Don't Derail The Plot

2. U̶n̶Clear Motive

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When Tanzu regained consciousness, she found herself in pitch black darkness. She thought her senses were awry, for they could not clearly tell her whether she was standing, lying down, or floating in this strange place. In fact, she couldn't sense anything at all about herself or. Tanzu was beginning to wonder if this was in a bizarre lucid dream when an artificially androgynous voice spoke out, seemingly from everywhere at once.

[Greetings, host! Welcome to the Cupid Catalyst System. My name is 909. Do you wish to enter into an indentured contract with me?]

Tanzu blinked dumbly before turning around to find the source of the foreign voice. She didn't know why she bothered, as her surroundings didn't change no matter how she moved about. When the words finally registered, she could only draw one natural conclusion: she fell asleep while reading another system novel. Tanzu's dreams had a tendency of incorporating the last thing she watched or read before falling sleep. But Cupid Catalyst System? she asked herself. Tanzu knew she had better naming sense than that.

"This is not a dream. You are currently in your soul state within a temporary pocket of space meant to contain it until you make a decision."

"...You can read my mind?" She had not expressed her last question out loud, or as externally as she could in her soul state, as this 909 called it.

[To a certain extent. I am currently linked to your soul.] 909 then remembered humans' peculiar obsession with privacy and said, [If you wish, you can deny me permission to access to your inner thoughts.]

"Hm." She sounded distractedly as she focused on her surroundings once more. Tanzu was naturally very skeptical about what this 909 was saying, but her theory that this was a lucid dream was coming undone when she couldn't change anything she was seeing or hearing. Left with no other choice, she decided to suspend her disbelief long enough to see where this development would take her.

"Okay." She replied slowly, thinking carefully about what the system meant about being in a 'soul state'. If this was a novel, the main character would only be picked up by a system when they were dead or somehow incapacitated. Tanzu tried to recall what she was doing before she found herself in this place. After a beat, memories of the recent events flooded her mind.

"Am...I dead?" She asked what she now dearly hoped was a ridiculous figment of her imagination.

[Yes.]

It was only a single word, but it got her with a crushing weight on her chest.

"You're sure I'm not in a coma?" Tanzu did not not know why she asked this. She knew she had a living will and if her injuries were as bad as they felt, it would have taken into effect, leading to the same outcome.

Death.

[You are not in a coma. You were declared dead on arrival at the hospital. Would you like me to show you? I have access to the events that transpired up to 48 hours after your death.] 909 reviewed her life data once more. It lacked a surprising amount of detail, leading 909 to wonder if some data had been damaged in transmission. 

Tanzu turned down 909's offer. "No. You can just tell me what I want to know." Seeing her death and hearing about it were two different things. Tanzu feared she would not move on from her death if she saw what looked like, and what her death meant to those she left behind.

Don't come home.

Her last living thought rang out in her mind, reminding her if her dying  concern.

"Mera."Tanzu gasped. How could she forget? "My sister Mera. Do you know if she is okay? She didn't go back, did she?" Worry tore at her as she thought of her sister returning to the apartment, only to encounter body, or worse, that psychopath. She had tried so hard to warn her away, but the pain made it difficult to know whether her words were clear enough for Mera to be heard over the phone.