Henrika was out on a mission. The woman lit a fire under her feet and stormed across the entire facility of Serendipity in search for Caius. None of the remaining players knew anything about his whereabouts. When I thought about it, I never knew where Caius spent most of his time.

Not that I ever bothered to look for the bastard in the first place. The farther I was away from him, the better.

Left without further options, Henrika and I returned to my room and used our last resort. The phone. It was the second time we used the damn thing.

Both times were used to call Caius. Each time I heard his cheerful voice and unconcerned tones, it made my skin crawl. There weren’t many people that could make me feel that way.

“What are you expecting to find in Wyatt’s room anyway?” I asked.

“I don’t know. Something. Anything.” Henrika’s desperation reached me. The woman was at the end of her rope. Nothing went according to her half-baked plan. Wyatt’s death swerved her off track.

“Just gonna grasp at straws now?” I called her out. She paused and set the phone down. Her back stayed turned to me. “Do you ever think things through? ‘Cause if you keep half-assing like this, the alliance won’t last, and we’ll die here.”

Henrika sharply turned around and glared at me. She shouted in a brittle voice, “If you have any ideas, I’d love to hear them!”

It only took a moment, but she regained her composure and took a deep breath.

“You good?”

“No, but, I’ll manage.”

“What are you hoping to find in Wyatt’s room?”

“A letter,” Henrika finally answered. “Nicholas claimed he and Darius believed they were the only ones to get one. But, I doubt that’s true.”

She was right. They weren’t the only ones. Thanks to my investigation with Zoey the other day, I learned that other players received letters. Some got more than others, which only increased my suspension about them.

“You’re right about that,” I told her. Since we were a team, I figured keeping that information hidden from her would do more harm than good in the long run of things. “When I was with Zoey, I went into the rooms of the other players.”

“Did you find their letters?” Henrika asked.

“No. They only mentioned them,” I shook my head. “Everyone had the same thought that Caius was the one behind them.”

“So, they destroyed them, right?” Henrika closed her eyes and grinded her teeth.

“Did you ever get a letter, Henrika?” I asked. As I thought back on it, I remembered that I never questioned the woman about them. Since she seemed so interested about the letters, I figured she never got one.

“Did you?” Henrika opened her eyes. Her gaze made me freeze. It was purely a look of judgment. She was testing me. Something deep inside of me warned me of the potential danger I’d face if I answered incorrectly.

It was a make or break decision.

I tried to think over every possible outcome that could happen if I made the right or wrong choice. Eventually, I relented and answered, “Yes.”

Turning back was no longer an option. I walked over to my nightstand and opened the drawer. There, I found the letter I tossed aside several days ago.

It was just as I predicted. The letters caused more problems that I wanted to handle.

I approached Henrika and handed the letter over to her. She took it and glanced over it.

“This is the same letter I received,” Henrika glanced up at me. “Same wording and the people listed as the traitors. But, there’s a problem.”

“What’s that?”

“I got two letters,” Henrika raised up two fingers. “Same wording, but two different people pointed out as the traitors.”

“Do you have them?”

“Of course,” Henrika handed my letter back over to me. “I wouldn’t get rid of something important as that. I needed them both to analyze.”

“What did the other note say?”

“It said that you and Wyatt were traitors,” She announced.

“Do you believe that?” I wondered.

“What I believe doesn’t matter at this point,” Henrika deflected. “I need to confirm my suspicions about these letters. I think I can do that if we get one more.”

Henrika wandered over to my nightstand and picked up the phone again. She pressed a single number and held the phone to her ear.

If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.

“Hello, Ambrose!” Caius answered.

“This is Henrika again,” Henrika sternly announced to the Game Moderator.

“Oh? You two are in the same room again? What are you up to this time?” Caius teased.

“We need Wyatt’s game bracelet,” Henrika answered.

“What for if I may ask?”

“We want to get into his room. We can’t do that without his bracelet. You’re the only one here that can make it happen.”

“Such an odd request. But, it can be done.” Almost immediately, the doorbell to the room chimed. Henrika and I jumped and stared at the door. “You may want to answer that.”

I cautiously approached the door and opened it. A small box wrapped in a red bow rested outside. I picked up the box and brought it back inside the room.

I opened the box and looked inside. I grimaced at the sight of our requested item.

Wyatt’s game bracelet.

Bastards didn’t even bother wiping off the blood that remained on the object. I reached inside the box and picked up the bracelet. Henrika nodded her head and hung up the phone when I showed it to her.

With that, we had everything we needed to investigate Wyatt’s room. We left my room and headed for the doctors.

Henrika held the bracelet over the scanner while I opened the door. Upon entering, I took a quick look around the room. Nothing suspicious caught my attention. Everything was neat and organized.

“Where to begin?” I asked.

“Anywhere,” Henrika replied. The first place she searched was the deceased man’s nightstand. She pulled open the drawers and rummaged through them.

