Eye Opener

[MoogleEmpMog]

Chapter 44: Visiting Hours

All four of us stared at Erin, even the woman who'd brought her. Her chauffeur? Only for the day, she'd said.

Can you blame us? There was something so incongruous about this gawky college student in her oversized glasses and black jeans and DU hoodie offering up formal apologies with a bow that would make a samurai jealous.

Miguel recovered first, which was pretty bad when you consider that he was the only one of us nursing a concussion. "I'm sure that such a charming young lady couldn't have done anything I wouldn't forgive."

Erin straightened up so abruptly that she almost lost her glasses for the second time. She stood ramrod straight, except for her head, which remained bowed, and her fingers, which fidgeted with the loops of her jeans. Her skin was too dark to see a blush on, otherwise I was sure one would've been visible.

Although she looked almost as confused as she did embarrassed. When she finally found her voice, it sounded less practiced. "Are you... looking at me through Third Eye right now?"

"Two are more than enough," Miguel said.

She blinked. "Oh."

"That's quite enough of that," the other woman said.

Now that she sounded annoyed, I finally realized where I knew her voice from. "DeepingShadows!"

"Fancy meeting you here, OC. And you too, Ash, of course. And that's quite enough of the screen names. Especially mine. God. The mistakes of youth, come back to haunt us." She made a sort of brushing gesture in the air. "Cam, Lena? I'm Donica."

She held her hand out to me. Her handshake was almost as domineering as Matt's. I wondered if they'd gone to the same business school.

Mostly, I wondered what she and Erin were doing here, and how they knew each other. Erin had implied that Donica – it felt so bizarre to think of her as anything other than DeepingShadows – had introduced her to the Third Eye Kickstarter, right? They must have known each other for a long time, which ruled out, say, Donica being one of Erin's teachers at DU. A family connection? But they looked about as unrelated as two people could get.

However they knew each other, it didn't explain why they were in Miguel's hospital room. Or even how.

Last night, while I waited for Lena to either fall asleep or pretend to so I could feel all right about testing Water, I'd posted a little bit about our misadventure in Erin's Discord. I'd told the wiki team we'd followed up on a lead where we'd gotten a Material and found Water as a result, but one of our friends got hurt.

But I hadn't given Miguel's name, much less his room number. Hell, I hadn't even had his room number. I'd had to ask at the front desk this morning.

Erin must have deduced it. How? And decided to come. Why?

While I pondered the question, Donica offered a shake to Lena, too, who took it like she expected it to turn into a judo throw. Maybe bracing against that was why she didn't bend under the pressure.

Donica stepped back and gave a curt nod.

"Finally got a name and a face to go with the handle," Lena said. "I hope you realize, I'll never call you DS in coms again."

"So inefficient." But Donica cracked a smile. "Well, neither of us were good enough for it to matter. It took me way too long to understand that."

Lena turned her nose up. "Speak for yourself."

Donica snorted. "Sure, Lena. Let me know next time you're in Grand Finals. In any case, I think you've both met Erin?"

"This is our first time running into each other IRL," Lena said. She thrust her hand out. "Nice to meetcha!"

"Nice to meet you too, Ashbird." Erin seemed to have composed herself while we talked to Donica. She clasped Lena's hand in both of hers. "You'd rather go by Lena in person?"

"Whatever works for you." Lena shrugged. "But just so you know, I'm not gonna call you NugsFan15 to your face. Sorry-not sorry."

Erin's smile peeked out around the fist she pressed to her mouth.

"You know these ladies, Cam?" Miguel asked. "How is it you've never introduced us?"

"I could ask you the same thing," I said. "I'm not the one whose hospital room they're visiting."

"I admit, I'm starting to doubt they just go from room to room, brightening patients' days," Miguel said. "Although if they don't, they should consider starting. To what do I owe the pleasure?"

Donica shot Erin a look I couldn't make heads or tails of. Lips and eyes taut, neck muscles standing out. The tension in the room ratcheted up a couple million notches.

Erin looked back, her smile gone in an instant. She bit her lip. She lowered her head more carefully so her glasses would stay on her nose. "It's because you got hurt, sir. I feel like it's my fault."

"Then allow me to relieve you of that feeling, Erin." Miguel reached from the bed to take her hand, but she was standing too far away. When she didn't step forward, his attempt only managed to replace tension with awkwardness. He shrugged it off and sank back against his pillow. "The only thing you've done for me, one way or another, is cheer me up on a dreary morning."

Erin shook her head. "You got hurt because of the wiki that I run."

"Which does not," Donica said, "make this your responsibility."

"Not legally," Erin said. "But ethically? Morally? If I lead people into danger –"

"You didn't," I said.

Erin froze.

Donica raised an eyebrow. "Oh?"

"The place where Miguel got hurt," I said. "We didn't go down there because of anything posted on the wiki, or even from your Discord. It was all original research."

"Do Not Steal," Lena murmured. I could hear her swallowing a giggle. If she was going to make jokes like that, she was lucky I'd promised not to tell people her avatar could have come straight off her DeviantArt page circa 2017.

Not that I would have at the moment. I was glad to hear her able to make any joke.

From how she swung between forced cheer and trying to vanish into the corner of the room, I could tell that the number of people present had exceeded her comfort threshold. At least for those she hadn't grown to see as friends. Since Donica arguably qualified as an enemy, she might exceed the threshold all on her own.

"We went to a place signposted by the first Material that Lena and I found," I said. "We thought to look past it because of a website that we discovered by following ARG clues last night. Miguel remembered a story about the physical location. That's it. Nothing from the wiki."

"ARG clues?" Erin's eyes widened. "You didn't mention that last night on Discord. What were they? I knew I should've spent more time on that side of the game..."

"There are thousands of players, Erin," Donica said. "Don't you think you do enough?"

"Evidently not," Erin said.

Donica pinched her nose. "It doesn't sound like this is our problem. I'm sorry that Mr. Herrera got hurt, but we really need to get going." She dropped her voice, but not enough to keep us from hearing. "I told your dad I was scouting a prospect at DU. I'm going to have to get back to the office soon."

"It doesn't seem like there are going to be any legal issues, at least," Erin said. "You should just go on back; if it saves time, crib whatever you like from my report. I don't want Dad to worry."

Another of those tight expressions I didn't understand. Donica seemed even more high-strung in person than she did online. "Erin..."

Erin arranged her face into something I was pretty sure was supposed to be a smile, but looked more like invisible fingers were wrenching the sides of her mouth up. "You know I don't. This will be fine."

"Oh, I know." Donica sighed. "You're going to walk back?"

"I was actually going to stick around and talk to Cam and Lena. I had a lot of things to discuss with them. And Mr. Herrera, if he likes, of course! If any of them like?" She looked over her shoulder at us.

"For sure," Lena said. "It's super cool getting to meet you IRL, Erin."

"I could say the same to you," Erin said. "But you came to see your hurt friend. I shouldn't interrupt."

"I would never object to such a charming companion," Miguel said. "As long as I get to hear you call me Miguel."

"Oh!" Erin's eyes flicked around until they found the most interesting sight: her boots. "You don't have to say those kinds of things."

"If you'd like me to stop, I will." He dismissed his smile and his voice turned serious. "Just say the word."

She shuffled her feet. "Well. You don't have to stop if you really don't want to."

"Then I'll continue," he said, "to call it as I see it."

"Are you really okay with this, Erin?" Donica asked.

"He's just being nice. Also, he's probably on painkillers?"

"High as a kite," Miguel said. "That's how you know I'm speaking from the heart."

Erin covered her mouth but couldn't quite stifle her deep-throated laugh.

"I meant," Donica said, "you're comfortable hanging out with these people?"

Erin looked at each of us in turn.

Lena cocked her head. I smiled. Since I was looking at Erin, I couldn't see how Miguel reacted, but I discovered that I'd been wrong before.

I could see a blush on Erin's cheeks.

"Actually," she said, "I'd be delighted to."

 

[MoogleEmpMog]

Chapter 45: Check Out

Donica headed off to whatever part-time job took up her hours between disapproving of us; something to do with Erin's dad, apparently. She left us with a shake of her head and eye-laser glares at Lena and Miguel. I'm not sure why I didn't earn an optic blast. Apparently our online interactions had gotten me labeled "mostly harmless."

As soon as she left, Lena perked up. "I almost forgot."

I knew what she meant immediately, and so did Miguel. He groaned.

Lena pumped her fists. "I'm gonna go grab the wheelchair!"

Erin regarded the three of us with raised eyebrows. Probably wondering if Donica had been right to worry about leaving her with us.

Lena darted into the hall and I went to the closet and took out Miguel's stuff. All he had were his clothes from last night, his wallet, and my parka. It reminded me that he'd lost his phone down in the tunnel. His plan to brick it still didn't settle well with me.

Better than going back to look for it, though.

I recognized my hypocrisy. I'd tell Miguel he was crazy to believe the Water had pushed him. On the other hand, I wouldn't return to a tunnel where I'd maybe heard something moving in the darkness, caught glimpses of something at the edge of my light?

Recognized, but didn't change.

I dropped his clothes and wallet off on his bed and smushed his keys into the pile. I folded the parka over my arm and turned to Erin. "Let's step out for a minute and let him get dressed."

I wondered if Miguel would have some line about her staying to help, but that was mean of me. I could tell he was pitching his banter to try to make her more comfortable, not less. He just waved us out.

Erin shut the door behind us.

I leaned against the wall and looked around for Lena.

"I'm sorry," Erin whispered.

I glanced at her. "Hm?"

"Coming over here was presumptuous," she said. "It turned out to be stupid, too. This didn't have anything to do with me. It barely had anything to do with Third Eye."

I couldn't quite suppress my snort.

Erin's head tilted.

For one absurd moment, I thought about sharing Miguel's suspicions with her. Hell. Maybe I should share my own. Erin had a Reactant, at least one. Had she experienced anything like I had?

But no. The fact was, I didn't really know her that well. I hadn't shared that shit with Lena for fear of coming across as crazy. It sure as hell wasn't something you dropped on a casual acquaintance.

I still had to explain my reaction, though. "It seems like everything's got to do with Third Eye anymore."

"True." She closed her eyes and rested the back of her head against the wall. Which made sense as far as it went. Her smile surprised me, though. She looked – contented.

With all the responsibility she took for the wiki and its use, she seemed to have invited a lot of stress into her life. I wouldn't have blamed her for souring on Third Eye entirely.

Whatever she got out of the game, it apparently made the effort she put in worth it.

I wanted to ask, but it seemed presumptuous.

Speaking of things that seemed presumptuous, though –

"Hey," I said. "While we've got a second, I've just gotta ask. How did you find Miguel's room in the first place?"

"Oh, that was simple." Her eyes flew open. She waved her hands in the air, tracing, I guess, the connections she'd made. "I just cross-referenced your and Lena's social media profiles. He was the only person you both had who made the automated tweet when he signed in to the Third Eye beta. Another friend you both share posted about 'Miguel's game' being tonight; from context, a tabletop RPG? After that it was simply a matter of calling the hospital nearest you and asking for him by name."

"Simple, huh?" I had to grin. She'd done exactly what Miguel had told Lena and I not to when it came to Albie. "You better watch it. You and he might end up natural enemies."

Erin, who had none of the context for what I'd said, let her hands fall to her sides. "So you do think it was wrong of me."

I should've either said something comforting or given her question real thought.

But all I could think of was that Lena had asked the wrong person for help. All we had was Albie's name and picture? And a whole lot of dog pictures, admittedly, if we brought Marroll into it?

For Erin, that might as well have been a CIA dossier.

Before I could explain myself, Lena returned, sans wheelchair, fists balled, glaring everywhere. She looked back and forth between us. "You making girls cry again, Cam?"

"You know me. A trail of broken hearts." I scratched the back of my head. "Sorry, Erin. It doesn't seem like you've done anything wrong. You just took information that was out there in public and put it together."

"Do you mind explaining why you reacted oddly, then?" Erin asked.

"Because you did something we asked Miguel for help with last night, and he shot us down."

"Oh, shit," Lena said. Her fists unclenched and her glare vanished. "That's right. I bet you could totally find Albie!"

Erin drew back. "Who?"

I heard movement in the hospital room. Miguel must have finished getting dressed. "I'll send you the deeds later," I said. "Just somebody we're worried about."

"Oh right," Lena said. "Can't do it around Mr. Stick in the Mud. He isn't up and moving on his own, is he?"

"How did you think he was going to get dressed?" I asked.

"With my help, duh." She grinned and reached for the door handle.

I rolled my eyes and repositioned to block her.

The door opened behind me. Thankfully, I wasn't leaning against it.

Miguel emerged, dressed but still wearing his neck brace. He looked Lena up and down. "I can't help but feel something is missing."

"Those assholes won't let me wheel you around." Lena shot a glare toward the desk where the nurse sat, but it looked like a performance. All her annoyance seemed to have vanished at the prospect of Erin helping us find Albie. "Blah blah patient health, blah blah liability. How can they think I wouldn't be the most responsible?"

Miguel's eyes crinkled. "A mystery for the ages."

"Speaking of responsibility," I said, "are you good to drive, man?"

His face fell. "I was told to avoid it if possible, but then, my doctor has never experienced your driving."

"I'm just out of practice," I said. "Plus, I was trying to be careful."

"You were certainly that."

"I have my license," Erin said. "If you're okay with it, I can drop you off and get a bus back to my dorm."

"More than okay," Miguel said. "There's no need for you to do that, though. I've already said you don't owe me anything."

"I barged into your hospital room and wasted everyone's time," she said. "You could probably argue that I invaded your privacy just to find my way here, too."

"I certainly could argue that," he said. "Fortunately, I forgive you."

"Thanks. I think?" She blinked. "My point is, at the very least, I wasted Donica's time asking her to bring me down here. Arguably yours; Cam and Lena's as well. I'd rather something useful come of the trip. I understand if you don't want me to drive you, though."

"You're a careful driver?"

She nodded. "To the best of my abilities. Especially if someone's injured."

"Hm. It's probably safer than me driving when I may not have absolute command of my faculties." Miguel tapped his cheek. "I know it's safer than Cam driving. The minimum speed limits may not be posted, but when bicycles are backing up behind you wishing they had horns to honk –"

"Nobody was biking in the middle of the night," I snapped. "But if Erin wants to drive, at least it gets your smug ass off our hands sooner."

He glanced at Lena to confirm what I already knew, which was that she was swallowing a crack about hands, asses, and whether they ought to be in contact. A groaner, for sure. Just imagining it, I had to fight not to respond appropriately, and my expression only made her grin widen.

Miguel shook his head and strolled to the desk.

"Checking out already?" the nurse asked. "Your discharge is finished, but if you have any questions, fire away."

"Followup in two weeks, keep head elevated, no strenuous physical activity?"

The nurse nodded. "It sounds like you've got it on lock."

I waited for the bills to start exploding across the desk, but Miguel said his farewells and swept away. Apparently they squared the financials in advance. Which, if you think about it, is even scarier. Checking in meant giving them an open tab.

I tried not to think about it all the way to the elevators, through the lobby, and out to where we'd parked Miguel's Prius. Nurses and orderlies and a receptionist all crossed our paths, but somehow, we escaped.

Miguel unlocked the driver's side door and motioned Erin inside, then went around letting Lena and I in back and himself in the front.

Erin took the key from him, looked around, nodded at each of us – checking our seatbelts, I supposed? – and started the car. She hesitated. "Oh."

"What's wrong?" I asked.

"I just noticed that Miguel doesn't have a phone on him." She took hers from her jacket and handed it to him. "I don't mind if you scout with mine."

He frowned. "Scout?"

"For Materials," she said. "If someone is willing to drive you, it works wonders."

He pushed the phone back to her. "I'll pass."

"Don't worry, I won't claim anything. You can just send yourself a note to come back later –"

"I," he repeated, "will pass."

He nudged the phone against her hand until, with a frown, she tucked it away.

I wondered what he didn't want to explain. That he'd been kicked from the beta, or that he'd convinced himself Third Eye was doing something beyond what a game should be capable of?

Either way, Lena and I had our phones out by the time we set off. This might be our only chance to scout from a car.

I was about to fire up Third Eye, but I'd left Discord up from the previous night.

When I saw the latest messages, I dropped everything else.

 

[MoogleEmpMog]

Chapter 46: Signs and Posts

I didn't shout when I saw the Discord message; kinda rude to distract a driver. But I wanted to.

I went to nudge Lena's arm. When I saw her grinning at her phone, I knew she'd seen the same thing I had.

Our video was ready!

LikeItsNinetyNine had done a final pass on the editing and posted the .mp4 file.

LikeItsNinetyNine: Voila!

Salamancer: Blatant cultural appropriation. For shame.

LikeItsNinetyNine: OMG, I am so sorry!

Salamancer: And I'm joking.

Salamancer: Good work, everyone.

LikeItsNinetyNine: Meanie. :\ What does everyone think of the video?

There was a twelve minute gap in responses. The video was twenty minutes long, so I assumed the first person to answer, DU_Goldie, had either played it back in 1.5x speed or skipped around.

On the one hand, way to appreciate our genius, buddy!

On the other hand, I did the same thing to YouTube videos, and he'd even worked on part of the editing for this one.

I decided to stay annoyed with him. We've already established that I'm not averse to hypocrisy.

DU_Goldie: psa is kinda cringe but what can u do

DU_Goldie: u both look sick + ur mad good w air oc

From context, I assumed he meant sick as in awesome, not sick as in ill. Maybe ill as in awesome.

Salamancer: It's true. If that's what you learned after just a day, I cannot wait to get my own Air.

LikeItsNinetyNine: You're a natural, OldCampaigner! And don't worry. Cringe is what folks say when they don't want to admit that something's nice.

DU_Goldie: ^ cringe

LikeItsNinetyNine: ^ will get it someday.

Salamancer: Hah!

DU_Goldie: w/e

DU_Goldie: ashbird do fire next?

I'd been smiling at the interplay until that line.

Ashbird, I thought, won't do any demonstrations soon. I'd grabbed the only Reactant she'd had a shot at. Really, I'd taken both of mine from Lena. The Water by jumping in front of her, the Air by not telling her about the tarp in the parking lot.

If we'd known enough to plan out our acquisitions, I'd have let her have that first Air and then scarfed up the Water when I got the chance, but however we'd divided our Reactants, each of us getting one would've been far better than both ending up with me.

Ashbird: Nope. Gotta save the best for last!

I watched Lena out of the corner of my eye.

She looked away. After she sucked in a breath, she said, "Stop somewhere when you get the chance, okay, Erin? I want to scout, but I gotta watch this."

"Is your video ready?" Erin asked. "I'm looking forward to it, too."

"This is what you were filming yesterday?" Miguel asked. When Lena nodded, he reached back, ignoring my protest about his neck brace, and pushed her phone down. "Wait a moment before you watch."

"How about nope?" She yanked her phone away and tapped back to Discord. Her finger hovered over the play button. She shot a glance at Miguel. "Ugh, now you got me wondering. Why should I wait?"

"I only wondered if you were sure you wanted to experience your big debut on a phone screen?"

"What's your suggestion?" I asked.

"Since you're driving me home anyway," he said, "why don't you watch it on a very nice television?"

"Changed my mind," Lena said. "I am now the soul of patience."

She started tapping her foot.

I leaned forward. "You sure you're okay with that, man? Considering – everything?"

"Of course." I saw his smile reflected in the car mirror. "How could I resist the chance to point out your mistakes in glorious 4K?"

"Well, I'm not gonna ask you twice," Lena said.

"First time seeing yourself on the big screen?" Miguel asked.

"Depends on how big your TV is." She chuckled. "My parents have a whole hard drive full of home videos."

"That sounds really cute," Erin said.

"Max adorbs, for sure." I'd never met a person as unselfconscious about her baby photos and childhood videos as Lena was. Definitely one of the highlights of my lone trip to visit her parents. "You got any, Erin?"

"Maybe from when I was very little." Erin craned her neck forwards and focused on the road ahead. Definitely not challenging for that unselfconsciousness throne.

Her discomfort, evident enough for even Lena and I to notice it, killed the conversation. With the Prius on electric, in-town power, the only sounds were the SUVs rumbling around us and Miguel's occasional directions to his home. Erin was indeed a careful driver, at least. I supposed she'd have to be, to pass her driving test with such poor vision.

Which wasn't really a thought that made the ride more comfortable.

I tried to think of some way to break the awkwardness.

When I couldn't, I got my camera out and started scanning. Scouting, as Erin put it.

As I'd noticed before, commercial areas seemed weirdly low density when it came to Third Eye objects. I spotted a couple of signs in the game's runic script amidst the South Broadway strip malls, and when we pulled into the turn lane onto Littleton, there was a seemingly normal yield sign too close to the edge of the street. Regardless of placement, it made no sense alongside a stoplight. I could actually reach out and snag it while we idled in the turn lane. A brief flash. Two Iron.

"This is a lot faster," Lena said. "You cruise around doing this with Donica?"

"A couple of times," Erin said. "We traded off driving and scouting. She's usually too busy, though."

"I suppose," Miguel said, "it would be more efficient to have a non-player as a driver."

"Why," Lena asked, "you volunteering?"

"No thanks," he said. "I've had my fill of driving you around to pick up fictional things."

Erin's head tilted. "You're not a player?"

Miguel waved off the idea. "I prefer to think of myself as simply charming."

Lena and I rolled our eyes, but Erin took a hand off the wheel to try to stifle a giggle. "Well, you manage that. But I meant a Third Eye player."

"Working late on the day of release," Miguel said, "meant I was insufficiently dedicated to deserve a spot in the playerbase."

"Ah. The bottom 1% thing." Erin nodded. "It seems so cruel."

"I don't terribly regret it," he said. "My one brush with the AR side of the game left me in the hospital."

She flicked a glance in his direction. "But you can't blame the game for that, surely?"

"The ARG side interests me more, anyway," he said, which sounded like an answer to her question if you didn't think about it too hard.

From the way Erin gripped the steering wheel, I suspected she thought about it hard enough. She asked no follow-up questions, though, just cruised through Littleton until we neared its downtown and Miguel motioned for her to turn south.

We passed the light rail station and the community college – nothing at either, Third Eye-wise, which I expected. Even if no players went to the college, this section was way too easy to access by light rail to stay pristine.

Finally, though, we hit a residential area. Though it made no sense to me, the density of Third Eye objects thickened as soon as we turned the corner.

A painted brick ranch house with a flagpole in front, but instead of a US flag or a Colorado one or a Broncos one, or even a Nuggets one, it had something like a forked medieval pennant curling down it. I'm not saying nobody would put that up, but it didn't surprise me to see it vanish when I looked without my phone.

Another house with gray vinyl siding, surrounded by a brick wall that almost encircled the whole front yard. It had a gap on one end – the opposite end from the driveway.

A two-story house, the only one on the block. Probably because it wasn't one in reality. The upper floor only existed through Third Eye's filter. I didn't see how we could collect it, which was a shame, because there had to be a ton of Materials in there. Glass windows, Wood walls, Stone from the terracotta roof tiles.

Lena nudged my elbow. "Check this one out."

I leaned over to look through her phone. Toward the end of the block on her side, a yard had been overrun with a sort of waist-high hedge maze. I looked over the top of the phone just to make sure it wasn't someone's weird idea of landscaping, but no, it was a Third Eye exclusive.

Judging from the cattails we'd collected in Harvard Gulch park, that would be a whole lot of Wood.

All from a single block. "Any idea why there's so many more objects in residential areas, Erin?"

"It is odd, isn't it?" she said. "Interesting that it's the same here in the suburbs. I'd only really looked around in town."

"Yeah, but why though?" Lena asked.

"I'm sorry," Erin said. "I couldn't say. If we're being perfectly honest, a lot of the design decisions are... odd."

Miguel chuckled. "That's certainly one way of putting it."

"So far, they've all made sense eventually," I said.

I saw his eyebrow raise in the mirror.

"Not everything is how I'd want it designed," I said. "When I started out, I thought a lot of it was just shit. The more I've played, though, the more I think it was done intentionally."

"Oh, I don't doubt that," Miguel said. "My question is, what are the developers' intentions?"

"More walkable areas?" I suggested.

"Maybe here," Lena said. "Half the US, you don't even get sidewalks except in commercial districts."

"Something grounded," Erin said. "Something that feels close to home – or that someone local would recognize as off, while a visitor might not? An attempt to create home field advantage."

"I know you can't see these yet," I said, "but some of them would be pretty obvious whether you were visiting or not."

"Advantage," Miguel said. "Personally, I think that's – ah, but this is me."

Erin pulled into his driveway. I'd been to this blue ranch house a few times before, but I couldn't help but notice how little it reminded me of its tenant. His lease didn't give him much leeway to change the outside, so it looked the same as it ever had, just slightly more decrepit. Same single tree, flowerbeds with untidy perennials, sidewalk up to the front door. No Christmas decorations, even.

That was how I knew what part of it came from Third Eye. A wooden garden arch stretched over the sidewalk. Vines snaked up its trellises, too long to have grown since I'd last visited, too green for winter.

I'd say it really classed the place up, but mostly it made me think Miguel's landlord should put a little more into the landscaping budget.

"You should grab this one, Erin," Lena said. "Only fair after you drove us all down here."

"First, I'd like to know what Miguel was thinking." Erin turned the car off and handed him his keys. "About why Third Eye places objects in residential areas."

"A moment, please." He got out of the car and lit up a cigarette. After a long drag, he took another.

Lena and I got out, too. After a moment, Erin realized she'd have to wait longer than she expected for her answer; she followed us.

