Chapter 13: Corridors And Clones
When Thresh led her down the corridors, foreboding chilled her heart. Her heartbeat in jackrabbit leaps, and she sensed tension from Thresh as well. He seemed a little on edge, as though one of the Summoners could appear.

She paused, her senses growing sharper from the adrenaline tensing her muscles and body. She strained to hear the sound of footsteps approaching or some stray attack headed in their direction, whether a scorching blast from the Summoner’s magic or the swish of a blade through the air towards her head. Akali usually prepped herself for dangerous missions by jumping in and being aware of a person’s ki and predicting their patterns and movements thanks to Shen’s teachings, though this particular mission had her more on edge than usual. What ifs continually played through her mind. What if she regretted this decision? What if she couldn’t find what she sought? What if Thresh was lying to her and stringing her along?

“Thresh…have you been lying to me this entire time?” Akali said in a murmur.

“The truth will be revealed if you open this door,” Thresh said while gesturing for the key in her hand. “Everything that you worked hard for…it would be a waste to throw away your hard work because you didn’t trust me.”

Akali remained slightly skeptical. “I mean, I don’t completely trust you, but I went along with this because my curiosity was even greater. Just what am I going to see beyond this door, Thresh?”

“I don’t know,” Thresh said honestly. “But I can tell you—it’s not going to be pretty.”

“We’ve come this far,” Akali said.

She slipped the key into the hidden vault. The two sturdy doors swung open. Upon first glance, there was nothing suspicious in the room. Akali’s heart sank. Did they do all this hard work for nothing? However, Akali didn’t want to stop there. She would not be defeated here. She wandered throughout the room before she paused before a door. Her heart leaped again. Could it be?

When Akali opened the door, her breath caught in her throat. Her first instinct was a scream, though she quickly suppressed it and swallowed it down. Inside the door was a laboratory harboring various rejuvenation tanks containing the sleeping forms of clones. Every champion in the League had several counterparts in rejuvenation tanks the Summoners set up. Akali saw herself reflected in one of the rejuvenation tanks, then quickly turned away. It was so surreal seeing another one.

“What the hell is this,” she whispered to herself.

She unconsciously folded her arms across her chest, as though to defend herself from this startling vision that was before her. She almost expected the clone in the rejuvenation tank would do the same gesture, though when she didn’t move, Akali blinked and turned away. This was unreal, and Akali didn’t know what other secrets the Summoner hid from the Champions. She wondered if she would find Shen among these rejuvenation tanks, and decided she didn’t want to know. She could already assume there were clones of even Shen in this vast room, and she wondered—was the Shen she loved and cherished the same man she loved? She knew he died several times on the Rift, just like her. It all happened to even the best of Champions, who would fight one another endlessly on the Rift. There was another room and Akali could almost venture to guess what might be there.

Don’t look, she told herself. Don’t look, don’t look, don’t look, don’t look….

Thresh wandered further into the laboratory, which opened up into yet another room.

“Akali, I think you better come look,” Thresh said.

Akali hurried over to Thresh. What she saw made her want to vomit. A morgue room with dozens of piled dead bodies lying underneath white sheets stood before her. Akali was brave enough to lift one sheet to uncover the face of Varus, who had ‘died’ on the Rift in the previous match. There were tons of other bodies like these, upon further investigation, of various champions in different arrangements of death. Some were burned, some were mauled, some were torn to pieces, and some were even in a state of asphyxiation; it made the knees weak and the spine shiver.

Akali had to wonder—were the Champions simply playthings to the Summoners? The corpses themselves looked like broken dolls, sad and forlorn after having been tossed away into the trash heap where they would be lost and forgotten. If there were dead bodies and clones, then Akali could assume there was something else she had to wonder about—what if Shen knew about this entire thing? What if he knew, and tried to keep this a secret from her? Did he despair like she did at this point, and decided to suffer in silence stoically? Or was he aligned with the Summoners, being the Eye of Twilight, trying to shake off the useless vestiges of emotion that would make him act carelessly towards the balance of Runeterra.

