"Reimi is down!" I screamed, stepping in front of the golden dome. "We have to hold the line!"

  The strange construct took a lumbering step forward, its four metallic arms screeching as the rusted joints groaned. Its central eye pulsed red, sweeping over us as it suddenly droned.

  'TARGET: DISCOVERED. WARNING: ANOMALY UNCLASSIFIED. THREAT LEVEL: RED. ASSESSING...'

  My brain just kinda... went into overdrive, you know? All the panic, all the fear, it all melted away into this super-intense focus. My wand felt like a lead weight in my hand, but also like it was the most important thing in the universe.

  Red light swept over me. I raised my scepter, the gem humming, ready to... I don't know. Unleash hell? Maybe? Probably.

  And then, the world glitched.

  It wasn't a slow fade. It wasn't a magical effect. It was like a movie projector skipping a frame, but the world was the movie.

  One second we were in the grimy, rusted belly of the Railyard Dungeon. The next...

  FLOOSH.

  A wave of black and white static washed over the Railyard, exploding outward from where Reimi was slumped against the container. The air crackled with a sound like a million TV channels tuned to snow, and the entire world flickered.

  The rusted metal floors vanished, replaced by a grid of sterile white tiles.

  The giant railway signal golem froze mid-stride. Its red light flickered, strobing. 'ERROR. ERROR. UNKNOWN PARAMETERS. ERRoozzzt-OR'

  "What's going on?!" Linda shrieked, clutching her Sapphire Lens as sparks showered from the frame. "The mana readings... the geometry... Maya, look at the floor!"

  I looked down. The rusted gravel and oil-stained ties were flickering, dissolving into pixels. In their place, pristine, white tiles slammed into existence, cold and sterile under my boots.

  The fog vanished. The heavy, humid air was sucked away in a violent vacuum, replaced by an artificial, recycled chill that smelled of ozone, floor wax, and antiseptic.

  "Where are we?" Valentina whispered, her red aura flickering low against the sudden, oppressive brightness.

  The rusted train cars floating around us slammed into a new alignment. They weren't trains anymore.

  They were sleek, silver maglev pods, suspended on tracks of humming blue light that stretched into an infinite, white void.

  Overhead, holographic signs flickered into existence, hanging in the air like ghosts. The text wasn't just English. It was a chaotic, glowing clutter of languages fighting for dominance, flashing in a rhythmic, warning red.

  I recognized the sharp, angular strokes of Katakana and the dense complexity of Kanji immediately. My old man had forced me into Saturday school since I was five - but they were mashed together with floating English words. The structure and layout also... wasn't... Japanese.

  Traditional Chinese? Like in Hong Kong and Taiwan?

  [SECTOR 4 - TRANSIT HUB] [第四セクター - 輸送拠点] [第四區 - 轉運中心]

  Linda tapped frantically at her lens, her face pale. "It's not working! I'm getting system errors! My Lens is reading this place as... 'VOID_STATION' and also... 'PARADISE_UNIVERSITY' and... 'BLACKSITE_ALPHA' all at the same time! This is impossible!"

  "It's coming from Reimi!" Alfie shouted, pointing at Reimi.

  Reimi was still slumped on the floor, her head in her hands. But the space around her was warping.

  She was slumped against what was now a pristine white bulkhead, her chest heaving. But the static was pouring off her in waves, distorting the air around her like heat haze.

  And then, I saw... her.

  A flickering, semi-transparent figure running through the pristine station, passing right through Althea's shield.

  It was a child.

  She couldn't have been more than eleven or twelve.

  She was Caucasian, skinny and pale, wearing a torn, hospital-style gown that hung off her bony shoulders. Her knobby knees were scraped and bleeding. Her long, tangled blonde hair whipped around her face as she ran.

  But her hands...

  Four glowing, bony claws protruded from each of her hands.

  She didn't look real. She looked like a bad hologram, a corrupted file.

  She ran past the golden dome. She scrambled up a floating train car, her claws sinking into the metal, then jumped to another one, her movements erratic and desperate.

  She looked behind her, her face a mask of pure terror. Her eyes glowed a faint, watery red - with a familiar fiery sclera.

  "Please..." the ghost whispered. "Please, let me go. I'll come back. I promise. I just want to go outside."

  She slammed into a holographic barrier near the Signal Golem, clawing at it frantically. Sparks flew where her bone-claws hit the hard-light.

  "SUBJECT 0040."

  A voice boomed over the station's PA system. I froze. I knew that voice. It was cold. Clinical. Dead inside.

  It was Reimi’s voice. But younger.

  The ghost girl turned around, pressing her back against the barrier, her eyes wide with terror.

  "Sister..." the ghost whimpered. "Don't."

  A projection of an Asian girl around the same age with short, neck-length hair stepped out of the static. She was wearing a black tactical bodysuit that looked more like a straitjacket with weapons, her face hidden behind a lower-half mask, her red eyes burning like coals.

  "Return to containment, Zero-Forty. This is your final warning. Mother is watching."

