Tump's secret HQ is a headache inducing sterile white. Rin stands in the empty void of it utterly unacknowledged by anyone else in the room. Not even Silicia greets her; like she hadn't felt out of place with Tump's new friends already. They don't like her, that much is clear, although she's not sure what she did. It doesn't matter in the end, because unlike them she has more important things to think about than Tump's little bauble. It's impressive, yes, but it's no match for the innate powers she came into this world with. Tump does not have any powers except for what he created for himself, however, so she doesn't remark upon it.

"Plus I can help you from here with my admin rights," Tump is cheerfully promising his posse, "And you have Rin!"

"Well, actually..." Rin says with a wince, as Tump's face falls. "Don't get me wrong, as much as I'd enjoy joining in on your... whacky adventures, I'm not going to be available to play."

"...What do you mean?" Tump asks, breathlessly. Her fingers twist in the fabric of her long dress under his gaze. She has always hated disappointing him.

"Look," Rin says with a sigh, "Pris and Plec were a different matter. I agree that it had to be done. But Lia? I don't know what her motives are, what she's doing... but I intend to find out."
She takes a tentative step back when her intentions sink in. The unbridled shock on Tump's face makes him look younger, almost like the kid who used to be her best friend.
"I'm sorry, but... I'm going on on my own. I need to find her and talk to her."

"Can't wait to rescue you I guess," says one of Tump's awful new friends, but Rin can't tear her eyes away from Tump's expression.

"Yeah, splitting up like that seems like a bad idea," contributes the other, and Tump's mouth gives a pained twitch.
The next second he is scrambling out of his chair, nearly falling towards her like - what is he planning to do, hold her here physically?

"What the fuck?" he demands. It still sounds more uncomprehending than angry, which is the worse option of the two because it means he actually believes that he's doing the right thing.
"She is behind all this," Tump insists, "pulling the strings! We just found our way back to each other and now you're already wanting to piss off on your own?"

She flinches and Tump straightens, catching himself.
"Rin, I need you. We need you."

Unexpectedly, anger rises up her throat at that. Who is he to make demands like that of her? After all, when she needed him - when they all needed him - where was Tump? Because here lies the crux of the issue: when she and Tump say 'we', they mean different people.

"No," she says sharply.
"Whilst you were out making new fucking friends, we were all stuck here, suffering. Lia is my friend, too. Sure, she was your love, but that doesn't mean you get to make this decision alone! I'm sorry, but my mind is made up."

Rin sucks in an uneven breath, and when no one else speaks up, she just continues talking.

"Besides, you've got your own thing going here. I wouldn't want to rain on your parade."

Tump slumps, and she can see that her words hurt. It'll be a good learning experience for him.
"Rin... please," he starts again, pushing his glasses up his nose shakily. She presses her lips into a thin line and lets him finish.
"I get it, but it took us all this time to find each other. All this... please. I... I can't lose you again. I don't want to lose you too. I don't want to be left as the only one who knows..."

"You get it, do you? Really? Do you know all the pain, the torment, the suffering we went through? Do you know? No. In the end you're just... sad."
She thinks she can see his lip trembling. Out of the corner of her eye, one of his annoying friends crosses their arms. She won't regret burning that bridge.
"I get your little survivor's guilt thing, but it won't lead you anywhere useful. You need to grow up and let it go."

Finally, Tump can find no retort. She doesn't like this either, but he will be better for having faced the truth in the end. She's been trying to teach him that since they were ten years old.

"Look," she says more gently, "I'm sorry. But this is something I have to do on my own."

She straightens when one of Tump's posse takes a half step forward. It will be better to cut them off before they can drag this whole miserable scene out any more.
"You really don't get any of it. I do owe you both, it's true, but this isn't your story, so stay out of it."

Tump reaches for her hand then, but she doesn't let him take it.

"I need to go," Rin says and squares her shoulders. Her friend looks up at her, nearly prostrated before her, and she makes herself turn anyway.
"I am not your enemy. I will still tell you if I find something relevant."

Her teeth grit, she opens a portal back to the menu and steps through.
Rin is under no illusion as to her own inevitable fate. It's much too late for her to escape, and she's had years to think about this. It makes it hurt even more how little Tump is willing to consider their perspective. She didn't help kill her oldest friend because he was evil, she did it because she loved him. It was mercy to kill the horror Cris had become, and even Alec had long realized how terrible their position is.
That's why she needs to find out what secret plan Lia has been concocting to get them out of here without killing someone else for a vessel - of course Tump wouldn't understand that. How could he? He and his new group all still have perfectly good bodies in the outside world. If they wanted to, they could just wake up and walk away. Maybe she resents Tump a little bit for not leaving them to die on their own terms.
It would not be better if he hadn't come back, but it would be easier.