Akali’s head swam and her imagination trembled with all sorts of dark possibilities. This wasn’t happening. It couldn’t be real. Yet there was undeniable evidence before her that everything took place, the events that happened before—her memories—were fabricated and tampered with.

“This is fucked up,” Akali said bluntly.

She then thought about Shen’s words and wondered if this was what he was talking about when he said she sought dangerous knowledge. What was she going to do with it now?

“We have to tell the others.”

“The Summoners will do something about it before we can do anything, I assume,” Thresh said. “We need to think of an exit plan.”

“Obviously,” A well of anger sprung within her. “But how could the Summoners do this to us? What does this all mean? What kind of fucked up sick, twisted notion did these Summoners have? Do they seriously see us as nothing more than…playthings?”

Thresh remained silent for a moment before he pointed a single gauntleted finger towards a back room. “Let’s investigate all that we can. We may not get this rare opportunity once again.”

“Or it may cost us our lives,” Akali whispered before a new determination steeled her over. “We’ve got to warn someone. Anyone.”

“We have to get out of here, first,” Thresh frowned a little, as though in deep thought.

Akali wondered what the skeletal being was thinking. He was a mysterious being indeed, though he probably sloughed off his former human emotions like a snake shakes off its skin.

“Thresh? I’m getting the shivers just standing in the morgue. Looking at all these dead bodies is just disturbing. I mean, I’m not one to coil at a dead body, but…this is beyond strange and the Summoners are crazy.”

Thresh paused in his thinking, before saying carefully, “The Summoners could find us. We should leave immediately.”

Akali wondered if Thresh was also afraid but he didn’t care to admit it. Even though he was the embodiment of death itself, it seemed that even the Reaper of Death had fears too. Though Akali also knew some things were worse than death, she was facing all the truths and lies she had to confront about the League and everything it stood for. So it seemed they died after all…but somehow their consciousness was transferred to another body, in one of the clones, before their memories of their death were wiped clean from their state of shock. That’s what Akali guessed. Thresh was smart enough to figure it out as well.

But what was most important was that they needed to move. They had to get out of here, lest the Summoners spot them and then do unspeakable things to them that went far beyond torture or death. They knew what the Summoners were capable of. This proved everything, about their power and ungodly sense of torment that they wanted to inflict upon the Champions that they kept under their thumb. The sense of despair and terror that Akali felt was growing with each step. What if there was no escape from this? What if they were captured and tortured for information, and then had their memories wiped clean again? It was within the realm of possibility. Her memories of her mother—were those fake? What was real? What was a delusion? What was this madness that lay before her? It was only right that they survived and told the other Champions about this. Nothing this big should be kept secret from them. Even if they were skeptical, even if they didn’t believe, they needed to be told about this.

Akali dashed down the hallways, though she could hear the sound of voices down the corridors. No alarms have been tripped yet, but she thought she heard the voice of Kei somewhere in the distance.

“The Champions mustn’t know about this room,” an Elder Summoner said to the young Kei. “We’ve been working so long and hard on this project for it to be disrupted by a few rebellious champions that may defy their fate.”

“It seems kind of cruel though, doesn’t it?” Kei said, wallowing in unease. “I feel bad for them.”

“Oh, Kei, they’re a mere hollow of their former selves,” the Summoner said. “They’re merely tools for the entertainment of the privileged. We perform grand spectacles as entertainment, of course, but there is a deeper reason behind all this. The tournaments and fights are merely a cover-up for things much deeper going on. It is all according to Master Thanatos’s plan.

Akali and Thresh stood at the edge of the corridor with bated breath, listening. Waiting. Frozen.

“Master Thanatos wanted me to check something real quick,” Kei said before he snuck off towards the very place that Thresh and Akali were hiding.

“You two!” Kei said, before looking around frantically. “You shouldn’t be here.”