Chapter 79: Afterparty

Lena clutched Bernie under one arm and waved frantically with her open hand. Erin paused at the railing to wave back, then bustled after Donica, who’d already reached the stairs and, as such, turned half-invisible as wind whipped the snow around.

I wrapped an arm around Lena’s waist and tugged her back into the apartment. I shut the door before a snowdrift could form around our feet.

Lena’s free arm thumped to her side. She slumped against me. I’d watched balloons deflate slower.

I was pretty sure at least some of it was feigned to make me catch her – I did, and we sank to the floor together – but equally sure some wasn’t.

I leaned down and kissed the top of her head. The smell of the strawberry shampoo we both used filled my nose. “Sorry.”

She shifted, but seemed to decide halfway through that the effort of trying to crane her neck back was more than she could muster. “Mrm?”

“I shouldn’t have invited everyone over without thinking of how draining it would be for you,” I said.

“Hadda happen.” She squeezed Bernie. “‘Sides. We both invited them.”

I pressed my smile into her hair. “You haven’t always made the best choices for yourself, Lena.”

That gave her the energy to shift. She twisted around to glare at me. “I guess your decisions are always maximally rational?”

“Oh yeah. I’ve been reading some very interesting subreddits –”

She gave me the finger.

We laughed, then we sat for a while in companionable silence, Lena recharging her batteries, me just enjoying her nearness.

I’d have happily stayed like that all night, although I doubted my knees or back would’ve been as happy in the morning. I think Lena might have actually fallen asleep.

Bernie gave a questioning burble, though, and we stirred.

“Sorry, little guy,” I said. “I got your mom all tuckered out. How about I take you and put you back to bed?”

“You should do that with both of us,” Lena said.

“Still not carrying you,” I said.

She pouted, but she held Bernie up and I scooped him into my arms. I felt a vague sensation of weight around my neck as his Third Eye version rested his head there or gripped me with his broad sticky feet. I carried him back to the counter where his pet bed waited.

Lena dragged herself over a moment later and sprawled across the counter.

I couldn’t resist a glance through Third Eye. Her wings draped off one end and furled against the microwave at the other. It should’ve looked completely ridiculous. Big-budget fantasy in our tiny-budget apartment.

It didn’t.

I checked Bernie. The weight I’d felt had indeed come from one of his legs. His head was tilted back toward Lena. His tongue flicked out and tasted the air.

I scratched behind his eyes and a contented little hum emerged from him.

“So that,” Lena said, “got a little heavier than expected.”

I sat down opposite her. Bernie stretched in her direction, so I set his plushie version on the counter. “Just a little?”

She chuckled. I saw her eyes appear from beneath her hair. She stretched a finger over to tickle Bernie’s belly.

“Did you realize?” I asked. “About Erin?

“I figured something like that after the other day in the park,” Lena said. “I was hoping the sports fan joke would help her feel cooler about the hug.”

I leaned over and kissed the top of Lena’s head again. “You’re so much better than I give you credit for.”

“Right? I’m basically the best at friendship.” She took a long time exhaling. “As long as I only have to do it, like, once a week.”

I chuckled. “Do you want to reschedule the expedition?”

She propped herself up on her elbows. “What? No, no way. That’s game stuff. I can do that forever.”

“I’m just saying,” I said. “If you want to push it back, they’ll understand. And if they don’t, screw them.”

“The longer we wait, the more likely it is somebody else gets whatever’s in there,” she said.

I nodded.

We planned to reconvene tomorrow night. Lena and I, Erin, Donica, Miguel –

The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

And Zhizhi.

I didn’t think any of us could’ve persuaded her to keep quiet about Third Eye. I wasn’t sure we had any right to try.

Miguel hadn’t.

His pitch started with the idea that the game’s true nature would come out, probably sooner rather than later, and that the best thing for all of us would be to get out in front of it.

Zhizhi would film our expeditions. A full and comprehensive documentary. Detailed and persuasive enough people would at least entertain the idea we weren’t crazy. Public enough it would be a scandal if we got “disappeared” to some government black site. Once she had reel after reel of footage in her can, she could decide what to do with it.

Present literally the biggest story in finished form to her bosses at the local news? Sell it to bidders who would be clamoring for it as hints of the reality began to slip out? Or go directly to the public through a YouTube channel that by then would have way more than 10K subs?

I appreciated Miguel’s confidence in Lena and I.

I also appreciated that he’d offered some valid options in case we didn’t live up to it.

“Do you think the video’s ready to go?” I asked. “We didn’t really get around to talking about it.”