I wondered if Miguel had waited to speculate until we were almost at his place so he could use his smoke break to hide the fact he didn't really have a theory.

Once he finally lowered the cigarette and heaved a great smoky sigh, though, he said, "If you were to meet another player on Broadway, what would you expect to happen?"

Erin frowned. "We'd say hello, I guess. Or just go about our business if we were strangers."

He tapped his cigarette. "And here on Sycamore?"

"The same?" She cupped her chin.

I found myself nodding. I hated it, because it suggested design priorities I didn't like and because it suggested Erin, Donica, Lena and I, and all of the wiki team, were wasting our time trying to persuade the devs.

"Don't tell me," Lena said, "you actually parsed that cryptic bullshit?"

"Pretty sure I did," I said.

Miguel leaned over the car, eyebrow raised, cigarette poised.

"You think they're putting more Materials on side streets," I said, "so we have to go places private enough to get invaded."

 

[MoogleEmpMog]

Chapter 47: Video Review

My words hung in the air.

You couldn't get in a Third Eye fight in the middle of a commercial district. I mean, you could, but you'd look like a lunatic. If you got too into it, you might even get booked for disturbing the peace.

On a side street, though? On this block of Sycamore, at this moment, we were the only people on the sidewalk. If we wanted to throw down in an AR game, no one would be around to object. They'd all be at work or school or the store or in their rooms, playing normal-ass games.

If you wanted to encourage PVP, especially unstructured, invasion-style PVP, you had to give players reasons to come to places like this.

Or better yet, places like the tunnel from last night.

Miguel took a long drag on his cigarette.

Lena nodded.

So did Erin.

Which annoyed the shit out of me. "You already figured this out."

It took her a moment to decide how to respond. Finally, she sighed. "I wouldn't call it 'figured out.' It's a possibility I've considered. There are a few other data points leading in that direction, as well. All the same, I'm trying to operate on the idea that it's not true for as long as possible."

"Which is fine," I said, "unless it is."

She thrust her chin forward. "Unless it's proven to be."

"I've trawled your whole Discord archives," Lena said. "You never said boo about this."

"I... didn't post it. I didn't want to encourage anyone else to believe it."

Lena balled her fists. "More like you let us waste our time!"

Erin lowered her eyes. Her polished voice broke and she rasped, "I'm sorry."

I lay my hand on Lena's arm. "Before we say we wasted time," I said, "let's watch the video."

Her shoulders slumped, but her fists remained. In Third Eye, I knew her wings would be battering Miguel's roof and that one scraggly tree. Outside the app, the tree's branches shook in the breeze.

"Let's not fight," Miguel said. He ground his cigarette out on the sidewalk, scooped up the butt, and strode to his front door. After a twist of his keys, it swung open. "Here. Mi casa es su casa."

"Gracias," Erin murmured. She didn't look up, though, or move, except to shy away when Lena stormed past.

I paused beside her. To say – what? It wasn't like I thought Lena was wrong. Overreacting? Maybe. But not wrong.

If Erin wanted to save Third Eye from itself, she could start by being honest with the people who were supposed to be part of her team.

Finally, when she showed no sign of following the rest of us in, I lowered my voice and leaned closer. "You don't have to protect us, Erin. It's nice that you've tried, but we can handle ourselves."

Was I aware of the irony? Of course I fucking was. Why do you think I didn't want Lena to hear me?

Erin's eyes met mine. Or at least the general vicinity of my face. She reclaimed her smile, braces glinting in the pale morning sun. "I'm sure you're right."

Which should've put me at ease.

We made it into the house before I realized why it hadn't.

Like her voice, Erin's smile seemed practiced. Calculated? I trusted her a lot more when she allowed herself to look upset.

The sight of Miguel's entertainment center distracted me. He'd expanded it in the years since I last visited, upgrading his old couch to a plush leather sectional that wrapped around his mahogany coffee table with its leather-bound artbook, granite ashtray, and bowl of nuts carved in the shape of a squirrel.

The TV was new, too, vast and gleaming. Miguel obviously didn't spend more on his jacket or his computer chair than on his television. Hell. I wasn't sure his whole computer cost more than this television. It might be closing in on his car.

Not even the smell of cigarettes baked into every surface could spoil the atmosphere. If anything, it made the place feel kind of like an old-school sports bar.

Miguel held out his hand and I pressed my phone into it. With a few taps, Discord appeared on his TV. The text looked shockingly crisp for such a huge display.

Lena and Erin settled in on opposite ends of the sectional. Lena folded her arms and perched her chin on her fist. Erin reached for a nut, glanced at Lena, and decided to study the outside window.

I found myself wishing I hadn't ever speculated about Material placement. All it had done was create tension. This should have been a triumphant moment, or at least a fun one.

Miguel handed the phone back to me and sat down.

I tried to plaster on a smile. "Who's ready for a show?"

"Let's just get it over with," Lena muttered.

I joined them on the couch and pressed play.

A minute in, after the Lena on TV had finished her intro, the Lena on the couch covered her face and looked away. "Oh God, I can't watch. Goldie was right. Cringe AF."

"I think it's cute," Erin whispered.

"Cute is even worse." What happened to max adorbs, yo? But Lena peeked out through her fingers and so did her smile.

The me on screen blitzed through Wood. I recognized some of the clips as coming from my first attempt, others from the second. DU_Goldie and LikeItsNinetyNine really had done a fantastic job editing the footage. There were even a few shots of me outside Third Eye, which I assumed came from Zhizhi's phone.

One shot was definitely taken from my second attempt: I successfully spun a unit of Stone around me with the two-handed technique I'd learned from Albie.

Erin clapped. "Are you doing that with smart glasses?"

"I just learned the hand movements." I paused the video, set my phone on my lap, and demonstrated the same motions I had on screen. I didn't have an object manifested, so it didn't do anything.

Nonetheless, she started to nod as she squinted to follow the movement of my hands. "That's... really cool."

"This is nothing." I picked my phone back up. "You should've seen what Albie could do. She made me look like a piker."

"So you met another player while you were filming? One with Air?"

"Yeah," Lena said. "Super cool little girl. She was a total Third Eye expert, too. Kicked Cam's ass when they played catch, that's for sure."

"You'll get no argument from me," I said.

"I wonder how she learned so much, so fast," Erin said. "I'd love to talk to her."

Miguel coughed. "Why don't we finish watching the video."

I knew he didn't want us to dwell on the idea of Erin meeting Albie. Had he overheard us talking about her? Or had he just figured out that someone who could follow social media patterns to his hospital room could probably help us find a little girl, too?

Either way, he was too late. Let's say he somehow persuaded me not to ask Erin. The only thing that might have stopped Lena was if she was too pissed to talk to her. I didn't believe she would be. Not after watching this.

I pressed play again. On Miguel's giant TV, day-old versions of Lena and I launched back into our performances.

Once we got through Iron – and past the PSAs, which, in all honesty, were kinda cringe – I found it hard to look away.

It was weird to see myself like this.

For one, my family didn't have the mania for home video that Lena's did. I doubted I had more than twenty minutes of footage from my entire life from before yesterday. Five from a neighbor kid's seventh birthday party where I huddled at the back of the room, miserable in my party hat. Fifteen from my one visit to Lena's parents' house.

For another, almost all of this was of my avatar, and while he – I? – didn't look as spectacular as Lena's or Erin's, this was still my Hollywood self. Dressed for a big-budget fantasy movie, hair swept back and blowing in the breeze I created, amulet gleaming on my chest.

For yet another, what I was doing with Air looked genuinely really damn cool. This was the longest stretch of Third Eye objects in motion I'd seen, aside from Lena's avatar, and, while I still couldn't compare to Albie, I really had leveled up with Air.

And that was just me! I'd already thought Lena looked her best that day, and the streamer persona she affected had made me laugh. Now, I wasn't even laughing. She looked like she belonged on that TV. Cool and confident where she should be, unironically funny, with just enough moments of goofiness left in to keep her seeming approachable.

One of the editors – probably LikeItsNinetyNine, if her and DU_Goldie's reactions to the finished product were any indication – had sprinkled in shots of Lena from the second shoot, the one where I'd thought she looked too content to pull off her persona. Maybe so, but I was willing to bet a whole hell of a lot of players would like to be smiled at the way she smiled at Albie. I certainly would.

By the time we got to Glass, all four of us fell silent, staring as Lena walked around the swirling pane, showing off its reflections with sweeps of her hands and wings.

By the time we got to Plastic, all four of us leaned forward, even Miguel, who probably should've done a better job keeping his head upright instead. The Plastic twirled and soared through Harvard Park, not like an extension of myself, but like a version of myself that could actually dance.

When Lena and I did our sign off, the video ended and popped us back to the Discord screen. Nobody moved.

The silence got awkward. Miguel broke it. "Where do I subscribe?"

"That..." Lena shook her head. "I mean. Is it just me? Or was that awesome?"

"It's not just you," Erin said. She took her glasses off and rubbed her eyes. "I don't know what to say. Thank you. Both of you."

I shifted on my seat. That seemed a little much. "We're doing this for our benefit, too. You don't have to thank us."

"Yes I do." She had a frog in her throat. She took a moment to compose herself, coughed, pressed her hand to her mouth. She stood. She clasped her hands together and gave a little bow. "That was absolutely awesome. It's so much more than I expected when you proposed the idea. I can get people to go along with me because what I do is too useful to them to disregard me. But like this? You can actually get them to listen."

I hated to drag the mood down, but –

"Will it matter?" I asked. "If the developers want invasion PVP, will it change anything even if we get ninety percent of the playerbase opposed to it?"

"It will. It must." She shook her head. "No, those are two things that can't be allowed to go together. How's this? A beta exists to get feedback, right?"

"It usually exists to get some cash before release," Lena said. "But let's go with that."

Erin bobbed her head. "If we can get enough players to listen to what you say, to agree, then Third Eye Productions will hear it."

"If," I said.

"I think there's a good chance," Erin said. "They have reason to watch, and once they do, I just know they're going to want to emulate what they see."

I didn't know how to respond. Lena shrank into the couch.

This was what we wanted, right? All Erin's praise meant was that, at least in her opinion, we'd accomplished our objective. I tried to grin but I don't think I managed.

Miguel said, "I believe it. People emulating Lena and Cameron." He paused just long enough to let it sink in. "God help us all."

Lena snorted. She nudged his foot with hers. "Still think we should stop playing?"

He rose, stepped away from the couch, turned his TV off, and took out another cigarette. He raised it to his lips but didn't light it with us sitting there. "Absolutely."

She rolled her eyes. "Come on, man."

"But. I understand why you won't." He turned his back to us. The cigarette appeared in his hand again, twirling between two fingers. "I wouldn't either. Even if I really did feel what I thought I did down in that tunnel. Perhaps especially."

"Felt?" Erin asked.

"Especially?" I asked.

"I know it was probably just disorientation. All right?"

"Nobody holds it against you, man," I said. "You had a goddamn concussion."

He nodded. For a moment, I thought that was all we were going to get out of him. Then he glanced over his shoulder, one eyebrow raised. "But if I thought it really was real, even for a moment? If I could control it?"

I glanced at Lena. She gulped.

Who could give that up? Not Miguel, but he'd never had a choice. Not Lena.

Not me.

I glanced at Erin.

Her eyes were wide behind her glasses. She cupped her chin and tapped a finger on her lips, like she was letting Miguel's words sink in.

But she'd only done that after she noticed me shift to look her way.

While Miguel spoke, she hadn't reacted at all.

 

[Noxious]

Is Cameron being a little too suspicious here or does the plot thicken?

 

[MoogleEmpMog]

Chapter 48: A Little Knowledge

I watched Erin's hands, because I trusted them more than her face or voice, but she didn't give anything away.

Maybe I was wrong. Believe it or not, it happens. Erin's reaction might have just been delayed because she wasn't used to how Miguel liked to end his proclamations with a leading question.

I didn't think so.

Erin had at least two Reactants. If I stood there and said Third Eye felt real to me in the moments I got Air and Water, if we were in a position where she felt comfortable being honest with me, even if it made her sound kind of crazy? I was sure she would nod and say the same thing about her Fire and Earth.

But we weren't in that position.

We were in Miguel's den, and I didn't want him to believe. Nor did I want a conversation with Erin to be Lena's first inkling that I was starting to.

Miguel was probably a lost cause. I saw the way he watched Erin and I. He'd caught the same thing I had, if the way his lips curled into a smirk around his cigarette was any indication.

"Of course," he said, "it's an absurd notion. Keep playing because you look amazing, and because it really does look like a blast."

"Damn right we will," Lena said. She brushed her hands on her pants and stood up. "Speaking of, you mind if we snag the Materials on your block?"

"I have no use for them." He shrugged. "Be my guest."

"Even split?" I said.

"Nah," Lena said. "I'll take 'em all."

Erin blinked. "Oh! You're kidding."

Lena laughed. "I mean, if you were gonna let me, I wouldn't object. But yeah, I'm kidding. Even split."

"You're welcome to stay for lunch," Miguel said. "But considering your terrible taste, you'll hate it. I need something with kick to welcome myself back."

"Excuse me for wanting to keep some taste buds unburnt," Lena said. Her voice softened. "Are you going to be okay? I'm kidding about lunch, too. We'll stick around for as long as you need."

He waved us toward the door with both hands. "I'll be fine. The best thing for me will be to get the three of you out of my hair. I can finally get some rest."

"Just ring us if you need anything, man," I said.

"If I need something, Cameron, I'll call someone who could get here in less than a half hour." He clapped me on the shoulder. "But I did have a great time watching your video. I think you'll do great."

"Thanks." Now I had a frog in my throat. I patted his hand and stepped toward the door.

Lena beat me there. Over her shoulder, she called, "See you soon!"

"Much to be looked forward to," Miguel said.

Erin nodded to him. "It was really nice meeting you, Miguel. I'm sorry it happened the way it did. That you got hurt, that you lost your beta access, and that I did something you found intrusive."

"Water under the bridge." Abruptly, he scowled. "There's an idiom that's ruined for me."

Erin grinned. "You've been a very gracious host, and you made me feel very welcome. So... thanks."

"That's because you are very welcome," he said.

She looked away. Her throat bobbed as she swallowed.

"Out, the lot of you." Miguel produced a lighter from his pocket. "I hate to be rude to my guests but nicotine waits for no one. Thus, no more guests."

I chuckled. "All right. We won't keep you any longer."

Erin unrooted herself and I followed her out the front door.

We found Lena standing on the sidewalk where we'd spotted the arbor in Third Eye. She had her phone out and her finger outstretched, not quite touching the space where one of the trellises would be. "Have you two both got your XP for this one?"

In answer, Erin got her phone out and panned it up and down. She didn't speak. Still seemed choked up from Miguel's words.

"I'm good," I said. I scanned the surrounding area, for one to check if we'd missed any subtler Third Eye objects, for another to look away from the flash when Lena collected the arbor.

"Hey, Erin," Lena said.

"Hm?"

"No worries about the PVP thing," Lena said. "I don't think we wasted our time anymore."

"I still should have warned you," Erin said softly.

"Yep!" Lena shrugged. "Water under the bridge."

I shook my head. Erin giggled.

"Now that's what I like to see," Lena said. "While we're talking about shit you should've told us, and bad game design decisions, you got any idea why Materials flash when we pick them up?"

"For that, I've got nothing." Erin shook her head. "It really is just shitty design."

"I put it in the feedback form the first day," I said.

They both nodded. "Same."

And still no change. Lena grabbed the arbor and the light was too bright even out of the corner of my eye.

I hadn't seen any new objects, so I focused on the next one in line, the weird hedge maze.

I was going to tell Erin to take it, but it occurred to me that we were all slipping back into treating these things as just potential Materials.

We needed to go deeper.

"Did you take a picture of that arbor before you grabbed it, Lena?" I asked.

"Yeah."

Erin perked up. "Are you going to start posting images of your finds on the wiki?"

"Not a bad idea," I said. "Mostly, though, I just want to make sure we think about all of these as potential clues, too."

"This is the ARG thing you were talking about?"

I filled her in on the website we'd found and the broad strokes of how we'd tracked it down. I considered it very much to her credit that she laughed when Lena and I explained how we recognized the meme. Like us, she could appreciate classics from before her time. I tried to ignore the fact that "before her time" was "our time."

"It's how I found Water," I explained. "Maybe if we understand what the objects here are trying to tell us, we can get –"

Lena elbowed my arm. "Something even cooler. Maybe Crystal, for real. Or Gold."

"If we do find a Reactant," I said, "it's your turn."

"Don't I know it."

Which was apparently as close as we were going to come to admitting that she didn't have any yet. I didn't understand why she insisted on trying to front that her avatar's flames were the result of Fire, not a Custom Personification. Erin, at the very least, had to have one of her own, so I couldn't imagine she'd have any objections to overspending on the Kickstarter.

Whether I thought it was a stupid secret to keep or not, though, it was Lena's.

And I had promised to keep my mouth shut.

"So," I said.

"What does an arbor mean?" Erin asked.

I nodded.

We clustered around Lena's phone and looked at the pictures she'd taken. Two wooden trellises with vines weaving between them, too vibrant for the middle of winter. Three curved pieces of wood linking them together, forming an archway over the sidewalk.

"How much Wood did you get for this?" I asked.

"Seven," Lena said. "I guess one per vine, and then one for each component?"

Made sense.

What didn't, was what deeper meaning the arbor could have.

"It's a dividing line between Mr. Herrera's house and the street?" Erin suggested.

"Is it supposed to lead him out to look for shit," Lena asked, "but he can't because he got kicked from the beta? Now I feel like I should've left it here so he could pick it up at full release."

"I doubt anything here will still be around at full release," I said. "They're going to have to refresh all the objects at some point. Nobody's noticed that happening yet, have they?"

"No," Erin said. "I've made a point to check the spots near DU. Nothing has respawned, and no one has made a reliable report of it doing so anywhere else."

"Maybe they'll do seasonal refreshes," I said. "One at full release, and then another one down the line when most of the objects have been picked up."

"That would make sense," Erin said.

"Doesn't tell us what this is for, though." Lena wiggled her phone. It didn't shake any secrets loose from the arbor in her photo.

We stared at it for a while.

"Let's check the others," Lena said. "Maybe it will make more sense in context."

Hope springs, I thought.

But since none of us seemed to be able to figure out what the arbor was trying to tell us, assuming there was anything to figure, we headed down the street.

We stopped in front of the hedge maze. This one seemed much better as a clue. Which wasn't to say I understood what it meant.

The yard it occupied was one of those with the house all the way in the back, no backyard at all, so the maze had plenty of space to spill out. If it'd been head high, you could have even gotten lost in it for a minute. Assuming you didn't lower your phone.

As it was, though, it only came up to our waists. Well, mine and Erin's. It was up to Lena's stomach.

"I wish we could see it from overhead," she said. "Maybe the pattern is a rune or something?"

"That reminds me," Erin said. "I've talked to Shake about writing a program to brute force solve what the runes mean, assuming it's a substitution cipher for English."

"Sick," Lena said. "Remember what Miguel said last night, though?"

I nodded. "Make sure whatever you set up, it tries French as well as English. Since the devs are Canadian and all."

"That's a great idea," Erin said. "Maybe Salamancer can help. Of course, that means the two of them working together. They always fight, but I think they're just becoming friends in their own way."

Lena gasped. "I can't imagine fighting with your friends!"

I was sure she'd be wearing one of those saccharine, angelic smiles.

But I wasn't looking at her.

I was looking at the maze.

I really wanted to step into it.

It was stupid. Crazy, maybe. I felt certain, though, that if I walked through the maze, respecting its rules, treating it like it could really stop me, I'd find something on the other end.

"Cam?" Lena shook my arm.

I blinked. "Sorry. Spaced for a minute there."

"Did you think of something?" Erin asked.

"Nothing relevant." Nothing we could act on without tromping all over someone's yard. "You take this one. I'll get the flag."

She frowned, but knelt and touched the edge of the maze.

Another flash, and it was gone. Just another too-large, too-empty yard, with nothing but dry grass in or out of Third Eye.

I still wondered what lay at the other end of it, though.

 

[MoogleEmpMog]

Chapter 49: Costs

If the impossible objects on Sycamore meant anything, none of the three of us figured out what. We took our pictures and mourned our inability to get to the house's fake second floor. I grabbed the flagpole – one Iron for the pole, one Plastic for the flag –, we rock-paper-scissored for the wall – Lena won, ten Stone –, and we walked to the light rail station.

On the ride to Englewood Downtown, Lena and I shared our images of Albie and Marroll. I let Lena explain why we wanted to find Albie, and Erin nodded along with a frown.

"I'll find her, of course," she said.

"No crack about what we're going to do if we manage to?" Lena asked.

"Try to help, I'm sure." Erin reached across the light rail booth and Lena let her clasp her hand. "I'm sure you'll find a way."

Lena looked away. "Well. If you get any ideas, drop us a line."

"Mmhm!" Erin's head bobbed.

The light rail's PA chimed. Englewood Downtown station.

I stood up and braced myself on the handrail. "This is our stop. See you around."

"Certainly," Erin said. "This was – fun."

"For sure," Lena said.

Erin peeked at her through her phone. "Hey. If I can find Albie, what do you say to telling me how you made your dress?"

"I'll think about it." Lena tossed her hair and slipped around me toward the light rail doors.

I hesitated, wanting to see Erin's reaction, but she just blinked up at me. I didn't want to get stranded and have to take a different light rail back, so I hurried after Lena.

We'd picked the path between the station and our apartment clean days ago, so we took Englewood's free Art Moves You shuttle home and rested our legs.

"We gotta get the video posted," Lena said as she opened the apartment door. "Your channel or mine?"

"Neither of us has posted any videos, much less drawn an audience," I said. "You play the host. I'm just the lovely assistant. It should be yours."

She grinned, but her grin slipped. "You sure? You're the one who did all the actual work."

"That's true for now. But we'll fix it." I meant we'd get her a Reactant. But I couldn't resist adding, "For instance, you can get it uploaded."

"Yeah!" She pumped her fist and dashed over to fire up her computer.

I booted mine as well, but for once it wasn't to do Third Eye shit. As much as it pained me, I still needed to finish that damn web design job I'd taken before the beta started. Also, to find some other paying work.

I imagined turning in a site like the one we'd unearthed the night before. What would a client even do if they saw that in 2023?

Since I didn't suspect the answer would include "appreciate its antique charm," I buckled down and started designing something modern while Lena got the video up.

Bringing it online took about a half hour, which was a lot less than it took for me to finish that website. Nested DIVs and responsive CSS drove all thoughts of Third Eye from my mind.

"Video's live," Lena said.

I grunted acknowledgment. "Don't forget to send a link to the wiki team so they can post it on there."

"Like I didn't already do that? How else are we going to jumpstart our subscriber count?"

I smiled thinly and refreshed the page I was working on. Somehow, the titles of the sample posts kept sliding down and overlapping the body text. This wasn't even the part of the project I was underqualified for!

"You should take a break," Lena said.

I adjusted an internal margin, refreshed, cursed, set it back and tried the external. Was it the border I had wrong?

"We gotta decide on food," Lena said.

"Scrounge," I said.

It wasn't the border, either. Wasn't there a third one? Padding. Or was the title inheriting something from somewhere else in the code?

"I think I deleted our video by accident," Lena said.

I spun my chair around.

She was grinning from her perch atop hers. "Welcome home."

I expelled a laugh. "I'm home."

She peeked around me. "I'd offer to help, but I can't even see the code. I just see blonde, brunette, redhead –"

"The line is 'I don't even see the code,' and you damn well know it."

"Nope. I totally forgot." Her grin put the lie to the claim, not that I'd have ever believed it. "Maybe I'll call Miguel up and make him give us his Netflix password. We can rewatch the original Matrix and then we'll start on the sequels –"

"Enough! I'll take a break." I dragged myself out of the chair and padded over to her. "Besides. I only need to see redhead."

"Heh." She ran her fingers through her hair. She played with a ringlet for a minute.

I waited for her to speak again.

She said, "You really just want to scrounge? I could go for another pizza."

So she wasn't ready for a serious conversation, huh?

That probably meant I wasn't, either.

Which was not the same as saying we shouldn't have it.

In fact, we should probably have a couple of different ones. About our relationship. About whether Miguel was right regarding Third Eye. About what we'd do if we could find Albie again.

Those, I could procrastinate on. One, however, was unavoidable.

I rubbed my arm. "I can't afford to get any more pizza this month. I can't really afford anything else, especially if you interrupt my web work."

"That bad, huh?" Lena frowned. For a moment. Then she gave me a thumbs up. "It's fine! I'll treat you."

I raised my eyebrows. "You sure?"

"Of course!" She got her phone out and started her order. "You can pay me back. You know. After the video makes us both gazillionaires."

"I think I can pay you back before the heat death of the universe."

"Way to sell us short." She tapped something else on her phone. "Maybe I'll just get me a pizza."

In the end, though, she ordered it with three meats and green peppers, a combination we both liked.

I was hoping Raul would deliver it. I wanted to ask him if he remembered seeing anything weird as he was climbing to our place the last time. If he'd spotted a delivery drone as it buzzed away, it would clear up at least one mystery. When I got the door, though, the person delivering the pizza was a girl I'd never met. She handed over the box, collected her tip, and jogged to the stairs.

I looked around the walkway. No packages. Not that there should've been, but after last time I had to check, you know?

We ate in silence – I guess Lena learned her lesson after she almost choked. I put my two leftover pieces in the fridge and tried not to notice how little else remained in there.

