They walked through walls. They walked through Sims. Wherever Zero passed, the world decayed. Grass turned to grey, cracked concrete. Happy moodlets turned to red, screaming "-" signs. The pretty, pastel world of Willow Creek began to rot.

She was deleting herself to save them.

Lily now lived in a world of patchwork reality. The group had established a "Stable Zone" in the basement of the Landgraab mansion—the one place where the foundation code was so old and so deeply embedded that even corruption struggled to take root. They called it "The Core."

The Player was silent for a long time.

The first to emerge was Subject Zero.