I woke up with the dawn. As I got out of bed, it surprised me that I wasn’t sore. In the few hours before bedtime, I had gathered so many rocks and clay that I felt like my old storage unit would be bursting with them by now. Thankfully I upgraded my storage unit. I was anxious to start today. Anxious to meet up with Theo. There was a chance he wouldn’t come today, simply because he had been battered by them. He was probably still sleeping it all off again.

I stretched before walking out of the room. It would be a really hot day today, so I ate my chilled creamy tomato soup that gave me a solid forty-five minutes of heat resistance. I went about my morning routine, gathering food and feeding my animals. The first greenhouse was close to being upgraded, so I placed five more sand into the tool so I could get it done by the end of the day.

Nope. I was doing it again. There was probably more than just glass to upgrade the greenhouse.

I placed four of the glass panes in the greenhouse before walking over to the shed and putting a single pane in there. I waited, anxious, before the entire shed gave a sheen. I let out a breath.

Shed completed

Lawn care unlocked

Purchased lawn care items will be stored here

Ability unlocked: Purchase fertilizer

Perfect. I opened the door to see an empty shed with a couple tables on either side. When I walked in, I saw a small clipboard hanging from a nail. I picked it up and scanned it.

Grass Fertilizer -10.00

Greenhouse Fertilizer -10.00

Flower Fertilizer -10.00

Grass seed -3.00

Flower seed -3.00

(Once selected, more options for flowers will be available)

This was a lot of good stuff. At least the greenhouse fertilizer would last for a while. A few bags lasted an entire season for my greenhouse, and I still had a full bag left. I wasn’t sure about how long the grass fertilizer would last, though. This was a massive lawn.

There was nowhere on the shed clipboard to buy the equipment, so I headed toward the storage unit again, guessing I could buy a lawn mower or a grass planter there. How was I going to plant grass? I guess I’d never thought about it.

My thoughts were interrupted as Theo broke through the trees. My instinct was to run and give him a hug, but I froze when I saw the look on his face. He was smiling brightly.

That shouldn’t have caused so many alarm bells to go off in my head, but it did. I was fully prepared to not see him today. He should be sleeping. The Theo from last night should have taken days to recover. He shouldn’t be coming out of the trees, smiling like this. Something was off. Something was wrong.

“Hey, Quinn!” he said, approaching me as he wrapped his arms around me in a tight hug before letting me go. He then wiped his brow. “It’s a hot day today! How are you outside right now?”

I still stared at him, my brows furrowed. I didn’t even know how to begin formulating a sentence to ask him what was going on. There was a part of me that was growing every second that perhaps this wasn’t my brother at all. The recovery was far too fast. My theory that he was just part of the game was back. That he wasn’t real. I pushed that theory down. He had to be real. He had to be here. But… he acted as though he hadn’t spent all of yesterday leaking black liquid from his face. Or vomited multiple times. Or that his veins were thick with blackness.

“Quinn, why are you staring at me like that?” Theo asked.

“You’re… smiling,” I said.

Theo snorted. “Didn’t know that was a crime.”

“You… shouldn’t. Not so soon. I… don’t understand,” I said.

Theo placed his hands on his hips, one of his eyebrows raising. “Really? I’m happy, and now your suspicious?”

“Do you blame me?” I asked. “You just got attacked by them a little over twenty-four hours ago. You spent all yesterday unable to walk. Yet now… now…” I gestured toward him, not sure how to articulate it. He was standing up straight. His eyes weren’t haunted. A smile came easily to his lips.

“I’m fine, Quinn. Don’t worry about it,” Theo said.

“Too late,” I said. “I’m worrying about it. What did you do?”

The smile that was there finally flickered. Theo dropped my gaze, wiping his forehead again. “It is so insanely hot. Why are you out here?”

A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

I grabbed his arm and pulled him closer to the forest. Once we were under the shade, all the sweat disappeared from Theo’s face. He was startled by this outcome, wiping his face again just to see.

I stared right at him. “We can’t keep secrets from each other. We’re the only two people here, and we’ve got to figure out a way to get out. That means we need to trust each other. So, I will ask again. What. Did. You. Do.”

Theo sighed, not looking at me. He then pulled off a glove to show me his perfectly fine hand. At first I didn’t know what he was trying to show me, but then I remembered the thick lines of blackness that were there yesterday but not today. His hand was fine. Again, the warning bells sounded in my head. With everything I saw yesterday, he should still be recovering. It was as odd to me as watching someone with a broken leg yesterday walk perfectly fine on it the next morning.

“I’ve told you about the bar showing how much corruption I have,” Theo said, glancing at the space where I assumed was his corruption bar. “It takes forever to get out of my system. In the early days of this game, I would lay around my campsite for hours, the weight of it too much to even get up.” Theo cleared his throat. “I soon found out that if I died, it automatically reset. The corruption was gone from my body.”

There was a pause, then my eyes widened. They got wider as I realized what they were symbolically supposed to mean.

“Theo…”

“I know.”

“Theo, that’s-”

“I know.”