I wasn't the only one who had been picking Third Eye over paying work for the last week.

I closed the fridge. "You actually can cover that pizza, right?"

"Of course. When would I ever make a rash financial decision?" She sighed. "I can cover it, honest. But I really do hope the video does some numbers. It would be nice to not have to ask for a while."

"Yeah." I walked over and rubbed her shoulders. "Erin and Miguel seemed pretty hype. So did the wiki team. Maybe we can save the soul of Third Eye and make a buck doing it."

"Hell yeah." She sprang up and ran to her computer. "I'm gonna check the numbers!"

They weren't great that afternoon, but they weren't nothing, either. I figured we'd need roughly twice the entire Third Eye playerbase to watch if we wanted to cover the cost of pizza, but just knowing that somebody had clicked through from the wiki left both of us grinning.

I was so energized I even fixed my web design problem. I got it sent off to the client before I crashed for the night.

That should have opened up the next day to hunting for new gigs.

So naturally, Lena and I were out of the house before nine, scouting Materials.

It was slower going now. We'd grabbed most of the objects in our neighborhood, and the obvious place to roam next was near DU, which I knew was picked even cleaner than Englewood. Anywhere we wanted to scout, we'd have to get there first. It would cut into our time, and the longer the beta stretched on, the further we'd have to travel. For the moment, we ended up grabbing a bus back to Littleton.

We'd hoped to stop by and check on Miguel, but when we passed his house, his car was gone. He must've decided to go into work, concussion be damned. Lots more to find in his neighborhood, though.

It was also slower going because we tried to photograph and document each find. Parsing a clue seemed like our best chance at finding a Reactant for Lena.

A couple of times, I thought we'd successfully gone deeper, chasing an odd thread or something that looked like more than just a supply of Materials. None of them led to anything as spectacular as the tunnel. By the time we staggered home that evening, loaded with Materials, we were still on two Reactants and both of them were mine.

Lena brightened as soon as we got home and she checked her computer. "8,000 views now!"

She showed me the page.

I asked, "Does that pay for a pizza?"

"I'm not sure it pays for a tip," she said. "But it's growing. People are listening. Right?"

"What are they saying?"

She scratched the back of her neck. "Don't they say to never read the YouTube comments?"

"Yeah," I said, "but I don't think we can get away with that if we're trying to become content creators. Especially if we're actually trying to change people's minds about something."

"Plus," Lena said, "Albie promised to comment."

She squeezed her eyes shut and scrolled down.

I started reading off the top comment. "That looks so badass! You've got to tell us where to get our own."

We wouldn't. Not unless the devs listened to Erin and cut the invasion PVP from the game. Oh, and not unless we figured out how to find more Reactants.

But at least if people found them on their own, the ones who thought we were doing cool things might try to follow our example.

"Hey, that ain't bad," Lena said. She risked peeking. "Ugh."

I wondered what she was reacting to.

The second comment read "lol so cringe." I wondered if DU_Goldie had decided to rip the bandaid off by posting it himself, or if he'd just correctly predicted some of the reactions. Still, it had a lot fewer thumbs up than I expected.

The third comment purported to be from AlephLambda. Coming from a dev was, I suspected, the only way it could've been voted up, because it was as vaguely positive as their Discord posts. "You've made some really interesting advancements! Looking forward to what you do next. "

The fourth comment just read "fire video." I was pretty sure that was just another compliment. But it could also have been a request.

One we couldn't fulfill.

"Tomorrow," Lena said.

"Yeah," I said.

But we were both wrong. The next day played out on repeat. We rode the bus further south, we collected the Materials we found, we tried to follow clues. We tried following ShakeProtocol's predictive algorithm, too. Add another miss to his tally. His attempt to triangulate where Reactants would appear relative to clusters of Materials either didn't work at all, or only worked in whatever environment he was trying to use it.

The video crossed 20,000 views that evening. The comments were only about 10% "lol so cringe" by volume.

On the plus side, I was starting to believe that if we kept this up, it might cover a pizza after all.

On the minus side, we couldn't identify any of the comments as coming from Albie.

And further on that side, more and more came from people who weren't going to be able to follow our example any time soon. Half complaining, half glad they could at least still watch while they waited for full release.

All unable to play.

A week after the start of the beta, the bottom 1% had begun to claim active players.

 

[MoogleEmpMog]

Chapter 50: Ripples

NugsFan15: I can't be certain yet, but from the number of reports we're seeing, I suspect the percentage of players dropped each day is based on the initial backer totals, not the current players, or even the number who signed in when the beta started.

ShakeProtocol: So if the beta lasts for one hundred days, we're all out.

NugsFan15: It's just a guess. The numbers wouldn't be that different so far, and it isn't as though they're comprehensive. All I can do is extrapolate from the data we have.

NugsFan15: But yes.

NugsFan15: If things continue as I suspect, and if the beta lasts for more than three months, everyone will lose access.

Not exactly the conversation I wanted to wake up to. Nonetheless, it was what I saw on Discord when I booted my computer up the next morning. I stared at the words for a few minutes, then retired to the kitchen to see if I could find anything vaguely appropriate for breakfast.

Lena yawned and stretched her way out of the bedroom around the time I finished scrambling our last two eggs, our last slice of cheddar cheese, and the last of our milk.

She looked me up and down. "Don't you look chipper."

"Check Discord."

I heard her do so in the background while I scraped breakfast onto a couple of plastic plates.

I carried a plate and fork over to Lena's computer and set it on her desk.

"Mm, thanks!" She started shoveling eggs into her mouth.

I retrieved mine and ate standing up as I read over her shoulder. I'd only seen the beginning of the conversation. From what appeared as Lena scrolled down, it didn't look like it was going to get more encouraging.

LikeItsNinetyNine: Maybe it's for the best.

NugsFan15: How can you say that?

LikeItsNinetyNine posted a link.

Lena clicked it and wrinkled her nose. "Who reads their local news?"

"People who can afford a subscription, or are willing to turn off their Adblock, apparently." The box insisting that Lena do one or the other had popped up to block the screen.

"Not a chance." She refreshed the page and selected everything without scrolling. A quick paste into Notepad++ and we had a text file of the article, plus a garbled mess of other headlines.

The one we wanted to read opened with "Gamer Rage Implicated In Arrest." It didn't get better from there.

I didn't think the author understood the difference between an AR game and Fortnite. Nor how easily a person could flow from losing a Third Eye fight into starting a fistfight. Which was probably for the best, because, as far as I could tell, that's exactly what had happened. One of the players ended up in the hospital – that made at least two, if you counted Miguel – and the other got booked for assault.

NugsFan15: This is exactly what I was worried about.

LikeItsNinetyNine: Playing around with Third Eye at home is all kinds of fun. I love talking to you all, and I hope I get to work on another video.

LikeItsNinetyNine: I think I'm gonna stop turning the app on when I leave the house, though.

NugsFan15: You know you probably won't be able to stay in the beta very long if you do that, right? Materials and XP seem to be two of the metrics they're using to judge who gets dropped.

LikeItsNinetyNine: I know I don't want any trouble when I'm with my kids.

NugsFan15: You're right. Of course.

ShakeProtocol: I'm not going to quit. We should start arranging groups to go on scouting expeditions together, though. That will have two benefits.

ShakeProtocol: A large group should deter invaders. And, it will increase the total XP generated, since people will get both what they collect and a small amount for what they see. Over time, the people who group up for defense will simply outscale invaders, so they should start falling out of the beta.

LikeItsNinetyNine: It also sounds fun! I could get behind that. Have to find some local folks to run around with.

Lena and I had been scouting together the whole time. The first day I tried to go it alone, I got invaded by Matt. Shake's theory about deterrence checked out.

Still, I frowned.

Lena glanced up at me. "Sup?"

"He's wrong about the XP."

She nodded. "Each object will provide more total XP if people share the chance to focus on it, but one player scouting alone gets all hundred for themselves every time. Less total XP in the system, but more for that player. Until he runs out of objects, anyway."

"And the people who go solo end up with a lot more Materials," I said. "That hasn't really mattered yet for me."

As I'd expected, I couldn't recover MP while it remained overhealed by Albie's potion. Between the Air I'd used for the video and a few experiments with Water, I was down to 9,974, and none of it came back overnight.

If anything, I'd become even more reluctant to use my MP than I had been when I only had ten a day. Meanwhile, my Material stockpile kept growing.

"But," I continued, "if you get your Reactant today, if you really want to you can spend a hundred MP and burn through, what, a quarter of your supplies?"

"Literally burn through, if I get the right thing," Lena said. "I might actually do it, too, to experiment. I just know there's more to Fire than what the wiki team has figured out so far. They're biased 'cause it's 'destructive.'"

She did finger quotes in the air.

I grinned, but it got me thinking. "Fire doesn't really suit Erin's whole community-building persona, does it? I wonder why that was her first."

Lena raised an eyebrow. "It's not like the game knows who it's giving the stuff to. We find what we find."

"Right." I ambled back to my computer and fired it up.

She *was* right. Wasn't she? So why did I have Air and Water, when the first time I saw my avatar, I thought my outfit evoked seas and skies? Why, when I saw Matt's avatar, had I thought someone dressed like him would use Earth – and why had I been right?

Could Third Eye Productions have seeded objects in such a way as to encourage specific players to get them? Maybe they planted a source of Air right near my apartment because they'd assigned that as one of my elements. Even the Water in the tunnel was probably geographically closer to me and Lena than any other players.

But there was the rub. Me *and* Lena. If they'd seeded our neighborhood, where was her Fire?

It was a lot more likely that I'd gotten lucky, both in grabbing the Water I wanted so much and in guessing what Reactants Matt would try to use against me. Not that the latter had done me any good.

Even if I was willing to entertain a supernatural, or at least sufficiently advanced, component to Third Eye, I didn't see how they could guarantee specific players getting specific resources. At the end of the day, we still had to scout, and we still had to choose to collect the stuff.

"Shake is wrong about something else," Lena said.

"Hm?"

"Didn't you say that dude took ten percent of your XP when he kicked your ass?"

I puffed my chest out. "When I was defeated in a hotly contested battle – in which, yes, technically, I never actually got an attack off – and also in which, technically, he literally kicked me in the ass with some Stone –"

Lena snickered.

I cleared my throat. "– he did get ten percent of my XP, yeah."

"So if XP is what keeps you in the game," Lena said, "the fastest way to get more is going to be to win a lot. If PVP wins count directly, it'll be even more extreme."

"And the best way to ensure you win," I said, "is to ambush a player who doesn't expect you."

"Almost like they designed it that way."

I pinched my nose. I thought about posting our discussion on the Discord. Probably should've. At least, I should've DMed it to Erin.

But I had a feeling she already knew. She'd mentioned "a few other data points" leading her to fear that Third Eye was built to encourage invasion.

Quietly, I said, "Do you really think you'd enjoy it, Lena?"

"Invasion? Who cares? If people keep doing it, a journo with at least a quarter of a clue is going to hear about it and the whole game will get shut down. Just like Erin said."

I looked over my shoulder. "That's not what I asked."

She slouched in her chair. "Yeah."

Crazy, I thought. But even I'd felt a rush after I dueled Matt, and that from a loss. I understood how she felt even if I didn't feel the same. "Hey, maybe it'll be like we talked about in the video. We can get PVP restricted to specific areas, but make them big enough that people can still opt in to invasion."

"Loving the optimism."

"We've just got to keep pushing for it. Speaking of, how are the stats on the video?"

"Oh shit, I haven't checked yet today! This is your fault for distracting me."

I'm sure she pulled them up. She didn't say anything, though.

I checked on my own computer.

70,000 views.

My chest felt tight. My hands, sweaty. I was sure plenty of those views came from bots, but if even half were real, an appreciable portion of the Third Eye playerbase had watched The Magnificent Ashbird and her lovely assistant, Old Campaigner. "That... might actually pay for a pizza."

Lena didn't say anything. I heard her chair creak as she nodded, though.

"We've got to get another one up," I said.

"Right," she said. "I mean, who else is going to tell people how they're supposed to play?"

"Exactly. We're doing this for the community." I ran my fingers through my hair. "I do think we need to keep that in mind. We need to stay authentic with it, even to ourselves."

"What the hell, Cameron?"

I spun around, eyes wide. "What?"

"How dare you suggest the act I put on was authentic!" Lena stuck her tongue out.

I laughed. Mostly because if I told her the truth – that I suspected her "act" had been a chance for her to live out some long-held fantasies – she might get pissed for real.

"Go get dressed," I said. "I'm going to hit up the wiki team and see if anybody has tips for using Water. For something I'm supposed to show off, I haven't actually tried it much."

Partly because every MP I spent was one I wasn't getting back, but mostly because I didn't want to show off Water around Lena.

She didn't seem bothered by it this morning, though.

"The Magnificent Ashbird will return!" She hopped off her chair and scurried to the bedroom.

I shook my head, then returned to the Discord.

OldCampaigner: Lena and I want to get the next video up. We can talk about grouping up if you want.

NugsFan15: That's wonderful! Do you have time to film it today?

OldCampaigner: Sure. What I haven't had time to do is learn much about using Water.

I was hoping LikeItsNinetyNine would still be around, but her name had slid into the Offline category.

NugsFan15: If you're going to film in the park again, you and I can practice.

OldCampaigner: You got Water, too?

NugsFan15: Just found some yesterday! Now all I need is Air.

OldCampaigner: Congrats!

I meant the word, but I had to force the exclamation point.

If Lena had just told Erin the truth, maybe Erin would have saved that Water for her.

Would she? For all that Erin talked about wanting to become friends, we'd still only known each other for about a week. I'd give up a third Reactant so Lena could get her first. But for an acquaintance?

A DM from Erin distracted me from having to answer honestly.

NugsFan15: I didn't want to share it with the rest of the group, but I have some info for the two of you.

My eyes widened.

OldCampaigner: About Albie?

NugsFan15: Yes.

NugsFan15: But I'm afraid you're not going to like it.

 

[MoogleEmpMog]

Chapter 51: Albie Watching

Lena and I sat on comfortable metal chairs, picking at ham and chicken sandwiches that we could, technically, afford.

Erin had suggested we meet at the Lil Coffea Shop on Downing, a couple blocks between the park and her dorm. When I searched it to make sure she hadn't typoed, a glance at the prices made me wince. An hour ago I would've found some excuse to delay. The payment for my web work had been deposited in my PayPal in the morning, but I wouldn't have chosen to spend it trying out a new cafe.

If Erin was going to tell us something about Albie, on the other hand?

Especially if the news wasn't good?

I'd eat South Denver's most expensive sandwich. These? Just a little out of our price range. I think they were worth it, but I'd be lying if I said I noticed the taste while we waited for Erin to speak.

I mean, I waited.

Lena leaned so far over the table, I figured it had to be bolted down to not tip over. "Are you going to tell us, or what?"

Erin picked at her salad. "I really think we ought to eat first."

"Makes one of us."

"I don't think your friend is in any danger!" Erin's fork rattled against her bowl. "I'm sorry. The more I think about it, that's an absurd thing for me to say."

Which really fired up my appetite, as you can imagine.

"Just tell us, Erin," I said. "Whatever it is, we need to understand before we can try to help."

"That's the trouble," Erin said. "I don't understand it at all."

"Start at the beginning." I couldn't believe how calm my voice sounded. I'd let go of the sandwich because I was afraid my fingers would crush it. Now I started to worry about the wrought iron of the table.

Erin nodded. She shuffled bread on the edge of her bowl. She cleared her throat and took a deep breath.

"The first thing I did was search the name Albie in connection with local schools for all the grades she could plausibly have been in. That didn't turn up anything. So I tried with a bunch of related names, in case that was a diminutive. I think it probably is, by the way, because that's the main way I've seen it used. It seems it's often a boy's nickname? Anyway, none of that turned anything up."

She paused for a breath.

Lena spread her hands. "Okay, then what?"

"I tried a reverse image search," Erin said. "She's quite a distinctive looking little girl, but nothing that I turned up matched the photo you showed me. Her dog is, if anything, even more unusual. I couldn't find a breed like him. Is he really as big as he looks in the picture?"

"No," I said. "He's even bigger. He jumped on me at one point and it was like getting in the way of a friendly bear."

Erin smiled, briefly. "Well, in any case, the image search didn't work, either. I tried the same roster of names on social media and none of them turned up a person who seemed like they would've been in that age group and in the Denver Metro area at the time."

"You're telling us a lot about how you didn't find Albie," Lena said.

Erin drew in on herself. "Just trying to start at the beginning."

"It's fine," I said. It wasn't. "Keep going."

"Finally," Erin said, "I thought, it sounds like there's some connection between Albie and the developers. Since she had such advanced techniques early in the game. She might be someone's daughter or little sister – you mentioned a brother, yes?"

I nodded.

"And I think that might be true, which on some levels makes the rest more concerning rather than less, if I'm being totally honest." Erin tapped her chin. "Although it might mean she's safer than I feared."

"The rest?" Lena loomed over the table, which took some doing at her height.

If this went much longer, I'd have to pull her off Erin.

If it went much longer, I might not pull her off.

Erin met Lena's gaze. "Once I started looking for a girl by that description in a Third Eye context, I finally got hits about her."

That sounded great. Except for Erin's tone, and her expression. And, you know. The entire conversation.

I didn't relax and neither did Lena, but at least she withdrew to our side of the table.

"She's been mentioned several times." Erin looked down at the table. "I found four different accounts of a girl with aquamarine hair, accompanied by a huge dog."

"Fantastic," Lena said. "So what's the problem?"

"Those descriptions," Erin said, "were of someone who invaded, and crushed, players in Cleveland, Seattle, Osaka, and Melbourne."

We stared at her.

She shifted in her chair.

Lena's fingers drummed on the table. Finally, she said, "Osaka? Like, in Japan?"

Erin nodded.

"And Melbourne, Australia?" I asked.

Another nod.

I glanced at Lena, but she looked as bamboozled as I felt. I was pretty sure you could fly to those places within three days, but you wouldn't get much else done. I said, "So you think Albie's, what? Jetting around the world getting into random PVP?"

"Forget about the travel," Lena said. "Albie wouldn't do that. You didn't meet her, Erin. She wasn't like that at all. Sure, she got a kick out of trolling Cam, but who wouldn't?"

I gave Lena a look, but she ignored me and I couldn't pretend to be offended.

"Apart from that," Lena continued, "she was the sweetest little thing you'd ever meet. Kind, helpful, generous. Right?"

"Right." My quadruple-digit HP and MP were testaments to how generous Albie had been. "Admittedly, she did beat me in Third Eye PVP."

"It sure as hell wasn't an invasion," Lena snapped.

I spread my hands. "No, I agree. I don't believe Albie would just go around attacking people. That's nothing like how she behaved."

"Who are these assholes claiming she did?" Lena slammed her fist on the table. Our plates rattled.

Erin and I both glanced into the interior of the cafe, where the barista had started frowning at us. I flashed a smile and he didn't look mollified.

"Whoever they are," Lena said, "I bet they tried to invade Albie. Then when she kicked their asses, because of course she would, they went running online to shout 'plz nerf!' I get my hands on 'em they'll find out what OP really looks like."

I clasped Lena's arm and squeezed. "We don't even know if they're really talking about Albie."

After a moment she batted at my hands, but sank back into her chair, shoulders hunched, glaring.

"These 'assholes,'" Erin said, "are people who were using the invasion report system I've set up. It's not immune to abuse, as I'm sure you know. Aren't you the ones who said I had to trust people, though? Or at least try to?"

"Not if they're talking shit about Albie." Lena sighed. She picked up her sandwich, tore a piece off and gnashed it. She muttered, "It just doesn't make any sense."

"I completely agree," Erin said. "But I'm not sure it makes as little sense as you think."

I watched Lena's eyebrow creep up. Watched very carefully. "Lena. Let's hear her out."

"Let's," Lena said, around a mouthful of ham and chicken and clenched teeth.

"The only incident that had details, beyond just the description of the invader, was the one in Melbourne," Erin said. "The poster described the attack as terrifying, like something out of a horror movie, but it wasn't because the girl was being aggressive or cruel. It was just creepy because she appeared suddenly and insisted on playing a game. The game of course being Third Eye, which she very definitively won."

Lena shot a glance at me.

I took a moment and took a bite of my sandwich. I chewed, sandwich and thoughts alike. I said, "Albie did love playing with me. If she doesn't think invasion PVP is a bad thing – which makes sense, if she's related to one of the devs; they clearly don't and would want to convince her – then all Erin is really describing is Albie trying to play with other people."

"And all of them got freaked out by it?" Lena asked. "I don't buy it. She was almost too polite to tell you that you were shit with Air, much less to attack you!"

"The only ones who got freaked out are the ones who posted about it," I said. "Somebody who thought, 'Sure, I'll have a match with this girl,' and then they lost and were impressed and went on with their day? They wouldn't have posted on Erin's site."

Lena stewed on this while she took another bite. "And she's jetting around the world doing this... why, exactly?"

"Traveling with her brother, maybe? Remember, she knew she wasn't going to be at the park again the day after."

"That bothers me in and of itself," Erin said. "I know Third Eye seems to have limitless resources, but what is an indie developer doing flying around in the first place? Assuming that Albie is indeed traveling with her brother, and he's one of the devs?"

Lena glanced at me. "What about that other theory you had, Cam?"

"I don't think Albie's brother is a dev," I said. "I think he's somebody who swept in with extra financial backing after the end of the Kickstarter. Venture capitalist, techbro type."

"And he's given his sister a head start on the game so she has something to do while he travels for business?" Erin asked.

"It was the best theory I could come up with," I said. "Albie had a Potion. She gave it to me after I lost our game of catch. Or our PVP match, if you want to look at it that way. She said her brother made the Potion. I don't know about you, but I haven't even seen them outside of the shop before."

"Wow." Erin took a bite of her salad. She frowned down at it. "I suppose it's a nice thing to do for your little sister. Certainly a nice thing for Albie to do for you! I wish this wasn't what she thought was the right way to play, though."

"She doesn't," Lena said.

Erin and I both looked at her.

She met our gazes. No anger in hers, not even annoyance. Calmly, she said, "I know she doesn't."

"It's nice that you want to vouch for her," Erin said, "but how can you be so certain?"

"Because The Magnificent Ashbird and her lovely assistant said it wasn't the right way." Lena grabbed the rest of her sandwich and stood up. "And Albie is our number one fan."

 

[MoogleEmpMog]

Chapter 52: Waterworks

The basketball hit the grass with a dull whump, far short of the tree I was aiming for.

Lena said, "Nice shot?"

Normally, I would have expected her to have meant it sarcastically, but with her sports knowledge, or lack thereof, I couldn't be sure.

I'm not saying I was going to drain a clutch three if left to my own devices. Or a clutch free throw. Or literally any action requiring accuracy with a ball of any kind. I hadn't so much as tried to play since high school.

But I could've taken a better shot than that if I didn't have to hold my phone in one hand. The ball having real weight and more than an imagined tactile feel might have helped, too.

The fact that the ball existed – exclusively in Third Eye – was a testament to what Water could do. Albeit, with an assist from Earth.

"It seems like it's hard to use most of these with just Water," I said.

Erin nodded. "The effects look really cool, but so far they haven't seemed very practical. Of course, I just got my Water, so I have a lot more learning to do, too."

The conversation about Albie had not put me in the best mindset to master my new, much desired Reactant. If it had just been Erin and I, I might have bagged the whole expedition. A quiet morning hunting Materials, by which I mean brooding, would've suited me better.

Lena wouldn't have it.

She acted utterly convinced that Albie wouldn't do the things that Erin had told us about her. When Lena acted that certain, I knew the person she was trying to sell on something was herself.

But she'd managed to sell me, too. Even Erin seemed swept up in her wake.

So we'd walked over to the park and begun practicing for the video.

What I'd learned from my experiments, and what Erin had showed me, was this:

We could change the color, texture, and, seemingly, the fundamental makeup of a manifested object. The fake basketball I'd tried to shoot was the right color for the ones I'd been forced to use in high school PE, all orange, although it lacked regulation black stripes. It looked like it had the rubbery, nubby surface I expected from a basketball. Since I couldn't actually feel it, I couldn't say for sure if it had the right resistance, but I needed to use about the right amount of force to throw it, so its weight checked out.

I could duplicate all of that by matching Erin's movements, although it took me several tries to get orange rather than red or pink. I don't think I ever managed something quite the right shade to pass for a real basketball. The texture on mine looked fine, as far as I could tell, but I didn't know sports equipment well enough to be sure.

Especially when I had to apply color and texture to a sheet of Plastic, rather than a ball of about the right size, like the one Erin handed me.

Similarly, we could both change the color of Glass, but she could first form it into the shape she wanted, something like a blown glass sculpture, and then tint it. I just ended up with a pane of stained glass. We could change the type of glass as well as the color; my discarded test pane was as dull and thick as the plexiglass at the old aquarium.

Iron was where it got more interesting.

"I said it before," Lena said. She kicked a discarded test piece and Third Eye's incredible sound design supplied a credible impression of a bronze gong. "They should just call this Metal."

"It really doesn't look like Iron anymore," Erin said.

We'd changed panels of supposed Iron into something that looked more like bronze, then silver, then even gold, which was, according to the store and at least some wiki entries from around the world, its own separate resource in Third Eye.

Then, with the combination of Water and Earth, Erin had shaped her metal into the wide, curving bowl or shield Lena had kicked.

