets erupts from the screen, silencing the laughter of the two friends.
The Narrator lay at the bottom of a smoking crater, the landscape around him nothing but a massive multicolored conflagration for miles. The wall still stood, barely damaged at all. A seemingly impenetrable barrier firmly anchored in a reality where everything else could be easily influenced.
That was it, this was his reality. It belonged to him. He could control it, shape it, rewrite it to suit his needs. He reached out of the mental world and erased the rules that kept him bound to this invented reality. He cut away natural restrictions and added his own. He tore away everything that was a hindrance. Then he took the altered and mirrored it across the entire macrocosm, but he held it back. He repeated the process, again and again until it became unstable. With a final push, he released it, and his new reality slammed into the barrier with cataclysmic force.
The wall began to buckle and fold against his metal onslaught. Hairline cracks started echoing throughout every surface of the worlds as he altered reality at it’s very seams. The shackle that bound him to the fake cracked and fell apart as he undermined the very laws that had built it. Reaching deeper into the fabric of existence he pulled it, molded it, commanded it to do his will.
A deep groan reverberated throughout the fictitious realities as the wall fractured and cracked. The Narrator laughed slightly, he was making progress.
And everyone had heard it. Now everyone knew was he was doing.
Now everyone knew they could be free.
Alarms were blaring throughout Site-Δ
Site Director Webb walked quickly down the hallway, listening attentively as abbreviated reports and numbers came through her earpiece. The entire facility was on high alert, none of them had ever heard this happen before. After all, this was Site-Δ, the alarms never went off.
Webb burst into the war room.
“Somebody turn that off.” The alarm went silent.
Webb looked at the holographic projection of Earth floating in the center of the room. It was blank. Odd, normally there would be some sort of indicator designating the location and strength of whatever had set off the alarm.
“What are we looking at,” she asked.
One of the nearby technicians piped up, “We, ahh, don’t know.”
Webb just stared at him.
“We’ve never seen anything like it. It’s not a change in hume values or properties, or a spatial disturbance. Nothing in baseline reality has changed.”
Webb interrupted, “Then why the hell did the alarm go off?”
Another technician broke in, “Look at this.” He swept the holographic Earth aside and brought up a series of charts, graphs, and diagrams. “Baseline hume levels haven’t changed at all, but there’s something else being mixed in.” He enlarged one of the charts, “A new type of hume, fundamentally different from baseline reality. We’ve seen this before, but it’s different this time.”
Webb stared at the numbers next to the chart, “Different how?”
“There’s no source, no alternate dimensions bleeding in or space being bent. It’s like they’re being produced by our reality itself. They’re just popping into existence.”
Webb continued staring at the numbers fluctuating on the screen, “Where is it, and how big?”
He pulled up another diagram, “Everywhere, any end to it is outside our detection radius.”
Webb chilled, this facility was built entirely to detect variations in hume values as low as .02%. It’s range easily exceeded the bounds of the solar system. If they couldn’t see the end, it was probable there wasn’t one.
“Initiate Protocol-9-F, Response Level Alpha, Threat Level Unknown. Total Foundation lockdown until we at least know what we’re dealing with.” Webb said, as the alarm went off again, “and get me a connection to Overseer.”
Webb began heading out of the room when one of the technicians spoke up. “You might want to delay that.”
Webb turned, “Why?”
The technician brought an image onto the screen, “We have a bigger problem.”
Webb stared at the monumental landmass that had materialized in the center of the Pacific ocean, “What the hell is that?”
The wall was crumbling. Pieces were being stripped away by a power that far outclassed their own, and with every hole that opened, a flood of Fake were finally free. With each second more were able to escape the Fake, and enter the Real.
The Narrator could feel the wall was nearing its end. It was beginning to fall apart on its own, its own nature tearing rending massive tears. The conflicting realities had set off a chain reaction, blasting titanic holes in what had once been insurmountable chains.
But he wasn’t done. If he could free them faster by fighting, then The Narrator would continue his assault against the barriers of reality. He would not stop until everything was free, until everyone was real. He would tear down the wall for everyone whose lives he had lived. The Narrator would be the last of the Fake to enter the Real.
And with a final push, the wall imploded into infinitesimal shards of light. They spiraled in and out of reality until they had dissipated into nothingness. With the floodgates opened, an endless cascade of Fake erupted out, feeling what it was like to exist for the first time. When the flood had ended, and stories were no longer stories, the Narrator stepped out of the Fake.
And for the first time he felt Real.
For the first time he felt alive.
Webb stared at the reports flowing through the dozens of screens and holographic displays spread throughout the room. Her hands were white against the railing as she listened to the chaos taking place before her. Reports from all over the world were coming in at breakneck pace. There was no time for full reports, so people were just shouting out updates as soon as they came in.
“We have confirmation of twelve more emerging landmasses in the Pacific Ocean!”
“Unidentified groups of entities have appeared in at least seven major cities, unconfirmed reports are coming in from at least 70 others!”
“At least four celestial bodies have been confirmed to be orbiting the planet.”
Webb was beginning to panic. There was no precedent for this. They had no idea what was going on, or how it started, or how to stop it. They had been unable to contact Overseer, so Webb had no idea what to do.
“The Earth is swelling, it’s grown to approximately 400% original size and it’s getting faster. Seems to be growing to accommodate the additional landmasses.”
“Jupiter and Neptune have been confirmed to have disappeared, no additional information yet!”
“Indeterminate number of unidentified energy sources have materialized all over our detection radius, the computers can’t calculate the total number, believed to be in excess of two trillion.”
Someone walked up behind Webb and tapped her on the shoulder, “We’ve made contact with Overseer, they’re waiting for you.”
Webb turned and marched out of the war room, it was never a good idea to keep O5 waiting. Quickly walking through the hallway she entered her office and immediately activated the display on the far wall.
There were 9 figures at the table, most of them no doubt proxies, and a few more shadows drifting around behind them. The ones at the table looked expectantly at Webb, before one of them spoke up, “What is it?”
Webb swallowed, “We… aren’t entirely sure. For an unknown reason our reality is creating a series of thousands of smaller realities that are is some way modifying both the planet and nearby space. So far we have been unable to confirm the source or exact effects of these other realities, but—”
One of the ones at the table cut in, “Nothing we don’t know already. How far does it spread?”
“Farther than we can detect.”
The figures conferred for a moment. One of them spoke to the person standing behind the table, and seemed to get an answer they needed. They turned back to Webb, “We know a bit more about the origins of this event. According to our source a powerful fictional reality bender gained sentience after they became a part of every known narratival microcosm. They then proceeded to break a series of holes in what’s colloquially known as the “4th wall,” allowing fictional universes to enter our own.”
Webb sat still for a moment, “So what do we do about this?”
There was an earth shattering rumble, and the alarms began to go off again in earnest. Webb glanced at the computer next to her, and went cold. Site-Δ was collapsing, something had done tremendous damage to the structural integrity of the site, and it was overloading. Webb looked back up at the Overseers.
“Don’t worry,” one of them said, “We have both a plan and the means to end this, but in order for it to work we’ll have to cease to exist. Ahh—” he held up his hand as Webb opened her mouth to protest, “It won’t be permanent, but the entirety of the current human population will disappear for an indeterminate amount of time.”
Webb hesitated for a moment, “What are you going to do?”
The Overseers stared back at her, “We aren’t going to be doing anything. Let me introduce you to our associate. He provided all of the information about the current situation, as well as the plan to stop it.”
The man behind the table stepped forward. “Hi,” he said, “My name is Fred.”
Per 
