Darlene spoke about Dawn last night. She says she misses me, but she doesn't understand why I broke up with her anyway. She will never understand, even if she is my sister. 

I hate having withdrawals and missing Dawn at night doesn't help much. Sometimes I feel like she's my substitute to morphine. 

Darlene is staying in my apartment until the day of the hack, because she doesn't think I can get off morphine by myself. She knows me too well, because she stares at me when I have my withdrawals. She's spent the whole day with me in my apartment, trying to prepare everything we need for tomorrow.

My body rejects the idea of food when it's craving the substance. 

I wipe my mouth, washing my hands before I leave the bathroom for the third time today. Darlene is sitting on the couch, her legs on my coffee table as she types away on her laptop. 

"Hey," she says, looking up at me as she stops typing. 

"What are you doing?" I ask, taking a seat beside her. 

"I'm trying to contact the Dark Army." 

"God, you really think they're gonna help us?"

"They have to," Darlene says after a brief silence. 

I look at her screen, all written in Mandarin. She sighs, rolling her eyes. 

"I don't understand shit. We need Cisco." 

"Where is he?" I ask, getting up from the couch again. Like a reflex, my eyes scan for the morphine bottle, but I know I won't find it. Darlene has them all in her safe, in her apartment. 

Maybe I can hack into her safe. 

No, Elliot. You have to do this. You have to quit. 

"Jesus fucking Christ," she says, sighing deeply. "Not even the translator is working." 

"Why don't you call Cisco?" I ask, realising she didn't answer my previous question. 

"I already told you. He doesn't wanna help," she responds. She shuts her laptop screen, tossing it onto the coffee table. She stares at blank space, her eyes full of worry. 

I know why she's worried. Because we only have 24 hours before Darlene's hack comes into place. And we need China to shut down E Corp's backups all over the world for that. Without the Dark Army, we can't have this plan. 

It just won't work. 

"I'll talk to him," I say, gazing at her. She's frustrated because she feels useless. I feel the same way sometimes. 

"I don't want you getting involved in this. It's too late," Darlene says, defeated. 

This can't end this way. 

"Give me your phone," I say, but instead of hearing my own voice, I hear Mr Robot's. 

"What?" she asks, puzzled. 

"Give me your phone." 

"No. You can't, it's too late." 

"We just need a translator," Mr Robot's voice says. 

"Elliot. It's risky." 

"Fine. I'll figure out a way," I'm back to being myself. Just like that. I grab her laptop, my eyes scanning the screen. I don't know a word of Mandarin, but I know the language hackers use. It's fluid, legible to only hackers and straightforward. Amongst the foreign characters, I see small chunks of codes. I can figure it out. 

"You need to enter the chat," Mr Robot says, sitting down on the couch next to me. But I'm too busy to notice him staring at me. I type quickly the code I need to enter the chat again. We don't have much time. When they find out it's us, they'll kick us out again. 

I go to edit the host name but I freeze. I don't know enough about the Dark Army to pretend to be one of them. 

"What's Cisco's real name?" I ask, typing away the host name. Maybe something simple, like his official name will make us stay longer. 

"What the fuck are you doing?" 

"I'm trying to get this plan to work. What's his real name?" I snap, suddenly hearing Mr Robot laugh. 

"Elliot, you have to be harder than that," he says, blowing out some smoke from his cigarette. Nothing annoys me more than when I'm having withdrawals and people smoke around me. 

"I can't tell you that. It's for his safety." 

"I don't care about his safety. We need to pretend we're him, until they realise we're not him." 

"What do you mean?" 

"We can use his name or something that only himself and the Dark Army knows. We change the host name; pretend it's him. We tell them to execute the plan. It works out." 

"Are you insane? You know they can find us." 

"Darlene," I say, losing my temper. Fuck, the nausea is back. My body has begun to shake uncontrollably again. But my fingers are still typing. I write Francis Shaw, somehow the name coming to my fingers as if I knew the whole time. 

I hit enter. There's a moment of silence before the messages start pouring in. I read the messages. I don't recognise the host names, but I don't need to. 

"Open the translator," I order. 

"I'm so not helping you with this."

"Do you want this to work or not!" I scream. My anger from my withdrawals is coming out. I made Darlene flinch because she knows she shouldn't be messing with me when I'm hacking. 