Mine, despite its changed properties, had remained an undifferentiated sheet as I cycled through different metals. I'd discovered one trick, though, and it had let me make at least as perfect a sphere as the one Erin had shaped with Earth. That would be one of the wow moments when I did it in the video.

"I think you should do Iron last in this video," Erin said. "Or Wood?"

"Definitely Wood," I said.

Skip over Stone, the most boring yet again – we could turn it into granite, or marble, or obsidian, or a few types of rock I didn't recognize but which didn't seem super interesting – and you had one last Material.

Wood was by far the most interesting to use with Water.

Because Water brought it to life.

The tree I'd aimed the basketball at was Erin's creation. She'd used Earth to form it into a rough dowel rod shape, but with Water, she'd made that blossom into something that looked like a living tree. It grew bark and branches and leaves until it was about the size of some of the saplings that were staked for the winter along the path. Aside from lowering my phone, my only way of telling them apart was to see which one had flowers and leaves instead of seasonably appropriate bare branches.

I couldn't start with a rod, so the plant that grew from my Wood looked a lot weirder at first, but unless you'd watched it grow, or paid close attention to how all the stalks grew together at the base, you could mistake it for a perfectly ordinary hedge.

"Yeah," Lena said. "Wood plus Water is probably the coolest thing I've seen in Third Eye yet."

Erin swept her phone in Lena's direction, up to her wings. Her eyebrow raised. She didn't ask, but I knew what she had to be thinking.

Lena must have, too, because she clapped and said, "We ready to get this show on the road?"

Erin's shoulders sank. "Just let me get out of the way. I can try filming some from the bench, like in your first video."

"You sure you don't want to join the shoot?" I asked. "Even if you skip the Earth you're still better with Water than me. I'm sure people would be happy if you guest starred."

"Absolutely not!" Erin covered her mouth. She retreated to the bench and huddled there. "Sorry. But, no. I don't want to be on camera."

I spread my hands. "I wasn't going to force you."

She bobbed her head. "I know."

Something about the way she said it irked me.

I trusted Erin to more or less have our best interests at heart, but it seemed like every time I talked to her, something came up to make me question her methods, if not her motives.

Take her confidence just now. She wasn't saying she knew I wouldn't force her because that would be rude.

She was saying she knew I wouldn't force her because if it came down to Lena and I against her, she fully expected to win.

Which was probably true. She was the only one of us who had an inherently destructive Reactant. It wasn't like Lena and I could really team up, either, when she didn't have any Reactants at all. Erin wasn't supposed to know that, though I'm not sure how well Lena had kept her secret. On the other hand, Erin probably didn't know about my overhealed resources.

Right or not, though, it annoyed me.

Lena caught it, too. Her eyes narrowed and she didn't so much shake her head as flick it. Subtle reactions. I could notice them, but I wasn't sure anyone else would.

Outside of Third Eye.

In it, her wings practically attacked the air, and little flames dripped from her hands and sizzled on the grass as she stalked over to take her place for the video shoot.

I didn't think either of us would've minded if we hadn't already been at least a little annoyed.

Okay, Lena probably would've minded.

"Heya, Third Eye community! It's ya girl, Ashbird, back with another introduction to a Reactant." She cocked her head and grinned at my camera. The framing wasn't quite right, I thought. I wanted to hold my phone at a lower angle so that, despite her height, Lena could sort of look down her nose at it. That would suit the expression she'd settled on for this intro. "I know what you're thinking. Is she really going to do it this time? Do we get to see the master at work?"

I rolled my eyes. "How hard are you going to push that?"

Her eyes flashed. Literally, though my camera. "Hard enough to keep them clicking back for a new video. Way to ruin the take, by the way."

"We always try a couple of takes of the intro," I said. "That way, LikeItsNinetyNine and DU_Goldie have more footage to work with."

"We could still try to nail it first try."

"Sorry." I waved for her to go again.

She did. This time, I got her from a lower angle, but she pushed her annoyance away and delivered her line with the peppy energy she'd opened the last video with.

We'd get a take where it all worked eventually.

I flipped to selfie mode. "Sorry, distinguished guests, but you're stuck with me again for this one. Today, I'm going to show you what you can do with Water."

"Everybody thank my lovely assistant, OldCampaigner, for covering all this boring stuff so we can save the best for last."

"Don't tell our audience that what I'm doing is boring, they'll click away."

"No chance," Lena said. "You provide way too much eye candy."

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Erin grinning, which seemed like a pretty good indication that this back-and-forth would work for at least some of the audience.

Would the rest of the video work, though?

The whole wiki team had pitched in to help us sketch out the first one, writing parts as a script and parts as a guideline. Between the news about Albie, and our desire to keep pumping videos out while people seemed interested, and the need to spread the advice to group up, we'd rushed in without the same level of planning.

What was more, Water, for as much as I'd ached to find it, didn't offer the same kind of visual appeal that Air had.

End on Wood, of course, and everyone who watched that far would be enthralled.

Open on Iron? I hadn't found Glass or Plastic tricks as visually interesting as what I'd done with what should've been called Metal. Stone, I almost wanted to skip, but I'd go through it for thoroughness's sake.

Yeah. Iron felt right to me.

We'd succeeded the first time with a plan that went a little deeper than doing what felt right in the moment.

And I was taking too long to decide. Lena made little finger twirls to hurry me on, more frantic with every minute I hesitated.

Open with Water and Iron. But, I thought, don't stop there. I nodded to myself.

"We're going to change up the format a little for this one, because Water is... weird, compared to Air." I settled into the idea that this would just be a rehearsal and prompted Lena. "Give them something about the verbs."

"Air 'moves,'" she said. "Water 'changes.'"

I nodded. "By now most of you probably know that much from reading the wiki. But, especially if you don't have these Reactants yourself, you might not have a good sense for what it means."

I tapped Water and Iron. The usual Third Eye metal plate appeared in the air between Lena and I. I made a few of the gestures I'd practiced with Erin. As the metal shifted forms, its color, thickness, and even texture altered. I wasn't sure how well it would show up on video.

Then I formed my open hand into a sort of cup, index and pinky fingers tilted to the side, and the metal plate began to melt.

 

[MoogleEmpMog]

Chapter 53: Troubled Waters

The Iron between Lena and I flowed and dripped and twisted and curved until, after a moment, it came to rest as a sphere of shimmering metal.

"So cool," Lena murmured.

I smirked. "I thought I was going to demonstrate the boring stuff."

"Me too," she said, "but then you finally did something that looks like it could be done with Fire."

I laughed. It almost made me drop the sphere, which would, I suspected, really suck. When I shattered my Glass last time, I'd thought cleanup would be a pain, but at least it remained in solid pieces.

"You might be wondering what exactly I've done, distinguished guests," I said. "Did I switch Reactants in mid video? No. At least, not yet..."

"Spoilers," Lena hissed.

"Teasers." I grinned. "Don't touch it, but do you want to poke this with a stick?"

"Why not touch it?" Despite her question, Lena scooped up a stick and approached with it outstretched. In Third Eye, the wood smoldered in her grasp; looking over the top of my phone, I saw the real stick unburnt and reminded myself not to be surprised.

"I guess it's not like you could actually get poisoned by it," I said. "But what this so-called Iron is right now is not something you should ever come in contact with if it were real."

"Molten metal, you mean?" she asked, playing along. She poked it with the stick.

The surface rippled, the ripples wrapped around and smashed into each other and the whole thing looked wonderfully complex for a few seconds before subsiding back into a smooth sphere.

Lena held up her stick. Bits of metal dripped off it, flowing back to the sphere for as long as it remained selected. From what I'd read, I was pretty sure that if I had used Fire to melt a unit of Iron, touching it with a stick would cause Third Eye to depict that stick as burning up.

Then, before I could say anything, Lena reached out and slapped the sphere.

"Careful!" I said.

"I wanted to check something." Her hands made a complicated dance in the air that, by now, I recognized as the sign of someone using a phone that Third Eye refused to show me. "No HP loss."

"Isn't this stuff super toxic?" I asked. "If Third Eye models that, I would expect touching it to drop you in a hurry."

"Nah. Somebody didn't pay enough attention in Chemistry, except to the warnings. Elemental mercury is tough to absorb through the skin; the really nasty shit to touch is mercury salts. Now if I snorted it, that would fuck me all the way up." She bit her lip. "I'm right about what you did, yeah?"

"That's right," I said. "The way I made a sphere is by changing the Iron's properties to be those of mercury."

"It sounds more fantasy-ish if you call it quicksilver," she said.

I tried the line again, incorporating her suggestion. We both nodded. So did Erin, from the bench.

We lined up to resume the video.

"Don't mess around with this too much," I said. "If you turn something into a toxin and ingest it, I don't know if Third Eye will just keep depleting your HP every day when it's supposed to refresh."

And if Miguel was right, and it was, at least sometimes, more than just a game?

Abruptly, I wondered if I should include this in the video at all.

"Timeout," I said.

Lena cocked her head.

I turned so I could look at both her and Erin.

I eyed the sphere. Lena's flames reflected weirdly off its curved surface. I said, "I don't know if we should show this off."

"What? But it's one of the two coolest things you can do with Water." Lena poked with the stick again and sent another of those amazing ripple patterns through the sphere. "We're legit going to lose viewers if you just spend the whole video changing the color of Stone and Plastic."

"You get it though, right, Erin?"

Slowly, Erin returned my nod.

I wondered just how much she got.

"If this can be turned into a toxic substance and a player can end up hurting themselves with it long term..." She looked away. "If someone could lock themselves out of playing, I mean."

"Granted," Lena said, "that would suck."

"So is it really wise for us to tell people how to do it? To show off the gesture, even?" Erin rubbed her arms. "Cam might be right. We should just find another way to keep people engaged."

Lena said, "Bullshit."

Erin's eyes snapped to her. "I know you said before that I shouldn't feel responsible, and I'm sure that you and Cam don't want to, either. I'm not saying that you should. But Cam recognized that this could be dangerous –"

"Which is exactly why we have to do something about it," Lena said. "Cam, how long did it take you to figure out you could change Iron into mercury?"

"Couple days," I said. "I mean, that was working with what was already posted on the wiki, plus what Erin showed me this morning."

Plus, although I didn't say it, a general "sense" of the kind of gestures that worked in Third Eye, which I'd picked up from practicing with Albie. I suspected they somehow corresponded to the runes.

"So people are going to find this out on their own," Lena said. "It's literally the same thing as with PVP. We found a potentially dangerous exploit, so we need to tell people about it. TBH, we should probably test if it actually does the ongoing internal damage thing. They may not have modeled it being toxic. Hell, we haven't even seen it deplete HP."

She took a step toward the sphere.

I used my control over it to yank it away. Without Air, all I could do was move it a set distance away from me in whatever direction I was focusing, but it was still enough to slide it out of Lena's reach. "I'm not ready to put that to the test by having you snort mercury, Lena. On camera or otherwise."

"Are you suggesting that Third Eye Productions would leave an exploit in the game that would let someone completely screw themselves over, possibly forever?" She leaned forward, eyebrows raised.

Erin and I exchanged glances.

"Yeah, no, you're right about that," Lena said. "If we can think of a safer way to test it, we probably should, though. Like, do we know when our HP refreshes?"

"I do," Erin said. "It happens every midnight."

"Midnight our time?" I asked.

"Yes, actually," she said. "I thought maybe it happened while we slept, but I stayed up one night and watched my MP tick back up. Then I asked Shake to do it, and he said it happened at 11:00 PM for him."

"He's on Pacific time?" I asked.

She nodded. "I think it's because the devs' office is in Calgary."

"Depending on where you were in the world, you could do some pretty fun tricks with that," I said. "Why did you want to know, Lena?"

"Staying up till midnight doesn't bug me at all," she said. "We should set up some kind of controllable source of ongoing damage and see what happens when the day ticks over."

"Makes sense," I said. "We can try it tonight. With something easier to reverse than mercury poisoning. Then, depending on how it turns out, we can incorporate that into the warning for this video."

"Cool," she said.

"If it came down to it," Erin said, "do you have anything you could use to get rid of a substance that was harming you, Lena?"

"You mean," Lena asked, "have I got Water of my own?"

Erin looked down at her feet. "I assume if you did, you would've wanted to practice with us."

"Pretty safe assumption." Lena rubbed her hands as she turned back to me.

"What I meant," Erin said, "was that I hoped you'd found a way to control your Fire that precisely."

Lena scowled in a way that didn't look cute at all, with or without Third Eye. I wasn't even sharing that clip with our editors, much less putting it in the video.

I wouldn't put my own expression in, either. I tried to swallow a sigh, but I think some must've got out, or else my face betrayed me, because Lena turned her scowl in my direction. Through Third Eye, her wings swatted at the air.

I got it, okay? There aren't many things more embarrassing than fibbing to someone and then being forced to admit you've done it. And there was still a chance, though I had no idea how much of one, that Lena could get real Fire before it was time for her to do her own video on it.

Hell, if my – I won't say suspicion, because it still made no sense to me to be suspicious of it, but my feeling – was right, and Third Eye Productions had somehow seeded Reactants in places where players with the right affinity would pick them up first, she might have a better chance of getting Fire in time for a video than either of us did getting Earth. Maybe ever.

That chance would only go up if she admitted to Erin that she still needed to find Fire.

Especially since Erin also had a vested interest in us being able to keep making videos.

It was Lena's secret to keep. And I'd promised not to talk about it. At the same time, though, we had so much riding on her ability to pick up a Reactant. I knew how much she wanted one. It was my fault she was still waiting to get her first.

I lowered my voice. "Are you sure you don't –"

"I am pretty goddamn sure, Cameron."

"Okay." I started to spread my hands and realized what it would do to the sphere. I managed to adjust to a different gesture before it deselected, turning it back to its original Iron form. It stayed in the shape of a ball, but now if I dropped it, it would just roll around instead of splashing theoretically toxic goo everywhere.

For the final version of the video, I would do that on camera. The next step would be to switch to Air. I'd seen how that worked while Erin demonstrated swapping between Earth and Water. If you used the same Material and a new Reactant, then instead of manifesting a new object, Third Eye would apply the second Reactant's effects to the one you already had selected. For Erin, that meant first shaping, then changing. For me, changing, then moving.

Eventually, I hoped we'd all be able to do all four. Even if it was just for PVP, it would open up a lot of possibilities.

At the moment, though, I didn't have time to explore any of them.

Because Erin had joined us on the grass. She reached out to Lena.

Lena stared down at Erin's hand. "What?"

"I guess I should keep playing along," Erin said, "but it's starting to get really uncomfortable, and if it keeps up, it's going to become a problem for all of us."

"No shit?" Lena hummed a bar from an old cartoon intro; I recognized it even though I couldn't place it. "And here I thought we were all having a gay old time."

Erin flinched, but her hand remained outstretched. "Not... exactly. Er. There's no need to be ashamed of having a Custom Personification. I know you can tell that I do, too."

I nodded along with her words.

Lena flicked a glance between us. At me, she flashed a glare. To Erin, without taking her hand, she said, "Pay-to-win girls unite, huh?"

Erin swallowed. "If it's pay-to-win, why don't you have a Reactant?"

Lena snorted. "I guess I'm the kind who can't win even when she pays. How pathetic is that?"

"It's not –"

"Good, 'cause I don't want your pity, Erin." Lena didn't snap, or snarl, or even shout. She didn't so much as raise her voice.

Erin's hand dropped to her side.

I released the Iron sphere and reached out to Lena. "Hey."

She stepped out of my reach.

I wanted to say I hadn't actually told Erin anything, but I knew what a pathetic excuse that would be. Lena had asked me to play along with her ruse; I'd played poorly enough to ruin it.

"Now that I look completely ridiculous," she said, "I've got nothing more to accomplish here. I'm out. You two script the episode and I'll read my lines tomorrow."

"I'll go with you," I said.

She half-turned, not looking back, but catching sight of me out of the corner of her eye. With her voice pure saccharine, she asked, "Is that a promise, Cameron?"

 

[MoogleEmpMog]

Chapter 54: Facing Facts

"That's not fair, Lena," I said.

"Lots of things aren't." But she stopped mid-stalk and sort of sagged on the sidewalk.

"I did a shit job keeping my promise." I caught her up, touched her arm, and when she didn't brush me off, turned her gently to face Erin and I. "If you're pissed at me, fine. But all Erin did was try to get us past this."

Lena bit her lip. She hesitated, then leaned around me and raised her voice. "Sorry, Erin. That was shit of me."

"I can't imagine how frustrating it must be if you don't have a Reactant yet," Erin said. "Especially with the video doing well."

"Yeah, it really sucks," Lena said. "But Cam's right. First time for everything, yeah? Honestly, I don't have much reason to be mad at either of you. I'm just jealous, I guess."

"If I can find a Reactant for you," Erin said, "especially Fire, I'll try to preserve it."

Lena shook her head. "I don't want your pity, and I don't want your charity. I don't... I mean, I want to keep playing, but a part of me doesn't want to. It's so cool, but it's getting kinda stressful, too. Maybe I'd be better off like Miguel, just watching."

"I think you're just worried about Albie," I said.

"Lil' bit." She sighed. She spread her arms and waved for both of us to come forward. "Hug it out?"

I glanced at Erin. She squirmed for a moment. Then she conjured her usual smile, braces bright in the pale light, and stepped forward with her arms outstretched.

Lena tugged both of us into a loose embrace; I hugged her back, and Erin leaned forward and put her arms around our shoulders without allowing herself to be pulled closer.

Abruptly, she laughed. "I feel like we're in a huddle."

Lena groaned. "Typical sports fan. Total one track mind."

But I felt the tension in her back ease, and after a moment, she started laughing, too.

When we disentangled ourselves and stepped back, both Lena and Erin wore pensive expressions. I couldn't really parse either of them. Better than Lena being angry and Erin being upset, at least.

"Is it cool if we still stop here?" Lena asked. "I'm not mad anymore. Worried and frustrated ain't how I do my best work, though."

"That's more than fine," Erin said. "If you don't mind, I'll hit you up on Discord later to talk about the script. I think we've done all the practical preparations we need for you to make an amazing video."

"Of course," Lena said. "The Magnificent Ashbird would never let down her adoring public."

I expected her to strike a pose, but she didn't seem to have the energy.

Erin clapped anyway. "I expect nothing less."

"Want us to walk you back to your dorm before we head home?" I asked.

She shook her head. "If I'm worried about invasion, I'll just turn off Third Eye until I get back."

Which wasn't the same thing as saying she was worried about invasion.

I wondered what extra gear she had that made her so confident.

Asking about it did not strike me as a way to boost Lena's confidence, though. Something to do in DMs someday, if we continued to get closer with Erin.

We left the park in opposite directions. The walk home felt barren. Lena didn't talk. I couldn't tell if she wanted me to rescue her from her thoughts or if she needed time to process them. The blocks rolled past with no impossible objects. Picked clean, either by she and I or by the DU set. We tried to take a different set of streets every time, but I doubted there was anything left to find in this part of town.

After a few blocks, Lena glanced at her phone and turned off Third Eye entirely.

"I'll let you know if I see anything," I said.

She grunted. We were almost to the end of the block before she said, "I mean, thanks."

"You don't have to be polite if you don't want to."

She looked at me out of the corner of her eye.

"I don't," I said, "want you to strain yourself."

She gave me the finger, but her chuckle gave mine permission.

Turned out she'd had the right idea. Though I kept sweeping the streets we walked down, I didn't see a single impossible object. Just block after block of older houses, neighborhoods I normally wouldn't have bothered to visit or noticed if I did, dry grass, bare trees, clouded skies, freezing air.

The world as it had been before Third Eye.

We'd only been playing a little over a week, so it probably shouldn't have felt so desolate. Then again, without Third Eye, I wouldn't have bothered going out in the first place unless I had a specific destination in mind. I would've gotten wherever that was as fast as possible and paid my surroundings as little mind as I could. A grocery store or restaurant or friend's house, or MicroCenter if my bank account was feeling extra full that week.

I nudged Lena's shoulder. "What do you want to do this afternoon?"

"Some actual work," she said.

"Makes sense," I said.

Our positions were reversed from a couple of days ago, when she'd been bouncing on her heels for Third Eye stuff and I'd stuck to that web design job.

The success of our video had left me hoping we had another option. Maybe we would, but our YouTube careers were still ticking up to the level where we could get delivery guilt-free a few more times a month. Actual success was a long way off, and so far from assured it would be insane to bank on it.

We could fail to find Lena her Fire before it was time to do a video on it. We could fail to find Earth for either of us, and we'd need that to do the very next video.

In theory, we could deal with all that. We could convince Erin to guest star and handle Fire and Earth, with Lena just acting as the presenter. Erin had seemed viscerally opposed to playing lovely assistant, though, and I knew how much it would suck for Lena to have to prance around acting peppy while everyone else got to do cool shit.

Nor were there any guarantees even if we could keep making the videos.

We could run out of material after three more uploads. One or both of us could fall into the bottom 1%. People could lose interest in watching us, either as our shtick got old or they got their own Reactants and started focusing on those. Third Eye's playerbase could all tune in, every last one of them, active and not, and it still turn out to not be enough to amount to serious money.

Third Eye could get canceled.

Forget the creepy moments where it seemed like it was more than a game. Forget the absurd design decisions like real-world invasion PVP. Even when they did everything right and had no complications at all, video games failed all the time.

Although deep down, I didn't really believe that could happen anymore.

So add another possibility to the list:

I could get so scared of Third Eye I wanted nothing more to do with it.

I thought about that as we tromped up the stairs to our apartment. I kept thinking about it as we hung our coats up and turned our computers on. I kept thinking about it while I peeked over Lena's shoulder and saw she really had opened Upwork to browse for gigs.

I tried hard not to think about it while I returned to my own PC. I went to Fiverr instead. No need for us to compete where our skill sets overlapped.

When I realized I hadn't scrolled in five minutes, I pushed my chair back and rubbed my eyes.

I got up, ran myself a glass of tap water, seasoned it with some ice cubes. The height of luxury. I leaned against the kitchen counter while I drank.

What actual evidence did I have for my fears?

The weirdness surrounding Third Eye's launch, its graphical chops, its tracking, the amulets. Crazy, but not impossible, just as I'd thought the first night.

The sense of physicality when one of us interacted with an object someone else had manifested. That could be down to the absurd fidelity of the graphics, sound, and physics model. The objects reacted realistically to our exertion and our minds filled in the sense we were pushing against something.

Miguel's belief that he'd been physically pushed by the Water before I absorbed it. The impressions of a guy who'd gotten a concussion from his fall, just about the least reliable source I could imagine.

Those moments when I got a Reactant, and it felt like I was experiencing everything as my avatar, without the need for my phone as a medium.

I didn't have an explanation for those. Not a good one. I could say they were just my memory backfilling what I expected because of the sound design. So where did my time go the morning I got Air? Why were those memories so vivid? Some of the most vivid I had?

And Erin's reaction.

That was what really scared me. Maybe I was reading her wrong, but I couldn't convince myself of it. When the subject of Third Eye phenomena feeling real came up, she went into actress mode. And she was the only other person I knew IRL who'd experienced gaining a Reactant.

So was that it? I believed in magic now? Or at least sufficiently advanced technology?

I downed a gulp of ice water and got a brain freeze out of it.

Actual magic, like Lena had joked from the start? Well, maybe. Just the fact I wasn't dismissing it out of hand made my stomach clench. It couldn't get any scarier.

Right?

I believed Third Eye was doing something much weirder than even the weird shit we'd agreed it was. That didn't have to mean it was real. Some kind of subliminal pattern in the graphics and sound, screwing with my mind? That would explain everything except Miguel's fall, and he could've just believed it was happening for the same reason I believed I could see an amulet on my chest sometimes.

Awesome.

At least if Third Eye was magic, I was getting magic out of it. Terrifying, but also incredibly cool. Now I'd managed to cook up an explanation that was even scarier, and it didn't even come with superpowers.

It didn't feel right. But then, it wouldn't, would it?

I finished off the glass of water – more carefully –, refilled it around the remaining ice, and carried it back to my computer.

I still had Fiverr open. A whole page of web design jobs. I'd gotten a four and a half star rating for the last one I turned in, so I would seem qualified for almost any of these. With my added experience, I might even deserve to. I started clicking through them between sips.

Long before I got to the point of firing off proposals, though, I found myself with my phone in my hand, staring at the Third Eye interface.

I pressed Water and Wood, pointed my camera toward the corner of our living room, propped my phone on the desk, and started making myself a houseplant with both hands.

I didn't have a plan, either for the plant or for why I'd started working on it. I didn't know what I wanted to learn from it. I just wanted to touch base with the part of Third Eye that was cool and, at least seemingly, harmless.

I heard Lena's chair creak.

I reached for my phone.

"Don't stop," she said.

"It doesn't bug you? Me working with Water?"

"That's not the one I want," she said. "Besides, we could use a plant to liven up this dump."

I glanced at her and smiled.

She looked so tired. Shoulders drooping, hair limp, dark circles under her eyes. But she smiled back and managed to make me believe she meant it.

I finished changing the plant. Starting with a vertical configuration, I'd kept its footprint small enough that it wouldn't take up too much of our room in Third Eye. I'd grown it into something like a fern, although I couldn't have begun to guess what kind.

"Well?" I asked.

"Love it," she said. "It totally brings the room together."

"If the world's first bobblehead-based interior decorator thinks so, who am I to argue?"

I managed to coax an actual grin from her.

My phone and both our PCs chimed. A Discord message. I switched to it on my computer.