  The blonde ghost screamed as the dark-haired girl raised a pistol.

  "What is this?" Valentina asked, horrified. "Is that... is that Reimi?"

  "I don't know!" I cried, watching the scene.

  The junk golem roared, shattering the memory.

  It shed its rusted armor like a snake shedding skin. The crossing lights and scrap metal fell away, clattering to the spectral floor, revealing a sleek, terrifying chassis of white alloy and black glass.

  It stood twenty feet tall. Its torso was a riot shield. Its four arms ended in riot-suppression shock staves that crackled with blue lightning.

  [DESIGNATION: GATEKEEPER SENTINEL] [TASK: ASSET RETRIEVAL]

  The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

  It turned its head - a smooth, featureless dome with a single vertical red slit.

  It scanned us.

  A beam of red light swept over Valentina, Althea, and me.

  “NON-COMBATANTS DETECTED. PROJECT ASHBLOOM SCRAP MATERIAL. IGNORE."

  It swept over Reimi’s unconscious body.

  “TARGET ACQUIRED. ASSET 0042. STATUS: COMPROMISED. INITIATE RECOVERY."

  Then, it swept over the golden bubble. Over Julian.

  The red light turned a violent, flashing purple.

  “CONTRABAND DETECTED. UNAUTHORIZED ORGANIC MATTER IN TRANSIT ZONE. PURGING RECOMMENDED."

  "Purging...?" Althea squeaked from behind her shield.

  The Gatekeeper raised its arms. The floor lit up.

  Laser grids emitting from floating turnstiles ignited across the white tiles. They hummed with a lethal, red energy, sweeping toward us in a quick, inescapable wave.

  "Move!" I screamed.

  I tackled Linda just as a laser grid swept over the spot where she had been standing. The beam sliced through a floating maglev bench, shearing it cleanly in half with a hiss of molten metal.

  "It cuts!" I yelled, scrambling up. "Don't touch the red lines!"

  "Crudsickles. My shield!" Althea cried out.

  The Gatekeeper marched right over the two of us. I stared in horror as I realized it was walking toward Julian and Alfie. It raised a massive, flat metal foot, aiming to crush the golden bubble like a bug.

  "No!" I raised my wand. "Prism Bolt!"

  The pink bolts pinged harmlessly off the Golem's riot-shield torso, but it staggered just enough to miss Alfie and Julian by a foot's length.

  "It's too tough!" Valentina yelled, rolling under a laser sweep before nimbly back flipping between three sets that converged around her. "Our normal hits aren't going to be able to do anything!"

  I let out a breath I didn't know I was holding when the laser wall swept into Alfie's bubble, but her golden barrier held. Linda yelped, tossing us to the side with a burst of energy as the lasers scattered us. They were everywhere, forcing us into a shrinking box of deadly red light.

  Althea took that moment to pack the shield in around her, yelling as she turned it into a hard ball and rolled back along the floor back toward the group. I felt the beads of sweat on my chin drip to the ground as she sailed past us, breaking her momentum against a platform pillar. She settled Julian back on the ground, panting as the ball expanded back into a dome.

  "We have to wake Reimi up!" Linda said, pointing.

  The ghost girl and the young presumptive-Reimi were gone, but the station was still there. The holographic signs were still flashing. And Reimi was still slumped against a white bulkhead, her body convulsing slightly.

  The Gatekeeper was turned around, its red eye locked on us. “THREAT LEVEL RE-EVALUATED. NON-COMBATANTS INTERFERING. RECOMMENDED NEUTRALIZATION."

  It was raising its four arms. The ends of its shock staves began to glow with an increasingly brighter blue light.

  "She's the key!" Linda shouted, her Sapphire Lens flaring as she pointed at Reimi. "The weirdness is coming from her! If we can just... wake her up!"

  "Or knock her out more?" Valentina panted, ducking under another laser grid. "Maybe whatever's happening is her fighting something in her head! What if we interrupt that?"

  Just then, Julian stirred inside the bubble. His eyes fluttered open. He groaned, pressing a hand to his head.

  "What?" he mumbled. "What's... what's happening? Where are we? The station looks... what?"

  "Julian! Stay down!" I yelled, fumbling for my Star Scepter. "The air in there is filtered! Don't breathe the real stuff!"

  But he pushed himself up, looking at the chaos around him. He saw the laser grids, the robot, the holographic signs. His eyes widened.

  He saw Reimi, slumped on the floor, shaking. He saw the Gatekeeper towering over us.

  And he saw the baseball bat lying on the floor next to him.

  His face, which had been pale and sickly, hardened.

  "No... way," he breathed, scrambling to pick up the bat. He looked at the golden wall, then at the chaos beyond it.

  His knuckles were white, and he was panting.

  "You guys have got to be kidding me," he muttered. "A giant killer robot? In a... where are we? And you guys are Magical Girls?!"

  He slammed a fist against the golden bubble, before promptly vomiting onto the white floor.