“You willingly go to-”

“It’s just a game,” Theo said, his voice sharp. “It’s not suicide, because I come back. It doesn’t mean anything.”

“It means everything.” I didn’t mean to match the sharpness in his voice, but it came. “You said so yourself. What if… what if we’re… dead. What if you-”

“No!” Theo looked away, taking a deep, rattling breath. “I wouldn’t commit suicide back home. I wouldn’t. I would know if that’s how I died. I would know if that’s why I ended up here.”

I gestured at the house. “Look at where we are, Theo. This strange game we’re in. These stupid monsters. We’re smack dab in the middle of some sort of twisted allegory of what it’s like to have depression.”

“God, Quinn, stop and think about it. If I committed suicide, why are you here?” Theo asked.

There was a silence I couldn’t fill, but I could not deny the sickness that entered my gut ever since Theo admitted what he did yesterday.

Theo started grumbling again, unbuttoning a few of the buttons on his shirt before fanning himself with his collar. “This isn’t working. It’s still so damn hot.”

He was changing the subject. I didn’t want him to. We were reaching something, racing toward something that I wasn’t sure I wanted the answers to, but we had to get there. I opened my mouth to ask him when everything inside me froze. He had unbuttoned his shirt enough that I noticed something. There was a chain around his neck, and at the bottom was a key. I stared at it long enough that Theo glanced back at me and noticed what I was looking at.

“Oh, yeah, this thing.” Theo seemed relieved to change the subject. “I’ve had it ever since I woke up. I have no idea what it’s meant to unlock. Can’t take it off, either.” Theo attempted to take it off, but as soon as the chain reached above his ear, it slipped through his palm like his hands were holograms and the key fell back against his chest. “See?”

I still stared at him, my mouth slightly open. Theo frowned, giving me a good stare. “Why are you making that face?”

I slowly glanced up at the second level, then back at him. “The door. It’s… locked.”

“What d-” The realization hit Theo. Every emotion flickered through his face before he finally shut down. Theo made a conscious effort not to look at the house. “Let’s get one thing straight, Quinn. I did not kill myself. I’d feel it if I did. There are just some things you know. I had a system to make sure I never got to that step.”

That was how terrified Theo was of the second floor. Despite being relieved to change the subject before, he plowed right back into it so we wouldn’t have to talk about the key.

A part of me believed Theo about not committing suicide, mostly because I didn’t want it to be true. What he said resonated with me. Theo had been in therapy. Doug and Brenda loved Theo. I loved him. Theo, no doubt, knew the warning signs before things got too dark, and he had a support system he could rely on.

“I believe you,” I said.

As soon as I said it, Theo’s shoulders relaxed, but a haunted look entered his eyes that I expected to be there the moment he broke through the trees.

“You have to stop dying here, though,” I added.

Theo closed his eyes, slowly shaking his head. “Please, Quinn. Don’t ask that of me.”

“Not dying?” I asked, feeling defensive. “Theo-”

“For the first time in my life, I can wake up the morning after an attack and get out of bed and go about my day,” Theo said, his voice still quiet. “When the weight gets too much, when the flashbacks happen and thoughts enter my mind, I can die, and it no longer bothers me. I no longer hear the thoughts, and I can function the next morning. For the first time in my life, I can be normal.” I closed my mouth, tears pricking my eyes. I hadn’t realized he experienced flashbacks in this game. No doubt about what he saw on the second floor.

“Theo…” I wanted to fight back against his notion of normal. I had so many thoughts, but they were all struggling to come through and clogged in my brain.

In my hesitancy, Theo pushed on. “I know what this stupid allegory is supposed to mean. I understand you’re concern about suicide. But… it’s just a game, Quinn. A sick, twisted game, but still a game. If I didn’t die yesterday, I’d be back at camp. Or… or vomiting on the ground here. Putting you in danger. Being a burden.”

“You’re not a burden,” I said. It was a knee jerk reaction, because it was true. I never wanted Theo to feel that way about himself.

“Aren’t I?” he asked, his brows furrowing. “I am a conduit of corruption. If you don’t get my vomit cleaned up, they could attack you. How is that not considered a burden?”

My lips drew into a thin line. “Because I’ve never considered you a burden. There is… no ‘normal’, Theo. You are not a lesser person because the corruption gets you like this.” I let out a frustrated breath. My thoughts were getting scattered again, so I tried to focus it. “Your game objective is to figure out how to defeat the corruption, right?” I asked. Theo nodded, folding his arms. “How can you possibly defeat it if you keep flushing it out of your system so quickly? What if there are clues you are throwing away?”

Theo stilled, then his eyebrow raised. He was considering it. Good. Let him think that. Despite his constant insistence that this was just a game, I could not shake the dark feeling in my gut whenever he talked about dying in the game.

A glowing orb lifted out of the ground, causing us both to take a few steps back. My eyes widened as I stared at it, then glanced at Theo. He met my gaze at the same time. I wondered if we’d ever get another memory orb. In fact, I didn’t think I had one since I discovered Theo was here.

The orb started vibrating before it broke in half. Before I could react, the two halves rammed into us, and everything went black.