Ninjas in Space
Look at where we find ourselves once again. This will be my final show. After this, I'll need to go into hiding until things cool down. And so, I've constructed one final trap for you all. This one has a special little twist on it!
Once more, the Ghoulie Grabber has taken you away and deprived you of your belongings sans your mundane clothes. However, this time you find yourself in a room made entirely of solid metal reinforced to be unbreakable. With walls like these, there is no chance of communicating with the outside world! Don't worry about air, I-er, GG will release you once Drekus' new trolley has passed the point of no return. He is in a newly built trolley and all that, as well as in another area far from anyone.
Now here's where the extra twist comes in. You see, the lever this time is different. This one is spring loaded and the end is glued to your hand in the pulled position. The glue isn't that strong, though. I just needed you to have your hand on it when you woke up. If you were to let go, however, the lever will swing into the unpulled position and change the direction of the tracks towards the five innocents. In front of you is a screen showing the scene live. Wondering if it's real? I believe the Ghoulie Grabber has done this enough to be believed at this point. Behind you is a single camera recording your actions. The video data won't be released immediately in case I need to edit it before release.
For the final time, what you do? Free your hand of the weak glue and let go of the lever? Keep it pulled to save more lives? Maybe some other third thing if you think you're so clever? I've even let you keep your quirk this time. After all, what use will it be...
IN THE DEPTHS OF SPACE!? That's right! We're not even on Earth anymore! If you want any chance of making it back to your home, you're going to have to make a decision! There's no autopilot on this thing, only the Ghoulie Grabber knows how to operate it! Now, make your choice!
Hoge blinks rapidly to try to flush the bleariness from her vision. Her mouth is dry. Her head hurts. What demands the most attention is the sticky feeling on her hand.
Disgusting. Nasty. Gross. Abhorrent. Filthy. She has to clench her teeth to force herself to begin peeling her skin away from the cool plastic ball of the metal lever she's been glued to.
That's when the speaker system crackles on. That's when Ghoulie Grabber gives his speech. Hoge's movements freeze and her mind retreats into itself. From that place of darkness, it devours the world into tiny manageable fragments. Slowly, the girl's fingers close back around the lever. The glue regains its seal.
"Another abduction," is all she says. She can feel the electric eye of the camera boring into the back of her head. But Hoge stares straight ahead at the monitor. Her vision tunnels into the scene it shares. She watches as Drekus, his face in a blue rictus of self-loathing and transcendent excitement, leans out of the trolley window to get an unobstructed view of the proceedings.
The trolley clammers down its track, runaway, brakeless, decisive. It speeds into the curve of the diverted track and kicks out twin arcs of orange sparks. As soon as the rear wheels are clear of derailment, Ghoulie Grabber keeps his word. The sinister laughter from the ceiling squawk box almost covers up the sound of many actuators kicking on. The reinforced walls begin their slow rumble downward to recess into the floor.
Hoge waits until they're all the way down before she pulls her hand free of the spring-loaded lever. She can hear the adhesive tearing. It sticks to her hand. It makes her palm cling to itself. She hates it.
It is difficult for the dead-eyed girl to get to her feet. She has been out for a long time, an alarmingly long time, and she feels weak. What's worse is the microgravity. She feels disoriented. She feels out of control. When she tries to stand, she just pushes off the ground, and drifts along. Even trying to halt herself against the ceiling with outstretched hands goes awry -- in the end, her lower body continues on without the braced upper half, and she ends up in a slow motion tumble that strikes her knees awkwardly against the reinforced metal.
What once was ceiling is now floor. Perspective visibly warps in Hoge's head. The brain reacts by ancient instinctual reflex, fearing poisoning. She pukes. The burning glob of stomach acid - Ah, a derealized part of her mind reflects, we've been unconcious for at least 12 hours - wobbles and pulls itself into a glistening wad that tumbles effortlessly through the air.
With an arm looped through a fabric doorway strap, Ghoulie Grabber sardonically performs a slow clap. He gives Hoge the kind of mua ha ha laughter that can only be developed by conscious repetition into a bathroom mirror.
"A beautiful showing, young hero," he says, stabbing the last word with a sarcastic knife, "I just hope this last circus act made it into frame. It might not make it into the edit I release to the internet, but it would definitely make it into my private collection."
Hoge spits a few times to try to expel the last of the juices souring her mouth. She watches the ghoulish Grabber like he's an early morning informercial and she's a bored insomniac. Ghoulie stops clapping. He frowns at her. She rests her cheek on the cold metal, but the pressure causes her to start drifting away from the surface again. He sneers instead. Then he opens his mouth.
"So why'd you do it?"
When Hoge replies, it's even more monotone than usual. "I still haven't done anything."