It was a DM rather than a notification, which didn't really surprise me. Erin had mentioned hitting us up to discuss the script.

What did surprise me was that this DM came from Donica.

 

[MoogleEmpMog]

Chapter 55: By Invitation Only

DeepingShadows: Are you free?

"The hell?" Lena jabbed something into her mechanical keyboard. "Are you getting this from DS, too?"

"Yeah."

Donica sure hadn't opened with a softball question. Was I free? It's a free country, they say. I didn't have anything scheduled, mostly because I kept getting distracted instead of doing so. Lena wasn't up to scouting and I wasn't sure how I felt about going it alone again. And then there was the question of, was I free of Third Eye's influence, mental or magical, to which the answer seemed to be a resounding no.

I rolled my shoulders and got to typing.

OldCampaigner: I can be. What's up?

It's kind of amazing how much information you can input to a Discord message, and how little of what you're thinking it can convey.

Or, hell. Maybe Donica saw right through that line and knew all the shit that was running through my head.

DeepingShadows: I need someone to help me scout.

OldCampaigner: Are you talking about whatever it is you do for Erin's dad, or a Third Eye thing?

DeepingShadows: Why would I possibly ask for your help scouting players?

Players? She'd mentioned DU before. So she was some kind of sports scout?

More to the point, why would she possibly ask for our help with anything?

In truth, I was just relieved she wasn't messaging us to ask if something had happened to Erin. That had been about the only reason I could think of for Donica to want to interact with us.

Unfair. At the hospital, she'd made an effort to be friendly. I'd sort of assumed she was doing it for Erin's sake, but maybe she really did want to mend fences.

OldCampaigner: You've got my curiosity.

DeepingShadows: Good. You can convince Ash. I'll pick you up in 15.

I blinked. "Huh?"

OldCampaigner: I didn't say I'd go with you, I just said I was curious.

No response. I glanced at Donica's icon on Discord. Gray circle. I hovered over it even though I knew what the rollover text would say.

DeepingShadows is offline.

I rubbed the bridge of my nose. To Lena, I said, "I hear I'm supposed to persuade you."

Lena snorted. "She's gonna be real disappointed when she drives over here and walks upstairs and I don't even unlock the door."

"If Donica wants to patch things up with us, we can at least hear her out. Hell. Maybe Erin found Fire and asked her to come pick you up so you could collect it."

"I already said I don't want her charity." The way Lena's shoulders stiffened told a different story.

"It's up to you if you want to go with her or not," I said. "I get it if you don't really want to hang out with her. Or do any Third Eye shit."

Lena rubbed her neck. "Right on both counts."

"I'm still going to invite her in for coffee or something if she drives all the way over here."

"You're gonna spend our precious caffeine reserves on somebody who can probably afford a latte out every morning?" Lena spun herself back to face her computer. "Now I really need to find some paying work."

I stood up and started to clean away some of the junk that had accumulated around the room. We'd kept better house in the last couple days, so it wasn't the disaster we'd welcomed Miguel to, but a little extra tidying wouldn't kill it. Or me.

I paused near Lena's desk. "You're really not interested?"

"If she tells me Erin's out there standing watch over a Fire source," Lena said, "I'll swallow my pride and suck it up. But if she just wants somebody to group up with for a scouting trip? Hell no. You two should go."

"I can't believe you'd leave me alone with Donica."

"Why, should I be worried?" She tossed her hair.

I tried not to notice how strained her grin looked.

"Yeah," I said. "Worried she'll bury me in an unmarked grave because I was five seconds late on the cooldown for my Q."

"Five seconds would be basically forever." Lena drummed her fingers on her desk. "No jury would convict her."

As if to underscore her point, there was a knock at the door.

"Fifteen minutes, my ass," I muttered. So much for picking up. Instead, I picked my way to the door and opened it.

Donica stood outside, wearing thick black jeans, a parka not a million miles off from mine but probably about that many dollars more expensive, and a pair of boots fit for a construction site. Compared to how she'd dressed at the hospital, this was either her casual Friday kit or she'd gone home and gotten changed before she messaged us.

"Hello, Cameron." She glanced past me. "I assume Lena is here as well?"

"Hiya." Lena waved, but didn't hop down from her computer chair.

"Come on in." I stepped back and beckoned Donica. "I'll have to hear you out before I know if you've wasted your time, but you're welcome to hang out if you want."

"Thanks." She almost made it sound like she'd consider the offer. She followed me inside and swept her gaze over the room. I thought she might remain frozen by the door, looking down her nose at our squalor, but after a moment, the ice broke and so did her smile. She strode over to Lena's side of the room.

Lena spun her chair around, tensed like she expected an attack.

Instead, Donica stopped in front of one of the shelves. She reached out. "May I?"

"Nope," Lena said.

Donica's eyebrow raised.

Lena sighed. "Oh, go ahead."

I thought Donica would pick something up, but she just adjusted the angle of the hammer on one of Lena's old Overwatch Legos. Softly, she said, "You kept these, huh? Did you guys keep playing?"

"For a while," I said. Duo queues were harsh, though.

"Good times?" Donica let go of the Lego. She frowned down at it. "I'm a better teammate than I used to be."

Lena pressed her lips together and said nothing as loudly as possible.

I said, "No idea if we are, but I'll give it a shot."

Donica addressed me, but looked to Lena. "Just you?"

"This is Third Eye shit, right?" Lena asked.

Donica nodded.

"Then I'm out," Lena said. "I've been too in, and I need a break. Did Erin tell you about me?"

"She's quite effusive about both of you," Donica said. "Finding out you're the one who introduced me to Third Eye certainly didn't hurt. It's cute, although I'd be lying if I claimed I didn't worry about her relying on you."

"Awesome," I said. "You're really selling me on the idea of teaming up with you."

Donica raised an eyebrow. "You're saying that you want her to pin her hopes on you?"

I'm sure I winced.

Lena saved me from answering. "If you're done running us down for a minute, what I meant was, did she explain I don't have a Reactant?"

"Ah." Donica pursed her lips. "I figured as much when you refrained from showing off in your video. Which, while we're on the subject... you know my instinct is to be a harsh critic, so when I say you did a great job, you know I mean it."

That hit harder than I expected. I ducked my head and whispered, "Thanks."

Lena mumbled something that could be interpreted the same way.

"It's a shame, though," Donica said. "I was hoping you could both back me up, since I don't have a Reactant yet, either."

"What do you need backup for?" I asked.

"There's a place I want to check out, but if I go scouting alone, I'm basically turning myself into a pinata for whatever ass decides to invade me." She shook her head. "No, that's not fair. If I had a Reactant and no Erin begging me not to, maybe I'd be the ass."

Lena gasped. "That's just crazy talk!"

Donica smirked. "Have your tastes changed? I seem to recall that one of the few things we agreed on was the fun of Dark Souls PVP."

"Well." Lena climbed down off her chair. "I'm going to check the fridge for some food. You want anything?"

"I'll take that as a yes," Donica said. "And don't trouble yourself on my account. I was actually going to offer to treat you both."

My eyebrows raised and I hated it. "I guess I don't really understand why you came to us with this. Why don't you go with Erin? Or at least some of her DU friends?"

"Sometimes it's nice to deal with adults," Donica said. "Bad enough I keep having to talk to teens for work. Erin's one thing, she hasn't really let herself be a kid for... a while."

I'd have loved to pry about Erin, but I had just enough self-awareness to recognize that was nosy and kind of useless. Instead, I said, "Why us, though?"

"Because..." Donica set her jaw. "Because it was my fault. Our old team breaking up."

"The whole group split?" I asked.

"I suppose they were all either better or worse friends than I thought," she said. "After I kicked Lena and you quit, everybody started to realize I was being unreasonable. Either that, or your stupid memes were the glue holding us together."

"Definitely the second one," Lena called from the kitchen.

Donica surprised me: she laughed. "You have no idea how pissed I am that you found a Reactant by chasing a 'We need to go deeper' meme."

I folded my arms and leaned back against the shelf. "Yeah, you sound furious."

She rolled her eyes, but she didn't stop smiling. "My point is, I wanted this to be a second chance."

"For us to team up?"

"For us to be friends," she said. "'We're still working to become that,' you know?"

I didn't.

My expression must've betrayed as much, because Donica said, "It's something Erin posted in the Discord right after you joined. She wants her team to work to become friends. My experience scouting sports programs says that's naïve. My experience trying to run a team says it's not like my way worked any better."

I rubbed my chin. Did I buy her explanation? Not totally. I didn't believe Donica memorized every line in the Discord. This sounded too much like a prepared speech.

I was, however, ready to believe she'd written it because she genuinely did want to team up.

I glanced at Lena.

The microwave dinged and she pulled a cup of ramen out. "I'm still out."

"That's fair," Donica said.

"Yup!" Lena twirled some noodles around a fork and blew on them. "Look, it was years ago. I don't really give a shit about getting kicked. If you want to try sitting around braiding flower bracelets and singing Kumbaya – Cam's probably super into that, since he was such a big fan of summer camp."

I glared at her.

She grinned over her forkful of noodles. "I'm not super into it, but if you want to be friends, I'll give it a shot. But not tonight."

"Again, fair." Donica spread her hands. "I realize I sprang this on the two of you out of the blue. I saw the opportunity and took it."

"No worries," I said. "It's just bad luck you caught us when Lena was feeling burned out on Third Eye. We can at least offer you a coffee or –"

"You should go," Lena said.

Donica and I both turned to her.

"You two should go," she said. She jabbed her fork in our direction. "Find some cool shit. Tell me about it when you get back."

I frowned. "You really don't mind?"

She popped a bite of noodles in. Slowly, she shook her head. Even more slowly, she chewed.

If she really hadn't minded, she would've said so before she started eating.

I sort of got it. She wasn't okay with it, but she wanted to be.

Our lives had forced Lena and I to spend almost all our time together. I was one of the few people she was comfortable spending that time with. Maybe the only one, outside of her parents. How often had one or the other of us hung out with somebody else without the other around? We'd been homebodies before lockdown left us with nowhere else to go. After? We'd gotten in the habit of treating this apartment and each other as our whole world.

Maybe if we'd managed a better balance in our lives, we'd still be dating. Or more comfortable with the fact that we weren't.

I turned to Donica and forced myself to smile. "In that case, how could I say no to scouting with a pro?"

 

[MoogleEmpMog]

Chapter 56: Ex Mart

I'm not saying I went with Donica because she'd offered to treat Lena and I to dinner.

I appreciated her willingness to try again to befriend us. I thought it was good for both Lena and I to spend time with other people. I wasn't ready to stop playing Third Eye for the day.

But a dinner offer from somebody who owned her own car didn't hurt. An SUV, even! When we got to the parking lot, she approached a Yukon, one of those monsters named for a mountain range and about the same size.

Donica saw me looking the vehicle up and down. Mostly up. "I have to ferry around a lot of tall people."

I wondered why she felt the need to justify her ride. "No complaints from me. What is it you do, exactly?"

"I'm an agent with Marshall Sports."

I glanced at her. "Martial sports? Like UFC?"

"Marshall," she repeated, pronouncing the second syllable a bit like "Shawl." "Erin's father founded the agency. We mostly handle basketball."

"Cool," I said, because I supposed it was.

"It has its moments." Donica tapped something on her phone and the Yukon's locks clicked open. "My job is to find talented players and put them in places where their talents can best be used. And since the really talented ones don't filter down to me, that means I spend most of my time massaging their egos until they accept their futures in Europe and China."

"And you wanted to branch out into esports?" I asked.

"The best laid plans, huh?" She sighed. "A pity none of us were even as talented as the kids I get assigned to represent. And that there's not much of a minor league. No room for agents if everyone who falls short of the pinnacle just becomes a streamer."

While I tried to think of what to say to that, I climbed into the passenger side of her vehicle. The seat felt like something out of a movie theater, and not one of the cheap ones that played second run flicks. It had been pushed so far back, I couldn't have reached the glove compartment from it. I pulled it forward, though doing so made me sink further into the plush seat.

"It seems like it's working out for you, anyway," I said. "Congrats."

She seemed more tense than she had in the apartment and I figured I'd said something wrong. Finally, she furrowed her brow and bit out, "Thanks."

I clamped my mouth shut and buckled up.

She barreled down Hampton and Broadway. Smaller vehicles gave hers a wide berth. Northbound. I wondered where we were headed.

To a Burger King, it turned out. I'm not saying I'd gone with her in the hopes of being treated to a more spectacular meal than a Whopper combo, but her choice did surprise me. Erin seemed to prefer hipstery restaurants, and I'd sort of transferred that expectation to Donica, as well.

Regardless, I was happy to munch on a cheeseburger and some fries on someone else's dollar.

Donica paid with her phone rather than cash. Once we had our food, she stuck a chicken fry in her mouth like one of Miguel's cigarettes and continued north.

Downtown Denver loomed ahead of us. At this time of year, the sun was already starting to dip below the mountains on our left, but the offices hadn't emptied out and almost all the lights remained on in the skyscrapers. I rarely got to see the skyline pop this way.

Then again, I rarely saw the skyline at all anymore. Lena had claimed she didn't need Third Eye for the purpose she'd originally backed it. She thought I'd dragged her out of the apartment enough. I wasn't so sure. We'd both gotten way too in the habit of staying in.

Between bites of hamburger, I asked, "Are we headed downtown?"

"Not quite," Donica said. "We're almost there."

"Did you spot this place when you were scouting with Erin, or what?"

"Or what."

I spread my hands. "Guess I'll wait and see, huh?"

We came to a stoplight and she took a sip of her Diet Coke instead of answering.

A few lights later, she flicked her signal on and pulled into a turn lane. I thought she was headed to the Alameda light rail station, but instead, she hung a right into the corpse of a parking lot.

I remembered this shopping center, or what had been a shopping center. When I was a kid, my parents would shop at the Kmart here and leave Benji and I waiting for pizza at the Little Caesar's inside. Those would've been good memories if they didn't include my brother.

I hadn't seen the place in years, but it didn't surprise me that it had gone the way of all Kmarts.

It had been replaced with a construction site for one of those do-it-all arcologies with the little shops on the bottom layer and apartments above. The kind of place Lena and I might move to if we were to come into a small fortune.

We wouldn't move into this one, though. Donica's Yukon was the only vehicle in the parking lot. Calling it a lot was generous. Most of it had been ripped away, and even this paved area was so chewed up and tracked with dirt you'd need an offroad-grade vehicle to navigate it safely. The buildings where the Kmart and its surrounding stripmall staples had been were gone, replaced not by a working arcology but the bones of one. Girders stretched up about twelve stories. Pressed board walls, uncovered by fake bricks or stucco, hid the first three. A chain-link fence surrounded the site.

When I'd mentioned unmarked graves to Lena, I hadn't expected Donica to drive me somewhere she could actually get away with digging one.

I waited for an explanation. Then I got sick of waiting and said, "What are we doing here?"

Donica ate the last of her chicken fries. "I told you. Scouting."

"This is a construction site," I said.

"It was." She took a sip of Diet Coke.

"Not typically the kind of place you go wandering around," I said.

"You know my usual itinerary?" She arched an eyebrow. "I guess you're not much of an urban explorer."

I picked up my own Coke and cradled it against my side. No need to let it go to waste if I decided I needed to fling the door open and run for the light rail station. "I'm not much of a trespasser."

Donica inclined her head.

"Why would you risk something like this?" I asked. "Aren't you supposed to be a lawyer?"

"A good enough one to get off." For just a moment, her confident smile wavered. She squelched her doubts in Diet Coke. "If anyone objected, which they won't, I'd tell them I was inspecting the site because my boss was considering it as an investment."

I waved at the traffic zooming past on our right. "We're visible from Broadway. Somebody's going to report us for sure."

"There's no one who cares to report us," Donica said.

"Nobody working late?" Was it even late? We'd gotten dinner way earlier than usual. "No night watchman?"

"None," she said. "Look closer."

I did. There was no sign of activity, but with the sun dipping behind the mountains it would probably be dangerous to do construction work.

On closer inspection, though, I saw what she meant.

No construction vehicles had been left out. They hadn't even left a crane set up, even though they must've had one on site to have put those girders together. There was a layer of dust as well as dirt covering the pressed board walls and bare concrete path into the building, and the few pieces of glass that had been installed, including the front doors, were so dirty I could only see inside because the doors were open. A metal sign had fallen. The fence had sagged near us, untended, and its gate had swung open.

"It's an abandoned construction site," Donica said. "A real estate company bought this lot five years ago, but a year later, they had a conflict in their ownership and construction stalled out. No one wants to cut through all the red tape to either finish it or tear it down and start again."

"Sic semper all my childhood hangouts," I muttered.

She frowned. "Wasn't this a big box store before?"

"Don't worry about it," I said. "That still doesn't explain what we're up to."

"We're having a... passable... meal." She grabbed a handful of fries and nibbled on them until she had only one left. With it, she pointed at the open doorway. "Take a look through your phone."

I did. Since I didn't have the Third Eye app turned on, it looked just like it had when I checked it with the mark one eyeball.

Donica rolled her own mark ones. "Really, Cameron?"

Lena would've laughed, I thought. "Fine."

I turned on Third Eye and returned to my camera.

I stared.

Donica raised an eyebrow. "Well?"

I said, "What the actual fuck."

The same bare girders above, the same stark walls around, the same dusty glass on the door.

But through the doorway and the handful of windows, Third Eye showed carpeted halls, wallpapered drywall, light fixtures, furniture, and a mix of signs in English and in the game's runic script.

 

[MoogleEmpMog]

Chapter 57: Under Construction

I took a last sip of my Coke and set it back into the drink holder, grabbed the last of my fries and scarfed them down, and unbelted.

I said, "I still think this is really dumb."

"Noted." Donica tapped something on her phone and the trunk of the Yukon swung open behind us. Did they call it a trunk on an SUV? Since I didn't know, I defaulted to yes. She got out of the vehicle and walked around to the yawning back gate.

By the time I joined her there, she'd unzipped a duffel bag and pulled out a pair of hardhats.

I took the one she offered. "Slightly less dumb now."

"Safer," she said, fastening hers over her swept-back blonde hair, "and a passable disguise."

"I don't think either of us are going to pass for construction workers."

"Someone who came to inspect the site would wear safety gear, too," she said.

I shrugged. If we got in trouble for this, she had a lot more to lose than I did.

"Step back." She pushed something else on her phone before I had time to obey, and I scrambled out from under the back gate of the Yukon just before it put my new hardhat to the test.

I noticed that there were two more hats in her duffel bag. "Who else were you going to invite? Erin?"

"I think you know him by the handle CannibalHalfling?" She rolled her eyes. "A D&D thing, I hope."

"I wouldn't say 'know,'" I said. "He doesn't talk much in the wiki team's Discord."

CannibalHalfling had responded to Erin's initial welcome and posted a couple of times since Lena and I signed up, but apart from VisibleFromSpace, he was easily the least active member of the server. I hadn't even realized he was one of the locals.

"Nor does he respond to my DM's." Donica brushed the air. "His loss."

She aimed her phone at the building and strode toward it.

I got my first glimpse of her Third Eye avatar. Seemed to be the default model, like mine, rendering her winter gear as a long white cloak, blue-gray tunic, and tan padded leggings. It looked great, like most Third Eye outfits, but the only thing that set it apart from others I'd seen were the clasps, chips of rough-hewn quartz set in wire-thin silver.

An affinity for Crystal, maybe? I wondered if this site was close enough to her place to have been seeded for her. Assuming objects really were seeded for specific players.

Only one way to find out.

I followed, dirt and gravel crunching beneath my boots.

Donica paused at the door, focused her camera on the carpet beyond it, and said, "Do you have your XP for this?"

"Let me check." I tapped to the Third Eye app, noted my XP, back to the camera, focused on the carpet, back to Third Eye. "Looks like I got it when you had me check the place out."

"Good." She crouched and touched the carpet.

We both braced, expecting the usual flash of light.

Nothing.

In the real world, her fingers had left streaks on the dusty concrete. In Third Eye, the carpet remained.

"Well," Donica said, "that sucks."

"If we can't collect anything here," I said, "and if we don't get any XP –"

"Then what are we even doing here?"

I shook my head. "Then this is something we haven't seen in Third Eye before. That's way more interesting."

"You don't think... a player built all this?"

"You'd have to have at least Earth and Water," I said. "Probably Air, too, and an entire building's worth of Materials. Not to mention a whole lot of time on your hands. And for what?"

"I suppose if you really, really wished this place had been finished," she said. "For some reason."

We stood there for a moment, staring half through our phones at the cheery interior, which looked about like I imagined the architect and designer's sketches for this place would have, and half at the bare, unfinished reality.

If you had the power to build anything, would you really choose to build a pretty prosaic arcology? You could move across the street to a functional version.

It made more sense to me that the devs had seeded this place. Somehow, for some reason.

My adrenaline spiked. If Third Eye was dangerous, this place was probably going to be more so.

On the other hand, if it was fascinating – spoiler alert, it was – I really wanted to know what this place was about. Could it be some kind of ARG clue, on a massive scale? Maybe something important enough that an individual player wasn't supposed to be able to claim it and remove it from community view?

If so, and if it was placed intentionally rather than by some algorithm that we couldn't understand yet, they should have picked a safer location for it. Not to mention a more legal-to-explore one.

I looked around. The traffic rolled past on Broadway, and I didn't notice anyone so much as glancing at us. With our hardhats on, we were just part of the background. "Let's try inside, I guess?"

Donica pushed on the door. It swung open with a creak loud enough to make me wince.

She hesitated. Her eyes narrowed.

Then she strode inside like she owned the place.

I squared my shoulders and tried to put a saunter in my step. We belonged here! If you saw us going in from the street, you wouldn't think twice! That's what my walk should've said.

I wouldn't bet on my having pulled it off.

The lobby was richly appointed. Brass fixtures and subtle, classy wall lamps that I thought were in an Art Deco style. Nice design. Maybe a player really had seen the plans for this place and decided they needed a finished version.

I tried touching the wall. Nothing.

Donica checked one of the lamps, standing on tiptoes to reach it. Nothing.

There were a couple of wooden chairs facing the two elevator doors. I ambled over to one and gave it a poke.

A flash.

I hadn't braced for it, and it left spots in my eyes. When my vision cleared, I switched to the Third Eye app and confirmed I'd obtained five units of Wood and 100 XP.

"Finally, something we can grab." Donica swept her phone along the line of chairs, focusing on each one in turn to collect her 10 XP.

"You realize," I said, "this makes the place even weirder?"

"How so?"

"It didn't really make sense for someone to spend all their Materials building it, but it was at least an explanation that fit with things we've already seen from the game. If the background elements can't be interacted with, but objects like these chairs can, then it has to be something the devs put here. Something new."

"Good." She looked away from her phone and grabbed a chair. Another flash. "It will be useful, and maybe we can learn something on top of it."

She wasn't wrong.

As long as you approached Third Eye as just a game, this place rocked. We'd seen a few other freestanding objects in the rooms the lobby opened onto. A huge windfall of Materials and XP. All that plus potential clues to some larger mystery? Hell yes.

If, on the other hand, you thought Third Eye was messing with your head, it was doing a whole lot of messing here.

And if you thought it was magic –

"How do you want to divvy these up?" Donica asked.

"Even split," I said. "Any time there's an odd number, you take the extra. You found the place and drove us over here."

"I like that arrangement." The lobby had started with five chairs. Donica collected two more, then strode past me toward the first adjoining room.

I'd hesitated to bring up my worries about Third Eye's nature with Erin. Hell. I still hadn't even told Lena. I sure wasn't going to start opening up to Donica.

If I did, I suspected she would cut our scouting expedition short.

Not because I'd successfully worried her about Third Eye, but because she wouldn't want to explore a construction site with a lunatic.

I swallowed a sigh and took the last chair.

"I want to add an extra rule," Donica called.

I joined her in the doorway. "What?"

"If you dawdle, I'm not going to wait for you to scan everything before I collect my half."

I chuckled. "Guess I'll pick up the pace."

The room she'd entered looked like a restaurant to me. Maybe a pub? It had a bar, a gorgeous, polished wood surface that curved almost the entire length of a room bigger than my and Lena's apartment. It also had a bunch of booths. The decor in here, and the lighting (in Third Eye) looked darker and richer than out in the lobby, probably the design sensibility of whoever owned this establishment, rather than the arcology itself.

Or rather, of whoever would have owned it, if it had existed.

I focused on each of the stools at the bar and each of the booths, as well as the lamps and chandeliers.

"Let's get the bad news." Donica touched the bar. Nothing. If it had been collectible, I wondered how much Wood it would have provided? We hadn't found any consistent relationship between the volume of an object and how much Material it gave us, but bigger generally meant better.

I checked a booth. Nothing. I pressed my hand down.

Solid.

I felt a flash of panic.

I turned on my phone's light.

Outside of Third Eye, the wood – but not the upholstery – for the booths and the bar were in place.

"Don't do that while we have enough outside light to see by," Donica said. "No one will challenge us, but I don't want to give them the chance to prove me wrong."

"Sure. Good call." I switched the phone's light off. Without it, I could just make out the shape of the booth beneath my hand. "Why would somebody put these in when the room wasn't finished?"

"Testing the layout?" Her frown deepened. "I agree, it's bizarre. It doesn't look like the stools are physically present, though. Let's see if we can get them."

We could. Eleven flashes later and we were each flush with Wood. Freestanding lamps at either end of the bar gave us Iron and Glass, two apiece.

"Forget the Third Eye aspect," I said. "This place is weird just as a construction site."

