Eye Opener

[MoogleEmpMog]

Chapter 105: Lost

I think Lena tried to drag me away from the window, and I think I tried to back off, but neither of us ended up moving. I stood transfixed, as rooted in place as any plant.

A loose piece of asphalt shifted on the street below. A second later and a few steps ahead, a cluster of ferns compressed, then sprang back up. Unbroken. Mostly.

With a shaking hand, I raised my phone and peered through the Third Eye filter.

At first, I didn't think it helped, but when I stared through it at the places I saw movement, my stomach lurched the same as when I looked skyward.

The same as it had at the construction site.

Now, as then, I couldn't make out the shape of the creature below me, but something about the distorted light told me it was present.

The one at the construction site had been completely invisible at first, then gradually resolved into something I could perceive without even using the phone. Its visible form began as simple polygons and gradually became something shaped like a human, but even at its most personlike it had been bizarrely, almost indescribably without color or texture.

Another thing that came down to alignment? But Third Eye only let me see part of the way. Why?

Because according to both Albie and VisibleFromSpace, the creatures weren't part of Third Eye.

If they were telling the truth, what was this one doing in a Realm?

"Cam!" Lena hissed.

I shook my head and dragged first my gaze, then my phone, then myself away from the window. "Sorry."

"Starting to see why Mask got so freaked out about being stuck here," she said.

I nodded. "We better find him before he decides to ditch us."

We scrambled to the doorway Mask had disappeared through. Beyond, I found crumbling halls, devoid of any sign of human habitation less durable than concrete, metal, or plastic. A bit of the latter – a discarded Pepsi bottle – lay on the floor. Since vines curled over it, I had to assume it had lain here since the city fell, rather than being litter from Mask or one of his previous victims.

Mask himself stood by an elevator shaft, and oh, did that make me shudder. At the construction site, an elevator had somehow been tied to the appearance of the creature. Was this how the one I'd seen in the street, or another like it, would attack us?

"Get it now?" Mask asked.

"Not even close," I said. "Unless you mean why you don't want to stick around."

Static from his voice changer. A laugh? A snort of disgust? For once, the device did its job – I had no idea what its owner was thinking. He said, "Fine. When I use the Key, hurry. I won't leave it open long."

Lena wrinkled her nose. "Do you get used to going through it?"

"No," Mask said.

Lena and I exchanged glances. I spread my hands.

"Are you gonna tell us where we're going?" I asked.

This time, Mask didn't even bother with an answer.

Travel through the Key had felt awful. Following Mask to yet another unknown location, this time without him being on the back foot from a fight, sounded like a great way to end up abducted.

Nonetheless, it had to be better than staying here and waiting for a monster to climb up and kill us. Even if these creatures proved more passive than the one we'd encountered before, we'd still be stranded here with no food or water except what we could scavenge and no power to keep our phones charged.

Oh, and no hope of escape except that Mask would both take pity on our stupid asses and to be able to find us when he did.

"Say 'when,'" Lena said.

"Now," Mask said.

Which wasn't "when," but Lena didn't even bother with a pedantic complaint. No point. Before she could speak again, the elevator doors became a matte black shadow and Mask vanished through it.

Lena and I dashed after him.

I tried to brace myself for the Key's effects. I might not be able to resist the nausea and disorientation, but maybe I could start to understand it.

Whether because I was prepared, or because I was stepping through instead of falling, or because I had my phone jammed up to my eye, I perceived more of the experience.

Nothing external. Either there were no stimuli or all of my external senses had been deadened. No sights or smells. No sounds except the overloud rushing of my own blood, punctuated by a single heartbeat. No tastes but the dryness in my mouth, no feeling of anything outside myself.

I floated without equilibrium, weightless or in freefall. Despite that, every part of me felt impossibly heavy, as though I was held together less by flesh and blood than by my organs having acquired so much mass they had their own gravity. The thought shot through me that this was my HP at work, holding me together in the face of a void that would otherwise have torn me apart.

True? Maybe.

Terrifying? Oh yeah.

Especially because one of the last things I'd seen on my phone before I stepped into the Key was my HP total.

After spending the fruits of Albie's Potion on a few desperate fights and a lot of training sessions, I'd only had sixty seven left.

Was that total ticking down with every second I spent in this void? Was time passing at all? It had to be inside my body, since I was able to form coherent thoughts. I'd only heard that one heartbeat, though.

Before I heard another, I staggered into light and feeling and pressure again. I sprawled forward, hands on my knees, gasping.

I could see myself again, my shaking legs, my phone, my worn-out gloves, my heaving abdomen from which bile clawed its way up my throat. I had directionality again, my feet on the ground. Feeling in my skin, and that feeling was cold.

Outside of myself, I'd exchanged a black void for a white one. Without dragging my eyes from the ground, all I saw was snow. There wasn't much light, but every star shining down on the ground reflected right into my eyes. If I was still here at daybreak, I'd find out if Third Eye could protect me from snow blindness.

I swallowed and tried to straighten up. On my second attempt, I made it.

That gave me more things to focus on.

Mask stood in front of me, a dark triangle against the white ground. More darkness loomed ahead of him, the starry sky broken up by the outline of conifers in every direction.

I whirled –

"I'm good," Lena mumbled. She didn't sound it, but what mattered was that she was here with me, not stuck in Mask's Realm or, maybe worse, the void of his Key.

I grabbed her and clung for dear life.

"Gonna puke again, dummy," she said against my chest.

I didn't care.

Okay, I didn't care much. I was still glad when she raised her eyes to mine without throwing up on my chest. Starlight gleamed on her smart glasses. She flashed a shaky smile and stood on her tiptoes to kiss me.

"Hurry up," Mask snapped.

Lena and I separated.

She wiped her mouth. "Keep your pants on. The longer we're making out, the longer it is before we start beating some answers out of you."

"You want answers," he said, "then hurry."

I waved toward the treeline. "Lead on."

He grunted – I was pretty sure that was the meaning behind his burst of static – and stomped forward.

We followed. What else were we supposed to do?

For the first time since Lena started leaving Third Eye active at all times, I shivered from the cold. It bit at the holes in my gloves and crept in through my shoes. I hadn't worn winter boots, or snow pants, or my parka. I hadn't needed them in Canyon, where the air had at worst gotten brisk. With Lena by my side, typical winter weather could grow sweltering.

This wasn't typical.

I put my arm around her shoulders and cuddled close as we walked. If that annoyed Mask, screw him.

Lena pushed into me. "I'm on fire and I still feel like shivering. Where the hell are we?"

Mask didn't answer. His gait didn't change at all, so he either hadn't heard her or decided not to answer.

I raised my phone to see if I could connect to the internet and figure out our location.

"Well?" Lena asked.

"I've got good news and bad news," I said.

"You know I always want good news first, bad news never." She peeked at my screen, so she was going to get both anyway.

"Looks like Third Eye works even though we shouldn't be able to connect to its servers," I said.

"Go figure," she said. "We already knew that, though. You didn't have signal in Mask's Realm, did you?"

"Shit, you're right. That, uh, pretty much exhausts my good news."

Seemingly normal sky over our heads, mundane snow beneath our feet, the sea of trees and freezing air we trudged through. This place had none of the uncanny hallmarks of a Realm. Nonetheless, I had no more signal here than I had in the ruined city.

If we were back in the real world, how far were we from civilization?

Our road trip had taken us down a lot of isolated highways in some of the most sparsely populated parts of the US. Our phone connections had slowed to a crawl when we ranged far from the cellular towers that spread the network across the country, but if they had ever dropped entirely, none of us had been paying attention to our bars when it happened.

Maybe I could walk for an hour and find myself in some little town with a satellite hookup.

I didn't like my chances, though. Mask had brought Lena and I out here for a reason, and I could guess what. In a place like this, he could let the people he'd abducted keep their phones – and thus, their Third Eye access – without allowing them to call for help. His powers would represent their only plausible way home and their only link to civilization.

Oddly, despite my lack of signal, I suspected I knew more or less where we were.

The biting cold meant we were either in someplace that stayed freezing year-round, or someplace it was winter, or both. In the few minutes we'd been trudging through the snow, we'd passed more trees than we could find in the entire continent of Antarctica, so I felt pretty comfortable placing us north of the equator.

I doubted that time passed at a wildly different rate in Mask's Realm or in the void of his Key, because he seemed to possess the ability to pop back and forth to different locations in a timely manner. That meant the night sky overhead was the same one we'd left behind in Texas, and, in turn, that we were still in the Western Hemisphere. That ruled out Siberia.

Not that I would've suspected it anyway. We knew from the invasion reports that Mask had gone at least as far as Calgary in Canada.

It seemed he'd swung a lot further north before he came back to stalk us.

How much further? Guessing represented a huge risk. If we tried to walk out of Mask's trap, we'd have to go south, right? For how long? While pitting the feeble, half remembered survival skills the counselors had tried to drill into my head over summer camp against an environment where there weren't any counselors and it sure as hell wasn't summer?

I didn't like my chances there, either. Trouble was, at least for me, that was the only way out.

Because the lack of signal and the remote location and the freezing cold didn't even begin to sum up the bad news.

The trip through Mask's Key had cost me some HP. Not as much as I'd feared! It legit could've been worse, and had sure as hell felt it. No, I had thirty two left. Had I lost the other thirty five the instant I stepped into the void, or had it ticked down over time? I couldn't think of a way to test it, even if I was willing to go back into the Key.

Which I wasn't, considering that if it was damage over time, I wouldn't have enough to survive the trip.

Worse, even if the damage did get applied in one lump sum, which the last of my HP would protect me against, that was a ticket for exactly one trip on Mask's wild ride. I wouldn't get another until my paltry ten Max HP returned at midnight.

Spending an entire day and night cycle in that overgrown, creature-ridden husk of the city that was his Realm?

I liked my chances there least of all.

 

[MoogleEmpMog]

Chapter 106: Cabin Fever

We walked.

Rather, since even with the evergreens pressing close around us and taking the brunt of the snowfall on their boughs, the remainder came up almost to Lena's knees, we trudged.

I panned my phone around as much as I could, and Lena still had her smart glasses on. Between us, I think we would've noticed any collectible objects in our path. We didn't find any. With or without Third Eye, we saw only a moonlit sea of trees. Dark branches, dark needles, white crowns.

Had Mask collected everything when he brought his captives this way? Or had we finally found a place so remote Third Eye hadn't populated it with resources? If I knew the answer to that, I'd almost certainly know whether Third Eye created the things we found or merely allowed us to find them.

I could've asked Mask. Two things stopped me.

First, I had no reason to trust his word. Instead of an answer to my question, I'd get another puzzle. I'd end up second-guessing whatever he said to try to figure out his motives.

Second, and far more importantly, the thought of opening my mouth and letting the frigid air into my lungs sounded insane.

Instead, I clamped my mouth shut, fixed my eyes forward, and pulled my soaking, freezing shoes out of the snow for one step after another.

It felt cold enough to hurt. Unfortunately, I had proof my feelings weren't just me being a wuss. When I checked my phone, I found I'd lost another HP.

I wondered what Mask did with people who weren't dressed for winter and didn't have any HP left. The flames of Lena's custom personification protected us somewhat, and our HP seemed to do the rest, but the cold still bit at my fingers and toes. Third Eye wanted me to know I shouldn't stay out here.

Way ahead of you, game.

Especially since I wouldn't get those HP back.

Forget having enough to escape through the Key. Forget winning a match in the hopes of persuading Mask to use said Key.

Did I even have enough HP to survive out here? Though it felt like ages to me, my phone insisted we'd only been marching for fifteen minutes.

If Mask was stranding people out in the frigid wilderness and trusting their HP would keep them alive, that would probably work for most of his targets. Most players I knew had triple digit HP, enough to last a day-night cycle. The "strong" players who caught his interest would tend to have even more.

Hell. He might even be using the threat of freezing to keep people from risking a fight – or flight, when we had no idea how far we'd have to go to get a cell phone signal, or how long it would take for help to arrive. Stranding strong players in an environment that constantly sapped their HP made a certain, awful kind of sense.

Trouble was, my status as a strong player had essentially expired.

If I stuck close to Lena and the cold didn't worsen – say, from one of the blizzards that must have deposited all this snow – I could muddle through a couple of nights. Once I was reduced to just my original Max HP total, though, the chill would rob me of them before dawn and I'd start suffering its effects for real.

How much would burning our Materials with Fire slow that process? The temperature in our apartment had gone up when we tested it, and Lena had a lot more Fire now than she'd had then. Even I could chip in. Eventually, though, we would run out of Materials. Did I say "eventually?" Because I meant pretty damn quick; unlike the other core Reactants, Fire destroyed the objects conjured with it, and the more Lena pumped in, the faster they decayed. Not to mention, I had no idea how significant the heating effect would even be out in the open.

Could we make shelter? An igloo sounded way beyond our survival skills, but surely we could cobble together some kind of lean-to. We could find branches to lash together and supplement them with Third Eye objects. A sheet of Iron had protected us from broken glass before. However weird it felt, it had to at least lessen the wind, right?

Lena nudged my arm. "You okay?"

I shook my head. When I opened my mouth to answer, the shock of cold against my teeth made me flinch. I'm sure I sounded real convincing when I said, "Fine."

She frowned and peeked at my screen. Her frown sure as hell didn't ease up when she saw my HP. She flicked her eyes up to Mask. "Good," she lied. "Chin up, Cam. I think we're here."

I followed her gaze.

I'd been so lost in my catastrophizing, I'd stopped paying attention to our path. In my defense, the forest had, at least by starlight, looked maddeningly identical.

It didn't anymore.

Mask had stopped. His cloak pooled atop the snow and his arms were folded over his chest. For the first time, though, I found him hard to see against the backdrop.

I could just make out the rough outline of a structure in front of him.

A house?

Not a house, a cabin. The rounded pattern along each edge came from the logs used to make its walls. In the dark, I couldn't judge its size or even shape. I also didn't give a shit. Even if it was one of those Hollywood facade buildings, just a single propped-up wall, it would cut down on the windchill and give me a better chance to survive.

Lena pressed closer to me as we approached. That was my first thought, but then I realized she was actually pushing me to the side. I let her guide me around a series of odd snowdrifts.

I raised my phone to see what her smart glasses showed her.

Through Third Eye, the cabin was surrounded by two layers of Stone outer walls. Lena had guided me through a pair of open Wood gates with Iron hinges. From the inside, I saw more Wood beams bracing the outer wall. Snow dusted everything, but not in the same quantities it piled up on the fully real objects. Under better circumstances, it would've been fascinating to watch how it interacted with the presence of a Third Eye obstacle.

Lena mouthed, "The hell?"

I shook my head.

Mask would either explain the weirdness of the situation, or he wouldn't. Right now, I just wanted to know if he would let us into the cabin.

When he saw us following, he stomped up the snowy wooden steps and rapped his knuckles on what I assumed was the door.

Through the haze of cold, I had just enough presence of mind to realize the interaction seemed odd.

Mask had plenty of power in Third Eye, and he'd struck me as damned good at using it. Quick, creative, decisive. Add Phantom and you got an absolute nightmare to face in PVP. Still, the actually unique power he wielded, among everyone we'd encountered, was his Key.

Boil his powerset down to its core, and you could say it was opening things.

So why, when approaching the structure where he'd presumably stashed the people he'd abducted, did he knock instead of just unlocking the door with his Key?

Because at least one person inside wasn't his victim, but his accomplice.

I'd let myself get sucked into assumptions about Mask again.

When we first encountered him, I speculated that he might be the tip of the spear for a team where he was PVP-mad, backed up by more research-oriented players. Something like Matt's relationship with the rest of the wiki team, just weaponized.

I'd dismissed that idea in part because Mask kept fighting alone against bigger and more experienced groups of players. He hadn't really been fighting alone, though, had he? He'd had Phantom with him all along.

No, the real reason I hadn't expected Mask to be part of a team was because I found his persona obnoxious. In my head, no one else would put up with his edgy antihero schtick. They'd either find it laughable, like I did, or they would insist on being top dog.

I could think what I liked, and if I'd only been risking myself, then I deserved whatever I got for it.

I hadn't just risked myself, though. Lena and I had planned from the start to grab onto Mask and follow him through his Key if we couldn't persuade him to take us to our lost friends. At every step of that planning, she and I agreed it would be fine, because Mask would fight alone and we'd fight as a team.

Instead, my stupid assumptions had delivered Lena to Mask's team. The first time I failed to deflect any serious Third Eye attack, I'd lose the last of my HP.

Lena would be the one fighting alone.

Ahead of us, the door swung open.

Apart from the moonlight, the only illumination came from a small lamp inside the building. Its glow framed part of a human figure who ducked behind the door. Then Mask swept in and blocked most of the light.

I touched Lena's wrist and caught her eye. I whispered, "I'm sorry."

She cocked her head. "Huh?"

"I fucked up. I shouldn't have asked you to come with me." I averted my eyes. "I thought he'd be alone."

"Cam." Lena reached up and tilted my chin till I was facing her. "It's cool."

"No, it's freezing." I flashed a wan smile.

She grinned. "I mean it."

"How can you say that?" I asked.

Her grin widened, hardened. "If we bet wrong and there's a whole team waiting to ambush us? In that really old wooden building?"

I nodded. "That's what worries me, yeah."

"Then," she said, "they're gonna find out how real seven Fire can get."

 

[MoogleEmpMog]

No chapter Monday as I will be on vacation over Labor Day weekend.

 

[MoogleEmpMog]

Chapter 107: Hideaway

I conjured and shaped a proper shield, but I didn't expect much from it. If a team waited inside to ambush us, they could strike from any direction and I couldn't possibly deflect everything.

Nonetheless, I led the way through the cabin door. I might not be able to help Lena much in a fight, but I could tank one last hit from an ambush and give her an extra second to strike back.

My whole body tensed as I crossed the threshold. I squeezed my eyes – not quite shut, but narrowed. I held my breath.

I didn't feel the searing pain of Fire, or the sudden jab of Air or Earth. Nobody even punched me, which was a good thing, because as low as my HP were, a solid right hook might have finished them off.

Instead, all I felt was warmth.

I took another step forward to give Lena room to join me inside, then allowed myself to look around.

When my eyes adjusted, I found we'd entered a crude living room or den. The rough log walls reminded me of the lodge where Lena and I had spent the night in the Black Forest. Those logs had been polished and lacquered. These looked like raw, rough-cut wood; the only stain on them came from age. A stone fireplace occupied much of one wall, soot-stained but, alas, not lit at the moment.

Instead, the warmth came from an electric heater. There were, in fact, far more electrical appliances in the room than there was furniture to hold them. The heater sat on the floor. A simple wooden rocking chair and an even simpler table sat beside it.

