Annie Strickland was an idiot.

She'd lamented this fact many, many times in the days that she'd been trapped in another world. What had initially seemed like a fantastic, impossible, storybook adventure had instead turned into a more grating type of storyline.

She was a damsel in distress.

She hated it more than anything.

She'd spent her entire adult life doing her best to be as independent as she could, from working multiple jobs to put herself through college without needing to rely on her step-father's money, to living in the tiniest apartment imaginable to save money after graduating, and even turning down an offer to teach at a high-paying charter school after her mom had let slip that the opportunity might not be entirely due to her own efforts. The very house she presently lived in with her family was more than she'd ever hoped for, but she still paid her share of the mortgage, taxes, and bills, even if it cost nearly all of what she earned.

And now, one stupid fantasy novel delusion later, she'd thrown those years of work away, and she was locked in a room, humiliated, waiting for someone to save her.

Probably Carl, from the few things she'd heard Ir'alith mention before she'd fucking died.

Annie had never wanted that. She'd been confused, she'd been upset, but she would never, ever wish for something like that.

Now she had to live with it for the rest of her life.

Her idiocy had killed someone.

The first day, she'd been taken back to the strange, empty city of stone, walking miles under the hot sun on legs that burned with each step while the voice from the robot dog's speaker talked to her.

Asked her questions.

Where was she from?

Was she from Earth?

Where on Earth was she from?

How did she get here?

Annie didn't know much about the new world she was in, but she did know one thing.

If the owner of these robots had killed someone who knew Carl—who apparently loved Carl—then they were definitely no friend of hers.

No, the paranoid part of her brain had started to gibber, once she answered the questions and was found to be nobody of consequence, she'd probably die too.

A novel trope it might be, but it was still one that made real sense to her.

She'd stayed silent during the return, and the robots had led her into a small house, dragged her to an empty, windowless bedroom in the back, and then left, with the door locking behind.

What would happen to her?

She'd felt there were certain implications to being taken to a bedroom and locked herself in the adjoining bathroom beyond. When she was left alone for a time—hours, according to her phone display, though it had no signal—she started to relax slightly about that, at least.

More time passed, and there was a knock on the door. The distorted voice sounded out again, announcing that it had brought dinner and wanted to talk.

Saying that it meant no harm.

She'd flipped out.

She'd completely lost her shit after hours of barely holding herself together, and she'd flung the door open and shouted with as much vitriol as she could muster at the robot dog.

The voice apologized, saying it was sorry she was upset, and it promised again that she'd come to no harm before it left, with the door again locking behind it.

Thus began a short-lived pattern.

Her captor would try to talk to her, and she would tell whomever they were to fuck off.

It wasn't until after the third time that she'd realized what was going on.

The fact that her captor knew about Earth meant that they were probably from Earth too. Easy enough to figure out with all the time she had to think that wasn't devoted to hoping she'd see her daughters again and wondering what Carl had gotten himself into.

Judging by how her captor talked, she'd guessed that he was a man. Specifically, he reminded her of several stalker-ish types from her college days who had creepily tried to ask her out and then tried again after being firmly rejected. Particularly memorable was the one who had followed her home from a bar in his beat up old SUV to make sure she "got home safe". She'd never met him before, and when she saw him again the next time—because of course there was a next time with creepers like him—he acted like she hadn't torn into him out on the street while somehow simultaneously managing to keep Cheryl from throwing up all over the side of her car.

It was when that thought came to mind that she realized her earlier suspicions were off the mark, and her captor was a Nice Guy.

He wanted to talk.

He wanted to discuss.

He wanted to be friends.

Also he accidentally admitted early on that he wasn't nearby and was doing something else for the next couple weeks that needed most of his attention, which further eased certain worries given how annoyed he'd seemed to be with himself for letting the detail slip.

He was a fucking idiot, it seemed.

Annie had never been the conniving type, but she'd seen friends of hers play the game enough times over the years and knew how it worked.

They entered into a routine. He would bring her food with his robots—of which there seemed to be tons, putting on hold any immediate ideas of trying to escape—and she might deign to talk to him about this or that, quickly sidetracking him into some other topic besides the questions he was asking. Mostly he seemed to want to talk about his dead wife, which was a creepy thing to talk about with a woman he was holding captive, but then again, it seemed about par for the course.

Days passed.

She was being watched by cameras—he admitted as much, and she could see them—except when she was in the bathroom.

Or so he claimed.