"You chose!," he outbursts. "This time you chose! You had to choose! I made you! Forward or back, up or down, five or one, you chose!"
He stabs an arm forward and jabs the air with an ungloved finger. His nails are cracked and yellow. Lab injuries, Hoge's inner voice reports. Chemical damage. Poor PPE discipline. "You had to choose to keep your hand there or to take your hand off and each side of that choice paid in blood. So explain it! Justify it to yourself! I want to hear it!"
A dangerous gleam flashes in his eyes as his lips crawl into a grin. "And I won't be landing us until you do."
Hoge experiments with twisting her body this way and that, just like she has to do in parkour practice. But every vector matters more. She manages to control her facing, but can't quite cancel her momentum, and she slides weightlessly at an oblique angle towards the ceiling-ground-wall with the mounted lever. It takes a long time for her to reply, and Ghoulie Grabber glares at her the whole time as he clutches onto the door breach.
"I didn't choose. You chose for me. I decided to leave things exactly as a villain arranged them so that my agency would not be involved in the sequence of events. My hand had no more control over that situation than a rock tied to the knob would have had."
Ghoulie Grabber scoffs. "You'll never get it. You'll never approach the trolley problem on its terms. You'll never see what I've seen, understand what I understand. You won't see the real world. You're pathetic. You chose. I saw it. And it's all anyone else will see when they look at the video and watch you holding the lever down so it runs over that orphan epidemiologist that you killed."
Both people float in the void in silence. They look passed each other.
Eventually, Ghoulie lets go of his perch and pushes towards Hoge with practiced ease. His hands loom in front of him, shaped like claws. She bounces slowly off the floor and begins her snail pace ascension again. She hangs there like a porcelain doll. Her expression is about as rigid.
He lets out a soft "heh" when he grabs her by the school outfit. He thinks to himself, broke her. Got another one. Nobody can handle it. Nobody except for me. And he hauls her, weightless baggage trailing behind him, as he space walks back to the rocket controls.
"Remember what I said. Only I know how this thing works. I built it myself, just like all the wonderful traps and gadgetry you've seen in my tests."
"Why me?"
He's momentarily startled. She's been silent for so long, that he thought she'd stay that way until re-entry. He turns to looks at her and it's like trying to see a mud drop on a windshield. She looks like she's at the wrong focal distance no matter how his eyes try to dial her in, and it's starting to irritate him.
"Huh?"
"Why'd you keep putting me in this? Why keep doing this to all those people? All this expense, all this effort, you could have gotten anybody, right? So why me?"
One side of his mouth grimaces to show his teeth. "You're not special really. You were just there at the start and I got upset that no one was taking Drekus' trolley thing seriously. It deserves real engagement. You kept ignoring the premise."
"No I didn't."
"Ugh. Whatever." He dismisses her with a shake of his head and went back to situating himself in the pilot chair and beginning the start up sequence. He made sure to mix in a lot of feints and false actions so she couldn't remember everything that needed to be done. She drifted closer and the indistinct spot in his peripheral vision worked him up again.
"I don't know what your whole deal is, but I'm pretty sure you're going to need to strap in. Your quirk of being super-boring is not going to help you with the gravity well, got it?"
She doesn't say anything. He pointedly ignores her and begins typing in the coded sequence that programs the thrusters and timings for getting back to Earth's atmosphere.
He ignores her when she smacks off a few more things in the cockpit. He ignores her when she gets tangled up in the tool netting. He definitely ignores her when the shield ceramics begin to glow from the friction of cutting through the mesosphere. The G-forces start the build and push him back against the customized piloting seat. Even though it's less force than the ascent to space, it's still higher than free-fall. Ghoulie especially ignores his passenger when she refused to get into her own protective seat.
Whatever happens to her serves her right for not listening. It's just one more body, anyway. Idiots like her don't deserve to live.
His green ghoulie eye mask slips down his face. He growls in irritation at the wardrobe malfunction and tries to catch it on his chin, but it only hurts his neck muscles from the effort and somehow the fabric band slides passed. It gets onto his neck and is pushed backwards towards the seat.
Then it crushes backwards. Hard. He can't breath. It digs into his flesh. Panic rises. With all his strength, he lifts his hands from their rests. They struggle up until their half point, then snap up and back as thrust aligns with them. He claws, desperate, thick nails scraping to get under the band. To cut the fabric. Blood warms his fingertips. Black consumes his vision. As he sputters and coughs on his swollen tongue, his red and purple face shudders into a massive grin. His eyes spill tears and his last thought was a funny one.
See? She chose.
An orbital vehicle jettisons its final fuel tank and releases a titanic white parachute. It is recovered with one survivor from splashdown in the Yamato Basin.