What I'd taken for a lamp from outside was actually a lantern, an electric one with an LED bulb small enough Lena could probably have powered it. Right now, it drew its power from a USB charger plugged in to the same extension cord as the heater.

In contrast to the rustic surroundings, cords stretched haphazardly around the room, attached to a whole wall lined with lithium-ion backup batteries. A fluorescent orange tarp covered a pile of portable solar panels. Four extension cords snaked through two doorways. A fifth ran to the heater, the lantern, and a closed laptop sitting on the table.

I wanted to run to the heater, but first, I eyed the person who'd let us in out of the cold.

"Yo," Gerry said.

My eyebrows raised.

He averted his eyes. "He got the two of you, too, huh? After you talked such a big game."

I didn't remember talking an especially big game, but I couldn't exactly blame the guy for resenting me after I'd failed to save him from Mask.

"Mask didn't 'get' us," Lena said.

"Yeah?" Gerry shrugged. "Doesn't matter now."

"We came here to rescue you," I said. "Are you okay, man?"

"Oh yeah, awesome." His laughter sounded ragged, almost hysterical. "Come on, let's get the door shut. It's freezing out there."

No argument from me. Lena and I shifted to let Gerry step around us. He shut the door, then hefted a wooden drawbar and let it thud into the metal brackets on either side.

Like most of the structure, the drawbar looked crude but heavy and well-made. Maybe Mask couldn't remove it with his Key, and that was why he'd knocked? I doubted that was the case. Third Eye interpreted the idea of a Key so broadly that it included teleportation; surely it would include unbarring doors. Even if it was true, though, it just shifted the question one step. Why would Mask have left the drawbar for his captives to find in the first place?

Also, if the drawbar offered any kind of protection against Mask, why would Gerry have removed it?

Seemed I wasn't the only one who wondered. Lena asked, "How come you're Mask's doorman all of a sudden?"

"I'm on watch," Gerry said. "What, you wanted me to let you freeze out there?"

"I wouldn't exactly start crying if he froze," Lena said.

"Yeah, well." Abruptly, Gerry shoved past us and stomped to one of the inner doors. "Make yourselves at home."

"Pass," Lena said. "I hate camping."

"Not gonna have a real good time, then," Gerry said. "I'll find you some coats and shit."

He pushed the door open and stepped through.

Lena glanced up at me. "That was weird, right? It's not just me?"

I squeezed her hand. "Not just you."

She hugged my arm – another wonderful shot of warmth, on top of what I was getting from her wings and the heater – then released me to pace around the edge of the room.

Even though I hated to let her out of arm's reach, for all sorts of reasons, I dropped my conjured shield and took the opposite side.

My path circled past the door Gerry had disappeared through. I could hear muffled voices on the other side. It sounded like at least three people, but I didn't feel like getting caught eavesdropping. Not yet, anyway. I kept circling the room.

Lena paused by the solar panels and bent down to pull back the tarp. Sure enough, it had covered a whole stack of the things.

"How much do you think all these cost?" She asked.

"Between the panels and the batteries? Thousands, at least." The panels were stacked four deep. In addition to their solar material, they had a fold-up midsection and handles for easier carrying.

If somebody gave me a five figure quote for the stack, it wouldn't leave me reeling. If they stretched it to six I'd start to think they were trying to rip me off, but I could've been convinced.

Lena tapped her finger on her chin. "You think Mask paid for all this?"

"What's the alternative?" I narrowed my eyes. "Oh shit. You don't think Omar's bankrolling him?"

"Wow, that would be so much worse." Lena shuddered. "I'll throw down with anybody, but I didn't sign up for a boss rush."

Despite everything, I smiled. "What did you mean, then?"

"Mask's got the power to open doors and a willingness to commit bigger crimes than burglary." She nudged a panel with her foot. "These things are designed to be portable, so why not teleportable?"

"You think he, what, unlocks a store after hours and then starts shoving everything interesting into his Key?"

She shrugged. "Better than him and Omar being in cahoots, isn't it?"

"For sure," I said. I'd panicked at the thought of Mask having a team. Him being teamed with Omar would make things far, far worse. Part of the purpose of our road trip was to prepare us to walk into the Florida castle of Third Eye's very own "evil wizard." We knew we weren't ready for him, even without Mask.

I finished my sweep of the room and met up with Lena next to the lamp, laptop, and heater.

All portable. All stolen?

I supposed compared to the crimes we already knew Mask had committed, burglary didn't rate. It did, however, remind me that we'd put ourselves in the power of an actual criminal, not just an asshole who'd taken a game too far.

My hand hovered over the laptop. If it had a satellite connection to the outside world –

Then Gerry or one of the other captives would've used it while Mask was out of the cabin.

I shifted my hands to the heater just as the door I'd passed opened.

Gerry emerged, his arms piled head-high with winter wear. "Might as well take your pick," he called. "Some of these should fit you."

I pulled a coat off the top of the pile. I hadn't been sure until I lifted it, but it was a parka. I recognized its multilayered down lining and almost impossible lightness. Unlike mine, which I'd gotten from a thrift store, this one looked brand-new, sleek black with silver accents. Also unlike mine, it was Lena's size.

She frowned at it.

"Where did Mask get these clothes?" I asked.

"Does it matter?" Gerry asked. "You can't leave the cabin without them, and if you run out of HP, even the cabin's only gonna help so much."

"You're cool with wearing stolen clothes?" I asked.

"Oh yeah, it's the best." Gerry's scowl was just visible over the coats, gloves, hats, and snow pants still piled in his arms. "How the hell can you still be worried about crap like that?"

Lena crossed her arms. "Maybe I don't feel like getting arrested the minute I get back to civilization."

Gerry stared at her for a moment. Then he shook his head. "First time the temperature drops, you'll get over it."

"Drops?" She swallowed.

I knew the feeling. My calculations of how long I could survive with ten HP depended on the weather not getting worse than it had been tonight.

"Just gear up already." He dumped the winter wear on the floor of the cabin and turned his back to us.

If Mask had abducted Gerry months ago, I could've excused the latter's resignation, but it had only been a few days. Stockholm Syndrome took a lot longer than that to kick in. Hell. Giving up should have taken a lot longer than that.

I opened my mouth to grill him about it, but the words wouldn't come.

I'd taken it as a given that Gerry had only been kidnapped for a week, but did I actually know that? No. We'd experienced distorted time through Third Eye before. It had moved much slower in the construction site than in the outside world, to the point it had been hard to understand the sped-up-sounding voices of people we'd been in coms with.

My operating theory had been that time contracted as space expanded. For all I knew, this cabin represented the opposite phenomena. Compressed space, expanded time?

I almost had to hope so, even though it meant our friends had been lost for subjective weeks or months. Still better than any alternative I could think of.

If Mask had done something so horrible it broke Gerry's spirit in less than a week, I felt so, so much worse. First, for letting Gerry slip away in the first place. Second, for underestimating the threat Mask represented. Third, most of all, for encouraging Lena to dive into the Key with me.

That wasn't why I froze, though. (Neither was the temperature; between Lena's flames and the heater and the body heat of whoever else was staying in the cabin, it felt almost temperate.)

No, what sent chills down my spine was the thought that Mask torturing or intimidating Gerry into compliance was not the worst case scenario.

From time to time, I'd wondered if Third Eye was manipulating our minds.

At first, I'd wondered if all the weird and wonderful things we experienced weren't just hallucinations. Turned out, no. Too many non-players had seen and even interacted with Third Eye phenomena, whether on a regular basis like Zhizhi or as a one-off like Benji and Sandy.

When I found out Third Eye phenomena had to be real, I'd dismissed the possibility of mental manipulation. It might still be possible, though. Might still be affecting us. Were we really waiting for the best time to tell the world the truth about Third Eye, or was the game guiding us away from exposing it?

I didn't want the devs, even Albie but especially her mysterious brother, screwing with our heads.

If regular players could learn to do so, though? If Mask already had?

As worst-case scenarios went, I didn't expect to beat that one.

While I fretted, Lena acted. "I'll take the coat. But we're not sticking around long enough to need it."

Gerry had drifted back toward the door. At the sound of Lena's voice, he hesitated and half-glanced over his shoulder. "You think you can leave?"

"Obvs," she said.

His throat bobbed. "You still think you should?"

"Obvs...?" Lena repeated. As her voice trailed off, she looked to me for support.

I tried to offer it. Honest. My smile came out as a grimace and the hand I lay on the small of her back felt clammy to me, much less her.

Because I'd come up with a scenario that could at least compete for worst-case.

Did it beat mind control? Maybe not, not on a personal level. In scale, though, and in sheer, infuriating bullshit, it kinda did.

Mask might have honestly persuaded his captives he was right.

 

[MoogleEmpMog]

Welcome back, dear readers! Hope you had a restful weekend, whether it was a long one or not.

Just a heads up that if you can't wait to get to the end of this (Eye on the) Road, you can join Magus of the 1st Circle fans on Patreon, who have officially reached the end of book two.

Patrons of all levels are also getting additional early access to The Mechaneer as it ramps up toward launch here.

In surely unrelated news, if any of you know of an excellent mecha artist who doesn't charge approximately as much for a book cover as for a working giant robot, please don't hesitate to drop me a link.

 

[MoogleEmpMog]

Chapter 108: Sitdown

In the end, Lena and I put on parkas, snow pants, and gloves. She kept her cowboy hat but supplemented it with a pair of fuzzy earmuffs. My ears felt instantly better after I covered them with a snug wool toque. Best of all, though I hated to admit it, we traded our soggy shoes for new, thick woolen socks and waterproof boots.

Lena stretched in hers. "I finally get why you're so into your parka."

"Told you," I said.

"Once we make it big, I am definitely buying myself one of these." She did a twirl, testing the feel of her new gear. For a second, she grinned. It didn't last. "How well do yours fit?"

"They're okay." All of the snow pants felt baggy, and I'd had to choose between an uncomfortably tight parka and the one I'd opted for, which hung too loose. Frankly, though, it wasn't any worse than the one I'd bought myself back in Denver; when you see a parka in a thrift store, you don't quibble over sizing. "Why?"

"'Cause mine," Lena said quietly, "fit great."

I furrowed my brow. It took me a second to follow her train of thought, but when I did, I gulped.

She raised her voice. "That a coincidence, Gerry?"

He shook his head. "Prolly not."

"That's messed up," Lena said.

"You want clothes that don't fit?" Gerry glanced back at us. "What do you want me to say? I didn't give the guy your measurements."

Lena said, "Maybe try, 'I'm not siding with the creepy kidnapper?'"

"I'm not siding with him!" Gerry groaned. "Look, now that you guys are kitted out, I'll tell everybody you're ready. If you don't get it yet, maybe you will when you sit down and listen."

"You never can tell," Lena said.

I didn't think she meant it, and I didn't think Gerry thought she did, either. He slunk through the opposite door from the one he'd used before. I heard his voice raise on the other side. The thick wood muffled it too much for me to make out his words, though, much less whatever response he got.

Lena crossed her arms over her chest and glared at the door.

I wrapped mine around her. I rested my chin on top of her head.

Even with my new, well insulated clothes, I felt the beat of her wings against my chest as clearly as I did the tension in her back.

"On the plus side," she said, "I guess this proves Erin was right. The Magnificent Ashbird legit is one of the most famous Third Eye players."

"She's got fans all over the world," I said.

"Too bad that includes creepy stalkers." She shuddered. "Creepy stalkers who can friggin' teleport."

I hugged her tighter. "We got this, Lena."

"Uh-huh?" She craned her neck to look up at me. "Not gonna lie, Cam, I really don't feel like we do."

I raised an eyebrow.

She wriggled around to face me. With her on tiptoes and me bending over, our noses touched. She hissed, "How the hell are you so calm?"

Because you need me to be, I thought. I said, "Why wouldn't I be?"

"Because we're stuck in the middle of who knows where? In some psycho's murder cabin? Wearing the outfit he stole to put in his fanboy shrine to me? Surrounded by people we came to rescue who sound like they're mainlining his Kool-Aid?"

I smiled. "Oh, is that all?"

"If you're trying to calm me down, it isn't working."

Despite what she said, her wingbeats came slower. So did her heartbeats.

"I know this is going to sound crazy, Lena," I said, "but I'm honestly not worried about almost any of that."

"What, do you have some kind of secret plan or something?"

My eyebrow arched higher.

She clutched my back. "If you do, you gotta tell me!"

"Nope," I said. "Can't."

"Why?"

"Two reasons," I said. "First, somebody might be listening at the door, or the room could be bugged."

She winced. "Not making me feel better. What's the second reason?"

"The one I know you'll agree with." I smiled. "If you say your plans aloud in advance, the laws of narrative causality demand they won't work."

"Ugh!" She buried her face in my chest to try to stifle her laugh. I felt more than I heard when it didn't work, and it felt great. "I hate that I agree with you."

I kissed the top of her head. "We got this. I promise."

"We better." My parka muffled her voice.

Did we?

I felt maybe half as confident as I meant to sound. Which was fifty percent more than I'd been before I realized Lena needed me to sound that way. In the process of comforting her, I'd talked myself into believing that we – had this?

No.

That we were in this with a shot.

Mask held plenty of cards. Thing was, I was pretty sure he thought he held them all, and if so, I looked forward to correcting him.

We'd officially accepted stolen goods. If we showed up back in Canyon tomorrow morning kitted out in this stuff, it might even come back to bite us.

Considering that I didn't think I could survive another trip through the Key, that ranked even lower on my list of concerns than Lena's worries.

Mask could hold our decision to wear the shit he'd provided over us if he wanted.

Thing was, except as a bluff, he wouldn't. I'd gotten him to back down before by threatening to get the police involved. Not because he feared arrest – if I could teleport, I wouldn't, either – but because he feared exposure. Him calling the cops on us was almost exactly as bad for him as us calling the cops on him.

I'd need to know real soon just how bad he felt that outcome would be. Then we'd find out how misplaced my confidence was.

Gerry opened the door. "Okay. Everybody's ready."

"Us, too," I said. "Right, Lena?"

I felt her take a deep breath against my chest. When she looked up, she wore her cocky streamer's smile. She turned it on Gerry. "We got this."

He wilted beneath it and mumbled, "Hope so."

We strode through the door.

On the other side, we found more of the same set up. Pitted, rough, dusty log walls and simple, sturdy furniture – this time, a narrow dining table long enough to accommodate ten chairs, as well as an old wood stove and a sink – mixed with stolen modernity. Three of the extension cords we'd seen stretched into here. They powered a heater, a USB charger connected to three phones and another of those LED lanterns, and seven laptops.

A person sat behind all but one computer. Gerry completed the set when he edged around us and took his chair.

I didn't recognize the two girls, nor did I know two of the other guys. All four fell within the demographics I expected of Third Eye players: the younger, paler girl looked gangly enough that I might have bought that she was absent from high school. The other three I figured for somewhere between a hard twenty and an easy forty. All four wore the same mismatched winter wear Lena and I had accepted.

Our captor sat at the far end, looking like an even more ridiculous edgelord than usual with the light from his laptop reflecting off the porcelain of his mask. He had, of course, positioned himself at the head of the table. Although there was space for a chair at the opposite end, he left it empty.

You know, just in case somebody forgot that he considered himself the main character here.

Matt sat behind the final laptop, arms crossed, scowling. He had his fur-lined leather jacket on, so I had to assume Mask had grabbed him in the middle of an evening scouting trip. He looked at us and sighed. "Well, shit."

Lena tossed her hair. "Nice to see you, too, Matt."

"Under the circumstances," he said, "is it?"

"Uh, yeah? Considering we came here to save your ass?"

"Huh." His eyebrows raised. He stroked his beard. "I guess I should thank you."

"Couldn't hurt," I said.

Mask's voice changer scratched as he cleared his throat. "Sit down."

Lena put her hands on her hips. "And if we'd rather stand?"

"Whatever." He shrugged. "I don't have laptops for you yet, anyway."

Now that standing didn't represent a power-play, Lena turned one of the chairs backwards and straddled it with her arms crossed on its back and her chin propped atop them. I took the empty seat next to her.

Mask spread his hands on either side of his laptop. "Now –"

"Before we hear your spiel," Lena said, "who here has HP?"

She raised her hand. So did I, while I tried not to think about how few I had.

Matt's hand stretched languidly upwards. Everyone else looked to either him or Mask, or back and forth between them.

After a moment's hesitation, all but two hands went up: Mask's own, which remained pressed to the table, and the younger girl's. She tugged on the sleeve of her parka.

"Pretty good rate," Lena said. She glanced at me. "You know what I'm going to ask, right?"

I nodded. "We're both wondering about it."

I didn't expect Lena's gambit to work, but if she hadn't pulled it, I would have. How it failed would tell us loads about the situation.

She asked, "That being the case, how come you guys haven't kicked the crap out of Mask already?"

While I tried to maintain a steely gaze, I watched as many people as I could.

Mask didn't move, so whatever reaction he had, his outfit hid it.

The younger girl's lip curled, which I figured marked her as a true believer. I saw no reason for her to have lost her HP in that case, so I assumed she'd left her hand down either because she didn't want to back Lena or to try to hide her status as an active threat.

I couldn't see Gerry from where I sat, but the older girl and the two other guys both turned to Matt.

Who sighed.

"What makes you think," he said, "that we haven't?"

 

[MoogleEmpMog]

Chapter 109: Stranded

Lena stared. "The hell?"

Matt looked down the table to Mask. "Do you want to tell them, or should I?"

Mask's shoulders flexed. Instead of responding, he hunched further over his laptop and started jabbing at the keys.

The younger girl began to inch her fingers toward his arm. His mask shifted toward her and she jerked her hand back and glared at the rest of us.

"I guess I get to play storyteller," Matt said. As he stood, he flashed a trace of his familiar smirk. A reminder that I'd only upgraded him from "acquaintance," or maybe "colleague," to "friend" after he got abducted.

I supposed I had to count it as a good thing that he'd preserved his smarm. I liked to think that if I had access to mind control, I'd be strong enough to never use it. Being cooped up in a cabin with Matt would leave me sorely tempted, though.

No way Mask let him carry on like this if zapping him into an obedient captive was an option.

"Before we begin," Matt said, "I just want to clarify. 'Mask' is what you've been calling our host? You couldn't have picked a name that sounds less like mine?"

"We didn't pick it," Lena said. "We got it off the invasion report."

"Doesn't exactly speak to the creativity of the people who post there," said Matt, who'd been pro-invasion from day one.

Lena cupped her chin. "Wait, what do you call him?"

Matt looked down the table again. "Currently? I call him Allen and we all try to pretend that's an alias."

