Elisa had spent months locked away in her secret laboratory.
She barely slept. She ate just enough to stay awake and spent her nights writing formulas, soldering components, and experimenting with stellar energy.
The laboratory was her entire world: a hidden space in the forest filled with cables, screens, and blueprints that flickered chaotically. Formulas, tools, vials containing liquids, and small energy cores glowing in different colors were piled up on the table.
She hardly spoke to anyone anymore.
Her parents believed that whenever she went out, she was attending the scientific university of Aetheris, but she hadn't been going there for months. Isabella was the only one who occasionally tried to visit her, but Elisa was always too busy or irritated to pay attention to her.
At first, her enthusiasm was genuine.
She sincerely believed that her inventions would help everyone. She had designed things such as a battery capable of extracting energy from stars without depleting them, a box that could store absolutely anything by housing a small pocket dimension, and even a device that could create matter from someone's thoughts.
To her, these were breakthroughs that could change the history of the universe.
However, her obsession began to consume her.
She slept less and less. Dark circles formed beneath her sunken eyes, her hands trembled from exhaustion, and her skin grew pale. She truly looked like a mad scientist. When she looked at her reflection in the metallic panels, she could barely recognize herself. Sometimes, she would step outside to get some air and gaze up at the sky, convinced that the universe itself was watching her with interest.
"I'm close..." she constantly repeated. "When everyone sees it, they'll understand. They won't fear me anymore. I won't have to hide anymore."
She began to believe that if she managed to show off her inventions, the scientists and leaders of Aetheris would finally accept her, and that her machines could help the entire universe. She imagined herself standing before everyone, presenting her creations and receiving the applause she had always dreamed of. That vision became the only thing keeping her going.
But the rest of the planet didn't see things the same way.
Aetheris was a world that valued knowledge, but it also valued boundaries. Everyone knew that energy and matter were dangerous if handled carelessly. That was why Elisa had always conducted her experiments in secret. She knew she wouldn't be able to reveal them until the right moment.
However, her family soon began to notice Elisa's deteriorating condition.
Her mother tried to talk to her, but Elisa always found an excuse to avoid her. Her father attempted to reason with her, asking her to tell them whether she was all right or if she was hiding something from them, but Elisa only became angry.
"If I am hiding something from you, it's because you always assume the worst about me! I was never able to express myself freely with you or anyone else because every word that came out of my mouth was judged! So all I'm asking is that you leave me alone, just like you've always done!"
Even Isabella began to worry.
One afternoon, she went to visit her in the laboratory. Elisa barely looked up from her work.
"Elisa, you haven't been outside in days," her friend said in a soft, concerned voice. "You barely eat anymore."
"I'm fine," Elisa replied without looking at her. "I don't need to rest."
"But look at yourself... Your hands are trembling, your eyes are red, and you have dark circles beneath them."
"You don't understand, Isabella. I'm on the verge of achieving it. Once they see what I can do, no one will ever treat me like a lunatic again."
Isabella looked at her sadly. For the first time, she felt afraid, not because of what Elisa was creating, but because of what ambition was doing to her.
And that fear was what led her to make her greatest mistake.
A week later, Isabella went to Elisa's parents and told them what was happening. She explained that their daughter was doing dangerous things, that she wasn't sleeping, and that she was conducting illegal experiments in secret. Frightened, they asked the planet's authorities for help.
Several guards accompanied Elisa's parents to the hidden laboratory.
When they arrived, Elisa was in the middle of an experiment. Her arms were covered in small burns, and she wore a triumphant smile. She had just completed the final version of her infinite storage box.
Upon hearing the footsteps, she raised her head. Her expression shifted from pride to confusion.
"Mom?... Dad?... What are you doing here?"
"Sweetheart," her mother said with concern. "What are you doing? Please, stop and step away from those things. This isn't right. You're playing with forces you don't understand."
"I do understand them. More than anyone on this planet ever could. Besides, how did you manage to find me?"
Among the crowd, Elisa managed to spot Isabella, hiding behind one of the guards.
"Did you bring them here?" Elisa asked, looking at Isabella with disbelief and sadness.
The guards advanced. One of them ordered that the equipment be confiscated.
Elisa stepped in front of them, spreading her arms.
"Don't touch them! You don't know what you're doing!"
One of the guards ignored her warning and tried to disconnect the stellar battery. Elisa lunged at him and electrocuted him with a taser she had, but another guard quickly subdued her.
Another guard stepped forward and went to disconnect the device, which had begun vibrating violently.
"Stop!" Elisa screamed.
But it was already too late.
A blinding flash filled the room, followed by an explosion that destroyed the entire laboratory. The energy wave threw everyone to the ground. The air filled with dust and blue sparks. When Elisa regained consciousness, the laboratory was in complete chaos.
Her father lay unconscious beside a fallen column. Isabella was sprawled among the rubble, covered in blood.
"No..." Elisa murmured, crawling toward her. "No! No, no, no, Isabella! Answer me! Please, I'm begging you! Wake up!"
She called out to her again and again, but there was no response.
Her mother also regained consciousness, and upon seeing everything, she began screaming in horror. The guards struggled to their feet. One of them called for reinforcements. Elisa stared at them, unable to think.
