Grace found herself in her own body again. Knightmare-Grimm still had her gripped at the arm with his sharp claw-like hand. She bled slowly. Pixel still lay on the ground. Debris still fell and the environment continued to collapse. Although from the effects of time dilatation they had only been away for a minute. Knightmare-Grimm's other hand was on the kernel. He looked at her menacingly.
"It doesn't matter whether you are inside my head or out here. With the power of the kernel, I will take control of you." He struck her with another pulse energy of despair, which went through her whole body. Grace felt a strong urge to surrender her soul.
'Don't give in.' It was Yi.
"He's too powerful now," Grace replied. A warmth infused her and she became aware that Yi's soul infused hers. Yi spoke to her inside her head.
"Yes he is," he said. "We need that password. I can try to type it in."
"I can't hold on much longer," said Grace.
"If I leave your side, he will overwhelm you," said Yi.
"Give it to Pixel," said Grace.
Knightmare-Grimm twisted his grip even more. Grace felt unbearable pain.
"I love you Grimm," she said. "I surrender to you." The delirium had taken her.
"No!" said Yi. But he was struggling to communicate with her.
"Yes," said Knightmare-Grimm as Grace's body finally collapsed to the ground. "I can feel her soul, so sweet haha, now in the real world, her body is mine!"
Pixel managed to get to her feet holding her head. Yi still in Grace's mind, noticing her essence fade, noticed this.
"Grace, what is the password?" he said.
"Philodendron," she whispered.
"Excuse me?" Yi said.
"Philodendron," she whispered again.
"How do you spell that?" Yi asked but Grace didn't reply. Out of time, he did the only thing he could do, he stole the memory from Grace's mind. He witnessed the darkness of Knightmare-Grimm taking over and managed to get out just in time.
"I'll try to come back for you Grace," he said. He left her and went to Pixel's body.
Pixel staggered after she stood up. She managed to get her bearings by the time Yi entered her mind.
"Pixel, there's no time to lose," he said. "We have to key in the password to the bomb."
"Yi?" she replied. I must be dreaming.
"Quickly Pixel, while he is distracted we can put in the code to make the bomb go off.
He's got Grace!!" Pixel realised.
"There isn't much we can do for her right now," said Yi.
Knightmare-Grimm screamed with laughter. "70% power."
Grace's body lay on the ground at his feet. "Not long now and it will be irreversible."
"Quickly," said Yi. "Get to the controls."
Pixel ran to the other side of the kernel. Knightmare-Grimm swelling in pride from his supreme victory, did not notice her movement. She narrowly missed a piece of ground that opened like a chasm from the shattering world of Yi's mental representation. Though, the fact he was talking to Pixel explained why the environmental symbolism persisted.
"What's the password?" she said.
"Philodendron," replied Yi.
"How do you spell that?"
"I'll give you Grace's memory," Yi said.
"You stole it?"
"No time to explain," he replied.
Pixel became aware of a new memory in her mind. A semantic one. She knew how to spell philodendron.
She paused for a moment, scared that by putting this password in, everything around them would collapse and they would be lost in the oblivion of the computer system forever.
"This is greater than death," Yi said, reading her mind.
She typed. P...H...I...L...O...D…
"Wait, what is happening?" said Knightmare-Grimm. He sensed a change in the kernel. Suddenly, distracted from his consumption of Grace's soul, he found himself afraid of what Pixel was about to do, yet powerless to stop it.
E...N...D...R...O…
"Your nightmare ends now," said Pixel.
...N.
Knightmare-Grimm's eyes widened with alarm.
"No," he said. "If you do that I will…"
A crashing sound emanated from the kernel. It cracked open and threw out a huge burst of energy. Light flashed so intensely that for a moment Pixel only saw pure white around her. The heat from the blast made her feel as if she had caught fire. She was thrown back several yards but she was not blown apart. Her head hit the rocks with a thud but luckily she was not knocked out.
She could not hear a thing.
When the light dissipated she saw the kernel broken in half in a horizontal plane, with the upper piece lying on the rocks near its bottom part. Electrical sparks flew out of the top of the lower part of the kernel, along with smoke. In fact, the area was so covered with it that Pixel struggled to see where Grace was. The symbolic representation of the internal software system at Sheldrake still felt so real and Pixel coughed as she inhaled some of the smoke.
"Quick," said Yi, inside her head. "Let's find Grace."
Pixel crawled and then picked herself up into a standing position.
Parts of the ground broke around her and with urgency she scuttled around looking for Grace, taking care to avoid the cracks in the rocky surface. Grace could not have gone far.
The body of her friend had been thrown several yards away from the kernel. The smoke rose up and cleared quite quickly, revealing Grace's body outspread on the rocks. Bits of ground between them collapsed.
"Quickly," said Yi. "I would try to jump to Grace's body but I've been weakened by the blast. We need to get close to her."
"I'm trying," Pixel replied.
She jumped across two gaps, being careful to avoid the black holes in the ground that would have probably led to a fall into the system abyss, though neither Pixel or Yi could be sure. Thankfully, Grace's body had not fallen into one of these holes but more were appearing.
"Oh no," said Yi.
"What?" Pixel asked.
"He's still attached to her!"
Pixel noticed an arm still held onto Grace. Wriggling on the ground with its head and right arm but missing the other arm, both legs and the left half of his torso was Knightmare-Grimm, hissing and screaming with eyes that were now red.
Pixel recognised the anxious terrified face of Byron Grimm. No longer wolf-like, instead gaunt and desperate; the expression of a fear written on his face with no trace of hubris. He only grunted and whimpered, with tears streaming down from bloodshot red eyes.
"I'm going to jump into Grace's body," said Yi.
"Yarrrgh," Knightmare-Grimm hissed.
"Get off her," Pixel screamed kicking the head of Grimm, who let go of Grace's arm in the process. Rolling away a yard or two. Pixel raised her boot to finish the job by crushing his head but stopped when she noticed that his body was dissolving away on its own. The monster looked with frightful eyes and a smile of hatred as he melted into a dark grey sludge.