Lena and I both stared at Mask. We could've guessed he'd have an ordinary American name. He tried to put on the persona of a mysterious antihero, but he slipped into modern slang on the regular. Still, associating such a mundane name with his (lack of a) face made it hard not to laugh.

Give us credit, though. We both managed to clamp our jaws shut.

Until Matt added, "Of course, Allen initially told me to call him 'the Nightmare Knight.'"

Lena covered her mouth, but if she wanted to stifle her laughter, it didn't work. Probably because she wanted to draw attention to it, instead.

I managed to restrain myself to a snort and considered it an amazing display of self-discipline.

Even Matt and three of the other captives cracked grins.

How could you not?

Look. As usernames go, Nightmare Knight wouldn't be a bad one. Certainly better than mine, and no cringier than Donica's DeepingShadows.

We weren't trying to get people to call us those names to our faces, though.

Between how ridiculous it was, and how ridiculously appropriate to the persona Mask – Allen, I supposed, because I sure as hell wasn't using his preferred alias – put on, and the tension that had been building up in Lena and I, who could blame us for laughing?

The younger girl could, it turned out. She surged to her feet and almost screamed, "Shut up!"

I did my best to compose my face. Lena, frankly, didn't.

"You have no idea," the girl snarled. "You don't know what we –"

"Quit it, Jan," Mask said. No, I reminded myself. Allen said.

His voice changer made it impossible to parse his tone, so I watched her reaction instead. She didn't cringe away from him, and when her glare swung his way, her body remained just as tense as when she'd shouted at Lena. Not what I'd expect from an abuse victim whose will had been broken.

Eventually, she coughed, slumped back into her chair, and fixed her gaze on the far wall of the cabin.

"You're right," I said. "I'm sorry. We don't know what you've been through."

She glared over her shoulder. "Huh?"

"I want to hear the rest of Matt's explanation," I said. "After that, though, you two can tell us whatever you need to."

Jan looked away again, but for some reason, what I'd said made Allen's shoulders tense. His mask tilted up until its three eyes pointed at me instead of his laptop screen. "Since when is that your call, OldCampaigner?"

I met his gaze, even though I couldn't see his eyes. Then, without answering him, I turned to Matt.

Who exhaled. "I can tell this is going to be interesting."

I offered a rueful smile. I figured he would understand what I was trying to do. Hopefully, he approved. "Why don't you finish up the introductions."

"Good call," he said. "You've just met Jan here. Life of the party, isn't she? But try to cut her some slack. Allen, obviously. Our oh-so-gracious host. And Gerry told me you two fought Allen together, along with Erin?"

"Yeah. Although I probably didn't make the best first impression." I turned to Gerry. "I'm sorry I couldn't pull you out, man."

He crossed his arms. "Same."

"That's not fair," Lena said. "We watched the whole thing through your cameras. Cam did his best!"

"And it wasn't good enough." I touched Lena's wrist but I kept facing Gerry. "I'm not sorry for not trying. I'm sorry I wasn't strong enough to succeed."

Gerry sucked air through his teeth. "Yeah, well. I'm the one who fucked up and dropped his guard. You tried to warn me."

"We cool?" I asked.

He ducked his head. "We cool."

"Great," Matt said. He pointed to the other two guys and the older girl. Each raised their hand or nodded to Lena and I as he said their names. "Bob, Ramon, Nadia. You guys, these two are Cam and Lena."

"Pleased to meetcha," Lena said. She'd broken character when she busted out laughing, but now she was back in full streamer mode. Her cheery voice and beaming smile came across as so effortless. I knew that as soon as she came down, she'd crash like never before. "Too bad it couldn't be under better circumstances."

All three of them nodded.

"You seem to keep your spirits up," Ramon said. "You're the famous one, yes? Ashbird?"

"Mmhm!" She bobbed her head.

"Allen has had us watch all of your videos," he said. "You give good advice."

Lena didn't let her smile slip at the reminder that Allen was perhaps too much of a fan of The Magnificent Ashbird.

To keep her from having to try to hold it while she talked, though, I said, "How about you finish your story, Matt?"

"Certainly." He rubbed his hands. "As you pointed out, we're not exactly a helpless collection of players. Allen specifically targeted us because he expected us to be worth his time. Now, I admit, individually, none of us are a match for him, even now. Collectively, on the other hand?"

"You can take him?" Although I addressed Matt, I watched Allen.

His mask revealed nothing. As for body language, he went back to jabbing at his laptop keyboard.

Matt said, "We could a week ago, at least. And again tonight, I imagine, since it looks like Phantom won't be much help until tomorrow."

The voice changer scratched with Allen's grunt.

"It's so messed up that you use your Daimon to fight," Lena said.

"Literally the point of them," Allen muttered.

"Unfortunately," Matt said, "while I hate to agree with our host, in this case, I do think he's right."

Lena scowled.

"Daimons are part of the game." Matt spread his hands. "If we have them, we should use them."

"They're not just tools," Lena said.

"Maybe not, but they seem to enjoy using their abilities," Matt said. "They also seem to get stronger from it. That's been true of Phantom, as well as Ramon's salamander."

Lena's eyes widened. "You've got a salamander, too? Where is he? What's his name?"

Ramon grinned. "Yes, in the room with our bunks, and Verano."

"So cool! I can't wait to meet him."

"Gushing over virtual pets aside," Matt said, "the point is, every time Allen goes out and brings back a new prospect, he gets himself beaten up and those of us stuck here get reinforcements. While he was grabbing Gerry, I convinced the others to act on that fact."

I leaned forward. "And...?"

"We won," Matt said. He waited a beat, almost long enough that I thought I needed to prompt him. "We knocked Phantom out of the fight, dropped Allen's HP to zero, freed Gerry."

Jan clenched her fists, but either Allen didn't give a shit about his defeat or he did a better job of hiding it.

I looked back to Matt. "If that's the case, how come you're still stuck here?"

"Because," he said, "and you can guess how much I love this, winning doesn't actually matter."

Lena cocked her head.

I nodded, though.

"You already figured that much out, eh?" Matt retook his chair.

"Let's see if I've got the particulars down," I said. "It's impossible to force Allen to use his Key, because either he's got HP and you can't really threaten him, or he doesn't and he can't help you."

Matt sighed as he tapped the touchpad of his laptop. "Yep."

"You could force him to tell you your physical location," I said. I held up my hand to let them know I was just working through my thoughts aloud. "I'm guessing he refused, though. Even if any of you were psychologically capable of beating information out of a helpless dude, which you're probably not –" I hoped not, anyway. "– you could never trust anything he said. He'd have every incentive to feed you a load of bullshit that would make it likely you'd get lost and die in the wilderness."

"Not quite every incentive," Matt said. "Enough that I wouldn't want to bet my life on my intimidation skills or his honesty, though."

"One thing I don't get," I said. "If you've already unmasked Allen, why does he still wear his whole outfit in the cabin? It can't be comfortable."

"To protect all of you, dickhead," Jan muttered.

"I'd call it mutual protection," Matt said. "See, we didn't unmask Allen after we beat him. He and Jan persuaded us not to."

"Why the hell would you let them talk you out of it?" Lena asked.

"Because if we don't see his face," Matt said, "we can't identify him to the police. Oh, we could make a good guess. So could a competent detective. Proof, though? Proof enough to stand up in court? Right now, we don't have it. Which is for the best."

Ah. Another piece of the puzzle clicked together for me. "If you saw his face, he'd never be able to let you go, and you'd both know it. As long as he keeps the mask and the voice changer on, he could, in theory, release you down the line."

"Right again." Matt chuckled. "Also, if he decided to stop bringing us canned food, we'd find out whether five city nerds could hunt and gather well enough to survive, or if our HP would protect us from starving."

"For the record," Nadia said, "we bet no to both."

I thought of the people in the cabin as Allen's captives, but that didn't quite – if you'll pardon the pun – capture their situation. He'd stranded them here. He controlled their resources. He was their best hope of getting back to civilization.

He didn't have them fully in his power, though, because their group did have some hope of trekking south. And if it came down to it, they could beat him in a fight.

Him and Jan both, I assumed. She gave every indication that she would side with Allen against the others. If she wasn't skilled enough with Third Eye to tip the scales back in his direction, why had he abducted her in the first place? Did he only look down on "mediocre" players if they didn't take his side?

Regardless, the people in the cabin remained cordial enough with Allen and Jan to sit at this table and talk. They accepted their laptops and winter wear even though they had to guess it was all stolen. Matt knew enough about Allen and Phantom's capabilities to have tracked the latter's growth, and Ramon's salamander, too, which implied they'd engaged in regular PVP.

Then there was Gerry's behavior around Lena and I. He seemed halfway to siding with Allen himself, even though he'd been here less time than Matt.

I caught myself.

I'd assumed Matt wasn't on Allen's side. Matt admitted they'd fought, right?

Fought. Not "were fighting."

"I guess that just leaves one more question." I locked gazes with Matt, since Allen's mask prevented me from seeing his expression and I didn't know anyone else well enough to have even a hope of reading theirs'.

"Shoot," Matt said.

"What," I asked, "did Allen drag you out here to do?"

 

[MoogleEmpMog]

Chapter 110: Hard Decisions

Allen had contented himself with allowing Matt to tell the story for so long, it caught me by surprise when I heard the crackle of his voice changer again.

He said, simply, "Survive."

Silence all around the table. You could hear a pin drop, or a person breathing, even if they weren't wearing a device that amplified the sound.

"Huh." I raised an eyebrow. "That's... not quite what I expected."

"I told you," he said. "I'm doing what needs to be done."

"No, I get that part. I didn't think you were going to say you wanted to conquer the world or something. You've got the whole 'hard man making hard decisions' thing going on."

I watched Lena out of the corner of my eye. She didn't mouth, "while hard." If I'd doubted that she remained scared shitless behind her streamer smile, the fact she let a trope go by without its traditional mockery proved it.

Because our creepy stalker was, among other things, apparently an obsessive fan of hers?

Or because, like me, she'd started to grasp his perspective on the wider Third Eye situation?

Either way, I gave her wrist a squeeze.

Allen pushed his laptop back and folded his arms. "If you get I'm not the bad guy here –" Hell of a leap on his part, but I didn't correct him. "– then what's even your problem?"

"Just 'survive?'" I shook my head. "I figured you'd at least claim you were going to save the world."

His head drooped until the peak of his cloak covered the upper eye hole on his mask. Whatever he said, his voice changer output it at the same volume. But everything about his body language and the hesitancy with which he spoke told me he whispered his next line:

"I can't."

Jan reached out to him again. This time he didn't drive her back with a look and she massaged his arm.

The others all lowered their eyes. Even Matt's smirk fell away.

Hell. Even Lena tensed beneath my touch.

I guess my scowl probably stood out.

Jan certainly seemed to think so. As soon as she saw my expression, hers' hardened. "What?"

"It's just," I said, "between Allen's win at all costs attitude, his habit of collecting strong players like Pokemon, and the fact he really did think he and Phantom could beat Lena and I? I figured he had more faith in his strength."

"It's not about strength," Jan said. "If Allen isn't the most powerful Third Eye player yet, he will be soon."

"Could be," I said. "I think OdysseyZZ might have a few things to say about that."

I thought Jan had glared at us before, but her previous expressions looked downright sunny compared to the venom in her eyes when I mentioned Omar's username. If looks could kill...

With the right Third Eye technique, maybe they could.

"That jitbag," she hissed. Had I heard that word before? No. Did context clues lead me to conclude it was complementary? Also no.

Maybe she put too much bile into her voice and some of it came up her throat, because she cut off with a hacking cough.

Allen looked her way.

She held up her hand. Two coughs later, she got the fit under control and gulped down a breath. "I'm fine."

"Okay." He waited while she steadied her breathing, then said, "Remember. OdysseyZZ will get his."

Jan wiped at her mouth. "Yeah."

"That will help you survive?" I asked.

Allen's gloves creaked as he clenched his fists.

I ran my fingers through my hair. "I'm not trying to bust on you. Honest. I'm trying to understand. For all I know, you legit do need to protect yourself from OdysseyZZ. If he threatened you, that's got to be scary as hell. Especially if he's got a Key of his own."

I'm not saying I chose my words specifically to sound sympathetic while reminding Allen of how shitty it felt to be on the receiving end of a teleporting stalker.

Wait, no. That was exactly how I chose my words.

What I got instead turned out to be even more interesting, though.

"He's got a Key, all right," Allen said. "Ain't his."

"Meaning it's yours?" When his head twitched in something like a nod, I added, "How did that happen?"

"Because," he said, "I started out stupid enough to ask for help."

"So that's what you meant," Lena said. "About how you'd never trust somebody again."

"Yeah."

"That's not fair," she said. "You trusted the wrong person, and that sucks, but it doesn't mean you shouldn't trust anybody else. Hell, if you're going after Omar, we're literally on the same side! You should've asked for our help, not attacked us."

"It doesn't matter." Allen banged his fist on the table. "You'll help now because you've gotta, so I don't have to trust you. Any of you!"

"Okay," I said.

Lena shot me a glance.

I didn't dare nod to her, but I hoped the steady rhythm of my hand massaging her wrist would convince her to let me take point on this one.

I probably don't need to say, but I didn't find anything about our situation "okay."

Claiming that I did seemed to calm Allen down, though. His fists unclenched and he leaned back a little in his chair. Not relaxed, exactly, but no longer tensed like a cornered predator.

More than anything, I wanted to ask him how Omar had taken a Key from another player.

If Omar had conned Allen into leading him to a Key and Allen just blamed him for taking it and then not giving back whatever they'd agreed upon in exchange, fine. Shitty behavior on Omar's part, but not even as bad as things we knew he'd pulled. I couldn't bring myself to side with the stalker and kidnapper against the conman.

If, on the other hand, Omar could actually steal Reactants, Refinements, or whatever the Key was? That presented a new and awful twist. We knew he claimed to be able to give Reactants to other people. Taking them away might use the same mechanic.

We needed to know if it was possible. We needed to know how to resist it.

But above all, at the moment, we needed Allen to stay calm enough to explain what drove him to pull his crap. Continuing to harp on Omar struck me as a bad way to make that happen.

It was my own damn fault for picking at what sounded like a hole in Allen's survival ethos. He rubbed me the wrong way, but this was too important for me to rub him the wrong way.

For now, I let the subject drop. I thought Allen might return to his explanation, but the only sound coming through his voice changer was his breathing.

Of course, he didn't seem to be the only one who knew what was up.

"You said it's not about strength, Jan," I said. "Please, tell me. Why doesn't Allen think he can save the world?"

"Don't ask her," he said.

Because he didn't want an account that would contradict his own? That wasn't the vibe I got.

Sure enough, Jan said, "Not talking about it won't make me forget."

Allen's mask tilted away from her. "Fine."

She looked down the table at me. "Didn't he let you see it?"

"The city in his Realm, you mean?" I asked.

She nodded.

"We saw it," I said.

"It was super spooky," Lena said, "and, like, I'm sure if we tried to stay the night, those creatures would hunt us down. Did you guys get stuck in there or something?"

"Or something." Her head dipped and she pressed a fist to her mouth. I thought she might start coughing again, but after a pause, she continued. "That's not the point. It's Allen's Realm."

"And...?" Lena cocked her head. "Do you get this, Cam?"

"I'm starting to," I said.

She rubbed her eyes. "You want to share with the class? 'Cause I am officially lost."

"You guys can stop me if I get any of this wrong," I said.

Allen and Jan both seemed content to let me shoot my shot. So did the captives.

If I'd misunderstood what they were getting at, I was about to sound like a total dumbass.

God, I hoped I was about to sound like a total dumbass.

"We can't say for every Realm we visited," I said, "because we don't know the players they're associated with. But every time we have known who the Realm belonged to, whether it was yours, Lena, or Miguel's, or any of the ones people have posted about on the wiki, their Realm always captured a moment in their lives that Third Eye considered important to them. Not just as players, but as people. Right?"

Lena nodded. "I mean, Miguel didn't agree that it was that important to him, but it was obviously made from his memories, yeah."

Nadia spoke up. "Mine was the same way."

"And mine," Ramon said.

Matt, Gerry, and Bob all shook their heads. Matt spoke for the three of them. "Either not every player gets a Realm, or none of us have found ours yet. Still, it's fair to say you're on the right track, Cameron. None of us have seen or heard of one that clearly isn't personalized."

So far, my much longed-for dumbassitude eluded me. I swallowed. "The cityscape we saw. I didn't recognize it, but am I right that you did, Allen, Jan?"

"It's... it was... Philly," Jan said. "You can tell from the skyline."

I couldn't, since I'd never been there, or even had cause to look at a picture of it, but it was obvious the two of them knew the town well.

How would I feel if I saw Denver's corpse moldering like that?

I would feel like doing anything I could to stop the vision from becoming a reality.

I wished I could ask – I wished I could demand – to know why Allen didn't feel the same about his hometown.

Trouble was, I already knew.

"Since I'm pretty sure someone would have mentioned if the city of Philadelphia got reclaimed by nature twenty or thirty years ago," I said, "there's no way that Realm could be a vision of your past."

"Yeah." Allen's voice changer couldn't quite hide the raggedness in his voice. "Almost there. You know how this ends."

"That's the point, isn't it?" I said. "How it ends."

Jan squeezed her eyes shut.

On the bright side, I wasn't going to feel like a dumbass.

Hooray.

"You're saying Third Eye Productions didn't pluck that vision from your past." I took a deep breath. "They pulled it from your future."

 

[Crayz9000]

If I were in Cam's shoes, I probably would have assumed that they pulled it from Allen's nightmares. Sure, third eye can do all sorts of spooky BS, but I don't think Cam has seen anything that suggests they can predict the future and drawing on nightmares is in line with drawing on memories of the past.

 

[MoogleEmpMog]

Chapter 111: Future Sight

Allen inclined his head at my conclusion.

Jan coughed into her fist. Gerry and Bob nodded. Nadia and Ramon looked away. Matt scowled, but instead of meeting my eyes, he dropped his gaze to the laptop on the table before him.

I got it, obviously. Third Eye had shown Allen a vision of his hometown in ruins. From what he and Jan had said, that probably didn't exhaust the awful shit they'd experienced as a result of the game. It had scared them, scarred them.

Just a glimpse of that Realm and what it seemed to represent had frightened Gerry into complying with Allen. The other captives might resist Allen's domination, but they weren't seriously fighting to escape his little survivalist cabin. If all that was waiting for them was whatever apocalypse had left a city stripped of human habitation, wasn't it safer to carve out an equitable arrangement here in the wilderness?