  "Stay down, Jules!" Alfie yelped. "The air is poisonous!"

  Julian moaned, feeling at the blue veins crawling up his neck. "It feels like my head is full of bees."

  I grunted in frustration. "Just... stay there and be a good VIP until we sort this out. Or we are going to have a major problem."

  He looked at the robot, then at the bat, then at me.

  "Right," he nodded. "Right. I'm the bait. I can do bait. What do I need to do?"

  "Nothing," I snapped. "This isn't a damned hero shooter. Just... stay inside the magic bubble and try not to die!"

  The Gatekeeper took another step, its feet clanking on the white tiles. The shock staves were glowing brighter, the hum filling the air with a sound like a thousand angry hornets.

  I thought of my dad. He had fought things like this. He had been a front line Sentinel. His old team's Vanguard. He had probably squished hundreds of robots just like this one.

  What would he do?

  "Val! Grab her!" I ordered.

  Valentina didn't argue. She used her gauntlets to slide across the floor, dodging a laser grid by inches.

  Val grabbed Reimi by the back of her shirt and heaved her over her shoulder as she exited an impossible roll.

  "She weighs even more than she did before!" Val grunted, her knees buckling. "What does she eat, lead bricks?!"

  "Just move!"

  The Gatekeeper’s lower arms fired. Grapple cables shrieked through the air, their magnetic tips aimed dead-center at Reimi's torso.

  "Ruby, intercept!" I screamed.

  "On it!" Valentina didn't hesitate. She spun, using Reimi's dead weight as a counterbalance, and slammed a glowing fist into the path of the first cable.

  “Ardorous Impact!"

  The punch connected with the magnetic tip. There was a blinding flash of red light and a deafening crack of thunder. The cable shuddered, its energy field crackling, then recoiled like a struck snake. The second cable, however, snaked past, wrapping around Reimi's leg.

  "I got it!" Linda yelled.

  "Wave Crasher!"

  A thin, crescent-shaped blue ray shot from Linda's hand and sliced through the cable. The severed end sparked wildly, retracting back into the Gatekeeper's arm.

  The giant robot paused. Its head tilted. “ASSET RESISTANT. ESCORT PROTOCOLS FAILED. RE-EVALUATING."

  "We can't keep this up!" Althea cried from her golden bubble. The shield was visibly flickering. "My Mana is draining! This place is like a sponge!"

  She was right. I could feel it myself. This white station wasn't just a hallucination. It was real, and it was starving us. My own Star Morganite armor felt... thinner. The pink light was dimming.

  I looked at my teammates. We were exhausted, out of our depth, and facing a probably-level-50-something Riot-Control Golem from a nightmare dimension.

  We were toast.

  Unless...

  I looked at Reimi. She was still a dead weight over Val's shoulder.

  What had she said?

  "Artillery does not stand on the front lines. Artillery stands behind the armor and rains hell."

  My eyes darted to the Prismatic Lens still nestled in my scepter. The decoy. The lie. The amplification system.

  The one Reimi had given me.

  It was a tool. A focus.

  What if...

  "Val! Throw her!" I shouted, a plan — a crazy, insane, probably-suicidal plan exploding in my head.

  "What?!" Valentina yelped, ducking another laser sweep.

  "Throw her between me and it!" I commanded, raising my wand as I sprinted directly in the golem's charging path. "Now! Aim high!"

  Valentina didn't question it. She trusted me unconditionally. She spun with a grunt of pure effort, using every ounce of her magically-enhanced strength, and hurled Reimi's unconscious body toward me.

  Reimi flew through the air towards me, a limp, black-clad missile.

  The Gatekeeper saw its opportunity. All four of its shock staves ignited to blinding white intensity.

  "PROTOCOL: STUN. RECOVERY IMMINENT."

  This was it. My one shot. I aimed my wand at the spot I'd seen the port open before.

  It fired.

  Four bolts of pure white lightning, each the width of my waist, crackled through the air, converging on Reimi's falling form.

  My heart hammered against my ribs like a trapped bird. I couldn't chant. I didn't have time. I had to pour everything I had into one single, desperate moment.

  I didn't say a word. I just aimed my scepter, my knuckles white, and let out a scream of pure effort. I poured my will, my mana, my fear, everything, into the Prismatic Lens.

  I aimed for the openings the cables shot out of. Not the body, not the shield. The hands. It was a hard shot, but I could theoretically detonate it inside of the port. It was wide enough.

  "Starlight… SHINE!"

  A ray of pink light, a dozen times brighter than any I'd made before today erupted from my wand. It was raw, uncontrolled, and shimmered with unstable energy. .

  A silent, blinding flash of white light erupted from the point of impact, so bright it bleached the world of color.

  And then something strange happened.

  My wand began to vibrate, giving off an explosion of pink and orange sparks.

  I felt the building resistance against my wand for a split-second before my whole world exploded. Reimi slammed into me, and the protective shield of my magical aura flickered and cracked like glass as I was thrown across the station screaming.