She had to keep her shit together if she had any hope of living long enough to get back to her family. That meant no nervous breakdowns, no crying when she thought about how Bobby and Sammy might have to grow up without their mom, no getting angry at Carl for whatever the fuck he'd been up to that something like this was even possible…

She spent most of her time thinking about what she'd be doing if she hadn't been so stupid and decided to go through a portal to another world.

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At the end of the first day, she realized that she'd gotten out of the department restructuring meeting that afternoon, which was sort of nice since she'd known it would've been a stress-filled waste of time and energy trying to fight an already-made decision. She'd been planning to go just to make a point and have her voice be heard, but she knew all too well that those types of meetings would end with her driving home bitter, frustrated, and angry, which wasn't how she wanted to feel when she was with her family.

At the end of the second day, she struggled to hold back her tears when she realized she'd missed Sammy's basketball game. While Carl tended to run late to the games lately due to work, she'd never missed the start of a single one. She might not go overboard cheering like he did, but she knew Sammy perked up just from seeing that her mom was there for her.

Annie was always there for her family.

At the end of the third day, she knew that Bobby's sleepover wouldn't have happened. She hadn't actually gotten around to officially changing her mind on it, and now she never would. By now they'd be looking for her along with the police, but she might never be found.

When she woke up on the fourth day, it would've been the weekend, and she missed her girls and Carl so much that she cried in the shower. Just for a minute against the wall. She usually cuddled with her husband at least one lazy weekend morning each week, even after so many years together. She'd never imagined that she'd find someone like him who kept her passion burning—when he wasn't being technical—even after so much time together, but the lengths he went to in his attempts to be the best version of himself always pushed her to do the same. If she'd believed in the idea, she might even have described him as her soulmate.

On the fifth day, she decided to try washing her clothes because she was feeling gross. She did what she could with the liquid soaps in the bathroom and the bathtub, using a hairdryer for lengthy periods to finish the job, and she wondered whether the girls would manage to do their laundry right without her. Sammy still didn't always use the more gentle detergent with the clothes that needed it, and Bobby… Well, as with many things, Bobby took after Carl, which, in the realm of laundry, meant that nothing else mattered as long as the clothes got into the washing machine with some sort of soap and then came out dry from the dryer.

At the start of the sixth day, Annie remembered that Becca would've left the day before. Probably. She'd never hated her younger half-sister; they just didn't get along. She wanted family, and Becca wanted everything her sister had or that she thought her sister wanted. She'd wished they could just get along for so many years, but neither of them was wired that way.

Things changed on the seventh day. She was close to losing her shit when she woke up. Really close. A whole fucking week had passed! She started to lose hope that anyone would ever find her. She was hidden away in a small building in an empty city in another world guarded by who knew how many killer robots. Even if Carl was here, how big was this world? Was it even Earth-sized? Even if it was, he might just be on the opposite side, and then he might never even know.

Besides, she didn't want to be rescued by him.

She'd never wanted to be rescued by anyone.

A portion of her time in her cell had been devoted to imagining what she would do when she was rescued. If it was Carl…

She hoped it wouldn't be.

But if it was, she didn't imagine how their relationship would survive. She'd be forever grateful to him, and she didn't imagine she could see him as an equal afterwards. How could a debt like that be settled? It wasn't like it had been his fault she was too stupid not to wander through the portal into whatever world this was. No, that had been entirely her decision, even to the extent that she asked to come here instead of just talking through the portal like a more responsible person would.

Like a mother with two children would.

The knowledge that he'd rescued her would eat away at her, she knew. It would slowly poison their relationship until she could no longer stand it, and then… Probably after the girls graduated they'd separate. She'd be able to do that much. Eventually it would get to her, and the feeling of being lesser would be an unsolvable wedge between them no matter how they tried to fix it.

As she thought about it more on that seventh day, she came to the soul-crushing conclusion that the most likely outcome of her stupidity was that she'd ruined not only her own life, but probably Carl's too. Her vision grew watery as she sat on the bed with her head in her hands, and one of the robot dogs had arrived to bring her a meal then at the worst possible time.

Then odd things began to happen.

The robotic dog collapsed. It just fell apart along the seams and curves in its metal body and stopped moving.

An unfamiliar voice, this one decidedly feminine and older, sounded out. "Hi, human! Your name is Annie, isn't it?"

Annie looked around, trying to determine the source of the voice.

A black marble dropped onto the bed next to her and rolled around on its own to rest in front of her. "I think this is her," said the same voice.