"It doesn't work, Elliot," Darlene says, frustrated. She scoots over and I hand her the laptop for a second before she hands me the laptop again. I begin to type, the program automatically correcting the words I type into Mandarin. 

users online: 莲花, 牡鹿, 精巧, 弗朗西斯肖

莲花: 你已经暴露自己.

lotus: you've exposed yourself

牡鹿: 新秀. 他删除.

hart: rookie. remove him.

 精巧: 你晚了 . 共商大计

quaint: you are late. what is the plan?

Fuck. I type a reply. 

弗朗西斯肖: 它必须被破坏

francisshaw: it has to be destroyed. 

"How the fuck are you doing all of that? You're not even using the translator," Darlene asks, waking me up from my trance. I silence her because I'm waiting for a reply. 

"I... I don't know," I respond. I don't know how easily I got into this. His name must be really private. 

Do I know how to speak Mandarin?

莲花: 我们没有时间

lotus: we don't have time. 

I chew my nails nervously. Do we really not have time? 

弗朗西斯肖: 他们已经准备好了计划。我们必须关闭服务器

francisshaw: they have prepared the plan. we just have to close the servers. 

There's that silence again. I wait for them to remove me from the group. But they don't. 

莲花: 启动计划 

lotus: initiate plan. 

 <你已经离开聊天. >

<You have left the chat.>

Darlene lets out a sigh of relief, a grin on her face. 

"Elliot, you fucking did it," she says, jumping into my arms. I awkwardly hug her back. I don't feel like I've done something important. 

The words just came to me. Maybe it was Mr Robot. 

"I can't believe you tricked them!" Darlene says, grinning.

I stare at the ground for a brief second, smiling to myself. 

I know deception doesn't last for long, but after the USB has been added, none of this will matter.

***

The withdrawals are getting worse. I'm sweating like a dog, in my bed, my eyes wide open as I stare at the darkness of my room. I'm insane. How did I think of starting doing morphine again? 

I'm never gonna come clean. The convulsions are back as I grunt, fighting with my bed sheets. It doesn't take long until Darlene hears me.

"Are you okay?" she asks, getting up from the couch. She turns on the light, making me grunt. 

"No light," I say, covering my face from the light. My body continues to jolt, shivering up and down my entire body. 

"Take deep breaths. You need to get this out of your system, Elliot."

"I can't," I hiss, panting heavily. My body trembles like a leaf. I can't control this. The vomit comes up; I can't control it. Darlene shrieks, her face full of disgust. But the convulsions are too strong for me to apologise. 

"Stay there. I need to shower," I hear her say, but I can't say anything. I let out a scream.

"You can do this, son," Mr Robot says. He's sitting down beside me on the bed. He clutches my hand. "I'm never leaving you."

I try taking in deep breaths. Shit. This is so hard. 

"You can do this," Mr Robot repeats, his eyes focused on me in the dimness of the room.

I black out again. 

---

<Six months ago>

Hello, friend. Hello, friend? That's lame. Maybe I should give you a name. But that's a slippery slope. You're only in my head. We have to remember that.

I'm at the shrink's office again. Krista Gordon. I hacked her after my first session with her. I was forced to come here. My boss, Gideon Goddard, said I have to sort out my life if I want to stay in AllSafe. I've only been working for 2 weeks and he already has dirt on me.

Angela, my childhood best friend, brought me in. Her mother was also killed after the Washington Township accident in 1993. The year my father was diagnosed with leukemia. 

"Elliot," Krista says, suddenly snapping me back into reality. 

"Sorry," I say, staring at her for a few seconds. 

"Why won't you say something?" she asks, leaning forwards in her seat. She may be a psychologist but she is bad at reading people but I am good at reading people. My secret? I look for the worst in them. 

"I don't have anything to say," I reply, shrugging. Krista narrows her eyes because she knows I'm lying. 

"You need to talk about your problems, Elliot. How is your second week at AllSafe? Have you made any friends?" she asks. She always diverts the topic when I don't say anything. Which is something I do in every session. 

"It's fine. My boss is happy with me." 

"I'm very glad to hear that," she says, a soft smile on her face. I know she's desperate to fix me, but she can't at this point. 

I know she recently went through a divorce and she is broken by it. I read her emails. She tries fixing people because she needs fixing. It's a cycle. 

"How are things going with Angela? Have you spoken to her lately?" Krista asks. 

I nod my head. "Yeah. We had dinner together last night," I lie. 

"That's great. Human contact is essential for us," she says, but I don't add anything to that. Maybe I should start taking the meds she gave me instead of doping myself on morphine. When I'm alone, I have no one to turn to. I don't have family and my only friend, Angela is too busy with her asshole boyfriend, Ollie. 