"If they were being this inefficient with it, maybe it explains where all the money for construction went: noodling around with details instead of finishing the big picture work."

"Let's see if it's just this restaurant," I said.

It wasn't. Across the lobby, we entered some kind of little store. No telling what it was supposed to have sold. Groceries, maybe? There were a bunch of plain metal shelves, all empty, and a counter where a cash register would've gone.

The shelving units were still empty in Third Eye, but they had nice detailing, lacquered wooden slats to display items on, and signs on each aisle.

The signs didn't tell us much, because they were written in runic script.

"This is so weird," Donica muttered.

I nodded, which wasn't very useful since she wasn't looking at me and we barely had enough outside light to see where we were walking.

The best prizes here were the racks, the spinning kind you get sunglasses and gift cards off of. Seven of them in the open part of the room. Six Iron for me, eight for Donica.

She got more from the cash register. "Huh. I got Wood from that as well. Didn't look like there was any on the fittings."

"It must've had money in it," I said.

"So paper also turns into Wood? I hadn't seen that yet."

"It's all on the wiki."

"Mm," she said. "I admire what you all do with the wiki, but I don't have time to study it in detail. I barely have time to play. If Erin hadn't been so excited, I probably would've ended up like your friend Miguel, kicked before I even signed up."

Erin must have told her about Miguel ending up in the bottom 1%.

"What's the deal with you and Erin, anyway?" I asked. "If you don't mind my asking?"

"Since you put it that way, I guess I don't have to answer." She waited a moment and when I didn't deflate, she chuckled. "I really thought I'd get you with that one."

"Once in a while," I said, "I catch when people are joking."

"I've known Erin since she was a kid," Donica said. "A younger kid. She always used to be underfoot at her dad's agency, and by underfoot, I mean, she could tell you more about the players than any of us agents."

"So she's always been a stathead, huh?"

"The best I know." Donica smiled, briefly. "She ended up treating me like something of an older sister. I suppose she latched onto me because mine was the only female perspective she had."

I almost said, "No Mom?" But I realized as my mouth opened how stupid it would sound. Clearly not.

"When she had some troubles, she ended up leaning on me more than I would've liked," Donica said. "It's not like I could turn her away, you know? Your boss's kid asks you for help, you help."

"Your job description doesn't sound like it includes being somebody's big sis," I said. "Her dad really would've been that mad at you?"

"I didn't see any reason to find out. And you –" She brushed past me into the lobby. "– are dawdling again."

 

[MoogleEmpMog]

Chapter 58: Back Room

Donica brushed past me and tried the door behind the plain metal counter. It swung open. She glanced over her shoulder at me, then stepped through.

I suppressed a sigh. She needed to work on this "trying to become friends" thing.

I jogged to the doorway.

The space behind it seemed intended as some kind of warehouse or stockroom. Of course, it had no actual stock, much less wares. Is there a difference between those? If so, I probably got told during a youthful stint in retail. Which, if you're not paying attention, is almost the same thing as saying I learned it.

What the space did have was more shelves, or at least the metal skeletons thereof, row after row of them.

I eased the door shut behind me as best I could, since it had no mechanism to latch, and turned on my phone's light.

Donica looked back at me. She set her jaw.

I put my free hand on my hip. "We have to use real lights back here. If we're trusting Third Eye, it could show us a carpeted floor and in reality, it's just an open pit over the basement."

"You're right." She looked down at her feet. Solid concrete, but she shouldn't have trusted it to be, and I could tell she knew it. "Let's keep an eye out for external windows and shut our lights down if we see some."

"Sure," I said. "If it comes to that, though, we should quit while we're ahead. It's too dangerous to fumble around in the dark. Maybe come back on the weekend when we can do it during the day. We can bring the rest of the team with us."

She took way too long to say, "Fine. Let's at least check back here, though."

We prowled up and down the shelving units. Way too many for just the mom-and-pop-style shop we'd been scouting. I supposed this warehouse area would service multiple stores if the arcology ever got finished.

Unfortunately, we'd already discovered that the metal shelving units couldn't be collected, and there were no convenient rotating displays or loose chairs to fill up on.

I found the shelves, row after row, all identical, disorienting. Too much Third Eye information? In case it was screwing with my head somehow, I closed the app and tried walking down an aisle without it.

Nope. The field of metal shelf frames was just a weird environment to explore, with or without Third Eye.

I turned the app back on. No point wandering around back here if I couldn't at least collect whatever objects had been strewn around.

I'd almost despaired of finding any when I turned a corner and nearly tripped over a shopping cart. It felt like it, anyway, and I thrust my hand out instinctively. A flash.

"What the hell, Cameron," Donica called. "What did you find?"

"Shopping carts," I shouted. Our voices echoed in the warehouse. "I touched one by mistake when I turned the corner, but there's about a dozen here."

"Well keep your pants on until I get over there."

"I think I'll keep them on even when you do," I said.

I thought she snorted, but she was too far away for me to know for sure. "Thanks."

I panned my phone over the carts while I waited, making sure I focused on each in turn. If anything, I'd underestimated their numbers. Seventeen if you counted the one I'd collected. Perhaps the weirdest thing about them was that each was a different style of cart. The blue plastic one looked like a color-shifted version of a cart from Target, another was a wobbly, gray metal Walmart type, another was plain brushed aluminum. One had writing on its child seat, runic script. Another, more writing in English. A third, just a pictograph of a kid.

I photographed the group of them, then each individually.

I checked the cart corral they were shoved into, but that seemed to be a real metal framework, not a Third Eye construct. Third Eye didn't even pretty it up the way it did most of the extant structures.

I leaned against it. My foot started tapping.

Finally, Donica rounded the corner of a line of shelves. Her cheeks were flushed and her breath made puffs in the cold air.

I'd planned to ask her who was dawdling now, but she looked like she'd run. Just how big was this place?

She surveyed my find. "Looks like a homeless convention."

"I'm surprised this building isn't one." Now that I'd said it, I couldn't get it out of my head. Between the open fence and the oblivious traffic, this was the second location I'd explored in a few days that should've been an amazing place for the city's homeless to winter. Yet I hadn't seen any evidence of people. Had there been any tracks in the dust before Donica and I put them there? "Do you know how long ago the fence fell over?"

She shook her head. "I never paid this place much attention before Third Eye."

"What made you notice it had objects in it?"

"There were signs in my neighborhood," she said. "Actual road signs, although they didn't seem to lead anywhere. I didn't think anything of them the first day when Erin and I collected them. After you and Lena posted about using the objects as ARG clues, I went back and looked at our list of finds and tried actually following them."

"So what you're saying –" I grinned. "– is that you found this place thanks to a 'We need to go deeper' meme."

She groaned. "Let's start collecting."

We divvied up the carts. Mostly Iron, a little Plastic between the one's coating, the child seats, and the wheels.

"Are you following a specific path through the aisles?" Donica asked between flashes.

"I headed left when we came in and just went up and down each aisle," I said. "It's crazy how much real shit they installed in here."

"I know. No wonder they ran out of money. Even finishing construction would've been a huge pain, unless they planned to rip all this stuff out and put final versions in later. Which would cost even more." She shook her head. "There are another dozen doors off this warehouse, just on the right side. More shops, I assume."

Each shop had offered something to collect so far. How many blocks did the construction site cover? Maybe two by two, by residential standards? Maybe less? Compared to the density of objects I'd found anywhere else, it was a treasure trove.

"Do you really want to try and collect all this?" I asked.

She raised an eyebrow. "You don't?"

"What we got this evening is already enough that, for however much XP and Materials count for staying out of the bottom 1%, we'll be home free for a while."

"We haven't really learned anything yet, though," she said. "Or found anything more interesting than basic resources."

"I just think we should bring more of the team over. They're losing out on a ton of XP from scanning alone."

"You mean you think we should bring Lena over," Donica said. "I wanted her to come with us. I invited her. It's her call to stay out."

"Then why," I asked, "do you sound so defensive?"

"I'm trying," Donica said quietly. Her shoulders slumped. "I don't think ill of either of you. I genuinely don't even dislike you. But we're really different kinds of people, you and I, and Lena and I to an even greater extent. Part of me was happy she turned me down."

"That's before you realized how annoying I could be on my own." I offered a tentative smile.

It took a minute, but she found it in her to return it. "Do you mind if we look around a little longer? I keep hoping we'll find something to explain why this place is so weird."

"Sure," I said. "Although you might need to look outside of Third Eye. It's weird with or without the app."

"Honestly, I'm curious enough I might start poking around to see if any of the statements from the real estate dispute were publicized."

"Shoot me a link if you find something," I said. "Otherwise it'll bug me, too."

She nodded. "Back to the grind?"

"Back to the grind."

We stuck together from there and finished canvassing the left side of the warehouse. No more shopping carts, but we did find a piece of paper clipped to a wall. It looked like a manifest or inspection report, graying from repeated photocopies.

I knew it was a Third Eye object before I lowered my phone to confirm, because the heading was printed in runic characters. The body text, however, was written in English, or at least in Roman characters and English words.

That didn't help much in parsing it.

I tried reading it aloud.

"Expand your world knowledge and treasure trove of happiness.

"And there is no reason. So there is no such thing. There are several reasons for this. The threshold of redemption. The threshold of life.

"This can be seen from the entertainment of the younger. 411 1123."

My words echoed through the warehouse. We were still staring at the paper when they faded.

Donica snapped a picture of it.

She said, "Thank goodness they made it so obvious for us."

I chuckled. "It's an odd number. All yours."

She touched the paper.

No flash.

"Well that doesn't make it any less weird," she said. "Come on. I want to finish sweeping this floor, at least."

I frowned at the paper. "One one twenty three. If that's a date, it's this past Monday."

The same day Lena and I met Albie.

Had her brother come here while she played with us?

"And the first three numbers?" Donica asked.

"Maybe a time?"

"I can buy that," Donica said. "What significance do you think it has?"

I hesitated to mention Albie to Donica.

"This object isn't collectible," I said. "Maybe that means it was put up intentionally? If you take away the weird text at the top, and how it reads like it went through a crappy machine translation, it's almost like an inspection report."

"And someone would put an inspection report through a crappy machine translation, why, exactly?"

"To get it into English," I said. "Maybe it's crappy because they're still working out how to do the translation. They can't draw on a big established library because it's the game's conlang."

She raised an eyebrow.

"Conlang." I said. "Constructed language. Like Klingon or Quenya."

It made sense that Third Eye's runes would come with a constructed language, didn't it? Of course, if it did, Erin and ShakeProtocol's attempt to parse the runes as a substitution cipher for Roman characters was doomed.

"Ah, got it," Donica said. "New question. Who in the hell would write an inspection report in their game's conlang?"

"That's a great question." It was. "You know what else is?"

She cocked an eyebrow and waited for me to tell her.

"Why," I asked, "would a game dev sneak onto a site like this illegally? And then, instead of scrubbing their AR objects so neither they nor their players get in trouble, slap a piece of evidence on the wall?"

 

[MoogleEmpMog]

Chapter 59: Door Number Two

Like so many Third Eye questions, this lacked an obvious answer. Another familiar refrain: the unobvious answers I thought of all sounded somewhere between unpleasant and sinister.

First of all, could you pick a more perfect place for invasion PVP? Easy to access from a major street, but away from the eyes of passing motorists. Lots of space to play around with the various options the app gave us, but blocked sight lines from which to stage ambushes.

If it wasn't unplanned and unwanted and terrifying, and also, in this case, illegal, even I might want to try PVP here.

Hell. If we managed to persuade the devs to restrict invasion to specific places, buying up a disputed building like this and turning it into a Third Eye battleground would be awesome.

Of course, I didn't believe we'd be able to persuade them. Not anymore.

I'd shifted my input on the video scripts toward shaping how players approached Third Eye, not convincing the devs. I suspected Erin had done the same, although she hadn't admitted it.

If Third Eye got canceled, it would be because somebody found out it was screwing with our heads, not because of legal complications from PVP. And if it didn't get shut down, it wasn't going to change its parameters because of player feedback, beta best practices be damned.

Because if Third Eye really was magic, or sufficiently advanced technology, or whatever explained the better case scenario? This place made it less of a better case.

I was starting to think the illegality was part of the point.

The game was tempting us, not just away from public spaces, but from normal society. If a PVP fight escalated to a fistfight here, and I lost – and I would – would I really call 911 and get myself arrested, too?

If I was dying, sure. But if I just got punched in the face and broke my nose? How about if I broke my ribs?

I'd already seen it in action. We hadn't technically trespassed in the tunnel, as far as we knew, but Miguel had still wanted to get outside before we called for help.

If the game wanted us to rely on it, instead of mundane authorities, pushing us into places where we had less access to those authorities made sense. If it wanted us to rely on it, and our powers within it, in defiance of those authorities? Wasn't this a good first step in training us?

All of that shot through my head as I stared at the inspection report. My palms felt sweaty and my hands shook as the sweat evaporated in air that couldn't be much above freezing.

"Isn't it also possible," Donica said, "that this is just gibberish, and the paper is here because it's the sort of thing that would be clipped to the wall in a place like this, which Third Eye is trying to make look like it's ready for use?"

I blinked.

That... did, in fact, sound plausible.

I hated how much I wanted to believe it.

"Let's see what's through door number two," she said.

She pushed and the door swung back and forth like you'd see in a saloon in a Western. No latching mechanism and a frame that didn't hold it in one direction. I put a hand on it to hold it open so we could look through.

Hallways. That's what was through door number two. They stretched in both directions along the length of this side of the warehouse. For the first time, the area looked almost the same with or without Third Eye. Concrete floor, pressed board walls, visible metal girders. The only differences were that the lights overhead, hanging from bare wires, were turned on through the app and off in real life, and that in Third Eye the doors had handles.

"Not exactly promising," I said. "We might as well have a peek, though."

We pressed on.

Door frames decorated both sides. I say frames, because when I tried the door across the way, I realized the board of the wall hadn't been cut out, the frame had just been nailed on top of it. Apparently this part of the construction had been further from completion when the builders abandoned it.

Since Third Eye showed the doors as complete with handles, and the real doors were just bits of the same board as the walls, I didn't see any way to tell at a glance what was a real door and what was unfinished wall.

"I'm impressed," Donica said. "They found a way to make this place more annoying."

"I guess we just try each one as we come to it?" I said.

She shrugged and nodded.

The hallway stretched past the warehouse. Looked at this way, that space didn't seem quite as huge as it had from the inside. Other halls stretched off at irregular intervals, some right next to the doors – real or fake – others a room's width away.

"Let's stick to the left wall," I said. "This place is a maze."

"Half maze, half amazing?"

I eyed her. "Is that a reference I detect?"

"I don't know, do you know what it's to?"

"Not a clue," I admitted.

"Then you'll have to figure it out for yourself." She smirked. "You're right about the left wall, though."

We trailed our hands along it for a while, until I felt a prick and cursed.

Donica glanced back at me. "What?"

"Thought I got a splinter." I checked my finger and didn't see anything, and the pain faded right away. Thinking about pain in my hand made me think about the cut I'd gotten the other day in the park. It hadn't bothered me since. I checked my palm and saw a hint of a scar, so I hadn't just imagined it.

Had it healed normally?

If it had healed abnormally, if it had healed from Albie's Potion, was that proof that Third Eye was doing something more than messing with my mind?

Only if I had independent confirmation, from a nonplayer, of both the injury and the healing. Too bad I hadn't thought to ask Zhizhi.

"Put your gloves on." Donica held up her own hands, safe and warm in black leather Isotoners. "We don't need to switch back and forth from the app right now."

I pinned my phone between my neck and my chin and tugged my gloves on, trying not to feel self-conscious about the places where the stuffing was popping out of the fabric. That would get worse before it got better if I kept running my hand along the wall. Still, I couldn't deny that said hand felt better with a layer of cloth and lining between it and the cold air.

We kept searching.

One door led back to the warehouse. Another marked what seemed like it was supposed to be a maintenance closet. I got to collect a mop – Plastic and Wood – while Donica took its bucket – Plastic and Iron.

A third revealed another exterior room, so we both scrambled to tug a glove off and turn off the lights of our phones.

It had grown too dark to see without them. How long had we been wandering around? I'd have expected to see the last rays of the evening sun peeking over the mountains. Especially since we were facing the west side of the building. No such luck.

We risked exploring the room with Third Eye only. More shelves, but only up against the walls. More chairs, as well as a sleek, stylish end table with a plastic rack full of magazines on it.

I wished I had some way of opening them up and trying to read them. Would they be all Third Eye runes? More of the gibberish from the sign we'd found? The only cover I could see was called "Live Pets!" and had a picture of puppies on it. All pretty normal. Maybe this place had been earmarked for a vet's office?

"Hold off on collecting this for a second," I said.

"Okay." Donica folded her arms.

I tried tapping just the plastic holder. A flash. When it cleared, the whole stack of magazines was gone along with the plastic they'd rested in. Plastic and Wood. Ah well. Worth a shot.

We got more Wood from the table and chairs, but the shelves were physically extant, uncollectible. I was a little surprised the glass panel over the counter wasn't; when Donica touched it, she obtained a unit of Glass.

I tried an outside window. Nope. Those were real. And so dusty that I could hardly see out of them. Maybe that explained the lack of twilight.

I went over to where Third Eye showed an exterior door, but in reality that was just another piece of board with the frame nailed around it, as yet uncut.

"It's getting late," Donica said. "We should head back."

"More to find next time, yeah?" I tried to sound chipper, but the dust caught in my nose and made me sneeze. I rubbed it away, annoyed. With the state of this place, and with our failure to find anything that so much as hinted at an explanation for that state.

Donica pushed on the door to the hallway and took a half step through it.

"Hey," I said. "Why did you hesitate when I talked about bringing the whole team?"

She paused. "It doesn't matter. I already said you were right."

"It matters because I'm curious. What, you don't like Erin's college friends?"

"Not especially," she said. "As I said, though, I don't like you or Lena yet, either. I'm trying to learn to. Liking people isn't one of my strong suits."

"See," I said. "You and Lena have more in common than you think."

Donica laughed. "Now you're getting nasty."

"If that's not it, then why? Don't you want to help them?"

The laugh died in her throat. "I am."

"How?" By keeping them away from too much Third Eye shit? Should I confess my suspicions to Donica, after all?

"When I told you I was a good enough lawyer to get off if we were challenged..." Her voice trailed off. "I mean, I'd like to think so. But I'm not even a real lawyer. I have a law degree, but I've never passed the bar."

I gave her a shaky thumbs up. "Good news, then. You couldn't get disbarred if you got caught here."

"Always look on the bright side of life, eh?" She pursed her lips like she was considering whistling along with the song that line came from. If she kept this up, I could really start to respect her. Instead, she said, "I'm not willing to risk those kids' futures on something that probably won't happen. Not Erin's."

"So that's why this trip was supposed to be adults only," I said.

"I guess that's stupid." She started to step through the doorway.

"I think it's nice," I said. "I'm surprised."

"That I can be nice?"

I spread my hands. "Not unsurprising, but it's not what I meant."

She waited, gripping the door frame.

"Turns out," I said, "you're a good big sis."

She stared at me. Her cheeks colored in ways I didn't think had anything to do with the cold.

Then she rolled her eyes and stalked through the doorway. The door swung behind her. I heard her boots clacking against the concrete in the hall.

I chuckled to myself. Donica might hate it, but seeing her embarrassed endeared her to me more than any number of forced attempts to make friends with Lena and I.

I pushed through the door, turned, and held it until it was steady. Then I tapped on my phone to reactivate the light.

I shone it in the direction we'd come from.

I cocked my head and tried the other direction.

Same result.

The only sign of Donica was the echo of her boots on the concrete.

 

[MoogleEmpMog]

Chapter 60: Lost

I shouted Donica's name.

My voice echoed up and down the hall for what felt like forever. I couldn't count the heartbeats thudding in my chest.

Then, finally, as if from a great distance, I heard her call back.

"Wait up," I yelled.

I jogged in the direction I'd heard her voice from, even though it seemed like it was the wrong way if we intended to leave through the warehouse. I turned the corner but didn't see her. Just more lines of doors and fake doors.

I could still hear her, though. "What?" At least, I'm pretty sure that's what she said. Both because it more or less fit what I heard, and because I figured she could hear me about as clearly.

I didn't understand why she'd dashed off. She'd gotten embarrassed, fine, but enough to make her break into a run?

Lena, I would have suspected of pulling a prank, although she hadn't done anything like that since I got upset about our first experiment with Air and Plastic.

But Donica? I couldn't picture her wasting her own time with it.

I felt like an idiot, shouting back and forth. If I'd had her phone number I'd have called her; lacking it, I swapped my phone to Discord and tapped out a DM.

OldCampaigner: You lost me. y did u run off?

I winced at the mess I'd made, but I didn't want to waste time cleaning it up. I sent it.

Hopefully, Donica had her Discord set to ping her.

She must have, because a moment later, I got her response.

DeepingShadows: Run? I walked. You must've taken a wrong turn.

I'd hardly taken a turn at all. But I didn't see any point in arguing with her.

OldCampaigner: u want me to stay put, or should u? don't want 2 get separated.

More than we already had.

DeepingShadows: I'll come back. I can't trust you not to get lost again.

I shook my head.

OldCampaigner: Im going back to that vets office or w/e it was.

She didn't send an acknowledgement.

Up to now, I'd been willing to extend her the benefit of the doubt, but this exchange really grated. She can't handle a compliment, runs off in the middle of a scouting expedition, and then gets pissed at me for not keeping up?

All of those were things I expected from Lena, and probably should've been annoyed with her about, too, but at least she would approach them with some humor. Maybe even some self-awareness.

I rolled my shoulders and stomped back down the hall. Donica should've appeared at the other end already, but I still didn't see her. I started trying doors to find the one we'd come from.

How many had I passed when I jogged to the intersection? At least one, because the first I tried was a fake.

At least two. Three.

I frowned.

Even more than the lines of shelves in the warehouse, I found these hallways disorienting. Every door, real or fake, looked the same, whether I checked it in Third Eye or out. The walls had no decorations. I didn't even see any imperfections in the pressed board, and damned if I was going to try to look for patterns in it.

I heard clacking behind me and turned around. So Donica really had gone that way? She must have burst into a sprint as soon as she left the room, and turned two corners in a hurry when we'd only rounded one on our way down here.

But when I looked back at the intersection, she still didn't appear.

Another trick of the acoustics?

OldCampaigner: u really didn't run?

DeepingShadows: Of course not. Why would I?

OldCampaigner: not back to vets office r you?

Had I gotten turned around somehow? I didn't think I'd moved that far.

DeepingShadows: No.

DeepingShadows: We followed the left wall out of that warehouse, right?

OldCampaigner: y.

DeepingShadows: Did we cross over to the other side when we went to the place you're calling the vet's office?

I frowned at the phone. Had we? I realized I didn't remember. Rather, I remembered not crossing, but that wouldn't make any sense with the geography of the warehouse, would it? We must have. Right?

Although my hand was shaking, I took a moment to type properly. I didn't want a chance of her misunderstanding.

OldCampaigner: Don't use wall. Check your footprints. Hall is dusty enough.

I took my own advice and followed the disturbances in the dust past two more doors, which seemed like way too many. The footprints did lead to one, though, and when I pushed at it, it swung into the room where I'd collected the magazines. I left my phone's light on, people seeing it be damned.

I felt a sudden urge to charge the exterior glass and crash through it. It would be a quick way to earn myself a trip to the hospital, possibly followed by jail.

I left my foot in the doorway to prop it open and looked back up and down the hall.

OldCampaigner: back @ vets office.

DeepingShadows: I'm making my way there now. Good call about the footprints. I guess I got on the wrong wall somehow?

OldCampaigner: No worries. place is screwing with my head too.

Literally?

I turned the Third Eye app off. I didn't know if it would help or not. Or if there was even anything to help.

But I couldn't imagine it hurting.

The clack of Donica's boots again. I swung my light around, hoping to signal to her. It passed over the intersection I'd initially jogged to when I went looking for her.

I snapped the light steady and squinted.

The sound continued, but I saw no Donica. Just swirling dust. I'd really kicked that much up behind me? It was a wonder I wasn't sneezing worse.

I panned the light back across the four door frames I'd passed on my way back to the vet's office.

That wasn't right. Was it? I remembered counting three as I checked them, and then I started following my footprints. Hadn't I passed two more? Of course, I'd had Third Eye turned on. Was it adding extra door frames for some reason?

My hand hovered over the three-eyed icon. All I had to do to check was tap it.

Most of the time I couldn't wait to activate it, so how come my hand was shaking when it actually mattered?

Discord chimed.

DeepingShadows: Are you still wandering around?

OldCampaigner: No way. got back to vets office + camped out there.

DeepingShadows: Oh.

I forced myself to calm down and type.

OldCampaigner: Try closing Third Eye. Don't want to get confused if it shows something that's not there.

I didn't want her wandering around with Third Eye open. Maybe it wouldn't make any difference. The fewer variables we had, though, the better.

DeepingShadows: I hope this works better than your footprint suggestion.

DeepingShadows: It seems like somebody else did come in here since the fence fell. I started following my prints and wound up tracing a different set. That's why I asked if you were moving around. These looked older, though, and I think I'm back to mine now.

I furrowed my brow. I looked up from the phone and swung my light back and forth, checking in both directions.

No Donica, which was becoming more and more concerning.

Nobody else. Which was a relief.

I jabbed the Third Eye icon and let it load. Back to my camera. I swept it down the hall.

Five doors. So it really had added one.

I swapped to Discord.