She selects file 14 and is met only with an error message. That is annoying, but not a problem. She will simply take the hard way.
The next module opens without difficulty, and Rin slips through the thin digital wall into the world in between. Compared to Tump.exe 3, this system is oddly quiet. Cris' cage used to produce a steady hum she could hear at all times, not to mention the rushing drone of her own prison and whatever it was Plectum used to get up to. But in this system there is nothing of the sort. If she strains her ears she thinks she can faintly make out music coming from far away, but the world in between is still as a graveyard.
She peers into a few files she passes to confirm that she's not actually stumbled into a graveyard, but everything seems fine. Is this what Tump.exe was always meant to feel like? There is no way to know now, after what Plectum and Lia did. Except maybe to ask the woman herself.

She keeps walking, stopping only occasionally to check her position, until she comes upon the frayed entrance of a file that sits at the very core of the system. It appears to be missing an exterior wall, and so she can see right into the corridor within. Almost like an invitation, she thinks with a shudder. But after all, this is what she came for.
The file does not seal itself up behind her as she steps in, which seems like a good sign. The long corridor she finds herself in slopes upwards so that the perspective hides what lays at its end from her. The walls are blank tapestry and plain wood paneling, and even less attention has been paid to the flooring. The cables, however, which run along each side of the corridor and disappear into nothing at the end of the file, are rendered in immaculate detail.

Step by step, Rin makes her way up the steep incline, and though exhaustion is now a foreign feeling to her, the impression of humbly creeping up to a throne is not diminished in the least.
At the very top, she finds Lia - she recognizes her immediately, because she looks exactly like she did at 13, down to the amateurishly cut hair. The jagged white bob swings forward as the girl bows her head to look down on Rin.
Her appearance takes her breath away. Lia is Lia, but she is also so much less and so much more. She is draped in cables, wires and tubes, which radiate out from her body like Durga's halo of extra arms. They twist around each other to form thicker bundles, multiple of which seem to serve no purpose but to keep Lia suspended. As she moves, Rin spies something that turns her stomach: A good part of the back of Lia's head and torso is gone, presumably to expose her central nervous system to the lines and drains which feed directly into it and move with her head like shiny strands of long hair.

"Lia," she chokes out, and watches the girl's eyes widen minutely in an otherwise normal gesture of recognition. But it is made bizarre by it's context; the husk of a person before her does not need to blink, and her eyes look hollow and still like those of a doll. When finally she speaks, it sounds like it's not coming from her throat at all.

"Rin, love. I knew you would come."

Rin nods, unable to tear her eyes away and be polite about the abject horror splayed out before her.

"You've killed my lapdog," says the girl-machine without inflection.

"So I did," Rin says bravely.

"Why did you do that?"

"Because it was the only way he could be at peace."

It takes her a moment to realize that the odd, twitching movement Lia's head performs is a nod.

"Tump thinks the same of you," Rin continues when nothing else is forthcoming.

Lia inclines her head, and like a puppet most of her upper body goes with it.
"And what do you think?"

Rin frowns. It's beginning to dawn on her that she's made a grave mistake coming here, but she can't bring herself to regret it. She wants to live the last snatches of her un-life as freely as she can.

"I'm not sure," she says carefully. "Can you die?"

"We all can," Lia intones.

They stare at each other. Then, her mouth opens again, stiffly.
"Come closer, I want to see you."

Rin swallows heavily and obeys. A small, pale hand comes up to rest against her cheek, cables and tubing sliding off of Lia's arm like a grotesque parody of Rin's own long sleeves.

"He will not kill you," Lia says. Up close Rin is sure the sound is not coming from where it should, but she is distracted from the thought as soon as it arises by the girl's hand. The fingers spasm suddenly, and then it's moving again and Rin catches on too slowly to stop it. As the god of the world in between touches the side of her neck, Rin's vision goes red.
She is ejected from her comfortable, whole digital body into a terrible reality. She can still see the face bent over her, the mass of cables at her back, but equally she is aware of luke warm fluid all around her, her lungs inflating and deflating without her say so, and finally the all consuming pain. It's all the worse for there being no outlet for it, because she can neither thrash nor scream as the waves of agony roll over her. It likely takes under a minute, but finally, after years of perpetual wakefulness, Rin falls unconscious in the inhuman arms of her former friend.