Chapter 113: Be Prepared

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

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

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

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

“So you’re bluffing?” Allen’s hand tightened around his phone. “Shit bluff.”

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

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

He kept flicking his phone screen. “Doesn’t do anything for you without a map.”

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

Allen glanced at Jan.

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

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

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

Beside me, Lena started. “Oh! Heh, that’s good.”

“You’ve got it too, right?” I asked. “Do you want to tell them?”

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

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

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

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

Matt’s brow furrowed.

Allen mashed his phone back into its holder. “Explain!”

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

Allen’s hand fell away from his phone.

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

“It’s empty,” Jan said. “An empty address in a stripmall.”

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

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

“The World’s Largest Beaver Dam.” Matt barked a laugh. “I remember when you posted about it.”

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

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

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

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

“What was that like?” Lena asked.

Jan kicked at the table leg. “... really cool.”

“Sticks and logs,” Allen said. “A waste of time. It didn’t mean shit.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

“You can leave when I say you can leave,” Allen growled.

Nadia stood up. “But that’s not true anymore, is it?”

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

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

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

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

Matt’s voice was soft, almost sad. “It’s over, Allen.”

“You have the high ground?” Lena murmured.

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

Matt cracked a smile. “From a certain point of view.”

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

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

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

Allen’s fists curled.

Jan said, “It wasn’t Allen’s fault.”

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

“No shit,” she said.

I stood up.

So did Lena.

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

“You should come with us,” I said.

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

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

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

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

“Stay back,” Allen snarled. “Give her air!”

Lena didn’t. She knelt beside Jan’s chair. “What she needs is a doctor.”

Jan tensed. Allen folded her deeper into his cloak.

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

Neither wanted.

Crazy.

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

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

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

They held her until she shrugged them both away.

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

Gerry backed off.

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

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

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

I lowered my eyes. “We’re trying to help.”

“You’re trying to abandon us,” Allen said. “You think I’ll just let you –”

“Yes,” Lena said.

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

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

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

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

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

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

It was an absurd thing to say.

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

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

Good thing, because the next thing she said was, “If you won, I’d stay.”