The vision scared me, too. If one city could fall into ruins, any could. Maybe they all could.

But it didn't terrify me the way it clearly did everyone else.

Why? I took a moment to figure it out. This time, I couldn't afford to sound like a dumbass.

They gave me my moment and then some. Everyone else seemed too upset to speak.

Everyone? I glanced at Lena.

She had a hand on her chin and her eyes were narrowed, but she wasn't shrinking in on herself with fear. If anything, she looked calmer than she had before I finished laying things out. She flicked a glance my way.

I nodded to her.

Allen's Realm terrified the others because they had no way to contextualize it.

Which was, in part, my and Lena's fault.

The last time I'd checked the wiki page for Realms, it had linked to descriptions of eleven separate instances. We'd contributed three of those pages: the ones for hers, for Miguel's, and for the great tree in the Black Forest. We'd described the two we knew more about as personalized, inspired by the players' pasts. Under the Speculation header of the main Realms page, we'd helped Erin craft a section theorizing about Third Eye Productions drawing on player input to create custom game environments.

Like a lot of what we'd posted, it was true. It just wasn't close to complete.

Partly, we'd held back because we didn't want to tank our credibility or incite a panic by declaring the existence of magic. I felt increasingly uneasy about waiting until the end of the tournament, not least because we now had to worry about Omar taking our magic away.

Partly, though, maybe mostly, we'd hesitated because the Realms felt too personal to share with a wiki audience. Lena's had reflected the darkest chapter of her life. The reminder had left her crying outside her old door. It had ultimately led to us getting back together, so I couldn't bring myself to hate the devs for it. Nonetheless, if Lena hadn't gotten Bernie from her Realm, I thought she might have uninstalled Third Eye that day. I wouldn't have blamed her in the slightest.

All but one of the other entries had followed our lead. Because we knew how we'd couched our descriptions of Realms, we could read between the lines and guess at least the broad outlines of what other players wrote about.

Only one entry had gone full burn-it-all-down, rant-like-a-conspiracy-theorist openness. The person posting it had done so anonymously – and, according to Erin, with their IP obscured. The details fit what we knew of other Realms, though. A twisted, mirrored version of the player's former house as it had been on the day they came home early and found their girlfriend in bed with their best friend. The house had seemed to stretch unnaturally, and everything was buffeted by a horrible wind because all of the windows and doors were just gone. The player posted that they walked away with three Air and a demand to know how Third Eye Productions found out about the incident.

Of course, that entry got flamed to hell in the comments section. Erin had forbidden any of the wiki team members from editing the entry, and she pruned the comments when they escalated to the level of personal attacks on the poster. (My understanding was that she deleted almost every one.) Despite her efforts, other users kept trying to remove the entry as an obvious troll, the same as anything else that talked about Third Eye as more than a game.

Lena and I knew better, of course. So did everyone at this table, considering they'd been transported through Allen's Key.

But, I realized, they didn't know everything we did.

I turned to Lena.

She looked up at me.

I raised an eyebrow.

She said, "It's not just me, right?"

"It's not," I said.

"Okay, so." She extricated her wrist from my hand and pushed her chair up against the table. "I think that conclusion is kinda dumb?"

Everyone stared at her, except me. I gave her a reassuring smile, then looked back to the others.

Allen started to rise. "How can you say that?"

"Easy," Lena said. "Don't get me wrong. I get how that would be scary as hell. I'm not even saying it's impossible that you're right! It is one hell of a leap, though."

"How do you explain it, then?" Allen demanded. "I sure as hell never walked around in a version of Philly covered by plants before."

"And I," Lena said, "didn't literally light the hallways of my apartment building on fire."

"Uh." Allen sank back into his seat. Though his mask made it hard to tell, I thought he was boggling at Lena.

"It's not your fault," I said. "Actually, it's not any of your faults. This shit isn't always easy to talk about, and frankly, as far as I can tell, nobody in a position to do so has told everything where you could have heard it. It's not really my place to start, even now, but it might be important to. Do you mind if I share enough to explain to them, Lena?"

Her streamer's smile slipped. For a moment. She conjured it back as easily as we pulled objects from our phones with Third Eye. "We've gotta. This is more important than me being embarrassed about fucking up my life."

"Thanks." I nodded. "Realms aren't – I was going to say 'real,' but that doesn't quite get at what I mean. They're maybe the realest things in Third Eye. Lena actually used the right word already. They're not literal."

"I have 'literally' no idea what you're talking about," Allen said. Which might've been the first thing I'd ever heard from him that didn't make me want to punch his mask off. Lena's laugh told me she felt the same.

It also made my smile widen. "Lena's Realm was a representation of where she used to live, yeah. The apartment itself was almost exactly like what she remembered. Through Third Eye, the hallways were engulfed in flames, though. That fire was never really there. It was Third Eye's way of representing how she used to shut out the world."

"Why Fire?" Lena shrugged. "We're not sure, tbh. We don't know how our Reactants get picked. I used to think mine was because I backed the game for too much money to get the objectively best avatar, but a lot of players seem to get something that suits them first. Maybe if I was more into Earth, my Realm would've been a pyramid or something. Water, and it would've had a moat. Air, I'm not really sure. Cam?"

"Floating castle?"

"That would've been super sick." She closed her eyes. "Oh man. If I'd lived in a floating castle IRL, I think I'd have stayed a shut-in."

"As all right-thinking people would," I said.

Her smile widened.

I realized that I'd slipped as much into streamer mode as she had.

It would be a long-ass time before we ever shared this episode of The Magnificent Ashbird. It might just be the most important one we ever made, though.

I pressed on. "Or, take the arcade we found. It's not just that the mall it was part of got demolished in real life. The Third Eye version didn't have the same layout as the real thing. It was bigger, darker, more the idea of an arcade than that specific one. Hell, the maintenance hallways had a bunch of kiddified traps and puzzles, like a funhouse version of a role-playing game dungeon."

"I still really want to explore more of those hallways," Lena said. "You say RPG, I say game show."

"Maybe after we get done with our road trip," I said.

We exchanged thumbs up.

I can't say the people around the table stared at us less after this exchange.

"The point is," I said, "the Realms we've seen don't really show the player's past. They reflect it."

"Not even that," Lena said. "The way Realms work is creepy, but not the way you're all thinking."

I glanced at her. "Hm?"

"Maybe they reflect how a player felt about something in his past," she said. "I'm not sure it's even that simple, though. I think they show the player something Third Eye Productions thinks he should see."

I found myself straining to hold my confident smile.

Based on Miguel's realm, I knew the devs could end up disagreeing with a player about what the latter needed. They could, I was pretty sure, make mistakes.

Why would they think Allen should see Philadelphia in ruins in the first place, though? If Realms represented the game's bespoke content, did that mean Albie or her brother, or some unknown other member of the dev team, had deliberately crafted that horrifying vision?

Matt asked what Lena and I weren't willing to. "If that's the case, why would Third Eye Productions think this Realm was an appropriate thing to show a player?"

Lena sank back in her chair.

I ran my fingers through my hair. "I... don't know."

At least, I hoped I didn't.

Matt believed Third Eye had been built to encourage PVP, and whether I liked it or not, I suspected he was right. Spoiler alert, I did not like it.

Neither did a lot of the playerbase.

Maybe if Third Eye had been presented to us from the outset as an AR-enhanced game of Assassin, we'd have jumped in wholeheartedly. We might have jumped the hell out when we started to realize it had real-world effects, but until then, it would've sounded cool. That wasn't the pitch in the Kickstarter, though. The AR-ARG had delivered on Augmented Reality, but it was light on Altered Reality Game and surprisingly heavy on head-to-head competition.

A lot of us had pushed back against the game's design. As The Magnificent Ashbird, Lena traded dazzling smiles and informative tutorials for the chance to encourage her viewers to avoid invasions and take care with arranged PVP. Erin's invasion report warned about aggressive players and helped defensive ones work together. Joon Woo encouraged people to speculate and experiment instead of fighting.

A whole lot of people listened.

Third Eye PVP wouldn't have been abandoned, not entirely. If not for the buzz about Omar's tournament, however, almost all the top players would have ditched it. Even the tournament hadn't been enough to entice any of the wiki team members other than Lena. A lot of the top players were people with too much else going on to drop everything and zip down to Florida.

Which was far from what the devs seemed to want.

Had they shaped Allen into Mask because they needed to give strong players a reason to fight?

I couldn't consider it worse than believing uncritically that an apocalypse was not just in potentia, but inevitable. It was, however, yet another scary thought.

Jan's eyes flickered wildly between us and Allen. She started to stir, looked at him again, and, when he didn't move, cleared her throat.

Everyone turned to her.

She stared into the corner of the cabin room. "What if –"

"It's none of their business," Allen snapped.

I thought she might clam up and started thinking of ways to get her to speak, maybe when Allen was off hunting his next victim, but she went eye to eyehole with his mask. "Unless they're right, Allen."

His voice changer crackled as he sucked down air, but he turned his attention back to his laptop.

I waited for Jan. So did everyone else.

She took a minute, but I had no idea if it was to collect her thoughts, to steel her emotions, or just to get her breathing problems under control.

"What if," she asked, "the Realm belonged to a player who was already dead?"

 

[MoogleEmpMog]

Chapter 112: Homebound

A dead city for a dead player.

If offered a kind of symmetry, so of course, my stupid monkey brain instantly latched onto it as correct. See a pattern, believe it's significant. That's how human beings work. ARGs play on that mindset, so you know damn well it's my instinct.

I couldn't afford to cave to it.

"I'll be honest," I said. "If Matt didn't say he'd dropped Allen's HP to zero, I might have actually considered the possibility of Third Eye creating undead. We know the game can do a lot of insane things. We also know almost everything it does shuts off when your HP run out."

"No!" Jan banged her fist on the table. Another cough wracked her body before she could keep speaking.

"Quit it, Jan," Allen said. "It's none of their business, and you gotta be more careful."

She wiped spittle from her mouth. "Is! Am."

I didn't believe the latter, at least. Her cough seemed to grow worse the longer the conversation dragged on, the more agitated she got. I couldn't imagine the freezing environment outside did her any favors, either.

Why didn't her HP?

Because she didn't have any.

I'd wondered why Allen had bothered to abduct a "mediocre" player. Or, on the other hand, why another strong player couldn't tip a team fight in his favor if she had his back. Now it seemed obvious. She couldn't help him in Third Eye because she wasn't a player at all. She supported him against the other captives because he'd never abducted her in the first place.

She'd been with him from the start, and he must have brought her to the cabin when they fled whatever had happened to them.

I felt like an idiot for not seeing it before, and like an asshole for not knowing what to do about it now.

Lena did. She swung her leg over her chair and stood. She took a step towards Jan.

Jan's eyes snapped up, her glare almost as venomous as when we'd talked about Omar.

Lena bore up beneath it. She swept around the table and offered her hand.

Jan slapped it away. "Don't you pity me."

"Just trying to help," Lena said softly.

"I'm." Jan gritted her teeth. "Fine."

Which would've sounded more plausible if she hadn't coughed again. It was hard to tell, because her gloves were red, but I thought I saw blood in with the spittle she wiped away.

Allen's fists clenched.

"We all know you're not going to convince her, Allen," Matt said. His voice sounded gentler than I'd ever heard it. "Isn't it safer for you to just tell us?"

"Fine." Allen rose. His mask focused on Jan for a moment, then tilted up to Lena for long enough her shoulders began to tense.

Then he turned his back on all of us and faced the wall.

"I'm not dead," he said, as if that explained anything. He hesitated a long time before adding, "This wasn't supposed to be my account."

Lena glanced back at me. I shook my head.

We could hand our phones off to other people and they could open up Third Eye. They could browse its menus, look through its filter – hell, they didn't even need the official app for that, and I wondered if we should at least provide Jan with Zhizhi's camera software.

They could even tap the menus and cause an object to be conjured. But the object would appear in front of the actual, registered player, not the person they'd loaned their phone to.

The player was the one with HP, the one whose MP pool got depleted.

Considering what we'd seen Allen do as Mask, he sure as hell had access to Third Eye.

Jan reached out and nudged his side.

"It's my dad's," he said. "He died."

Were Third Eye accounts inheritable?

I realized otherwise when Allen added, "Five years ago."

Shortly after Third Eye's crowdfunding campaign.

"I'm sorry," I said.

"Why?" he asked. "You kill him?"

My shoulders slumped.

"Signing up for this game he backed was supposed to get me 'closer' to him." Allen's voice changer crackled with static laughter. "Almost did."

Jan flinched. "Not funny."

"Nope." He didn't say anything else.

In the silence, I sank back in my chair. When Lena realized Jan wasn't going to change her mind and reach out for a hug or something, she slunk back and joined me. I took her hand when she offered it, but I was lost in my thoughts.

From Jan's reaction and the fact she had already known about how Allen got Third Eye, I had to assume they were siblings. I'd previously pegged her for his girlfriend. A family relationship, on the other hand, explained why she didn't seem to give a shit when he obsessed over what size parka to steal for the internet-famous girl he wanted to kidnap.

And the Realm? A dead city for a dead player. It would be pretty screwed up of the devs, in my opinion, but perhaps not the worst thing we'd seen them do.

"Well, Cameron, Lena?" Matt asked. "You're the experts."

I spread my hands. "Whoa, hold up. I just said we knew some things we hadn't shared with the public yet, or maybe even with all of the wiki team."

"Don't tell us what you know, then," he said. "Tell us what you think."

I thought a tangled mess of wishes and fears. I thought people shouldn't trust us with their lives.

"I think," Lena said, "it makes more sense than the future being set somehow, and the devs knowing it, and them deciding that for just this one specific dude's Realm, they're going to pull from that instead of the past."

I started to nod along.

Matt raised an eyebrow. "Your sample size is what, nine Realms? Very Norse, but not very scientific."

"Twelve, now, counting Allen's," I said. The others must have been added to the wiki since the last chance he'd gotten to peruse it. "It's not much of a difference, though. What more do you want, Matt? All we can tell you is what we've seen."

"You've seen Third Eye mess with time before." Matt had been on the support team for our expedition to the construction site. Allen's Realm wasn't actually his first encounter with one of the creatures. "You've seen monsters attack people. I suspect, since you get more out of conversations with AlephLambda than most of us, you've been told the devs expect 'PVE content' to expand after the end of the beta."

It didn't surprise me that Matt had continued to message Albie. He was probably one of the best people around at translating her odd, pablum, game design jargon into something that reflected the truth of Third Eye.

It didn't exactly put my mind at ease, though.

I looked down the table. "Did you try to contact the devs, Allen? Jan?"

"No help," Jan said.

Allen punched the wall. "Just a load of chatbot bullshit."

I felt weirdly relieved. The devs might still have set things up to shape him into Mask, but at least they hadn't come out and said so.

"What's your point, Matt?" Lena asked. "You buy this time travel crap?"

"Not especially," he said. "I certainly wouldn't be surprised if things get worse rather than better, though."

Lena crossed her arms over the back of her chair. "So you're just gonna hide out here in the middle of nowhere and wait for it to all blow over? Screw everybody else?"

He scowled. "I'm going to study the game, get better at it, and figure out as best I can what the devs want and what they're capable of. And in case you've forgotten, it's not like I chose to 'hide out here!'"

Lena glared. "You sure as hell aren't raring to leave!"

"Shut up!" Allen's voice rose so loud that some got past the soundproofing of his voice changer and left him with a weird echo. "Shut up, shut up, shut up! It doesn't. Fucking. Matter!"

Lena and Matt had bent further and further over the table as they argued. Now they shrank back from it.

Just in time for Allen to smash his fist into the surface. From his hiss, I guessed he would've broken his hand if not for his HP. "I don't give a shit what you believe. Did you forget? I didn't give you a damn invitation."

Matt folded his arms. "There is also that, yes."

"Do you actually want to stay here, Matt?" I asked.

"Don't ask him," Allen shouted. "It's not his decision! I put up with your crap for a while, but we're done here."

I glanced at him. "I'm afraid we can't be."

His neck cricked. "What do you mean?"

"Lena and I came to rescue our friends," I said. I panned my gaze over the table. "I hope all of you will leave, but that's not our call. It's different with Gerry, and even if only because absence makes the heart grow fonder, Matt."

"Which I appreciate," Matt said. "I wish you'd worked a little harder on your plan so you could have presented a viable alternative."

Gerry hunched on his chair, making himself as small as his big frame allowed. "Yeah. It's cool you tried to come for us, but basically, you just got yourselves stuck, too. Even if we wanted to go back – which, I mean, I guess, you for sure gave us something else to think about –"

"Don't," Allen said. "What's the point?"

I ignored him. "Thing is, you guys aren't the only friends we have to save."

Gerry peeked over his crossed arms.

Matt frowned. "Ah hell. Erin?"

I nodded. "She used your login to present our scouting expedition as a school trip, run by you. Which bought us a couple weeks, tops. If you and Gerry aren't around by the time you're supposed to be back in Denver, the cops are going to start poking around."

"Cops ain't shit," Allen said. "Don't you get how much bigger this is? When we get out of 'beta' in four months, if the admin's still out there, she's probably dead anyway."

"Even if you're right, that's her last four months spent rotting in a jail cell." I shook my head. "Or years, if we don't unquestioningly accept an assumption you made when you were panicking because reality was falling apart around you."

Allen went for his phone.

Iron sizzled against Stone inches from my face, invisible with my phone tucked into my coat but loud enough to hear.

I could tell the Materials just from the sound they made. Interesting.

"Thanks, Lena," I said.

She gave me a thumbs up.

With Allen's object still grinding against the shield she'd conjured, I turned back to Matt.

I either wasn't acting, or was doing such a good job I'd fooled myself. My calm amazed me. I observed it as if from a distance, coldly, dispassionately.

It was simple, I decided. The lovely assistant had to trust the magician unreservedly.

How could I not? She was magnificent.

"You have to go back, Matt," I said, like the interruption had never happened.

Third Eye objects clashed behind me.

I ignored them.

Sweat beaded on Matt's forehead. His eyes kept shifting first to Allen, then to Lena. Every other face I saw remained fixed on their invisible battle.

"Shouldn't you –" he began.

"Nah." I waved it off. "Look. If you really believe things are going to get so much worse that you want to flee civilization, this is a pretty good place to hide. I'm not saying you can't come back here! That goes for you too, Gerry."

Two pairs of wide eyes dragged back to me.

"You guys going back long enough to make some excuses so Erin isn't the top suspect in your missing persons cases? And, yeah, so Lena and I aren't suspects numero dos and tres? I'm afraid that part is nonnegotiable." I reached across the table – past the feeling of heat and pressure where blazing Iron met reinforced Stone – and offered my fist to Matt. "I want you guys to come home. But I need you to come send some emails."