A silver marble with green splotches appeared a short ways away. A different voice spoke, but it was less of a voice and more of the idea of a voice, though even trying to describe it that way wasn't exactly right. There is an edge between this human and the answer you seek.

Annie looked back and forth between the two marbles. After a moment, she started to giggle. Then she started to laugh outright. "It finally happened," she murmured, falling back to lay on the pillows at the top of the bed. "Finally lost my fucking mind."

It was sad, and she felt like she needed to go back to her recent state of mind where she'd been about to cry, but it was also funny somehow. Too funny not to laugh at.

There is no edge between you and your mind. The indescribable voice spoke to her again, but she only laughed harder.

She decided that maybe it was better if she didn't go back now. She'd obviously cracked, and it wouldn't be good for Sammy or Bobby to see their mother like this. It sucked, but that was just how her life had been sometimes.

"Human, I need you to answer my question," said the woman's voice. "Are you Annie? Carl's wife?"

Annie's cackles changed to a groan, and her hands raised to her temples. "Why does everyone here ask if I'm Carl's wife? Can't I just be a fucking person? Not an ornament to—"

"Please refrain from unnecessary profanity," said the woman's voice in a disapproving tone. "You don't need it, do you?"

Annie struggled to sit up again, now feeling a decidedly different emotion. "YES, I FUCKING NEED IT!" she screamed, looking around wildly. "I'M TRAPPED IN ANOTHER FUCKING WORLD! IF I WANNA FUCKING CURSE TO COPE WITH THAT, SHIT, I'LL FUCKING CURSE FUCKING EVERY FUCKING OTHER FUCKING WORD! FUCK!"

The black marble bumped against her knee, then rolled up her knee, across her leg, up her side, and stopped on her shoulder. "I suppose it might be okay in that case," the old woman's voice said, still sounding skeptical.

"Are you a fucking marble?" Annie exclaimed, trying to pick up the stupid fantasy world thing from her shoulder. Somehow though, it wouldn't move even a little bit no matter how she tried, as though it was glued in place.

"I'm a dungeon core," said the black marble in a condescending tone. "I've been looking for you for a long time now."

Time has passed, true, but the edge between then and now is not wide.

Annie's gaze slowly moved to the silver marble. "You're a fucking marble too?!" she shouted. This other world—if she wasn't going crazy, which she was now on the fence about—was different than she'd imagined.

Marbles could talk here, apparently.

Maybe it was a planet inhabited by sentient rocks? They'd built these robots somehow? Her mind strained as she tried to imagine a world where anything like that made sense.

"Don't start with me," the woman-marble said in an annoyed tone.

"Hey! Don't fucking ignore me!" Annie yelled, flicking her finger against the black marble.

"You admit to being Annie?" it probed.

"Yeah, I'm Annie. What's going on?"

A sheet of rock rose up over the locked door and covered the ceiling and floor, accompanied by a low-pitched, quiet call of "Core" from somewhere beneath her.

"See? I told you!" the woman's voice exclaimed. "Annie, we found you, and now you're our treasure."

Annie frowned. "I'm what?"

"A dungeon has to have treasure," the black marble said in a patient, slightly patronizing tone. "The power of a treasure is based on its value to the dungeon master. You're the most valuable treasure in the world to Carl, so now this dungeon can become the most awesome dungeon that has ever existed. You'll stay here, and we'll—"

All the anger combined in the rest of her life wouldn't have matched how furious Annie was at that moment. "I'M NOT SOME FUCKING THING!" she shouted. Her anger quickly receded, changing to grief. "I'm a person!" she said more weakly, her eyes starting to sting.

Her whole life, she'd tried her damnedest to be her own person. To be the best she could. To never feel like she was being a burden to anyone like she'd been to her mother.

Now she was just a prisoner, or a treasure, or a thing being kept in this room.

"I just wanna go home," she whispered as she fell onto her side and curled up, pressing her face to her knees.

She'd tried her best.

She really had.

It was just impossible.

She wanted to see Bobby again and hear her complain that it wasn't fair how she couldn't play her video game more than she already did.

She wanted to see Sammy again and hear her begging for whatever new accessory or gadget her basketball friends had caught her eye with.

She wanted to see Carl again and listen to one of his most technical explanations of something or other.

She knew that she never would now, though.

She'd lost hope.

She would die in this room, and probably her family would never even know what had happened to her.

It was her own fault.