Everything she had done, everything she had built... had turned into destruction.
She ran out of the laboratory before reinforcements could arrive and arrest her, then disappeared into the darkness of the forest.
That night, Elisa reached a hill outside the city overlooking the entire area.
The sky was covered with clouds, and the lights of Aetheris shone in the distance as if nothing had happened. Meanwhile, she saw on one of the screens in the main square that the news was reporting she was now a fugitive and that authorities were searching for her.
Elisa collapsed.
She cried for hours. She remembered her father's words, Isabella's warnings, and her mother's terrified expression. Everything echoed endlessly inside her head. She could even see that the news was calling her a murderer and a potential terrorist.
Not only had everything she had done and sacrificed been in vain, but she had also lost the people who mattered most to her, and now the rest of the world not only feared her but hated her as well.
But as her tears finally ran dry, something inside her changed.
Her sadness began to turn into rage. A deep, seething rage.
Lightning began to flash among the clouds, and then it started to rain. Elisa was getting drenched, yet she didn't flinch, not even when thunder roared above her.
"They forced me into this..." she whispered. "I only wanted to help. I only wanted them to accept me, and they did this to me. Everything that happened is their fault. They've always treated me this way."
She looked at the city, at the civilization that had rejected her. As the news continued criticizing her, she felt her pain turning into hatred.
"If everyone's going to treat me like a monster, then I'll become the monster they fear."
She stood up, her eyes glowing with anger.
"If this is the world I'm supposed to help, then it's not worth it. I'm tired of trying. I'll find another world that actually values me, and if they don't either, I'll force them to. I'll make the entire universe see what I'm capable of, and then it will have no choice but to listen to me."
Over the following weeks, Elisa devoted herself to rebuilding parts of her machines.
No longer for the sake of helping or advancing civilization, but with a single goal in mind: revenge.
She created an enormous machine based on the same principle that had caused the laboratory explosion, but this time it was deliberately designed to produce another explosion with enough power to destroy the entire planet.
She knew that if she activated it, Aetheris would be reduced to dust.
But she no longer cared.
She returned to the city with an expressionless face... and wearing Isabella's black sweater.
When the guards had cleared out Elisa's destroyed laboratory, they had taken both Elisa's and Isabella's belongings to the police station. However, a couple of days earlier, Isabella's sweater had mysteriously disappeared. It was as if Elisa had taken it, wanting to keep just one thing that reminded her of the only person who had never abandoned her, despite everything.
She opened a portal using a small device she had created and then brought the machine to the center of the city. She did so with the sole malicious intention of making the city where all her misery had begun the first thing on the planet to be destroyed.
The guards soon appeared and ordered Elisa to surrender and raise her hands. Elisa did so, but only to press a button embedded in her palm, generating a pulse that disabled everyone's weapons. She then generated another pulse, this time electrocuting all of them and leaving them immobilized and in pain.
Afterward, she picked up one of the guards' weapons and reactivated it before proceeding to shoot each of them in the head, leaving only the civilians alive. They remained completely immobilized, unable even to tremble because of the electric discharge.
Elisa calmly activated her machine and began walking away slowly, her expression never changing.
From a distance, she watched as the planet's surface trembled and slowly began to crack. All the lights went out, and the only light that remained came from her device, growing stronger and stronger. Everyone was screaming and begging for their lives, unable to move, while Elisa simply kept walking farther and farther away.
She didn't smile. She didn't tremble. She simply watched in silence as her home disappeared.
Just then, a small ember landed on her sweater. Elisa noticed it and quickly brushed it away before it could burn the fabric. She breathed a small sigh of relief and, almost out of habit, thanked God. However, after saying those words, she fell silent, lost in thought.
"God..." Elisa said, her gaze distant. "You know, Isabella... sometimes I wonder if there really is a God who has everything under control. Because if He truly can prevent every tragedy, then I don't understand why He would allow things like what happened to me. And if He can't prevent them... then perhaps He isn't as powerful as we believed."
The planet continued to die as Elisa watched the desolate landscape, lost in her own thoughts.
"I want to believe He didn't do it on purpose..." she continued. "I want to think there's some explanation for all of this. That I wasn't condemned by someone who simply decided I had to suffer, or by someone who did nothing to prevent it."
She clenched her fists.
"Because if I ever discover that was the case... if I discover that someone could have stopped all of this and simply chose not to..." Elisa slowly raised her gaze toward the sky. "Then, when I die, I don't care how... I'll kill Him for what He did to me."
For an instant, the sky seemed to tremble. As if those words had reached something far beyond the stars, as if someone had actually heard them, and as if that divine presence had felt... wounded.
Before everything exploded, she teleported using her device to one of Aetheris's moons. The lack of oxygen didn't concern her; she had already created another device to sustain herself.
She watched as the planet exploded behind her, then murmured in a cold voice:
"If the universe has no limits, then neither will I. And if the galaxies won't accept me... I'll force them to."
And so began her journey among the stars, traveling from world to world, using her intelligence to create, dominate, and subjugate.
The ideal of saving and improving had become a desire for absolute power.
Rage had been born inside her, and now she no longer sought understanding or acceptance.
Only conquest.
The story of that version had come to an end.