Matt eyed the clash happening inches from my outstretched fist, but after a moment, he met my gaze. "I think Allen might be right about the future, Cameron. I might even be willing to bet my ass on it."

I raised an eyebrow.

He smiled. "But I'm not willing to bet my student's."

He bumped my fist.

When I shifted it, Gerry uncoiled enough to do the same.

"That's not your choice," Allen snarled. "You can fight me if you want, but you're not getting out of here! The only person who gets to decide where you go is me."

"Wrong," I said.

I didn't need to see his face to know it would be contorted with rage. His shoulders shook, more visible when his cloak was just a scrap of inert cloth and not a billowing, shadowy Daimon.

For a second I let myself feel smug, watching his tantrum and, far better, watching Lena render it irrelevant.

Jan sat beside him, though, and she didn't wear a mask. She had her head in her hands. Her shoulders shook, too, with angry tears.

The bravado leached out of me. Spent, I collapsed into my chair.

"That's right," Allen said. I could tell he didn't understand my reaction.

He flicked his fingers to the side and dismissed his conjured object. It clattered atop the table. The wood discolored where one edge of the heated Iron touched it; if it had been fully aligned, would it have been like pressing a woodburner to it, or a blowtorch?

I didn't have to ask if it would have taken the rest of my HP, had it hit.

Nor did I worry about it for a second. Lena had my back.

She patted my shoulder. Her fingers never uncurled, though. Her object remained selected, active.

"You get it now?" Allen asked. "What? You gonna wander around in the wilderness for weeks?"

Talking to him sounded exhausting. Knowing what I did now, I couldn't even enjoy my victory.

But, as much for his and his sister's sake as for ours, I still had to win.

I rubbed my eyes.

I took my phone from my pocket and tapped the screen. Everyone watched me.

I think they expected me to open Third Eye. And then what? Reveal that I had a Key of my own?

An hour ago, doing that would've made me feel like a total badass..

Oh well. I didn't have one, anyway.

"No, Allen." I showed my Maps screen to the table. "We can hike about eighty miles east."

 

[Khettien]

Thought, I would point out that if this is Alaska, an eighty mile hike can be...taxing. Even more so than a 'normal' eighty mile hike.

 

[Qoheleth]

Thought, I would point out that if this is Alaska, an eighty mile hike can be...taxing. Even more so than a 'normal' eighty mile hike.

Click to shrink...

Under normal circumstances, yeah. Are there factors at play here other than the cold and fatigue, though? Because we've established that HP buffers against physical fatigue without depleting about it... and as for the cold, we've got Lena, and Lena's got seven Fire.

 

[MoogleEmpMog]

Chapter 113: Be Prepared

There was a kind of purity to my Maps screen. It showed no gray spaghetti of roads, no lighter gray blocks for buildings, no list of destinations. Just a field of almost unbroken white like the snow outside, a few flecks of blue for lakes and streams, and at the extreme right edge, a single thin line of road snaking southeast and a dot representing the town of Fort Smith in Canada's Northwest Territories.

And in the middle, one more dot with a line around it, marking my phone's current position.

Allen scrambled to unclip his phone from its harness. His fingers jabbed blindly at the screen. "That's impossible. There's no way you've got signal!"

"If I had signal," I said, "I'd be figuring out which rideshare app would actually send a car all the way out here so we didn't have to walk."

"So you're bluffing?" Allen's hand tightened around his phone. "Shit bluff."

Spoken like someone who would have just fallen for it. Considering the extreme simplicity of the map I'd shown him, the only thing I might have struggled to do in a paint program was get the name of the town right. There was no way he could read what I'd written from where he stood at the far end of the table.

Of course, since I wasn't bluffing, it didn't matter. "You don't need a cell signal for GPS data, Allen. It's Global Positioning Satellite, you know?"

He kept flicking his phone screen. "Doesn't do anything for you without a map."

"You're right," I said. "Without a cellular connection, most GPS functions are kinda useless. Although with that said, if anyone here has actually been reported as a missing person, I think there's a pretty decent chance the cops will eventually be able to follow that signal. This isn't as hidden a refuge as you were thinking."

Allen glanced at Jan.

She clutched the sleeve of her parka. "Could be another bluff, but..."

"I'm sorry," I said, "but none of this is a bluff. The other thing you can do with GPS when you don't have a cell signal is use it to find your position on a map that you downloaded back when you had a connection."

The eyeholes of Allen's mask fixed on my face again. "How the hell could you know what map to download?"

Beside me, Lena started. "Oh! Heh, that's good."

"You've got it too, right?" I asked. "Do you want to tell them?"

She shook her head. "Nope. You figured it out first. You get to take point on this one."

I smiled wanly. I didn't want to take point. I just wanted this to all be over.

"Were you – or rather, I should say Joon Woo or Miguel – able to track our GPS signals?" Matt asked.

"Sorry, no," I said. "Maybe that would've worked? I don't think any of us believed someone would abduct you and then leave you with Third Eye access. To be honest, it had almost nothing to do with you."

Matt's brow furrowed.

Allen mashed his phone back into its holder. "Explain!"

"Lena and I have been planning a Third Eye road trip for a while," I said. "We always had two destinations in mind, one of which is none of your business –" Lena's parents' place in Kansas. The last thing I planned to do was draw Allen's attention to them. "– and the other is Omar's tournament down in Florida. We talked about all sorts of other spots we'd like to visit, though. Places we thought might be relevant to Third Eye."

Allen's hand fell away from his phone.

"One sidetrack we considered was up to Canada. We wanted to check out the Third Eye Productions office in Calgary." I cocked my head. "What's it like, by the way?"

"It's empty," Jan said. "An empty address in a stripmall."

Allen shot what I suspected was a wounded glare at her. Get real, though. He had to know by now that I'd figured out where we were, and why.

I pressed on. "And if we drove all the way up to Canada, messed with getting our passports up to date and everything, we thought, why not go to the other location we knew of that was related to Third Eye. The thing one of the devs picked as a Discord handle, and one of the only ARG clues we've actually managed to get something out of."

"The World's Largest Beaver Dam." Matt barked a laugh. "I remember when you posted about it."

The dev we suspected was Albie's brother used a beaver avatar and the username VisibleFromSpace. Put together, it made a reference to the only nonhuman construction that could be seen from Earth's orbit.

According to the map I'd downloaded in advance because I knew we wouldn't get a reliable signal so far into the Canadian wilderness, the dam was about twenty five miles south of the cabin.

I knew damn well it was the reason Allen came up here in the first place.

"What was that like?" Lena asked.

Jan kicked at the table leg. "... really cool."

"Sticks and logs," Allen said. "A waste of time. It didn't mean shit."

"No Realm, huh? Damn." I had to admit, I'd held more hopes of finding a clue that radically re-contextualized our understanding of Third Eye at the dam than I had at the supposed office. Or at least a cool Realm.

I still wanted to see for myself. I believed Allen hadn't found any obvious Third Eye phenomena at the dam, but I didn't trust him to discover – or even look for – subtler clues.

Was I willing to add an extra day to our probably three day hike through the forest?

Remembering the cold outside, I decided I was not. I wouldn't freeze, not with proper winter wear and a whole team of Third Eye players who could use Fire to heat us up if need be, but it wouldn't be any kind of pleasant.

Besides, I didn't want Erin and the others to have to worry about us any longer than necessary.

"So that's how it is," I said. "We know exactly where we're going and we're not going to get lost along the way. We can beat you in a fight, certainly as a group. It won't be an easy trek, but Third Eye will make it easier. We could leave tonight, although frankly, I think we should probably wait for daybreak."

"You can leave when I say you can leave," Allen growled.

Nadia stood up. "But that's not true anymore, is it?"

Bob and Ramon followed her lead. All three held their phones in their hands.

"You're crazy," Allen said. "You're fools. If you do this, you're just throwing your lives away and making it harder for me to keep Jan safe."

"That," Matt said, "is a risk we should have had the choice of taking. Maybe if you'd warned us instead of abducting us, I'd have taken leave instead of leaving Erin in the lurch."

"If the wiki admin's all you're worried about," Allen said, "what's the problem? You think I don't want her here? She's another strong player –"

Matt's voice was soft, almost sad. "It's over, Allen."

"You have the high ground?" Lena murmured.

It felt absurdly good to hear her complete a reference. As much as I admired her ability to armor up as The Magnificent Ashbird, what I really wanted was for her to feel comfortable being herself.

Matt cracked a smile. "From a certain point of view."

"So, what?" Jan asked. "Allen's supposed to let you just walk out of here? Report him to the cops? What about us?"

As far as I was concerned, the cough she punctuated her question with was its own answer.

"It's obvious that you're sick," I said. "It's from going through the Key, isn't it?"

Allen's fists curled.

Jan said, "It wasn't Allen's fault."

"I know," I said, as gently as I could manage. "We're all trying to figure this crap out. You two just had an especially horrible experience with it."

"No shit," she said.

I stood up.

So did Lena.

Maybe it made us assholes, but neither of us slid around the table to offer some kind of comfort again. I couldn't speak for Lena, but in my case, I wasn't willing to put myself within arms length of Allen until I was sure he'd faced the reality of our situation.

"You should come with us," I said.

Jan recoiled. "No! You're not taking me back to get taken apart by those things! I won't –"

Another cough cut her off. This time, the fit didn't stop.

Allen finally discarded the last vestiges of his attempt to look badass in front of us. He grabbed Jan's shoulders and held her.

That was enough to get Matt and Gerry out of their chairs, and to make Lena throw caution away, along with her conjured object. We all shifted around the table.

"Stay back," Allen snarled. "Give her air!"

Lena didn't. She knelt beside Jan's chair. "What she needs is a doctor."

Jan tensed. Allen folded her deeper into his cloak.

Lena remained kneeling beside them, head bowed, hand outstretched, close enough they could reach out if they wanted but not quite touching.

Neither wanted.

Crazy.

Jan's coughing fit petered out after a few minutes. She slumped in Allen's arms, breathing raggedly. Blood and bile mixed with the saliva staining his paintball vest.

Gerry appeared beside them, holding a bottle of Powerade. He must have darted to the other room and grabbed it while I wasn't paying attention. He unscrewed the cap and offered the drink.

Jan clasped it in shaking hands while Allen and Gerry each braced one of her arms. She let the fluid dribble down her throat. She swallowed hard, and for a second we all thought she'd start coughing again. She got it under control, though, and rasped, "Thanks."

They held her until she shrugged them both away.

"I can hold a damn bottle," she said. Apparently so. She let it sink to her lap, but it didn't spill.

Gerry backed off.

Allen straightened up. He surveyed us. That damned mask hid his expression, and I didn't know how to parse his body language.

Surely, he had to see that he wasn't helping his sister. Right?

Wrong. "That's it." His voice sounded flat, but maybe that was just my imagination. "You've done enough damage."

I lowered my eyes. "We're trying to help."

"You're trying to abandon us," Allen said. "You think I'll just let you –"

"Yes," Lena said.

Everyone stared at her as she picked herself up off the floor.

She only looked at Allen, though. "You'll let us go, and you'll either come with us or let us send a vehicle to pick up Jan so she can get checked out by a doctor. Whatever you decide to do after that, you'll swear to never abduct anyone else."

Jan looked up sharply, but she didn't speak. Maybe her voice wasn't strong enough yet. Maybe after her last fit, she was reconsidering a doctor.

Maybe the steel and velvet in Lena's voice electrified her the way they did me.

I thought they did Allen, too, because his voice changer couldn't hide the way he stumbled over his words. "W-why the hell would I agree to that?"

"Because those are the terms of our match," Lena said. "When I win, you'll abide by them."

It was an absurd thing to say.

Exactly the right kind of absurd for Allen. "And when I win?"

Lena tilted her head back to meet his gaze. Somehow, though he was more than a foot taller than her, she managed to give the impression of looking down her nose. She left absolutely no doubt as to how likely his victory would be.

Good thing, because the next thing she said was, "If you won, I'd stay."

 

[MoogleEmpMog]

Chapter 114: Term Limits

I wanted to believe in Lena. I did believe in her. Honest!

I still blurted out, "Wait, what?!"

"You know this is how it's got to go, Cam." She didn't turn back to me.

Not even when I grabbed the sleeve of her parka. "I..."

She reached over and squeezed my hand.

I bowed my head. "I know."

I let go and stepped back.

Lena stood, if not tall, at least proud. I couldn't see her flames but their warmth suffused the room. What would I see if I raised my phone? Gleaming armor? Or a queenly gown and crown of fire, more appropriate now than they'd ever been?

I couldn't bring myself to look away long enough to check. I didn't need to. She was magnificent with or without Third Eye.

Hell. I knew no one in that room could take their eyes off her, including the person whose eyes we couldn't see.

Allen's voice changer picked up his harsh breaths. Finally, he said, "You'd stay."

"I'd stay," Lena said.

He shifted. "... and what?"

"And be your sparring partner, your teammate, your Third Eye investigator." Lena's words were hard, her tone soft. "I wouldn't help you do crimes, but the rest? Anything to do with the game? Yeah. And, as best I could, I'd help your little sister."

Allen and Jan exchanged glances. The corner of her eye twitched.

Before I could parse what it meant, Allen's fists clenched. "Sure. Help. While your buds run off to call the cops on me."

"No way," Lena said. "I guess I shouldn't say this, 'cause I haven't been stuck here like they have, but I'm gonna have to ask everybody to agree to not press charges against you, no matter what happens with our match."

Jan's eyes widened. Allen's head tilted.

Still without turning, Lena called, "Are you guys willing to promise that?"

The captives tore their eyes off the confrontation between her and Allen to search each others' faces.

"It is," Ramon said, "a lot to ask."

"I know. Sorry." Lena inclined her head. "I've got to."

"I don't know about anybody else," Nadia said, "but whatever happens next, I just want to go home. If it means Allen leaves me alone? That's enough for me."

Bob nodded along. "It's not like the cops could arrest him anyway."

"We call the cops, it'd hurt Jan," Gerry said, "but it'd just piss Allen off."

Matt shrugged. "I voted against unmasking Allen when we had the chance because it created a destructive incentive structure. This is just an extension of that."

Ramon sighed. "You're right."

"Cool," Lena said. She returned her gaze to the eyeholes of Allen's mask. "Cool?"

His voice changer crackled with a snort. "I didn't hear OldCampaigner agree. You expect me to believe he's gonna leave you here?"

He hadn't heard me because I could hardly bring myself to speak.

"That would be Lena's call, not mine." I heard the words in my voice, even though I couldn't believe I'd say them. My next ones, I felt as well as said. "Of course, if she stays, I'd want to, as well."

"Because you're a team." The bitterness soaked through Allen's voice changer. "Some match. You mean you two and whoever else you can rope in will kick the shit out of me while Phantom's down –"

"Nope," Lena said. "I mean tomorrow morning, after our HP and MP have refreshed and Phantom has recovered, I'll take you on one on one."

Allen snorted. "Until you lose and the rest of them pile on me."

"Everybody else would respect my decision." She turned to the rest of us at last, eyes ablaze. "Right?"

Under her gaze, nobody else spoke.

Though I felt sweat chilling on the back of my neck and my hands clenched to keep from shaking, I needed to. I forced the words out. "Of course."

Lena's gaze locked with mine for just a second, and I got a glimpse of a tiny smile that almost made it all worth it.

Then she turned back to face Allen.

"One on one," he said slowly. "You don't even have your Daimon."

"I don't have either of my Daimons," Lena said. "God, I miss 'em."

Though it was hard to tell through his outfit, I thought Allen stiffened. Maybe at the realization of just how much power Lena refused to use. Maybe for the same reason I did: Lena spilling that information to him. He might not agree with her about Daimons, but he could see how much she valued them.

For her to put another one at risk wasn't just confidence, it was the same as saying she considered Allen no threat at all.

She didn't do anything to contradict that notion. "I wouldn't ask Bernie or Ryu to fight for me. That goes double for a match against you."

Allen hissed a breath in through his voice changer. "That's so stupid. Let me guess, you want me to leave Phantom out of it?"

"I want that, for sure, because I hate if I have to hurt a Daimon." Lena let a crack in her steel show. She reached up and fiddled with a curl of her hair. "Messed up as it is, though, I kinda need you not to."

"The hell?" Allen reared back. "You're not good enough to beat me, much less me and Phantom both. You'll never get stronger if you keep holding back."

Lena stepped around Jan's chair, into Allen's space, into his chest. It might have seemed more intimidating if the top of her head hadn't come roughly level with his chin.

Even so, he backpedaled.

"I'm gonna beat you, Allen," she said. "And I'm gonna do it the right way. The way I believe in."

Matt picked that moment to find his voice. "Even if the game isn't designed for it?"

"Screw designer intent," Lena snapped. "I'll mod, hack, and just mess around in any game."

He raised an eyebrow. "Even one that changes the world?"

"Especially that one."

Allen hung his head. Paradoxically, that lined his eyeholes up more with Lena. "It won't work..."

"It will." Lena reached out and touched his arm. He tensed, but didn't pull away. "That's the real reason you'll let us go, and let us help Jan."

"That doesn't even make sense." Then why did he avert his gaze when he said it?

"I think you know better," I said.

Winning a match meant – not nothing, but not enough. If Lena won without compromising her morals, on the other hand, while Allen pulled out all the stops he insisted he had to?

It proved that he didn't have to, after all.

Now, realistically, he could say that the power to beat him wouldn't be enough to fight even one of the creatures from his Realm. He'd be right. He could say that breaking even a game like Third Eye wasn't the same as breaking the fate he believed his Realm prophesied. He'd be right.

Would he say those things?

Lena clearly didn't think so. From everything I'd seen of Allen, I didn't, either.

Instead, he shook his head. "Whatever. You can't beat me anyway, much less me and Phantom."

"Then what have you got to lose?" Lena asked. "If you refuse, all of us will leave. If you try to stop us, we'll fight back as a group and you'll get your ass kicked. If you keep harassing us, we're going to have to go to the cops and screw it up for everybody."

Allen said nothing.

"If you're so sure you're gonna beat me," Lena said, "then accept my terms. Win, and you'll get the willing help of a pair of Third Eye players you picked out as two of the strongest. How is that not a great deal?"

Allen still hesitated.

Lena turned away from him at last, tossing her hair. "Or are you just too chicken to face The Magnificent Ashbird?"

Allen shouted, "Fine!"

"Allen!" Jan hissed. "Can't you see she's playing you?"

He gave a curt nod. "Where's the lie, though?"

Instead of answering, Jan hunched over and sucked on her Powerade.

"Ashbird," Allen said.