I've been doing morphine for a year, but I only limit myself to 30 grams a day. That's the only way you don't become a junkie. 

"Elliot, you're not saying anything," Krista says, her eyes focused on me. 

I should have listened to Angela and gone with her to her birthday party. I'm bad at talking to people so I avoided the invitation by saying I had to come here. 

Now I regret it. 

---

I wake up in a cold sweat. My body aches from the withdrawals. My hands are clenched into a fist as I gasp for air. My vision focuses and I see Darlene making herself coffee in the kitchen. When she hears me, she turns around. 

"Hey. Are you feeling better?" she asks, walking towards me with her mug of coffee with steam coming off it. 

I stare blankly at my sheets, trying to figure out how many hours I've been clean. If I remember correctly, it's been almost 48 hours. 

"How long have you been awake?" I ask, sitting up, my breaths heavy. 

"Half an hour. You finally fell asleep," she says, chuckling. 

"Did I throw up on you last night?" I ask. Darlene laughs, a drop of her coffee spilling on the couch. She glances at the stain, flinching. She looks up at me again.

"Yeah. It was really gross," she says, laughing again. 

I don't know if I'm ready for today. I remember vaguely chatting with the Dark Army from Darlene's laptop. 

"Any news from the Dark Army?" I ask, getting out of bed. My back aches, but the nausea is gone. Maybe it wasn't so hard. 

"Nope. So they must have fallen for it," she says with a grin. "Elliot, it's today, I can't believe that, after so many years, we made it here. We're going to crush Evil Corp." 

"Yeah," I say, smiling before I head to the bathroom. I take a hot shower to get rid of the sweat from last night's convulsions. I can't believe I threw up on Darlene. 

I woke up from one of my dreams, my arm drifting to the other side of the bed for Dawn. But she wasn't there. I was alone. 

I clench my jaw as I step into the shower, the hot water hitting my body. 

Maybe I should have been honest with her. But I don't know enough about her to tell her what I did. The only thing I know about Dawn is that she seems to be friends with Darlene. I don't know why, or how they met. I don't have time to ask those questions.

"Elliot!" I hear Darlene call from the living room. "We're leaving for fsociety in half an hour!" she shouts. 

Fuck. I completely forgot about that.

I step out of the shower, throwing my clothes on. I zip my hoodie up, going back to the living room. Darlene is sitting on the couch, her eyes fixed on her screen again. 

"What are you doing?" I ask, grabbing some breakfast from the kitchen cabinet. 

"I'm trying to see if the Dark Army has said anything else," she says, her eyes still on the screen. "And also, Angela texted you. She said she's ready to put the USB in."

"We need to plug her in when we get to fsociety. We need to tell her the steps," I say, a mental image of the plan unfolding in my mind. It's working. We can do this. 

"Yep," Darlene says, closing her laptop. "Maybe we should get going and get a head start," she suggests. 

The trip to the Coney Island amusement park seems shorter than what it usually is. Maybe because my thoughts are back to distracting me. No sign of Mr Robot since last night. 

Sometimes it worries me when I don't see him. It feels like he's abandoned me. 

I don't like being alone. 

The amusement park is as gloomy as always, even on a sunny day. The signs are all rusty from the salt water. The park has been empty for over a year now, since the death of the owner. He was shot dead in his own park. 

Darlene and I make our way inside the arcade. The rule is, the moment we enter, everything becomes professional. Once we leave, we do not work on the project. That way we can protect ourselves from being found by the cops. 

Their eyes all turn to me the moment they walk in. 

"Elliot! Today's the day, bro!" Mobley exclaims excitedly. They're all smiling because our plan is working. 

For now. 

These people standing right in front of me have been waiting their entire lives for this; just like me. 

I spot Dawn on the CPU at the very end of the arcade. Her eyes don't leave the screen. I know she's avoiding me. I notice Romero staring at me, his brows furrowed. I catch Darlene giving him a nod, meaning that I've kept my promise of staying clean. 

"Let's get Angela on. Mobley, connect her with our servers. We need to tell her exactly what to do," I say, walking over to my own computer. 

"I have her locked in," Trenton says. 

"Good. Put her online," I say, giving Darlene a nod before she picks up the microphone. We all linger around her nervously. 

"Angela, are you there?" Darlene says into the microphone. 

"I'm here," she replies.