The walls around her explode outward and suddenly there's all kinds of things in her way. Things she's unfamiliar with.

There are levels of indoctrination. Degrees of control and usefulness. Hollow out someone too much, and you lose the best of them- Too little and they refuse to obey. Max's true consciousness lives on the tiniest bit because of one simple fact: time travel isn't an ability to be thrown away lightly. Its presence in Max convinced the Reaper to keep her mind at least partially whole.

And now it calls on that- and Max raises her hand, ready to twist time around her fingers, a practiced and familiar motion.

But the part of Max that's still thinking properly- that's still a young Oregon girl- says no.

Because Sans would die. Because the rewind would rip him backward through his teleport and leave him a shredded mess.

Time stutters, grinds, breaks for a tiny monent. Alternate realities overlap- a tunnel full of bones that hover unmoving, against one where they burst out in a wild cacophany, against another where the bones were never there at all.

The bones that shouldn't exist rip into Max's shirt as she plows into them, lacerating her torso, arms, legs- she collapses onto the ground, a bloody, torn up mess, crying out in agony- pain shooting through her like nothing she's ever felt before. She crumples there like a broken puppet.

The phone flies out of her hand as she falls, clattering against a wall and breaking into so many pieces.