Lena's head dipped. Now that she was facing me, I got a great look at the tension tugging at the corners of her eyes. Not what I hoped to see. She asked, "You accept my terms?"

"Yeah," Allen said, "I'm in. Let's set it up."

"Dawn tomorrow," Lena said. "You've got a good place to do PVP, right?"

"There's a clearing out back we've used for practice," Matt said.

"Works for me," she said. "Allen?"

He shrugged. "If I say yes to that, is this the part where you pick our weapons and it's some bullshit you think I'm bad at?"

"Heh, that would be pretty funny." Lena flashed a sad smile. "If I only wanted to win, I'd do it just to troll you, not gonna lie."

I had no way of judging Allen's reaction, since he didn't move, but Jan snorted a laugh. As soon as it escaped her lips, she clamped her mouth shut and looked away.

Lena heaved an exaggerated sigh. "Unfortunately, in this case, I've got a point to make. You can use whatever you want. I already know what I'm bringing to the table."

"Fine," Allen said.

I thought he might leave it at that, because he turned and stalked to the door. His hand clasped the handle.

He couldn't let go of the last word, though.

The pause had given him time to get himself under control, so when he spoke over his shoulder, it was with all the edge he tried to cultivate as Mask. "You think this makes you a hero, Ashbird. Tomorrow morning, I'll show you what happens to heroes."

He thrust the door open and swept through. Even with Phantom inert, his cloak billowed behind him.

Then he was gone.

In the silence he left behind, Jan dragged herself to her feet. She surveyed all of us with hooded eyes, then stomped after her brother.

The door slammed behind them.

As soon as it did, Lena exhaled. Her shoulders slumped, her head lolled. Her cowboy hat tumbled off, and like in all our bad takes, she failed to catch it. It rolled on the floor at her feet.

I thought she might have actually sunk back to her knees if I hadn't scooped her up in my arms.

She snuggled against me. "Mm."

I rested my chin against the side of her head and held her. I held her like that for a long time.

Eventually, if nothing else to keep her from falling asleep on her feet, I said, "I hope you've got one hell of a plan."

She tilted her head back and wrapped her arms around my neck. Her eyes twinkled.

Of course, I had to kiss her.

I almost regretted it when, against my lips, she whispered, "Not a clue. Plans are your department."

 

[MoogleEmpMog]

Chapter 115: First Light

Lena paced down the circular furrow her boots had worn in the mud and snow of the practice field. When her path took her past the cabin's back porch, she shot a glare my way. "God, waiting sucks. Why didn't you remind me it takes all day for dawn to come up here, Cam?"

I turned a tired smile her way. "You were on too much of a roll last night."

She kicked the ground. "I'm'a roll out if the sun doesn't get its ass up soon."

"No," I said, "you won't."

"Well." Her glare melted like the snow around her feet. "I sure want to, anyway."

My smile faded. "I know that feel."

She grunted and resumed pacing.

It's not like either of us were long on patience at the best of times. Lena fidgeted in line at the grocery store, although that might have been as much about crowds as time. I had no such excuse and still got antsy if I had to wait more than ten minutes to head out for an appointment.

This was not the best of times.

Once dawn finally broke over the eastern horizon, Lena's match with Allen would begin.

That was why her Third Eye avatar was clad in gleaming armor. It wasn't the same as any of the designs I'd seen her in before. But then, it never was.

We'd actually tested once if the game would dress her avatar the same if she wore the exact same clothes two days in a row. It had. But when she put on that outfit a few days later, the Third Eye version looked completely different. I'd felt then and still did now like the game was trolling us.

Today, her armor was plainer than usual. A series of polished steel plates, simple, geometric, and bulky enough to look almost comical. More familiar was the undercoat: fine, interlocking chain mesh like her armor had transformed into when she accepted the Fire from her Realm the first time. Her head was uncovered at the moment, but when she put on the cowboy hat she had tucked under her arm, Third Eye would interpret it as donning a stout bucket helm.

The cumulative effect of the layers reminded me of the kind of armor a hero character would end up with in a generic fantasy anime, the sort of Dragon Quest-ass junk food we'd turn our brains off to after an especially rough day.

I suspected that a person who knew about medieval armor, or someone who pretended to be one on the internet, would bitch us out over that armor. Even I knew it wouldn't work in real life. Hell, I wasn't sure Lena would've been able to move with its bulk and its shitty weight distribution, even with how much fitter we'd both gotten since the start of Third Eye.

Which was kind of the point. Both participants in this match would look like walking cliches.

Who would Third Eye reward? The hero, or the antihero?

God, waiting sucked.

We'd spent much of the previous night making plans. Good plans. I believed in them. I believed in Lena.

So how come another cliche kept clawing at my mind? No plan survives contact with the enemy.

I understood why Lena felt she had to do this. The fact remained, we could've been waiting for the dawn so we could hike out the front gate with the rest of the captives, Allen's opinion be damned.

Instead, we were one losing match away from making the cabin our permanent address.

I surveyed the practice yard. A wide clearing, at least when it came to trees, but anything but clear. Snow covered every inch of it, except where Lena's path had blazed a trench of ice and mud. Like at the front of the cabin, Third Eye walls surrounded it, Stone braced by Wood. Various other Third Eye constructs shoved up against them.

From what Matt had said, erecting these defenses was one of Allen's obsessions. He wanted everyone to practice it, refine their technique, make the walls higher and sturdier and more real.

I already knew they were pointless.

A barrier like that wouldn't even slow down the creature from the construction site. The one in Allen's Realm would likely prove just as overwhelming.

Nonetheless, trudging out into this freezing cold and conjuring useless walls to try to make Allen and Jan feel safe represented one version of my and Lena's future.

Not exactly my ideal of urban living. No buildings over four stories here, although there were an awful lot of trees taller than that. If I'd had the choice to visit, I might've enjoyed it for a week, or a month.

Or I might not have.

I'd sure never want to live here, much less as the "guest" of an increasingly unhinged dude convinced he was mankind's last hope for survival.

Convinced? For sure. What happened to Lena and I almost wasn't the worst thing about the match. By placing so much symbolic importance on not just winning, but winning the right way, Lena had given herself maybe the only chance any of us had to convince Allen. The flipside was, if she tried and failed, I couldn't imagine anybody being able to reach him afterwards.

If we ended up stuck, we were stuck, and we probably wouldn't be the only ones. Allen might let his current captives go, but we couldn't stop him from abducting, recruiting, "rescuing" others.

"I see you're excited for the big match," Matt said.

I tensed. I hadn't heard him approach, and that was a problem. Sure, I might not need to remain alert right this minute, but going forward? Whether Lena won or lost, I couldn't imagine this was the last time Third Eye would ask us to stay on our toes.

I stood up to try to hide how startled I'd been. Matt's smirk suggested it didn't work, but then, it seemed to be his default expression.

"You know I'm not into PVP," I said. "Much less having to watch Lena fight alone."

He shook his head. "It's a noble endeavor, what she's trying to do."

"Really?" I raised an eyebrow.

"I didn't say I thought it was going to work, Cameron." He rolled his shoulders and took the open chair next to the one I'd vacated. "You should start figuring out how you're going to cheat."

"I'm not," I said.

"You're going to sit here and watch Allen beat the crap out of your girlfriend, then hold you both prisoner?"

"I'm going to sit here and watch Lena teach Allen a lesson." Sit, I did, if only to prove a point. I'd work on the rest later.

Matt whistled. "How much would you mind if I cheated for you?"

"Personally? I wouldn't mind at all." I smiled thinly. "God help you if Lena catches you, though."

Matt folded his arms behind his head. "Fine. I'll be strictly an audience member for this one."

I eyed him. "I'm serious, Matt. Lena is all hells of serious."

"Oh, I know." His sigh spoke volumes about how much he thought that was worth.

I scowled. "Are the others coming?"

"I'm sure they will," he said. "We've got our supplies packed and the solar panels deployed one last time."

I glanced at the side of the cabin where they'd cleared a space for the panels, though of course, from where I sat, I couldn't see them. "I'm a little surprised you guys bothered with them."

"Consider it a farewell gift," he said. "If Lena loses, the two of you aren't going to be in any mood to put the panels out, but you'd certainly regret it if you didn't. And if she wins..." He sighed. "I'm afraid none of us actually believe that's going to happen. The others all think this is a sacrifice play, keeping Allen's attention on the two of you so he'll let us go without a fight."

"You don't?"

"Like I said, I know Lena's serious." His smirk faded. "I just don't think she's right."

"She's not the same player you beat, Matt," I said.

He glanced at me.

I returned his gaze.

He blinked first. He looked down to the practice yard, uncorked a Powerade, and took a swig. "Well. Good."

Something about Matt's doubts dispelled mine. I supposed it was the same effect that made Lena snap at anyone she saw as criticizing me.

Anyone other than her, I mean. We were allowed to doubt each other, even mock each other. When someone else did it, we closed ranks.

It probably wasn't a good thing. It certainly wasn't rational.

It worked. I watched Lena's fingers zip through a series of gestures over the phone strapped to her harness. She came just short of touching the screen each time, even though her fingers danced in the air. Her feet shifted just as rapidly, a dance of their own, dodging imaginary strikes, adjusting the angles of her own.

She caught me staring and grinned.

I realized I was matching her expression.

Matt almost hid his chuckle as he watched us.

The cabin door opened.

My grin faded.

Gerry emerged first, hauling a pair of chairs from the kitchen. He set one up and sank into the other.

Jan came next, wrapped in at least three layers of winter wear until only her eyes and the tip of her nose emerged. She hesitated in the doorway and stared at Lena. Muffled beneath a pair of scarves, she sucked in a breath. She stomped to the open chair and huddled on it, doing her damnedest not to meet anyone's gaze.

Ramon, Bob, and Nadia each brought their own chair. They arranged themselves on the side of the door Matt and I shared, but none of them addressed us. When I looked their way, they all averted their eyes.

I thought about what Matt had said. If they thought Lena and I were sacrificing our freedom to buy theirs, they had to feel pretty shitty about it.

I wanted to reassure them.

I didn't get the chance.

Allen was the last to leave the cabin.

Last night, his facade had cracked. At times, despite his voice changer and his edgelord getup, he'd sounded more like a scared kid than a dangerous criminal. Then again, his ridiculous costume was chuuni as fuck; as an expression of "eighth-grader syndrome," it fit a scared kid better than it did a dangerous criminal.

Except that this morning, lit only by electric lanterns and the glow from our phones, swathed in Phantom's roiling shadows, his costume didn't look ridiculous.

He'd dispensed with any pretense of wearing a mundane cloak. Through Third Eye, I saw Phantom bubble down into the training yard, a shadow that stretched on and on, forming an unnatural curve all around Lena's boots.

Allen himself, towering, back straight, head held high, stalked down the steps without a word. His long strides crunched darkened snow beneath his boots, and he came to a stop at the edge of the arc Phantom had plunged into shadow. He was every inch Mask again.

And he had a lot of inches. From my vantage point, he didn't just tower over Lena. He looked half again as tall as her, twice. I peeked around my phone in the hopes it was just a Third Eye effect. No such luck.

I tried to remind myself it didn't matter. We'd never seen Allen try to throw a physical punch. None of the plans we'd made hinged on Lena's reach.

Rationalization didn't help. Every fiber of my being screamed that I should throw myself at him, HP be damned. That I should haul him away from Lena or die trying. The hell with the match! The hell with principles! If he wouldn't leave her alone, I'd –

Lena caught my eye.

She wasn't grinning anymore. Her smile was small, sad, and absolutely magnificent.

I exhaled. I pried my fingers off the arms of my chair.

Lena reached out.

Allen cocked his head. "What?"

"Can I touch Phantom?" she asked.

"He'll touch you soon enough." Allen's shoulders twitched with just a hint of a shrug. "Do whatever you want."

Lena's fingers extended further. Allen's cloak rustled and one of the folds bulged out to meet her touch.

Her smile widened, even as her gaze drooped. "I'm sorry."

"What?" Allen said.

"Not to you, dummy," she said. "I'm sorry, Phantom. I don't want to hurt you. Maybe after this, your dad will think twice about making you fight."

Matt snorted. He muttered, "Literally the point of them," but I got the impression he was laughing with Lena instead of at her.

Allen sure wasn't. He took a step back and jerked his cloak away. "After this, you'll learn better than to make yourself weak."

He still had his edgelord script on lock. His body language, on the other hand, had shifted completely. Instead of looming over Lena, he shied back from her. His words sounded more like empty bravado than a terrible truth.

He was Mask no more, just Allen. Just some dude.

As if on cue, light pierced the tree line to the east. It cast both combatants in silhouette. Phantom's darkness shrank beneath it. Lena's armor shone.

Dawn had broken.

Their match had begun.

 

[MoogleEmpMog]

Chapter 116: The Lesson

Lena and Allen both went straight for Iron and Air.

Their first clash extinguished two reasons we might've hoped the match could go her way.

Allen wasn't going to sit back and let Phantom pick at Lena's defenses the way he had before we'd really pushed him in the park. Nor was he going to leave Phantom out of the fight, after all.

Lena had to throw all her effort into a series of frantic deflections just to keep Allen's Iron plate from slamming into her, and that left her wide open to Phantom's rippling strikes.

No, make it three sources of hope that died like sputtering embers with that first exchange. Lena had not, it turned out, been hiding an extra two Air from even me the whole time. Even without Phantom, Allen's attacks zipped through the air twice as fast as hers, and even more nimbly.

As long as Lena focused entirely on defense she managed to fend him off. His strikes had to travel further and build up more momentum than her parries, and she'd gotten damned good at parrying over the course of our practice sessions. Iron whirled through the air and crashed into its opposite number again and again, a storm inches from Lena's face. Despite that, and despite Phantom's relentless assault, she never flinched, never gave ground.

As soon as she tried to strike back, though, the freezing morning air shattered with the sound of Iron ringing out against her armor.

She staggered backwards, leaving streaks of mud and ice in her wake. Her hands flailed for balance.

It left her open to a second strike. This one left her on her ass.

Allen drew his Iron back and swapped Reactants. His plate shifted with Stone, changed with Water. It glowed with Fire, then all the heat transferred to one edge down the subtle channels he'd shaped.

Gerry's technique for focusing power should have taken enough time that Lena would get a second to catch her breath. No such luck when Allen used it, because Phantom never let up. Shadowy pseudopods erupted from the ground all around Lena and whipped into her armor. They surrounded her so completely the metal didn't even shine in the dawn light.

It had all happened so fast, I hadn't had a chance to process what I was seeing.

As Allen stalked forward and raised his sizzling Iron, I finally did.

We'd considered it a coin flip whether he would come out swinging and try to make his point with overwhelming force, or if he would waste time posturing until the match got serious. He'd clearly gone for option one.

We'd prepared for it. Planned for it.

In the moment, though, it seemed so much worse than anything we could've imagined.

Beside me, Matt shook his head.

Allen snapped his hand down.

Phantom rippled away from Lena to give him a clear shot.

Iron rang out against –

Stone.

Allen's voice changer crackled. "Tsk."

Lena's newly conjured Stone shield flowed outwards, becoming a full sphere around her. Pores in its surface let her see out, supporting pillars bolstered its structure. The result looked almost like coral. She climbed to her feet within it and flashed a grin.

This was the bowl-like defensive technique Erin had used against Phantom taken to its logical extreme. Like a lot of extremes, it was full of flaws. It wasn't as fast as a shield directed by Air. It wasn't as sturdy as a shield focused in a single direction. Either weakness would've been fatal against a lot of Third Eye attacks.

Worst of all, it lacked any way to transition from defense to offense; not only would controlling it with Earth take too long to hit someone who could smash it aside with Air, it was too spread out to strike with enough mass to hurt.

But we'd already known Lena couldn't keep up with Allen when it came to Air, any more than she could me. Phantom's attacks weren't as individually strong as a player's offense, so they would struggle to crack the Stone even in this relatively thin shell. Even Allen's Iron, weakened by the structural adjustments needed to put that single searing edge on it, would bend and deform before it broke through.

Damned if he didn't try, though. He and Phantom both threw all of their focus into battering Lena's shield. It cracked. It chipped.

Before it crumbled, though, her Plastic wrapped around Allen's face and dragged him away from her, because she'd stopped controlling the shield as soon as she shaped it. Her attack hadn't had to pass through the Stone's pinprick holes, because she'd pulled the shell inwards from the point Third Eye manifested new objects.

Allen clawed at the Plastic while it half-muffled the curses that crackled through his voice changer.

This was my technique, in a way. Maybe it would be better to call it my mistake. The very first time I manifested something with Air, I'd ended up tangling Lena in a sheet of Plastic. She'd feigned choking on it at the time to troll me; only later did we realize she'd been losing HP all along.

It wasn't much of a weapon. In flight, it was too slow and awkward to maneuver, at least with the amount of Air Lena had. Any Third Eye construct could block or deflect it, or just tear it apart. The HP loss it caused was slow compared to blunt trauma from Air, and not even close to the kind of damage Fire could pump out.

As a surprise attack, though? As a distraction?

It had a lot to recommend it.

Of course, Lena could pull a few tricks with it I wouldn't have been able to back then, even if I'd wanted to. Before Allen could drag the Plastic from his face, she switched to Fire.

Allen coughed as the Plastic burned into a cloud of oily smoke atop his mask. His Iron clattered to the snow, its heated edge gouging a new furrow.

Jan's fists clenched. She leaned forward in her chair.

Matt raised an eyebrow.

I wished I thought Jan's worries were justified, or Matt's interest.

Unfortunately, it didn't surprise me in the least that when Lena switched to Iron and shot a missile at Allen, it vanished through his Key.

He wiped the last of the melted Plastic away and conjured more Iron. "Cute trick, Ashbird."

"Right?" Lena said. "It's one of Cam's specialties."

Considering that I'd only ever used it once outside of practice, and that by accident, I didn't think so, but I wasn't about to contradict her.

Allen snorted. "And the sphere is the wiki admin's defense, yeah?"

"Yep," Lena said.

"Is that how this is going to go down?" he asked. "You show off each of your buds' tricks one at a time, and it's supposed to prove to me how trusting a team is so much better than trusting my own strength?"

Lena cocked her head, all wide-eyed innocence. "Look. If you decide to take some kind of positive life lesson from the way I kick your ass, I'm not exactly going to complain, you know?"

Allen grunted. "'Couple problems with that."

He tapped his phone and curled his hand, reshaping his Iron.

Suddenly, Phantom gathered a huge pulse of shadow. It smashed a hole through Lena's Stone shield. Allen shot his newly formed wire through the gap. Lena cried out as electricity coursed down the length of the wire.