Lena shrugged. “It’ll be great. I had to trudge through all that snow to make it this afternoon, so it has to be.”

Now that she mentioned it, maybe her exhaustion came from more than an excess of social interaction.

I reached out and massaged her shoulders. My hands slid down her back, down to her shoulder blades. I could feel the warmth of her wings, but not the point where they emerged from her back.

She sighed and stretched, her fingers wiggling in the air on my side of the counter. “You really like those wings, don’t you?”

“What can I say? They’re super hot.”

She rolled over just enough to give me the side eye.

I held a straight face just long enough for her to do so.

When we finished laughing, she dragged herself back across the counter and eyed the empty coffee pot. “Ugh. Guests are the worst. Please tell me we’ve got more grounds in the can.”

I got up and checked. “Thankfully, yes.”

More finger wiggling. “Gimme.”

I did, and she started a new pot brewing while I sat back down and idly stroked Bernie’s back.

“Joon Woo was right, you know,” she said.

“About?”

“How scary this should be.” She glanced over her shoulder at Bernie and I. She nodded to the former. “He moves around like something from a horror movie. The game reaches into our world and changes us. It seems to warp space and time.”

Bernie made a little meeping sound.

“I’m not actually scared of you, little guy.” Lena scurried over and gave him a squeeze to prove it. “Just. I feel like I should be.”

“I know,” I said.

So much of what Third Eye did seemed to fall into that category. Stuff we were supposed to be scared of, presented to us in ways that put smiles on our faces instead.

“Horror is supposed to be about powerlessness,” I said.

“Did you get that out of a review of Resident Evil 4?”

“I have my sources.” Actually, I was pretty sure the review had been of 5. “I also have a point”

“Sorry. Go for it.”

“That’s what’s missing,” I said. “Instead of doing this stuff to us in a way that leaves us feeling helpless, Third Eye is giving us the same stuff, but the deeper we get, the more it feels like it’s ours.”

Lena nodded to herself. “Makes sense.”

I leaned back on the stool.

“Want some coffee?” she asked.

“Sure, thanks.”

She took out two new foam cups – extravagant! We usually washed and reused them for a couple of weeks. – and filled them with steaming fresh caffeine. She pushed one across the counter to me and clutched her own.

I raised it to my lips.

“So,” she said. “Which do you think is real?”

I hesitated.

“The horror,” I said, “or the way Third Eye makes us feel about it?”

Another nod. A sip.

I took one as well. Too hot. “The way we feel.”

Lena raised an eyebrow. “Yeah? You sound... weirdly confident about that, for a guy who was freaking out a couple nights ago when he got back from that construction site.”

I blew over my coffee. “Point.”

“I was really hoping you’d have a better comeback,” she said.

“I do,” I said. “You reminded me that I shouldn’t put all my trust in it, though.”

“Sorry, I guess?”

“Nah,” I said. “I believe what I’m going to say, but part of that is because I want to believe it. If either of us starts to forget that, we could end up doing something legit dangerous.”

“So why are you confident?” Lena scratched Bernie’s neck. Her fingers started to move faster, more nervous than caring.

I reached over and clasped her hand.

“Because of Albie,” I said.

We hadn’t had the chance to talk about her with the rest of the team. We weren’t sure how much we should share, or how much they could help, and there was just so much to cover it had been easy to put it off.

Lena nodded anyway. “She’s the closest we’ve come to an in-person encounter with the devs. Or at least someone associated with them.”

“And all she wanted to do,” I said, “was play games and make people happy.”

“That doesn’t mean her brother feels the same way, Cam,” Lena said. “Or anybody else who’s involved. Technically, we still don’t know for sure that Albie is.”

“Do you actually doubt that?” I rubbed my thumb on her palm.

“Nope.” She closed her eyes and smiled. “Look at how those assholes on Erin’s report system described Albie.”

A creepy little girl who appeared out of nowhere and challenged them to a game. Something else that should’ve seemed straight out of a horror movie.

Who was, instead, someone we wanted desperately to see again.

Of course Albie was associated with the devs.

Of course I trusted them.

We’d put that trust to the test tomorrow.

Lena pushed something across the counter at me.

I frowned down at it. A cupcake. Not Hostess, the store brand. She must’ve bought a pack the other night, after she lost to Matt and while she was worried I was out fooling around with Donica.

“You sure?” I asked. “I know you love these.”

She unwrapped one of her own and took a bite. She sipped her coffee. “C’mon, Cam. Eat, drink, and be merry, you know?”

I knew. I wished I didn’t.

Because she was right: For tomorrow, ye may die.

When we reconvened the team, we were going back to the construction site.