We spent about a half hour tearing the place apart. We searched through the drawers, his trash, and any place we figured the doctor would want to hide somewhere. All hope seemed lost until we looked through one final place—under his mattress.

There we found another letter. Henrika snatched it as fast as she could and read through it. Her expression turned grim once she finished.

“Son of a bitch,” She swore under her breath. Her hands trembled. Out of caution, I took the letter from her hands before she tore it to pieces.

I used that moment and read through the letter. It was the same as Nicholas’. It claimed that Iris and Melanie were one of the traitors.

At that moment, I saw what went through Wyatt’s head. Since he learned that he and Nicholas got the same letter, he’d assume that they were correct. The doctor didn’t seem like the type to believe in coincidences.

He wouldn’t think twice about acting out on his impulses. Iris died because the bastard couldn’t take a moment to think things through. He had no clue that he was being used in someone’s plot.

“If I knew the letters would cause this much trouble, I would’ve come out about them sooner,” I said. I knew to lament over my choices were pointless, but I at least had to say something to soothe the situation.

“Don’t beat yourself up over it,” Henrika patted my shoulder. “You couldn’t have known this was going to happen. Whoever made these letters is the one to blame.”

“So, do you have everything we need?” I asked.

“For now, yes.” Henrika nodded. We left Wyatt’s room and headed for Henrika’s. She approached her nightstand and pulled out her letters. We stood by her bed with all the notes found lined up.

I kept silent while Henrika examined each of the letters. I didn’t know what she expected to find, but I remained hopeful that she would.

Henrika sighed and stepped away from the bed. She rubbed her temples and took a seat.

“Find anything?” I questioned.

“Yes. It only costed the severe strain of my eyes,” She replied.

“What did you find?”

“Two different people made these letters,” Henrika announced as she grabbed two different letters. “It looks almost identical, but someone forged the letters to try and trick us.”

“Weren’t all of them made to do that in the first place,” I inquired. I always figured the letters were created by Caius to sow seeds of discord within the players. In a big way, it worked. So, I didn’t see the need to develop more letters.

“Maybe. Maybe not. I don’t know.” Henrika shook her head. “But, the forgery here is pretty damn close to the original.”

She passed the letters over to me. I narrowed my eyes and focused on them as hard as I could. But, I couldn’t spot any difference between them.

“I don’t notice anything.” I shrugged my shoulders and handed the letters back to her.

“To the untrained eye, you’ll miss it.” Henrika ran her fingers across the letters. “The fake letters show hesitance in their strokes. As if the forger struggled to try to make it as authentic as possible.”

“And your eyes are trained to spot things like this?” I questioned her.

“I worked as my father’s secretary for a few years, Ambrose. I’ve read through hundreds, if not thousands of files and documents. I can spot forgeries if I look hard enough.” She boasted and flashed me an arrogant smile.

I rolled my eyes and took another look at the letters. “Okay, so if you’re right about this, what would the forger gain from sending these fake letters?”

“Probably to trip us up as they did with Wyatt and Nicholas,” Henrika assumed.

“So, which one out of these are the fake ones?”

Henrika grabbed the letter that I received and set it on one side of the bed. “The one you got was a fake.” She took some time and separated all the other letters. “Same with one of mine and Wyatt’s.”

“That’s another question I wanna bring up. How come some people got two letters while others got one?” I wondered.

Henrika brought her hand up to her chin. She mulled over the question. “I’ve got a theory. What if one person sent out the letters to warn specific people about the traitors? And then the second person found out about the letters and sent out some to everyone else?”

I could see that. If someone tried to warn everyone about the traitors, and one of the traitors learned about the letters, they’d come up with a plan to trip everyone up.

But, that theory only raised more questions. If one of the players tried to warn the other players about the traitors, how’d they figure out the identity of the traitors in the first place? If certain players got two letters instead of one, wouldn’t that cement the fact that they weren’t traitors? And since I only got one letter and it turned out to be a fake; didn’t that point me out as a traitor?

I took a quick glance over to Henrika. Her eyes were affixed to the letters. I hoped that she didn’t piece the information together. If she learned that I was one of the traitors, I didn’t know how she ’d react.

No doubt she’d tell others that she felt she could trust. And the problem was I didn’t know who those people were. I didn’t forget that there was one other person in our mysterious alliance. No matter what happened next throughout our stay in Serendipity, I couldn’t let my guard down.

“I’m going to take these letters and look them over some more with our other partner later tonight,” Henrika collected the letters in her hands. “After that, we should tell everyone else about the letters and collect them.”

“Yeah, by now everyone should assume that we all have letters.” I nodded my head. The plan didn’t sound bad. If he collected all the letters and analyzed them, perhaps it could point us in the right direction as to who’s been screwing with everyone. “But, do you have a plan to catch the forger?”

“I’m working on that, okay?” Henrika frowned at me. “One thing at a time. Right now, let’s get some rest. It’s almost time for the next game to start.”

“I know, I haven’t forgotten.” I sighed. With that, we said goodbye to each other and went our separate ways, dreading the time when the next game would come.