OldCampaigner: can confirm, 3rd eye adds extra doors to halls.

OldCampaigner: As if this place wasnt confusing enough.

No response.

I imagined Donica scowling at her phone, too annoyed to respond when I pestered her more.

I imagined her lying somewhere, bleeding out from a blow to the back of the head.

I felt soaked with sweat, like the hallway had turned into a sauna. I shook like the hallway was freezing.

Only the second one was true.

I could still hear Donica's boots echoing, I reminded myself. That sound hadn't stopped, just raised and lowered in volume as she stalked the halls. It meant that whatever else was happening, she was okay.

Unless those weren't her boots I was hearing.

I hugged my arm and took a step back.

Something bumped into my back. I'm not saying I screamed. I'm not not saying that.

Then I remembered the swinging door to the vet's office.

"Oh my fuck," I muttered, and turned around to steady the damn thing.

"What the hell was that?" Donica shouted. Despite the echoes, she sounded closer than I'd heard her since I stepped into the hall. A moment later, I saw the light from her phone lance through an intersection. Not the one I'd tried to follow her down.

"It's fine," I said. "Just bumped into something."

"Wonderful," she said. It did not sound like she thought so.

Finally, blessedly, she rounded the corner.

Her eyes were narrowed, her smile was tight, and she walked with the same clacking steps I'd been hearing the whole time. She could pass for unconcerned, except that streaks of sweat ran from the brim of her hardhat and down her face.

When she reached me, she grabbed me by the arm and pulled herself halfway into a hug.

I didn't think she'd appreciate me completing the gesture, so I settled for clapping her on the shoulder. "We're good."

"If we ever do this again," she began. She drew in a breath. Gave a little shake of her head. "Just. Try to keep up."

"I'm with that," I said. "You ready to bag this expedition?"

"God yes." She reached up and squeezed my hand on her shoulder. Her expression shifted, but it never quite made it to either a more authentic-looking smile or a frown.

She turned on her heel. "Follow the prints. Right?"

"Right."

Judging from them, we had crossed over from when we were following the left wall. We swapped the hands holding our phones and trailed our right palms along the pressed board, retracing our steps.

The sound of those steps bounced back and forth as we walked, multiplying in the darkness beyond the light of our phones. Even though we'd managed to link back up, the acoustics here still freaked me out.

"Don't tell Lena," Donica whispered.

"What?"

She studied the floor. "Are you going to make me say it?"

"Yeah," I said. "But afterwards, we're even for when you kicked us. At least as far as I'm concerned."

"Ha!" She sighed. "Don't tell her I lost my cool here."

I gasped. "You lost your cool?"

She glared back at me.

I spread my hands. "I won't say a word. Feel free to tell her I bumped into a door and screamed my fool head off, though. She already thinks I'm a huge pussy."

Donica laughed. There was the authentic smile she hadn't quite lost control of before. She sagged against the pressed board wall. "Thanks. I needed that."

"It was definitely a joke and not a statement of fact."

She shook her head. Abruptly, she said, "Vince Carter."

I blinked.

"When I was a kid, NBA announcers used to call him 'half-man, half-amazing.' That's what I was trying to reference. When we first came back here?" She sighed. "I guess I've got to work on my reference game."

"No, you're doing great," I said. "You've got to commit to the bit, though. If you managed to stump me with something, that's a win."

"I don't think I'm ever going to understand what the two of you see in this."

I smiled. "I'll try to tone it down when you're in the conversation. Thanks for giving it a shot."

"Yeah. Well." She picked herself up off the wall and rolled her shoulders. "We should be almost out."

We passed four more door frames, at least by my count. I realized I'd left Third Eye open, so I could only really trust what I was looking at if I didn't look through my phone. None of them opened when I pushed against them, whether they were physically present or not.

The fifth swung into the warehouse.

 

[_Phoenix4_]

I felt soaked with sweat, like the hallway had turned into a sauna. I shook like the hallway was freezing.

Only the second one was true.

I could still hear Donica's boots echoing, I reminded myself. That sound hadn't stopped, just raised and lowered in volume as she stalked the halls. It meant that whatever else was happening, she was okay.

Unless those weren't her boots I was hearing.

I hugged my arm and took a step back.

Something bumped into my back. I'm not saying I screamed. I'm not not saying that.

Then I remembered the swinging door to the vet's office.

"Oh my fuck," I muttered, and turned around to steady the damn thing.

Click to shrink...

This is a very intriguing story, horror, mystery, drama, sci-fi, romance, it's like a genre salad, with a little bit of everything

 

[MoogleEmpMog]

Chapter 61: Home Stretch

I'd never been happier to see row after row of empty metal shelf frames.

The only reason I didn't run up to the nearest and throw my arms around it and plant a kiss on its brushed aluminum side was that, technically, we were still on the construction site. I had to save some relief until we made it back to Donica's Yukon. And maybe a bit more until she drove me back to the apartment.

Oh. Also, I didn't do that because I would look like a goddamn lunatic. I couldn't afford to until she dropped me off. Otherwise, she might strand me here.

So instead of making out with the shelf, I hugged the right wall and broke into a light jog. I heard Donica at my heels, matching my pace.

Row after row of shelves, all identical, stretching into the darkness. Echoes from our boots, rolling back to us.

Did the warehouse occupy almost an entire half of the bottom floor of the arcology? It hadn't seemed so from the hallways, but from inside, I'd swear it was almost a block across. Forget supplying shops. If you filled this place up, you could supply the whole building, probably for the better part of a winter. A nuclear one.

Which made me wonder if there was another warehouse like this on the other side. Absurd though that would seem, there almost had to be, right? Otherwise, that restaurant or pub or whatever we'd seen would've had to wheel its supplies through the lobby. Or would the completed arcology have used some wacky freight elevator system to cart cases of beer underground?

I recognized that my thoughts were wandering; I chose to set them free. Sure, I could've concentrated on my situation. That wouldn't have gotten me out any faster, though, and it would've sucked a lot more.

At least there didn't seem to be a bunch of fake door frames in the warehouse. The first door I jogged up to swung open when I shoved it.

I barrelled through and swept my light around. More shelves, a counter, and no Third Eye objects except the decorations we couldn't collect. The mom-and-pop shop we'd entered the warehouse from. And beyond, within reach, the lobby.

Beyond that?

Outside.

My heart raced and so did I.

I skidded to a halt in the lobby and glanced over my shoulder to make sure I hadn't somehow lost Donica. For one horrible moment, I didn't see her.

Then she rounded the doorway and staggered to a stop, panting, hands on her knees.

I gave her a moment.

When she'd caught her breath, I said, "How do you keep up with athletes?"

She glared up at me, opened her mouth, shook her head, and gave me the finger instead.

It almost put a smile on my face. "Another thing you've got in common with Lena. Once you two actually hang out, you're gonna be fast friends."

"Never," Donica gasped. She straightened up. After sucking down another breath, she continued, "I'm never hanging out with either of you again."

"Fair," I said.

I'd been joking when I asked how she kept up, but I genuinely did wonder. Why wasn't I exhausted? Had I really shaped up so much from a week of playing Third Eye? I supposed if Donica hadn't spent much time playing the game, and had mostly done her scouting from a car, she wouldn't have gotten the same fitness program out of it.

Speaking of out, that was where I wanted to be.

I turned back to the lobby to make it happen.

I froze.

The outside doors waited on my right. Just one more sprint and I'd be home free.

A little to the left, where we'd collected those first chairs, was the bank of elevators. Three sets of brushed metal doors.

But I could only see two sets of those doors, because one was open.

I nudged Donica's shoulder. "Do you have Third Eye open right now?"

"No." She was still breathing hard, so her voice came out even more clipped than usual. "Those hallways were confusing enough without it."

"Amen to that," I said. "So. The elevator doors."

"One set is open," Donica said flatly.

"Were they... like that when we got here?"

I felt her shudder. She jerked away from my hand. "They must've been. The place doesn't have power."

"Right." I rubbed my hands. "Must've been. Only thing that makes sense."

"I'm very much in favor of things making sense," Donica said.

It didn't matter.

If I hadn't glanced at the elevator, I never would've known it was open. Except that it must have been open to begin with, so I'd seen inside and just didn't remember because I'd been paying attention to other things. Third Eye things. Collectible things, like the chairs. Aesthetic details, like the Art Deco lamps and the carpet in the lobby. We were never going to ride an elevator in a construction site to begin with, so why pay it any mind?

Besides, it wasn't like it was between us and the front doors.

We had no reason to interact with it.

I took a step toward it.

Donica grabbed my arm. "What are you doing?"

I stared at her hand on my arm. Back at the elevator doors.

They hadn't closed. Of course. They didn't have power. They couldn't.

I could just make out one corner of the inside of the elevator. Waist-high wood panels, a rich reddish-brown like a fancy desk. Carpet, the same low-pile burgundy as in the lobby, but a little brighter. Less dusty. The same Art Deco lamps. Above the wood panels, metal polished to a mirror sheen.

The reflections inside looked odd. If it were mirrored all the way around, it should have had that infinite corridor effect I've always found disconcerting. For some reason, the lack of it here made me queasy.

"Sorry," I mumbled. "Just. Got distracted. Let's get the hell out of here."

Donica didn't even bother responding. She just charged through the lobby to the front doors.

If we were well and truly screwed, if whatever Third Eye shit was going on here went way beyond a game, beyond messing with my mind, then those doors wouldn't budge –

They slammed wide open when her palms hit them. A blast of colder air shocked me out of my catastrophizing.

I ran to the doors and stumbled onto the sidewalk beside her.

It was freezing out here, and fully dark over the mountains. Most of the skyscrapers had gone dark as well, and a lot of the shops across Broadway. Bars and restaurants remained bright, though, and the headlights of the cars blazed, almost shocking after we'd relied only on our phone lights and the fake ones Third Eye showed us.

I realized the lights on our phones were still on and fumbled to shut mine off.

Donica saw me do it and followed suit.

I don't know why we bothered. Nobody on Broadway so much as tapped their brakes. A quartet of people emerged from a bar across the street, chatting and waving, and didn't spare us a glance.

Wordlessly, Donica and I rushed back to her Yukon.

I haven't always been kind to SUVs in my head, but in that moment, I loved that vehicle more than anything I'd ever owned, and almost as much as anyone I'd ever known.

Then Donica turned the heat on and the Yukon rose a couple notches in my estimation.

We sat there, warming up, catching our breaths, for several minutes.

Donica ripped her hardhat off and threw it into the back seat.

The suddenness of her motion made me jump. After a second to collect myself, I took mine off as well. I set it at my feet.

"That was..." I bit my lip. "That was really goddamn weird back there."

She nodded.

"Like." I drew in a breath of deliciously heated air. "I guess, technically, nothing actually happened. We just... got lost."

"You mean I did." She looked away.

"I wouldn't have fared any better."

"Agreed." She laughed. It sounded hysterical. I don't mean the funny kind.

"But I'm not the only one who felt it was weird," I said. Of course I wasn't. She'd already acknowledged it.

I needed to hear it again.

I did.

"No." She shuddered. "I was losing my shit in those hallways. When I realized the prints I was following weren't mine? I was one hundred percent convinced I was going to die. Either you were a psychopath and were hunting me down, or the place came preloaded with one and we were both screwed."

"In fairness," I said, "I'm pretty sure you could take me in a fight."

That wasn't true though, was it? I thought about how I'd outpaced her when we ran through the warehouse. Maybe she had asthma or something.

"For sure." She tried to smile. When it didn't work, she averted her eyes. "I'm glad it wasn't just me."

"There've been a few Third Eye things that are just... weird." If I kept talking, it would all come burbling out. Donica was not the person I should be talking to about this. Or was she? "Nothing on the same level as that, though."

She frowned. "What part of that do you think was a Third Eye thing?"

"At the least, it was adding extra door frames and making the maze even more confusing," I said. "Although I guess that's just an extension of its whole thing of adding extra mundane objects to the environment."

"They fit weirdly well in there, don't you think?"

I hadn't thought about it, but – "Yeah. Some of the impossible objects we see don't really make sense. In there, everything did. It was consistent, too."

"What do you make of that?" she asked.

"No clue," I said. "Unless it has to do with the inspection report? Maybe that's what a bespoke Third Eye environment looks like, compared to the procedurally generated stuff."

"Which goes back to your question about why a dev would add stuff instead of taking it away in an environment that it's, technically, trespassing for us to wander around in. Or them, for that matter."

"Don't remind me," I said.

I had no idea what to do with our speculation. If we'd actually been in danger, we'd have no choice but to splash warnings all over the wiki. If Erin didn't like it, we'd convince her. Lena and I would do a video on it and try to warn as many players as possible, even if it killed our channel.

Had we been in danger?

Nothing actually happened to us. We just got lost. I couldn't even prove we'd gotten lost because of Third Eye, rather than the confusing layout of the physical building.

Hell. I couldn't admit we'd been poking around the construction site without confessing to at least a misdemeanor.

Another reason for the devs to craft a bespoke environment inside a place players had to trespass to get to?

I sank into the Yukon's luxurious seat and rubbed my eyes.

Despite how freaked out we'd gotten, despite even that moment on the way out when I'd seen the open elevator doors and felt almost nauseated with dread, neither Donica nor I had been hurt. Neither of us had been threatened. At just about any point, I, at least, could've smashed through the window of what I called the vet's office if I absolutely had to get out of the building.

Hell. The weirdest shit in there didn't even seem related to Third Eye. The preinstalled shelves and booths, so inconvenient for a construction site, were real. So were the doorframes nailed up around stretches of solid wall. So were the doors without latches or stops.

So were the cavernous warehouse and the maze-like hallways.

So was that elevator.

My hand dropped to the armrest. I sat up.

"What?" Donica asked.

I didn't look at her. "You saw inside the elevator, too, right?"

"Yeah, why?"

"The interior," I said. "It was finished?"

When she didn't respond, I risked peeking at her face. The only lights came from the cars whizzing past and the bars across the street, but I thought she looked wide-eyed. She murmured, "I must've looked through my phone camera."

"Even if you did, you'd closed Third Eye by then."

She looked down at her phone. Uselessly, she confirmed that the app was off.

"Putting in dummy shelves, and booths, and a bar." She shook her head. "It's stupid. Wasteful. I get how somebody with more money than sense could think it wasn't a terrible idea, though. You check out the layout, get a sense for it as a physical environment. Hell. If you couldn't do that on a computer, I might even say it made a kind of sense."

I understood what she didn't say:

There was no excuse for the elevator, and no explanation.

I flexed my fingers over the Yukon's door. I watched Donica's hands on her phone, and on her own door handle after she put the phone away.

"I'm not going back." I couldn't tell if she was whispering it to me, or to herself.

I forced myself to buckle up and clung to the seatbelt.

She threw the Yukon into reverse, pivoted, shifted back to drive, and zoomed out of the parking lot.

 

[Noxious]

Now this some good limnal horror. So is this is a incomplete dungeon or an arg location? One wonders.

 

[MoogleEmpMog]

Chapter 62: Warm Welcome

Neither of us spoke while Donica drove me back to the apartment. I don't know what was running through her head. I hardly even looked at her. I stared out the window, watching strip malls and fast food joints and antique stores roll pass.

Real places, filled with real people. I wanted to ask Donica to pull in at one of the bars just so we could mingle with the crowd. The alcohol probably wouldn't hurt, either.

But I couldn't afford bar prices, so my mouth stayed clamped shut and the crowds rolled past, as oblivious of me as I usually was of them.

I felt trapped, queasy, almost worse than at the construction site. Desperate for human contact, yet I wouldn't even open my mouth to connect with the person next to me.

I felt like an idiot. Nothing had happened. The weirdest phenomena seemed to have had more to do with the construction site than the app I'd started to fear as much as I was addicted to it.

That thought sent a new shiver down my spine as we turned onto Hampden.

Was this my new normal?

Had Third Eye damaged my mind – and Donica's, and maybe every player's – so much we would face that kind of disorientation no matter where we went?

Or had the Third Eye app opened some actual third eye, if just a crack? Was I going to spend the rest of my life drifting at the edge of weirdness I didn't, couldn't, understand? Weirdness that might have always been there, but which I would've glossed over before, as safely oblivious as those bar patrons?

I didn't know if it would be better or worse if the things I saw were real.

When Donica brought the Yukon to a stop, I blinked and shook my head.

Maybe any or all of the above was true, or maybe the people who'd tried and failed to build that arcology had completely screwed up priorities. It sure would explain why, long before Third Eye entered beta, construction on it had stalled.

Regardless, I wasn't going to find out tonight. Not even when I slept on it and saw that elevator in my nightmares.

I unbuckled my seatbelt. "Thanks for the ride. And the tip. It may have been creepy, but we did get a ton of materials and XP out of it."

"Back to the bright side, huh?" Donica's smile looked almost natural.

"I try," I said. "You want to come up for coffee or something?"

"I bet your coffee's terrible." Somewhat to my surprise, she unbuckled her seatbelt. "Sure."

I chuckled. I hadn't been able to since we left the construction site. Doing it now broke open a floodgate and I found myself grinning. "With wagers like that, you must make a killing in Vegas."

"Oh no," she said. "When you end up the loser in every fantasy sports league in your office, you learn better than to bet on anything."

We got out, she tapped her phone, and the Yukon honked as its locks clicked shut. Once again, I stood in the parking lot below my and Lena's apartment. On my right, the lid of the dumpster where I'd gotten Air hung open again. I went over and slammed it shut before joining Donica at the foot of the stairs.

"Neighborly of you," she said.

"Somebody's got to be."

She considered this in silence.

After a minute of it, we trudged up the stairs.

At least no one had left their garbage out on the walkway this evening. Although it was so cold, I doubted I could smell it if they had.

I unlocked the apartment door and called out, "I'm home."

No "welcome home" from Lena.

I pushed the door open. Warmth flooded over me. I hadn't realized how desperately cold I'd gotten until I felt an alternative.

The lights were off inside, so the only illumination came from Lena's computer. It painted the shelves and bobbleheads and an empty Dairy Queen ice cream cup in weird blues. The tips of Lena's curls looked almost purple.

She didn't spin her chair around. Her mouse clicked; her keyboard clacked.

After a flash on her screen, she said, "So. You did come back."

"Huh?" I stepped inside to get out of the cold and give Donica a path to do the same. While I shrugged off my coat, I lowered my voice to whisper, "Coffee's in the kitchen."

"Thanks." Donica shot me an odd look out of the corner of her eye, but headed for the counter before I could try to parse it.

Lena finally did turn to us. I couldn't see her expression. The outline of her shoulders tensed further, though.

The edges of her screen went red, a surefire sign she was taking damage in whatever game she'd been playing.

She seemed to realize it. She spun back around, reached for her mouse, hesitated. The red went away, replaced with a splash screen, then a clip from the swooping camera angle of whoever had killed her character. She said, "brb" into her headset, pushed the microphone up to mute it, and dumped it on the desk.

"Sorry," I said. "I didn't realize you were playing online. If you want to wait to talk –"

"Whatever. I was having a shit match anyway." She pushed away from her computer and climbed off her chair.

Donica turned on the kitchen lights.

Lena flinched at the sudden brightness.

"I'll be out of your hair in a few minutes," Donica said. "I'm just grabbing a coffee for the road."

"I didn't say you should go." Lena rolled her shoulders, stretched, and met me halfway across the apartment. She raised her chin to face me.

I got my first good look at her expression. Lips pressed tight, eyes averted. I couldn't say for sure in the dim light, but I suspected those eyes were red-rimmed.

I touched her arm. She stared at the floor.

"You must have had a really shit match," I said.

"Heh." Finally, she looked up at me with a trace of a smile. "Hell of a lot worse than yours, apparently."

"You have no idea." I held my arms out.

After a moment, she gave a little shrug and an even smaller nod.

All the excuse I needed. I wrapped my arms around her. I'd intended to just give her a quick hug, but I found myself clinging for dear life.

I'd thought I was over the tension from exploring the construction site. Like hell.

Lena squeaked. "Wha –"

I felt her arms snake around my back; awkwardly, she patted it.

I squeezed her even harder. If it'd been just the two of us, I might've collapsed against her, but since we had company, I forced myself to straighten up and let go.

"That," Lena said, "sure isn't what I expected."

"I could say that about just about everything tonight."

She frowned at me, then past me at Donica. "So it... didn't go well? Why were you gone for so long, then?"

"Were we?" I had a couple of horrible thoughts. "Oh shit. Did you try to call me again and I didn't pick up?"

Lena shook her head. "I figured you didn't want to hear from me."

"Extremely wrong." Still, I breathed a sigh of relief. After I'd missed two calls from her the other day, I'd started to wonder if my phone was going. Or was somehow being co-opted.

The second remained all too possible, but it seemed it hadn't happened tonight.

My other worry, though...

"Is your clock broken?" Donica asked.

"The eyes and tail don't move, but the clock part works fine as long as we remember to keep batteries in it." I swallowed. Looking back at the cheery knockoff vintage Kit-Cat was almost as hard as looking at the elevator had been. Now as then, I couldn't stop myself from doing so.

Donica gazed up at it, too. "It's really quarter after ten?"

"Looks more like ten thirty to me," Lena said. "I figured..."

She shook her head.

"I know we were in there a while," Donica said, "but that has to be too much. When did we leave?"

"Five-ish," Lena said. "You can check the Discord."

"There's no way." Donica grabbed her foam cup out of the coffee machine and joined us between our two computers. She peered at Lena's screen. The lower right of the desktop displayed the same time as the kitchen clock.

How long did it take to drive back and forth to the construction site? Fifteen minutes each way? Probably less, the way Donica drove. Even adding time for us to grab and eat dinner, even adding a little conversation, we'd have had to have spent four hours inside.

I didn't believe it.

Nor did I know what it meant.

"I guess time flies when you're having fun," Lena muttered. She hunched her shoulders and looked everywhere but us.

Donica blew on her coffee. "I suppose I have to give Cameron props for stamina, if nothing else."

Lena whirled on her, sputtering.

"Well?" Donica raised an eyebrow. "That's what you're implying, isn't it?"

Lena balled her fists. "Don't screw with me like that. You're not even close to a good enough friend to get away with it."

"I'm not your friend at all, and it doesn't seem like our relationship is headed that way." Donica took a sip. "If you're that worried –"

"Of course I'm fucking worried," Lena snapped. "Cam's demonstrated he's got shit taste. Hell, he used to date me!"

Her self-assessment made me want to hug her again; her admission we weren't together anymore reminded me I shouldn't.

"There is so much to unpack there," Donica said. "None of which is my business."

"You got that right!" Lena said.

"Enough, Lena." I held her arm.

She tried to tug it loose. "Why are you siding...!"

"Lena." I gave her arm a squeeze.

She slumped back against me. "'Cause I'm the one being a bitch."

"Lil' bit," I said. "We've had a very, very weird night, but it's not anybody's fault. Well. Nobody here. I promise I'll tell you all about it."

Her back muscles tensed against my chest as she nodded.

"Thanks for the coffee, Cameron." Donica raised her foam cup in a mock toast. "If you can spare this, I think I'll leave you to explain what actually happened to us."

"You wildly overestimate my exposition skill." I almost said it was "base twenty percent." I didn't know if she'd get the reference to the Call of Cthulhu RPG, though, and I'd told her I'd try to cut down on the obscura.

She swirled her coffee. "You think I could do any better?"

"Nope." I didn't know if anyone could explain what we'd gone through to someone who hadn't. So much of it seemed innocuous unless it was happening to you. "Do you mind writing down as much as you can remember? When you get home, I mean. I'd like to go over it tomorrow."

"I mind," Donica said, "but it's a good idea."

Lena looked back and forth between us. "What the hell did I miss?"

Donica and I exchanged glances.

"Hell, huh?" I let go of Lena to rub my hands. "We should sit down. It's a long story."

 

[MoogleEmpMog]

Chapter 63: Two Truths And Third Eye

When I broke it down to just the facts, it turned out not to be a long story, after all. Although the three of us took seats around the kitchen counter, I'd laid out the basics before Donica even finished off her coffee.

I paused to collect my thoughts and catch my breath.

Donica got up, pitched her foam cup, and collected her coat.

Lena eyed each of us in turn. "I don't really get it."

I sighed. "If you weren't there, I don't know if you can."

"Like, I get why it would be scary in the moment," she said. "Getting lost especially. And I have no clue what's up with the time thing. It seems like that's happened to you a couple times, which is freaky for sure."

She got no argument from me.

"But in the end," she continued, "that's the only thing that really happened to you, right? You got lost, you saw the creepy elevator, and you took way longer than you thought?"

I lowered my eyes. "Yes."

"It doesn't matter whether you get it or not," Donica said. "I don't know why it was so disturbing. But it happened. If you want to understand, go check it out for yourself."

"Yeah, no," I said. "As far as I'm concerned, none of us should ever set foot in there again."

Not that I believed it would help.

Whatever was happening to us, whether Third Eye had created the weirdness in our heads or in the world, or just steered us into contact with weirdness that already existed, I doubted a single construction site could contain it.

Lena sipped the Dr. Thunder she'd cracked open while she listened to us. "You get why it's hard for me to just accept, right?"

"Yeah," Donica said. "It's hard for me to accept, and I endured it."

I expected Lena to have some comeback, but instead, she just took another sip.

"That's it for me." Donica pulled her coat on and stepped into her boots. "I'm going to go home and try and fail to sleep."

"Good luck," I said. "Drive safe."

"Safe." Donica snorted. "That would be nice."