Erin's preferred attack.

"One," Allen said, "I can just make people show me their tricks."

Lena gasped, unable to hide her pain for the first time in the match.

I clamped my jaws shut. The last thing she needed was a distraction.

She pried the wire off her and stomped on it. That wouldn't have stopped Erin's version of the attack, but Allen seemed to lose interest in the wire as soon as it stopped hurting.

Unfortunately, it was because he'd already switched to a new attack. Lena had nothing to throw in the way of his Iron when it shattered what remained of her shield. She tumbled back into the mud.

"Two," he said.

He advanced again, through the ruin of Lena's shield, with Phantom's darkness spreading beneath his feet. He loomed over her. He stretched his hand out. The Iron pushed down. A single solid block, massive, simplistic, inexorable. Pure power.

Lena swung at the Iron with Stone, but Allen only had to adjust his hand to grind his construct against her chest again. She batted at it with her fists and it didn't even budge. Mud squelched away from her back. Snow ran in rivulets where her wings thrashed against it.

Bob and Nadia looked away. Gerry hung his head. Even Jan averted her eyes.

I wished I could.

"Cameron," Matt hissed.

I didn't turn.

I had no right to look away from this.

Allen lifted his Iron, just a little. As soon as Lena started to squirm beneath it, he slammed it back.

I already knew what he was going to say.

He didn't disappoint. "Tricks ain't shit."

Lena grunted as the Iron pressed her further into the mud.

"All that matters..." Allen began, lifting it to slam it back.

She managed to wedge Stone beneath it.

Stone that shattered as soon as he brought his Iron down.

"... is power," he snarled, "and the will to fucking use it."

 

[Candlelight]

Masked guy in a black cloak kidnapping people and thinking he's the cool and powerful anime anti-hero, saying "All that matters is power and the will to use it?"

You could not more clearly say "I'm an edgy loser who's going to get my shit kicked in," than seriously and sincerely quoting Voldemort, my dude.

 

[Crayz9000]

If Lena doesn't pull something in the next update to beat Allen, if she gets actually injured by him I would hope cam sees red and pull something out of his ass to flatline Allen, consequences be damned, because he is that much of an ass and deserves to have a s*** kicked in.

Allen is as legitimate of a sociopath and psychopath as any I've seen in fiction. Congratulations. You've created a character that I cannot help but hate. All of his justifications are total BS, he was apparently enough of an idiot to drag his sister with him and hurt her using his key, and now that she's trapped in the middle of nowhere he's using her as an excuse to abduct and trap other people.

If you have a path to redeem him, I honestly couldn't guess at it because at this point I don't want to see him redeemed!

All I can say is I hope he doesn't win because that might make this story feel like it's taking a hard turn into grimderp the likes of which we probably haven't seen since Wildbow.

I love how the eldritch elements of Third Eye have been played up so far, the ambiguity over the developers and the question of whether it really is an AR game or something else entirely. Mask so far has been an unwelcome detour from that theme and one which I hope will be cut short soon.

 

[MoogleEmpMog]

Chapter 117: The Magnificent Ashbird

The sun continued to rise over the tree line, the snow continued to melt beneath Lena's wings, and Allen continued to press his Iron down on her chest.

"That's enough," Matt said. "If she's too proud to surrender –"

I whispered, "The Magnificent Ashbird isn't asking for audience participation."

Matt started to push himself from his chair. "How the hell can you sit there and let Allen do this to her? Aren't you going to fight him?"

"Fight him?" I tore my eyes away from Lena long enough to glance at Matt. For just a second, I allowed myself the savage grin I'd been holding back all morning. "I beat him last night. Didn't have to lift a finger."

Plans, after all, were my department.

Matt stared at me.

Slowly, he eased back into his chair.

The rest of the audience looked my way as well, which probably meant I'd spoken too loudly.

Sure enough, I saw Allen's mask tilt in our direction.

I called out, "Sorry. I couldn't let somebody interfere."

"It's all good," Lena said.

Allen's attention snapped back to her. His arms shifted. His Iron pressed down.

Until Lena pushed it off her. Not with a Third Eye object. Sure as hell not with a mighty feat of strength. She just braced her back against the muddy ground and gave the Iron a shove. What looked like a hundred plus pounds of solid metal raised over her outstretched hands like it was papier-mache.

Allen tried to slam it into place again and she held it on the tips of her gauntleted fingers.

She climbed to her feet. It would've looked even more impressive if she hadn't slipped in the mud, but even then, nothing Allen tried so much as budged her.

His fist curled. "I know how much HP you've got, Ashbird. You post it on the damned wiki. I know how much that had to have hurt! Why don't you just quit already?"

Lena tapped her chin, which left just one hand holding the Iron at arm's length. "If I had to guess, I'd say... because of a trick?"

"Bullshit!" Allen chopped his hand down and his Iron went with it. The sound of its impact against Lena's armor pealed through the air.

Lena made no effort to stop it. She just looked down and sighed.

Allen backed up. "No way did you get this powerful. No way you got stronger than me. You can't trick your way out of that!"

"Okay, so." Lena's voice softened. I'd been expecting this callback, but I'd figured it would sound mocking. Instead, she kept her tone gentle, almost apologetic. "I think that conclusion is kinda dumb?"

"W-what?"

"'Tricks ain't shit?'" Lena shook her head. "What do you call the way you defend with your Key? Or the way you let Phantom do most of the fighting so you can catch people by surprise? Or even that heated edge attack you stole from Gerry?"

Allen's voice changer crackled as he sputtered.

"Tricks are the shit in Third Eye," Lena said. "You and Matt like to go on and on about what's supposedly 'literally the point' of Daimons in the game? Well this is literally the point of the whole damn game. This is what it's trying to teach us."

"You can't know that," Allen said.

"Honestly?" Lena ducked her head. "You're right. I can't."

He started to straighten up.

"I can make an educated guess, though," she said. "I can watch what happens every time the principle is put to the test and see what works and what doesn't. Most importantly, I can prove my way of playing the game will beat yours. It won't even be close."

Allen barked a laugh. Maybe it was the voice changer, maybe it was wishful thinking on my part, but I thought it sounded more hysterical than mocking. "You've barely even hit me."

"That," Lena said, "is what should really worry you."

His shoulders stiffened. "You think I'm scared of you?"

"I hope not." Her smile slipped. I hated how tired, how sad she looked so much more than I had watching her pretend to lose a match. "I'm still kind of pissed off at you, Allen, but I legit don't want to hurt you. I don't want you to be scared. I want you to listen. For your sake, for Phantom's, and especially for Jan's."

"You got no right to talk about my sister!" Allen snapped his hand forward. Phantom and his Iron alike hurled themselves at Lena. Again, she made no move to deflect either.

Beside me, Matt grunted.

I shot him a glare. Sure enough, he'd fixed his gaze on the point on Lena's armor the Iron had bounced off of.

When he'd wanted to help her, I'd at least agreed with his sentiment, even though I'd had to stop him from interfering. If he was going to start giving Allen tips mid-match, he and I would have a lot more of a problem. I respected his passion for teaching, but there's a time and place, man!

He didn't say anything, though, just stared at the armor and smirked.

Specifically, he stared at the dent.

Like the outfits our avatars wore, Third Eye armor seemed to be more or less cosmetic. It didn't actually protect us, it just reflected our understanding that we needed protection.

On the flipside, it didn't scuff or deform when we took damage.

If we somehow continued to manifest it after our HP ran out, it might start taking damage just like our bodies would. We'd never had the chance to test what happened when we ran out of HP during the narrow window when we were absorbing a Reactant and appeared as our avatars in the physical world. Under any other circumstances, our gear disappeared with the last of our HP.

Matt already understood. If Lena's armor could be dented, it meant it wasn't part of her avatar.

In a way, this, too, was a borrowed trick, and it had started out as one of his. When he guest starred on Lena's channel, he'd shaped himself a suit of Iron armor and tried to use it for both offense and defense. That had limited how he could attack, though, and forced him to keep manipulating the Iron just to move around.

Last night, Lena and I had refined his concept.

Her armor was the purest expression of the idea that Third Eye rewarded tricks, not power. Not only did it not require a ton of any one Reactant, it wouldn't work if you used more than a single unit of Earth to shape each piece.

Shaped with one Earth, the plates were hardly aligned with the real world at all. As far as Lena's body was concerned, her armor weighed little more than aluminum foil, and if anything, offered less protection.

As far as Allen's attacks were concerned, Lena's armor was steel so heavy a person couldn't even walk in it. Instead of flinging around a shield to protect herself, she was wearing dozens of shields, and each bulky Iron plate was backed with a unit of Plastic that she'd used Water to shape into dense, springy foam padding.

Between Allen and Phantom, they could punch through both layers eventually.

Eventually was a long time when your opponent no longer had to worry about defending herself.

Phantom's inky pseudopods battered Lena's armor. As far as I could tell, he couldn't hurt her at all. He certainly hadn't so far. Allen hurled strikes at her; those, at least, left dents, but nothing broke through.

Lena ignored them. She took her time crafting a missile, sleek and aerodynamic Iron, and hurled it at Allen. He was too frustrated to even try to block and it caught him in the chest. His grunt hissed through his voice changer.

Lena snapped the missile back and forth with tight, linear motions. Her two Air didn't do much damage, but each strike had to at least sting.

"Fuck," Allen screamed. "This doesn't make any sense!"

"It would if you stopped to think about it," Lena said.

When we worked out the plan, I'd asked her – begged her – not to turn the match into a tutorial in real time. We weren't filming this, it wasn't going to show up on her channel, and the lessons she wanted Allen to learn would sink in better after she'd kicked his ass.

She'd said they would sink in even better if she gave him every chance to recognize them in advance, and he didn't take it.

Watching her now, as she flicked her missile into him over and over again, driving him back, sapping his HP, making him madder and madder, I thought we had different definitions of giving somebody a chance.

Not that I was complaining.

"Phantom," Allen said, "keep her off me."

"What kind of jerk makes his pet tank for him?" Lena snapped.

Her missile darted forward.

Phantom rippled to intercept it.

"He's not –" Allen's response garbled into static when Lena's missile transformed in mid-flight, shifting smoothly from Air to Earth to dodge away from Phantom and jab into Allen's boot. He hopped backwards, cursing.

Still, he flung his Iron forward, one strike after another, trading HP for damage if only he were doing any damage.

Eventually, he'd have to give up attacking entirely. Even the smallest hit was still a hit. They added up, while his own did nothing to her.

The one thing we hadn't been able to plan around was that we weren't sure how much HP he had. Had he spent Tickets on it, or found some other way to raise his total from what we'd read in those earliest invasion reports? Had he gone into those reported invasions below full HP?

If either of those were true, all the momentum in the world might not be enough for Lena to beat him. With enough HP, he could literally run her out of MP before he dropped.

Neither of us believed he'd cranked his HP, though. Matt, Nadia, Bob, and Ramon had said they'd been able to drop him to zero just a week ago. He'd started using Phantom to tank attacks and teleported especially nasty ones through his Key. More tricks he hadn't wanted to acknowledge, but surely they explained his increased durability.

Surely.

I felt sweat bead against the lining of my gloves.

Lena could beat Allen, I knew that now. If he'd realized about her armor in advance and had time to either come up with a counter or craft his own suit? Maybe not. Like this, though, with him too caught up in defending himself to process what she'd done, absolutely.

Could she beat him without hurting Phantom?

I knew she would try. I respected the hell out of her attempt.

Let's be real, though. If some asshole trains their dog to attack you and it starts ripping into your arm while they advance on you with a knife, that's awful, it's not the dog's fault and it's awful, but you've still got to do whatever it takes to get that dog off you or you're gonna die.

Lena could make her point about playing the right way just by refusing to use her own Daimons in a match, without tying her hands behind her back to avoid hurting the one that was actively fighting her.

The last traces of even a sad smile disappeared from her face. She set her mouth in a hard line and tapped her phone.

Her missile began to glow.

Allen tensed; though I couldn't see exactly where he was looking behind his mask, the shift in his body language told me he was considering the use of his Key. How much Fire would Lena need to put in before he used it instead of letting Phantom tank?

More than one, it turned out.

When Lena lunged forward, Phantom threw himself between Allen and her missile. Darkness roiled; the Third Eye version of Allen's mask went from comedian to tragedian.

The missile skittered across the snow, deflected, but a flick of Lena's hand sent it flying back at Allen. She tried to dip it around Phantom's folds, but the Daimon moved faster than she could without spending more MP to swap back to Air.

All the while, Allen battered her defenses. The heated edge of his Iron finally cut into one of her oversized pauldrons. He tried to jerk his object back and it took him two pulls to dislodge it. A hint of burning plastic wafted through the air.

My eyes narrowed. He had to know that wasn't how Third Eye equipment behaved.

He did.

"So that's how it is," he muttered.

He wound up and struck again, aiming for the crack. Lena managed to twist so his Iron struck sidelong, but that just served to damage the pauldron further. So what if she hit him three times while he attacked? Phantom tanked it all, and while the Daimon's cloak looked increasingly ragged, he remained in the fight.

Lena nodded. "That's how it is."

Allen threw his head back and barked a laugh. "Dumbass! You think I can't open something up?"

He flung his Iron at Lena, but by the time it slammed against her breastplate, he'd already deselected it. The lightless plane of his Key appeared in the air. He pressed it forward.

Lena dodged, but her hand slipped into the Key.

I tensed, even though I knew from Gerry's abduction that the Key didn't cut or disintegrate objects that went through its edge the way portals did in some games.

Sure enough, Lena's hand emerged unscathed.

I could tell, because the bulky gauntlet she'd shaped with Third Eye had vanished.

"Well," Lena said, "shit."

"You should've hit me harder when you had the chance," Allen snapped. "Now I'm gonna peel you out of that tin can."

"I guess it can't be helped," Lena said.

I swallowed. I whispered, "Gerry."

Everybody except the two combatants looked at me. Gerry said, "Huh?"

"I think you'd better stand in front of Jan and call up a shield."

To his credit, he got up and did as I asked, despite the confusion twisting his features. "Why?"

"Yeah," Jan said. "Don't you try to baby me."

Because, I thought, you don't have any HP. I was too busy calling up my own shield to answer.

I knew the phrase Lena was about to invoke. In her own way, she was almost as ridiculous as Allen, and I suspected she had less of an excuse. Why did her version delight me while his made me roll my eyes?

Down in the practice yard, like the wonderful dork she was, Lena's voice rang out without a hint of shame. "Sometimes, you have to use 'that.'"

 

[MoogleEmpMog]

As always, apologies for the non-Third Eye threadmark.

My romantic space opera, The Mechaneer, has just launched for general audiences here and on Royal Road! If you've enjoyed Eye Opener, I hope you'll enjoy it as well. And if you want to support the continued writing of Eye Opener, the absolute best way you can do so is by helping The Mechaneer climb the Rising Stars list on Royal Road. If you can drop a follow there, and hopefully give it a read, it will be an immense help to me.

 

[Crayz9000]

All right. Well. Evil cliffhangers are evil.

I probably wouldn't have had quite as much of a reaction to the last chapter if this wasn't being posted in a serial format. Still, Allen is a jerk and any comeuppance he gets is richly deserved.

 

[MoogleEmpMog]

Chapter 118: To The Victor

In one moment, Lena and Allen faced off across the practice field, surrounded by snow and mud and the walls beyond. I stood on the back porch with everyone else; All of us but Jan conjured shields and braced ourselves.

In the next, a thunderclap ripped the air apart, I was on my ass, my ears were ringing, and the practice field had become a haze of snow.

I dragged myself up, groaning, blinking. My butt and back hurt from the impact and that pain didn't go away a heartbeat later. I didn't have to scrape my phone off the porch to know my HP were gone, but I confirmed it anyway.

When my vision cleared enough for me to look around, I saw Gerry was still on his feet and Jan was still in her chair, more or less shielded. Everyone else had fallen like I had.

In the field –

Allen cried, "Ah! Get it off!"

"Bro!" Jan screamed. She scrambled around Gerry and would've jumped off the porch if he hadn't caught her waist.

"Here," he said. She beat her fists against his arm, but he ignored them and lowered her easily to the snow.

I bounded down after her.

"It's okay." Lena's voice cut through the cloud of snow, soft but firm. "You're okay."

Enough of the snow settled that I could make out movement. A larger figure on its back, scrambling away from the smaller one kneeling near it. Allen downed, Lena beside him.

She reached out.

"Don't touch me!" Allen rasped. To my ringing ears, his voice sounded high, reedy, breathless. I realized his voice changer must have been fried by Lena's attack.

"I won't if you don't want me to," she said. "But you've got to let me or Jan or somebody take that mask off."

He flinched. His shoulders sagged. "... okay."

Lena touched his face. When her hands pulled back, they held a broken porcelain oval, trailing scraps of fabric and wire. She whispered, "Oh, God."

Allen's head snapped up.

By then, Jan had reached them. She skidded to her knees and shoved Lena away. "I'm here, bro."

"Sis? Don't –"

"I got you." She threw her arms around his shoulders. He buried his face against her neck.

Lena had allowed herself to be pushed. She rocked backwards.

The mask tumbled from her hand and rolled across the snow. As the last of the cloud finished settling or blowing away, I finally saw the results of her sealed secret technique.

In the real world, it had left a deep divot in the ground where Allen had stood. Not quite a crater, but enough that all the flash-melted snow ran into it. Arrows of mud pointed all around it where they'd been flung. The impact hadn't been huge, more hand grenade than artillery piece, but it was so, so much more than we'd seen a normal player do with Third Eye.

Through the game's filter, the destruction looked far worse. All our shields had buckled. The captives had all gone for Iron, and each of their shields had bent and warped. Mine, Stone, had fared a little better, but the side facing up was pitted and blackened. Several of the crude barricades ringing the practice field had collapsed, while others sagged against their cracked, singed posts.

This was Air as a Material, activated with all seven Fire at Lena's disposal. A week ago, someone had posted on the wiki that they could create "controllable lightning" with that combination. It sounded super cool, but they'd been flooded with reminders that they'd permanently spent a precious Reactant.

A Reactant wasn't so precious when you could buy it back with Tickets. Lena would've used one for this match even if it was her last, though.

It had proven every bit as fast as we'd hoped. Allen never stood a chance of blocking it with a conjured object, much less the Key he'd flung far from his body to open up Lena's armor.

Trouble was, it hadn't been as controllable as promised. A difference in practice? Or between one Fire and seven?

Even Lena's own armor hadn't been spared. The plates were bent and distorted, and some had outright fused together. It no longer looked like the shining armor of a cliched hero from a modern anime. Try the uneven, misshapen mecha of a cannon fodder alien in one from the '80s. If it had been any more aligned, I didn't think she would've been able to bend her arms; as it was, I heard the plates grinding when she tried.

Almost a third of Allen's mask had broken off, from one eyehole down to the corner of the rictus grin. I wondered if it would be restored to pristine condition when Phantom respawned the next day.

The electronics trailing behind it, what little was left of Allen's voice changer, wouldn't. Whatever insulation he'd added to his armor after our first fight back in Denver, it hadn't been even close to enough to protect the device against this. The acrid smell of slagged wires and burned plastic assaulted my nose as I neared it. Parts of its casing had blackened.

I shivered and it had nothing to do with the cold.

Lena's attack itself would, at worst, have taken the last of Allen's HP. If the voice changer had overloaded and caught fire right next to his face, though...

I crouched beside her and hugged her shoulders. Her armor offered the impression of resistance, like I was embracing her through a layer of wadded up paper, but it didn't actually stop my arms from encircling her.

She looked up at me. "Oh God, Cam."

"How bad is it?" I pitched my voice low to try to keep Allen and Jan from hearing, but I didn't think they were paying us any attention.

Lena said, "He's just a kid."

I frowned. "I meant the burn."

"It doesn't matter how bad it is." She shook her head. "I shouldn't have risked hurting him at all."

I exhaled. "We already figured he was younger than us, Lena."

"He doesn't just look 'younger than us.'" She stared past me.

I wrenched my gaze away from her and turned.

Allen had sat up. When he noticed us staring, he shoved his face against Jan's shoulder again.

Too late.

I'd already seen his soft features, still round with puppy fat. His big brown eyes. The acne speckling his nose and cheeks. He might look more like Jan someday, thinner, sharper-faced, with just a few hints of pockmarks on his cheeks.

Someday. You know. A couple years away.

Jan wasn't his little sister at all.

At least the injury from his shorted-out voice changer didn't look too awful. Blistered skin from the fire, oily smudges from the smoke. A painful burn, but not a dangerous one.

Not that that seemed to calm Lena any. She jerked out of my arms and padded across the mud to where Allen and Jan huddled. I drifted along in her wake.

Jan glared up at us. "What?" she snapped.

Lena bowed her head. "I'm sorry."

Jan looked away, her eyes disappearing beneath her layers of winter wear. "For what?"

"I didn't realize how young you were, Allen," Lena said. "I didn't realize what would happen with your voice changer, either. I didn't mean to hurt you, but I should've been more careful."

Allen's head snapped up. Jesus, he looked young! I'd been tricked by his height into assuming he was at least an older teenager, but now, with the grace of his avatar stripped away, it was achingly obvious he wasn't that old. When he pushed himself to sit upright, he moved with the gawky uncertainty I remembered from my own growth spurt. What did that make him? Fifteen? Fourteen?

"Don't you dare pity me." He tried to conjure his antihero persona, but without the voice changer, he stood no chance. His voice broke as he spoke and his unburnt cheek turned as red as the blistered one. He looked away and tried to hide in his sister's embrace and his tattered cloak.

Lena knelt beside the siblings. "Can't help it, kiddo."

"It's my fault, too," I said.

Lena's head snapped toward me. "Cam, no! You're not the one –"

I raised an eyebrow. "– who planned for you to pull Allen's Key away from his body so he couldn't defend himself? Then break out an Air with seven Fire?"

"Seven!" Allen gulped. "Shit. Shit! You been holding back on me all along."

"Not enough, obviously," Lena said.

"I thought –" He squeezed his eyes shut. "I was so dumb!"

Lena opened her mouth to speak.

I trusted her in a lot of ways. To try to do the right thing. To play Third Eye magnificently.

To tell an injured kid on the verge of tears he'd been dumb when that was manifestly, dangerously true?

Call me an untrusting asshole if you want, but I cut her off. "Lil' bit."

Lena and Jan both glared at me. Allen flinched.

I crouched beside them and held my hand out. "Sorry, but you all know it's true. You got dealt a terrible hand, Allen. The way you played it still wasn't right, or smart."

Allen sucked air through his teeth.

"You already got what you want," Jan said. "Why won't you leave us alone?"

"Because leaving you alone would be dealing you another low card on top of everything you've already gotten," I said.

"If they had a hand that was really bad," Lena said, "wouldn't another low card probably give them a pair or something?"

I slowly turned to her. "That is so not the point."

It was the right thing to say, though.

Allen snuffled, snorted, and couldn't quite suppress a laugh. The corners of Jan's eyes crinkled. She tried not to chuckle, failed.

Her cough cut her off.

Allen tensed. "You better get back inside."

"'m fine," Jan muttered.

She wasn't, and we all knew it. Allen stood up and helped her to her feet, practically carried her. I wanted to offer a helping hand, but I'd seen how they flinched away from us and couldn't really blame them.

Instead, Lena and I followed them up the steps. The captives watched us. No longer captive, if Allen abided by the terms of the match – not that he had much choice anymore.

Silently, Gerry opened the cabin door. Jan shuffled through. Allen followed with his arm around her shoulders.

I took a deep breath. I didn't know what to say.

When I turned, I found Lena nose to chin with Matt.

She said, "Did you know?"

"How young Allen is?" He tapped his chin. "Let's leave it at this: I'd have been very surprised to hear an adult try to call himself the Nightmare Knight without apparent irony."

She grabbed his arm. "Then why the hell didn't you tell me?"

"Because," Matt said, "kid or not, he was dangerous to himself and others. He needed to learn better."

"Cam and I would've found a better way! Or we would've run away with you guys instead of fighting." She looked to me. "Right?"

I met her eyes. I wanted nothing more than to wipe away the tears pooling in the corners of her eyes.

I couldn't. "This was the best way."

Lena's eyes widened.

Gently, I pulled her away from Matt. My hands massaged some of the tension from her arms. "You know that, Lena. You're the one who challenged him."

All that tension rushed back. She hung her head. "Don't remind me."

My hand cupped her chin. When her eyes blinked open, I smiled down at her. "I will, because I have to remind you why."

Her gaze flicked to the cabin door.

"You couldn't let Allen go on like this," I said. "For our sake. For anyone else he attacked. Especially for him and Jan."

"If they stay out here," Lena said, "Jan's going to get sicker. So is Allen, just, not so much in his body."

I nodded.

"I should've found a way to stop him without hurting him, Cameron." Lena set her jaw.

I ran my fingers along the line of it. "I know, Lena. We should've."

"That's right." A smile tugged at the corner of her lips. She poked my ribs. "Plans were supposed to be your department."

 

[Crayz9000]

*Facepalms* because of COURSE Edgeface McEdgelord would be a teenager. Well played.

 

[MoogleEmpMog]

Chapter 119: My Turn

I pulled Lena closer and patted her back. Her arms encircled me. Her warmth enveloped me. She rested her head against my chest; I, my chin in her soft curls.

We stayed like that until the cabin door creaked open.

Allen shuffled out onto the porch. He'd ditched the remnants of his cloak and his battered paintball gear. He'd slapped a Band-Aid over most of the burn on his cheek. With his broken mask discarded, there was nothing in him of Mask, the terror of Third Eye. Just a sad, sullen, pasty teenager in black jeans and hoodie.

The change in his posture was almost more startling. He hunched his lanky frame over so badly he didn't look any taller than me, and Gerry practically towered over him.

"How's Jan?" Gerry asked.

"Having some soup," Allen said. "Said she'd be okay."

Gerry nodded.

"How are you?" Lena asked.

Allen shot her a sullen glare, but it didn't last. He ended up staring at the two of us long enough for it to get uncomfortable. I felt like I should let go of Lena and fought back against the urge.

Eventually, Allen shook himself in the cold air, sank onto the chair I'd abandoned, slumped back in it, and closed his eyes.

Lena pulled away from me and crouched beside the chair.

"It was supposed to be my turn," Allen muttered.

She cocked her head. "Hm?"

"Ever since Mom and Dad died, Jan took care of me," he said. "When I got all this power and everything went wrong, it was supposed to be my turn to protect her."

"You shouldn't have had to," Lena said.

"Yeah, well. She shouldn't have had to quit school and flip burgers so we could keep our apartment."

"Agreed," Lena said, like somebody who hadn't hated every minute of normal school she'd endured until her parents pulled her out.

"'All this power.'" Allen banged his head against the back of the chair. "Yeah, right. Everything I did and I'm not even close to your level."

Was that true? I wasn't so sure. I'd put every scrap of what I knew about Lena and Allen and Third Eye itself into the morning's plan. All to set up an attack that Lena could only use twice, the second only if she was willing to burn herself out on Air entirely.

If Allen had focused his Key on defense and trusted Phantom to run Lena out of MP? If he'd realized how her armor worked in their first exchange and swapped to his Key while she was down? Hell, if he'd thought to close in and use his physical strength instead of his Third Eye abilities?

Lena and I had bet he wouldn't.

We'd been right.

I tried to tell myself we'd been right to make the bet at all.

Lena flashed a sad smile. "You made me use my sealed secret technique, Allen. Nobody else has pulled that off."

He snorted. "All I've done is make things worse."

Lena's hand hovered over his. "That's not true."

His eyes snapped open. He grabbed her wrist. For just a second, I tensed at the hint of Mask's cruel arrogance. "How would you know what I did?"

Lena never so much as started, though. Her other hand crossed over, patted the back of Allen's, and gently tugged his fingers loose.

The fire faded from his eyes. He let go of her and slumped in the chair.

"I know," she said, "because I can see how hard you're trying, and how much it hurts."

He swallowed.

They fell silent for long enough that I heard Ramon shifting on his feet. Everyone else remained still, and he must have felt bad about interrupting the moment, because he just turned back to the ruined practice field.

It was so quiet I could hear Jan stifling her cough inside the house.

Allen tensed and looked to the door. We only heard one cough, though, not another fit.

"I'll check on her, okay?" Gerry said.

Allen scowled. "Yeah, fine."

Gerry slipped through the door.

Allen remained to answer our questions.

Trouble was, everybody just stood or sat in awkward silence.

I said, "So."

Allen hunched his shoulders and looked anywhere but at me.

Just as I was about to give up on waiting, he scooted back in the chair and raised his eyes.

"I didn't even want to play the damn game. Some oldhead crap my dad blew our money on?" His lip curled. "But Jan bugged me about it all day, 'cause it was something Dad wanted."

"She wanted you to feel closer to your dad," Lena said.

Allen eyed her. Last night, he'd made a crack about how close Third Eye had almost brought both he and Jan to their dead father. His sister wasn't around to complain about his gallows humor now.

He just hung his head, though. "Yeah."

"Will you tell us what happened?" I asked.

"I signed up," he said. "But I wasn't into it, so I picked 'physical' on the signup bonus to troll her and didn't start playing. Until it showed up."

"Oh, the amulet?" Lena's eyebrows raised. "Do you still have it?"

He pulled it out from his hoodie. The same design as Lena's, and a lot like mine if you viewed it through Third Eye, but Allen's was set with a polished onyx so dark it seemed almost lightless.

"Hey, twins!" Lena unzipped her parka enough to show hers off. The ruby glinted in a way I wasn't sure the morning light explained.

Allen smiled. It didn't last.

"After that, it didn't get weird again right away," he said. "It was just a game, yeah? I started scouting and shit. Seemed cool for a while. I started wearing my old Halloween costume for PVP."

"What changed?" I asked.

"Jan had dug a box of Dad's crap out of storage in case I needed a code or something," he said. "I didn't, so who gave a shit, yeah? When I started getting into the game, though, I figured I'd go through it with the filter on. There was this old key in there. I'm like, 'what's this open?' and Jan didn't know so I grabbed it."

"And got your Key," I said.

"Yeah." Allen pounded his fist on the arm of the chair. "When I touched it, the floor went dark and Jan fell in. I jumped in after her."

"That was brave," Lena said.

"Couldn't just leave her." Allen shrugged. "You know where we ended up."

I nodded. "The dead city."

He returned the nod. "I could tell the Key had torn Jan up inside, so I didn't want to use it again. We were gonna walk to the edge of the city and try to find help or something. We got as far as the super's office downstairs. I saw this whole rack of keys hanging there and..."

"Wait," Lena said. "A whole rack? How many Keys do you have?"

"One," Allen spat. "I never got to grab any more. That's when one of those things found us."

I winced. The creature at the construction site had pushed our team to its limits even with Albie's help. I couldn't imagine trying to escape one without a dev beside me. "How did you survive?"

"Phantom saved us," Allen said.

Lena's head dipped. Still sorry she'd had to hurt Phantom to stop Allen, I knew. I rubbed her shoulder.

Allen didn't seem to notice us. "I found him – his mask, I mean – in the dead version of our apartment. I thought it was just a duplicate of the one from my costume, yeah? When that creature came after us, though, Phantom woke up and we thought he was another monster until he tried to protect us. Didn't do so good, but he gave me enough time to use the Key."

"Did it take you home?" I asked.

For some reason, Allen hunched over again and averted his eyes. He didn't look angry, more... embarrassed? "It went to Florida. Orlando."

"Huh?" Lena cocked her head. "Why?"

"I dunno," he muttered.

I fought down a smile because the rest of the story made it inappropriate. "You ever go there as a little kid?"

"It doesn't matter!"

"Got it," I said.

He looked up sharply, but I didn't say anything more.

Allen must have wanted the Key to take him somewhere he felt safe. It sucked that his and Jan's apartment hadn't counted. Even so, I couldn't help but find it funny to imagine that the sinister Mask's happy place was the Magic Kingdom. How many years removed was he from those childhood memories?

Not enough to have gone through the shit he had.

I found it easier not to smile. "What happened next?"

Allen shifted on his chair. "The hell you think? We see Philly in ruins, everything we read about the game says that will happen, Jan's hurt, we're stranded, there's monsters. We freaked out."

"So you went for help," I said.

"We were pretty close to this OdysseyZZ guy, and he seemed like he knew his shit." Allen scowled. "Yeah, right. All he did was steal mine."

"You mean the Keys you saw in your Realm?" I asked.

"I screwed up and told him about them," Allen said. "He put me and Jan up in this hotel on his compound. He said him and a bunch of his goons were gonna go through the Key with me and figure shit out. Gonna 'protect' me. Instead of fighting that creature, though, he just grabbed the Keys and bailed."

Lena's back stiffened. "Omar abandoned you with one of those things?"

I tried to massage the tension from her. Didn't work. Maybe because I had to fight to keep my own hands from curling into fists at the thought of someone leaving a kid to fend for himself against that creature.

"I mean..." Allen's shoulders shifted. "He told me to run away, too, but basically, yeah."

"Then what?" I asked.

"I ran. Duh. I knew I wasn't strong enough." Allen sighed. "When I got back, he said me and Jan weren't supposed to leave until he 'figured things out.' I wasn't gonna wait for him to figure out we knew too much, so I broke her out of his compound. That's when I learned the Key works on locks. Cars, too. We stole one of his SUVs and ran the hell away. Couldn't go home, it was gonna get wrecked. Plus OdysseyZZ knew where we lived."

"Is that when you decided to go to Canada and try the devs?" I asked.

"And got jack shit," Allen said. "Better than getting ripped off again. I guess? After that..."

"You gave up on trusting people," Lena said, "and tried to become the Nightmare Knight."

The reminder of the name he'd tried to go by made Allen's unbandaged cheek flush. He scratched the back of his neck. He muttered, "Mask sounds cooler anyway."

"You think?" Lena grinned. "The Magnificent Ashbird has no room to talk either way."

"No way, that's an awesome name!" He sat up. I thought that up to that point, he must have been too lost in his misery to parse the fact that The Magnificent Ashbird had his hand clasped in hers. He realized it now, all right. He reddened even more and twisted so he could fix his gaze on the wall of the cabin.

Lena's grin widened. To everyone else, it probably looked like she enjoyed being somebody's crush. I knew what it really meant: she'd just remembered that she was, and wanted to hide how it freaked her out.

Allen didn't notice either way. He hung his head. "I keep screwing up. Keep hurting Jan. Keep hurting everybody. Everything I do, I just make things worse."

"I know a thing or two about that," Lena said. She tugged at a tangle of her hair. "You know, until a while ago, I'd dug myself a hole so deep I couldn't see out of it."

He glanced at her out of the corner of his eye. If she'd been sitting and him crouching, they'd have been eye to eye. As it was, he towered over her even more than when they were both standing. A crooked smile tugged at his cheeks. "W-wouldn't take much."

"Hey!" Lena turned her nose up and puffed out her cheeks.

I couldn't help but chuckle. Matt joined me.

After a moment, so did Allen.

Once Bob, Nadia, and Ramon got in on it, Lena finally cracked and laughed at herself.

Even Gerry and Jan emerged from the cabin. They stared at us like we'd all gone crazy.

Well, maybe.

Eventually, we fell silent. Lena stood up and rolled her shoulders.

I rubbed them.

She flashed a little smile at me. Her voice turned pensive. "You know how I got out of that hole, Allen?"

He kicked at the porch. "I guess OldCampaigner pulled you out."

"Up the last rung, maybe," she said. "But it was Third Eye that made the ladder."

Allen swallowed.

"That's why I can't believe the game is evil," Lena said. "Unlike you, we have talked to the devs. They're – Albie's – good people. She swears the creatures like the one that attacked you aren't part of Third Eye, and I believe her. Whatever's happening, whatever's coming, it's not Third Eye causing it. Third Eye is giving us a way to stop it."

"Even if it's the future?" Allen asked.

Lena bit her lip. "I don't believe that."

"You can't know, though," Jan said.

Lena didn't answer. She looked to me.

How they hell could she think I knew what to say?

Absurdly, because the right thing to say was itself absurd, I did.

I smiled to hide my worry. And my embarrassment. Lena had the right idea; you could conceal anything behind a grin. "Here's what I believe. Even if what you saw was fate, The Magnificent Ashbird would burn it away and forge a new one."

Lena's freckles showed. Smooth as in an edited video, though, she struck her victory pose. "Of course!"

Allen stared, open-mouthed. Absolute. Fanboy. Awe.

Jan was just as wide-eyed as her brother. Her voice wavered when she spoke, but she still said, "Even you're not strong enough to fight those creatures."

"Well," Lena said. "Maybe."

"You want us to go back to civilization with you," Jan said. "You don't know we'd be safer, though. Not really. You're just hoping."

She said "hope" like a curse.

Lena wagged her finger. "Actually, that's where you're wrong."

Jan's eyes narrowed. "How do you figure?"

"You saw how powerful I am, right?" Lena waved a hand over the ruined practice yard. Then she patted my back. "Even so, Cam is the one who protects me."