Lena kicked idly at the counter. "Sorry I bitched you out earlier."

Donica glanced over her shoulder. "Shall we call it even for what happened with my Discord group? It'd be nice to clear all my debts. Be able to say I got something out of the evening."

"That's fine by me." Lena glanced at her computer; an end of match screen had popped up for the game she'd abandoned to talk to us. "You ever want to play a round, hit me up."

"I don't have a lot of gaming time anymore," Donica said. "Although, if Cameron's right about what happened being related to Third Eye, that's a timeslot I might be rescheduling. I'll let you know."

She opened the door, letting herself out and a storm of cold in. When it clicked shut behind her, I rose and locked it.

Lena wandered back to her computer chair. She stood over it, hands on the armrests.

"If you two are messing with me," she began, then fell silent. She tried a laugh. "Then it's a pretty great prank. Props?"

"I wish," I said. "We really did get lost in there, and it really did feel like... I don't even know how to describe it. Like if we looked away, with or without Third Eye open, when we turned back it'd be a completely different layout. And we really did lose track of time."

"I guess," Lena said, "you think we should stop playing. Like Miguel said."

I ran my fingers through my hair. Sweeping it back into the style Third Eye gave my avatar.

I took my phone out. I still had the app open. I trained the camera on Lena.

Her wings drooped, and instead of blazing, her flames had subsided to a gentle, hearthside glow. Third Eye rendered her current outfit – IRL, worn black jeans, a fading pink and gray sweatshirt – as a simpler dress than I'd seen the first day, trim, medieval-style, with a high collar that mimicked the sweatshirt's turtleneck.

"I don't know," I whispered.

She turned, eyebrows raised. "After an experience like that?"

"I probably seem like an idiot." I probably was. "I think... it might be better if we'd never started playing. Never installed the app. Maybe, never even backed it."

Lena waited.

"Assuming this is real. And not just in my and Donica's heads." I forced myself to lower the phone and tucked it into my pocket. "And Miguel's. And I'm pretty sure Erin's, although I haven't confronted her about it."

"Everybody but me," Lena said quietly.

I winced and didn't know why. "In the tunnel, when I –" When I stole Water from you. "– got Water. What did it look like to you?"

"I don't know. First I was pissed, then I was scared for Miguel. I didn't really think about how it looked." She frowned. "I think I just saw you through my phone, so your avatar, same as usual."

"That's totally possible. The experience of getting a Reactant is something I need to talk to Erin about. I've been putting it off because I thought I would sound crazy."

Lena cocked her head. "What did it look like to you?"

"Like I was seeing you as your avatar. Not just through my phone." Seeing her avatar and mine, feeling the amulet on my chest and the warmth of her flames.

"It all happened so fast," Lena said. "I wouldn't have even considered that possibility before tonight. Maybe it worked the same for me?"

"It could be just the person who gets the Reactant who sees things that way. I felt the same way when I got Air. Or I could just be losing it."

"You really do need to talk to Erin about it," Lena said. "I'm the wrong person to ask."

"Until we find your Fire," I said.

She held out her hand and flexed her fingers. I knew she'd be thinking of what they would look like in Third Eye, sheathed in a glove of flame. "If we still want to."

I nodded.

"You believe this shit is either real or messing with your head." She chewed her lip. "Aren't you scared?"

"God yes." I held out my hands. They shook.

Lena clasped them in hers. I fought down a shudder. Too warm, too soft. She even waited for me to continue my explanation.

I tried to gather my thoughts but her touch frazzled my brain. Or maybe it came pre-frazzled. I babbled. "Like I said, I think it'd be better if we never started playing. I don't know if Donica and I were in any danger tonight, but I know it scared the shit out of us. That's not an experience I want again. Not something I'd ever want you to go through."

Her smile peeked through. She clamped her jaw and it vanished. "So why wouldn't we quit?"

"Because –" I swallowed. "I don't think what happened tonight was just a Third Eye thing. Or, if it was, then what we're thinking of as Third Eye things are just the tip of an iceberg."

Lena waited.

"That elevator, at the very least. It was really there. Not just through Third Eye. Even if I'd thrown my phone away, I still would've seen it." Still would've felt it, that overpowering dread. If I closed my eyes, I'd still see that mirrored surface that didn't reflect another mirror. I couldn't seem to arrange my understanding of what it had reflected. "I think... I'm going to keep seeing shit like that. Encountering it."

"And that makes you want to keep playing Third Eye?"

"I don't think it will stop just because I quit the game. At least with Third Eye, I feel like I might be able to do something about it." If the danger was real, surely the power was, too. "I don't want to be powerless again."

"I know that feel," Lena said. After a moment, she let go of my hands and took her phone out. "I went scouting this evening, too."

"I thought you wanted a break." My eyes widened. "Did you find Fire?"

She shook her head.

She tilted her phone so I could see her screen.

100/100 MP, as always. Without a Reactant, how could it be otherwise?

0/1000 HP.

On the bright side Donica claimed I always looked on, I could no longer say I was the only person to have made Lena lose HP.

Fuck the bright side. I gripped her shoulder. "You're not hurt, are you?"

"Nothing but my ego." She shrugged. "Remember, until you and Donica dumped your bogus journey on me, I was still operating under the assumption Third Eye was just a game."

"Which," I said, "it still might be. I hope."

Lena raised an eyebrow. "You sound super convinced."

I tried to smile. "Hope springs eternal?"

"Maybe for you." She tucked her phone away. "It's just like they were saying on Erin's Discord. You go out alone, without a Reactant, you're just asking somebody to invade you."

"This invader," I said. "Sturdy looking, short-haired asshole in a bomber jacket?"

"Oh, you've met!" She poked me in the ribs. "Why do you think Matt's an asshole? Because he's an invader?"

Because he attacked you, I thought. Unfair. I'd already considered him an asshole. "No, because he's a smug prick."

"That checks out," she said. "He talked some shit about our video."

"Now that's just unforgivable." I glared into the distance, vaguely in the direction of DU where Matt had – maybe – retreated to his lair with 10% of Lena's XP.

She watched my face. Hers puffed up as she tried to hold back a laugh. "Right? Although he did praise your technique, and my outfit."

"Some things are above reproach," I said. "Even for assholes."

"Honestly, though, it was scary when he showed up out of the blue, but he wasn't mean about it or anything. He helped me up after I lost and told me to be more careful." Lena shrugged. "If I could've fought back, I'm pretty sure I would've thought the invasion was cool as hell. I'd have loved to kick his ass. And I'd have loved to see you guys go at it."

"Shit, sorry, Lena. I should've gone with you."

"If you had, he probably would've avoided us. Why fight a two-v-one? Besides, I told you to go with Donica." Her smile faded and her shoulders slumped. "Which makes the way I acted this evening even bitchier."

Well, she wasn't wrong.

Maybe it made me a shitty person, but I couldn't bring myself to care if Lena was prickly toward Donica. The specific way she had been, though, I couldn't keep ignoring.

Lena had said it herself. I'd admitted it to Miguel.

We used to date.

So why did it raise her hackles when I stayed out too late with another woman? The evening I'd spent with Donica was about the least romantic thing I could imagine, and even under better circumstances, she was roughly the last person I knew who I'd want to date. But in theory, both Lena and I should be open to other people, should be cheering each other on.

I wondered if she thought I'd been just as bad when Miguel flirted with her. I wondered if she'd be right to.

"This is literally the worst night to talk to you about that. My brain is a mess. But I really want to." I shook my head. "Shit. We both know that's a lie."

"You mean you need to." She looked at my hand on her shoulder. "We both do."

"Yeah." I half-spread my arms. I hated how much I wanted to hug her. Almost as much as the thought that I shouldn't.

For just a second, she hesitated, and I wondered if she'd turn away.

Then she leaned forward and hugged my waist. She rested her head against my chest.

I slid one arm around her shoulders and, when she didn't pull away, hugged her back. My other hand hovered over her hair. "If we don't talk tonight, are you going to keep putting it off?"

"Yep." I felt more than heard her chuckle. "No, I promise. I'll sit down and we'll hash our shit out. We should've done it a long time ago."

"Yeah," I said.

"Tomorrow night?"

"Tomorrow night."

"You want to talk about everything, right?" She tilted her head back to look up at me. "Where we're going. How we got here."

"I think we have to." I brushed a curl out of her face.

She reached up and clasped my hand. Her fingers trembled. She mastered them. Her gaze wavered. That, too.

She said, "Then there's somewhere we need to go tomorrow. The place I should've gone right from the start."

 

[MoogleEmpMog]

Chapter 64: Steel

I woke to an unfamiliar smell. Rich, savory, just a little spicy.

I drew in a deep breath. My lips curled into a smile.

My eyes flew open and I staggered out of bed. My first thought was that the next thing Third Eye had begun to subject me to was olfactory hallucinations. Or, looking at it another way, it had started letting me smell things from another reality. Third Nose? I guess it would be second but it didn't have the right ring to it.

My second thought was that if it had, I wondered how long it would take to go from tantalizing to frustrating.

My third thought was to realize, as I stumbled past the room divider, that Lena's bed was empty – worrying – and made – unimaginable.

Maybe I'd slept crazy late? Had I lost time while I was sleeping, too? Or just been so worn out, physically and emotionally, by the construction site, that I slept in?

I scooped up my phone and checked. Assuming it reported truthfully, which I no longer did, it was going on eight. Normal wakeup time these days.

I tucked the phone into a pajama pocket and padded out of the bedroom.

"Morning, sleepyhead," Lena called. "I'm almost done here."

I peered at the dark interior of our microwave. Had the bulb burned out? The bulb wasn't part of the cooking process, was it? "Done with what?"

Instead of answering, she said, "Grab the hot pad, would you?"

I did.

She turned around and deposited a pan on top of it. It contained an omelet.

Let me clarify.

It contained an omelet. Not scrambled eggs. Not scrambled eggs with some leftover taco cheese sprinkled haphazardly on top.

An omelet. Egg, cheese, flakes of thyme, and I was pretty sure mushrooms. And, from the smell of it, seasoning. Folded over and only a little overcooked on one side.

The source of the aroma I'd woken up to.

"Oh God," I said.

Lena narrowed her eyes. "Geez. At least taste it first."

"Nope, it's too late." I shuddered. "I've stumbled into a parallel universe."

She stuck her tongue out. "Come on, I've definitely cooked breakfast before. At least three times since I moved in."

"You've heated," I said. "Same as me."

She thrust her jaw forward. "Cooked."

"Seriously, this smells great," I said. "Thanks."

"Yeah, well." She scratched the back of her neck. "Sounded like you had a shit day yesterday."

"This one's off to a better start." I got out some plates. Lena cut the omelet in half and slid it onto them.

We dug in. Frankly, I thought she'd used too much salt, probably not enough pepper – although maybe the right amount for the two of us –, and way too many mushrooms. The egg taste disappeared into the rest of the mix.

I savored every bite.

I set my fork down. "That was awesome."

"You don't have to be sarcastic about it." Lena stabbed her last bite and shoveled it into her mouth. "I looked up the recipe and everything."

"I'm not," I said. "When I make breakfast, I usually just crack the eggs and stir 'em up. I think it's really cool that you tried a little extra."

"Don't get used to it." She nudged her plate with two fingers. "It came out good, then?"

"Didn't you think so?"

"Little heavy on the salt," she said.

"A little salt never hurt anybody, unless they had a coronary from it." I grinned. "When did you get the mushrooms?"

"Last night, same time I stocked back up on eggs," she said. "After I got my ass kicked by that Matt guy, and you hadn't called, I was walking past King Sooper and I just... figured I'd do something that felt productive."

"Quest complete," I said.

She brightened. "I better get a level out of it!"

"You might get two," I said. "When you first start grinding a skill, it shoots right up."

"I wouldn't know. Who's got time for MMOs?" She tossed off the line, but I realized I'd said something wrong because all of a sudden, her smile turned brittle.

She grabbed the pan and dishes and dumped them in the kitchen sink. If she'd run the water and started scrubbing with our smiley-face dish wand, I really would have started to worry I'd stumbled into a parallel universe.

Instead, she stepped around the counter and headed for the bedroom.

I took Lena's place behind the counter. Might as well knock out the dishes while she got dressed. I'd lost track of whose turn it was, but it only seemed fair after she'd made breakfast for once.

While I scrubbed, I tried to understand what was going through her head.

What about this morning's trip? She'd implied we'd be scouting again, but refused to say where. Or why she hadn't been willing to go there until we agreed to sit down and hash out all our shit. Was the breakfast an attempt to butter me up so I'd go along with her trip, or to make up for her expectation that the trip would suck?

Maybe the key lay in what she'd said about the mushrooms. She'd wanted to feel productive. I could tell her lack of Third Eye progress was eating at her. Especially after she'd had to admit her Custom Personification to Erin. Losing a PVP fight to Matt must've made it worse. Did she want to wrest a modicum of control over her life by doing her own cooking?

I supposed it was possible she really did just feel bad for the bizarre experience I'd had the previous evening. We did nice things for each other, occasionally, especially when one of us seemed down.

Less than we used to. Less than we should.

"You didn't have to do those right now," she said.

"It almost sounds like you're saying I didn't have to do them." The egg and cheese had really stuck to the pan. Cooked on max temp, I bet. I leaned forward to scrub it out. "I'd rather finish them now so they're not waiting for us when we get back."

"Fine. Just don't take too long."

"I'll get dressed right after this." The pan looked more clean then less. I rinsed the soap off, put it in the rack, and turned.

I'd planned to say something, but I forgot what.

Lena had dressed for cold weather. Striped leggings poking out of holy jeans, her only pair of thick socks – a novelty Christmas set she got from her parents three years ago –, a red polyester weave cap, and a black thrift store sweater only two sizes too big for her. She had more trouble finding used clothes than me.

But two other things on top of that ensemble:

On her nose, her first generation Google Glass, which she'd never worn on a scouting trip before.

Around her neck, draped over her sweater, her amulet. Ditto.

Individually, they both should've looked ridiculous on top of normal – for her – modern clothes. A little bit of sci-fi from a future people were too uncomfortable with to embrace. A little bit of fantasy from a past that never was.

I swallowed. I stared.

"I don't care if it looks stupid," she said.

"Doesn't." I sounded like an idiot. "I mean. You make it work."

She looked away. I didn't think she believed me, but I was telling the whole truth and nothing but. Her accessories transformed her winter clothes into armor. No Third Eye required. Somehow, I knew the app would translate them the same way. I'd surely check later in the course of our scouting, but I didn't have to.

"This is it for me," she said.

I shook myself out of my daze and rounded the counter. "What's that supposed to mean?"

"For Third Eye," she said. "Either this works and I feel like an idiot for putting it off, or I'm out of the game."

I frowned. "You think you're going to fall into the bottom 1%?"

"Nah. Not immediately. And whether I do or not, I'll still go with you if you want to scout. I guess I'll scan stuff for as long as my beta access lasts, but I'm not collecting anything else. There's no point in me getting Materials instead of you. There's not much point in you going with me, although it sounds like Donica isn't any better. You should try to go with Erin and her friends."

"I'd rather go with you." I reached out to her.

Unlike last night, she looked at my hand and shook her head. "I already said I'd tag along. But I'm not gonna be a drain on the real players anymore."

A line like that would normally have made me grab her hands at the very least, no matter how she responded to my offered touch. This morning, though, she didn't really sound upset.

Resigned? Accepting? I couldn't tell, and it made me hesitate.

Still, I said, "I've never thought you were a drain."

"I know." She closed her eyes and smiled. "Thanks for that."

"For not having a completely batshit take? You're welcome, I guess."

I managed to make her chuckle. She said, "Last night you told me you didn't want to stop playing because you didn't want to feel powerless. Every Material I take, every XP I gain instead of you, pushes you closer to that. And if you actually needed power? For the game, or for something real, if there is something real? I can't do shit."

"You can watch my back," I said. "You can spot things I'd miss. Hell. What about the video? Where's it at, now?"

"Crossed a hundred thousand last night. I checked before you got home. Some of the comments are from people who don't even play. They just think it looks cool."

"Exactly! It does. You do." I smiled. "You think it would've gone anywhere if it was just my skinny ass doing tricks?"

She crossed her arms over her amulet. "So I'm the eye candy, now?"

If she hadn't seemed so serious, I'd have told her she pulled it off beautifully. That would just annoy her, though. Instead, I said, "You're the Magnificent Ashbird."

"My character is the Magnificent Ashbird." Slowly, her arms fell to her sides. She sucked in a long, deep breath and held it. She exhaled. "I'm just Lena."

I smiled. "That's plenty."

"Yeah?" I thought she might avert her eyes. Instead, she looked me up and down and her gaze ended up locked with mine.

I'd seen her look angrier, fiercer, sadder. She didn't seem any of those things now, except maybe a hint of the last.

Her expression this morning, like her tone, like the way her accessories armored her, was something else. Something new. If I could collect her as a Material in that moment, I knew she wouldn't be Fire; she'd be Iron, and only because Steel wasn't on the menu.

I blinked first. Who wouldn't?

"I'm glad you think so," she said, "even if I don't get it. But one way or another, it's not gonna matter after this morning."

I cleared my throat. "Are you going to tell me where we're headed?"

For a minute, I thought she would. Then she leaned forward and hid her steel behind a familiar grin. "And spoil the surprise? Couldn't be me."

 

[MoogleEmpMog]

Chapter 65: Wavy Bricks

Lena was taking me to Micro Center.

She didn't say that. When I made the mistake of asking her again where we were headed, as we took our seats on the northbound light rail from Englewood Downtown, she turned her nose up and looked out the window.

But what else could she have in mind? We switched lines at Broadway to head southeast, got off at the Southmoor station, and boarded a southbound bus. We'd made this pilgrimage every time one of us saved enough cash to splash on some electronic gadget or PC upgrade.

"You really think you're surprising me," I said, as the bus pulled to a stop at Eastmoor and Quincy.

She hopped out of her seat. "Normally, I'm the impatient one."

"Fine." I spread my hands. "I'll play along."

Mostly, I wanted to understand why we'd come here.

I knew from long experience that the lawn we walked past on our way to the intersection occupied a lot about the size of our apartment building. Actual structures lay in the distance, some blocked off by walls to keep the sound and the riffraff – like us – out. Others, separated from the street only by manicured stretches of grass or, once you hit the commercial area, parking lots.

Or, this morning, by snow. Only a dusting last night, but the sky looked even grayer than usual, promising another salvo. I hoped that whatever Lena wanted to scout, we'd find it before the weather broke.

We reached the intersection.

She cast a longing look toward Micro Center.

I saw the moment her resolve broke, even though I didn't understand it. Her shoulders slumped and she pressed her fingers together. "You got me. I really just wanted some retail therapy."

I caught up to her. "I don't 'got you,'" I said. "What is it, Lena?"

"I just told you." She laughed nervously.

I caught her gloved hands in mine.

She tried to jerk away, rolled her eyes a little, and squeezed back. "Why are you being silly? Don't you want to go to Micro Center?"

"Always," I said. "I can tell that's not why you came down here, though. And it's not like either of us can afford anything."

"We can through the magic of credit cards." She tried to force a smile. If I hadn't been clasping her hands, I think she would've waved pretend sparkles in the air.

"Whatever you wanted to do," I said, "I can tell it was important to you. I'll back you up. So let's see this thing through."

I got a glimpse of freckles, then she yanked her hands out of my grasp and spun around. I saw her hand rise to her chest. Clasping her amulet. She muttered, "Why you gotta get all serious like that?"

She stomped across the dusting of snow.

To the right. Away from Micro Center.

I followed.

The apartments we walked past stood out in the middle of Tech Center suburbia. Really, they would have even in-town. If I hadn't seen them for years, I'd have wondered if they were Third Eye constructs themselves. I wouldn't move in, because the only thing they were convenient to was Micro Center, but just for the structures? Hell yeah. I thought they might be my favorite apartments in the whole metro area.

Tudor-style wood framing around the windows and the peaks of the roof, nice looking but nothing special. But between those stretches, whitewashed brick in an irregular, wavy pattern I'd never seen anywhere else. It looked like they'd been built five hundred years ago in Europe and gradually settled into their current shape. Since they'd actually been built here in the 1970s, I figured a lot of drugs had been involved.

We passed a couple of two-story versions I thought were maybe condos.

Lena sagged to a stop in front of the tallest building in the complex, five stories high with a cool clock over the front door. No numbers, but I remembered enough about telling analog time to recognize 9:15. We'd gotten down here fast. The light rail and buses had lined up almost perfectly.

Lena didn't look grateful for it.

She stared up at the apartment like she was seeing a ghost.

Since she had her Google Glass on, and, I was sure, Third Eye open, maybe she was.

I took my phone out, opened Third Eye, and trained my camera on the front of the apartment building.

Nothing.

I saw an odd sign out of the corner of my eye, but it was across the street. Iron and Plastic, I supposed. Something to collect on our way out.

Lena ignored it. All her attention remained fixed on the apartment building.

I took in her appearance in Third Eye. She looked every inch magnificent. As I'd known it would, Third Eye showed her in full armor, crimson lacquered plate, bare steel trim, a cloak of flames that flowed directly into her wings as they beat furiously in the morning air.

If these apartments looked like they'd been transplanted from the dying days of medieval Europe, then Lena looked ready to lay siege to them.

How had I known she'd look like this?

More to the point, how had Third Eye known to show her this way?

I could make excuses. It translated her Google Glass as armor for some reason. (No, it hid the smart glasses like it did any device it ran on.) It recognized she'd worn more layers than usual. If I wanted to dredge up an absurd but mundane explanation, whatever AI attached our avatars to us had read her body language and responded appropriately.

After yesterday, I no longer felt like making excuses.

Third Eye armored Lena because Lena had felt like she needed armor today.

I hoped the fact it wanted to support her was a good sign about the devs' intentions. And that she – and it – were wrong about the need for armor.

"Why here?" I asked.

She squared her shoulders. She squeezed her eyes shut. Her gloves bunched up as her grip tightened around her amulet.

Why didn't I just let her pivot to a Micro Center trip if this bothered her so much?

I leaned forward. "We don't have to –"

"Let's go," she bit out.

I swallowed a sigh. I hadn't minded her playing around about our destination when it seemed like she was playing. If it mattered to her, if it hurt her, I wanted to know why.

I supposed I'd find out soon enough.

Lena pushed her way into the lobby of the apartments. A bell rang, but there was no attendant, and if anybody was home at 9:15 on a weekday, they were the kind of people who stayed at home and didn't peek when newcomers came in late.

A lobby. Upholstered wooden chairs. Mood lighting, washed out by the pale light pouring through the glass door, a door to fire stairs.

At the far end, an elevator.

I took my phone out and swept it around. Everything looked the same except Lena and I. Either Third Eye hadn't planted any objects in this lobby, or someone had collected them, or they were too subtle for me to notice.

I realized I'd started to sweat and forced myself to take deep breaths.

Lena might feel nervous about coming here, but it couldn't be because it was a space like the construction site. We'd only walked fifteen feet from the sidewalk along a busy street. People lived here. They came and went every day.

Still, when Lena approached the elevator and pushed the up arrow, I lingered near the front door.

The lights over the elevator said it started on floor five. Why five? Wouldn't people have been leaving for work?

Four. Three. I saw Lena's back stiffen. I tilted my phone and saw her wings pressed in close, almost folded in on themselves. Two. One.

The elevator dinged. I flinched. So did Lena.

The doors opened slowly. Dragging it out. Or just in need of maintenance?

I wanted to look away, but, my phone stretched out so I could see half in and half out of Third Eye, I forced myself not to.

I needn't have bothered. No matter what eye I used to survey it, the inside of the elevator was just worn wood paneling. No mirrors. Nothing that should've been mirrored. Normal.

I relaxed. Some.

Lena didn't.

I forced myself forward and looked down at her.

Her amulet rose and fell as she took a deep breath.

"All right," she said. "Let's do this."

"Do what?"

"Check out my old apartment." She strode into the elevator.

I stepped across its threshold. Nothing swallowed me up.

Lena huddled against the back wall, one hand still on her amulet, the other tucked into a pocket of her coat.

I pushed the little round Three button and joined her there.

She stiffened. More than she already had. "How'd you know?"

"I saw your reaction when it was coming down," I said. "Three was obviously the floor you cared about."

"Good spot." She tapped her foot as the elevator doors rolled shut.

They sealed us in. I've always hated elevators, but after last night, I had to fight not to hyperventilate.

I plastered a smile on my face. "I had no idea you used to live here. That's so cool. You could afford this?"

"Obviously not," she snapped. Her gaze dropped to the tiled floor. "Sorry."

"No, I am. Just trying to get you to relax." I lowered my voice to a whisper. "Bad memories?"

"On the inside, it's just another apartment." The lobby and the elevator bore that out. All the really cool design details were on the building's facade. I didn't understand how that answered my question, until she added, "That's all I saw when I lived here."

Lena had never talked about her old place. She hadn't asked me for help moving, either. After we agreed she'd move in with me, we'd set the date and she showed up, riding shotgun in a moving van she'd contracted to lug her stuff over.

From what I quickly learned of her housekeeping, I'd figured she was just embarrassed about the state of her old place. Which was silly; I'd seen enough through her webcam to know both how bad it had been, and that it didn't bother me.

She didn't need armor against embarrassment.

I asked, "Did somebody hurt you when you lived here?"

"Yeah." She looked up and met my eyes. "Me."

I opened my mouth to respond, but I had no idea what to say.

Before I could figure something out, the elevator doors opened and I heard the roar of flames.