Chapter 82: Key Item

Gerry said, “What the shit? N-no way.”

He spoke for all of us.

Through my phone camera, I saw his red-hot Iron plate bisecting Mask’s prone form. The glow on the Iron faded and it tipped over, deselected, as Gerry staggered away from the scene of the... crime?

Erin covered her mouth and whispered, “Oh, God.”

Zhizhi and I dashed forward to get a clearer look. Even though I thought I might regret it.

Because from where I’d been standing, it looked an awful lot like Gerry had just cut Mask in half.

Except –

“Don’t let up,” I shouted.

“Dude, quit it,” Gerry said. Snapped. “This is on you. You made me keep going!”

I shook my head, which was pretty pointless since he hadn’t wrenched his eyes off Mask. “It’s a trick, dammit!”

Erin’s shoulders tensed, but I saw her hands shift, working the Stone she’d conjured around Mask's hands. Either she still extended me her trust, or she’d realized the same things I had.

Gerry didn’t. I could tell from the way he whirled to face me, arms spread wide, instead of staring at Mask’s shadows and calling up another piece of Iron to defend against them.

The shadows which were still roiling.

I didn’t know everything about Third Eye, but three things had been consistent in every aspect of the game.

First, no regular player had ever showed off an attack that would do more than annoy someone without HP. It probably had something to do with what Albie called alignment, but what felt like a punch to the throat while your HP was up was more like a spitball without.

Second, even if someone did have such an attack, you couldn’t be seriously hurt by anything as long as you still had HP. In-game or out-of-game, damage would just slide off you after a moment of pain.

And third, once you were out of HP, you couldn’t keep playing until the next day. Or until a little girl gave you a Potion. Even with a Potion available, though, whatever object you’d had selected would fall inert and your avatar would fade until you’d drunk it.

Gerry wasn’t looking for advice, though. He was looking for somebody to take the blame for what he thought he’d just done. He balled his fists, and I thought if he did conjure another object, he would throw it my way.

He didn’t get the chance.

Mask’s shadows surged up and wrapped around Gerry’s legs.

Then Gerry fell through the floor.

That definitely qualified as something I didn’t know about Third Eye.

His hands scrabbled at the tiles. He cried, “Oh fuck, help!”

I swept my Iron orb downwards. It should have rebounded from the floor, but instead it sank in, meeting almost no resistance. Gerry tried to grab hold, but if anything, the orb was slicker than the tiles. I tried to haul him up, but two Air wasn’t even close to enough for me to fly, much less to lift someone heavier than I was.

His head went under the floor, like he was a swimmer caught in an undertow. His hand stretched upwards.

Erin’s fingers worked frantically, weaving a ladder of Stone. Gerry’s outstretched hand snagged a rung. His head broke the surface for a second, his mouth open to shout. The ladder tipped over, though, and slid in faster than he could climb it. I slammed my orb down to try to hold it in place, but still, he weighed too much for me.

His hand clamped on the final rung. Then the ladder vanished into the darkness with him.

Erin screamed, “No!”

To her absolutely insane credit, she scrambled in to the arcade.

I followed.

By the time we reached the counter, Mask’s body had seemingly melted into the floor. So had his shadows.

So had Gerry.

I scanned the tiles with the Third Eye app, and again without it. I got the same sight either way: an old and pitted linoleum floor marked by a weird, semicircular discoloration where Mask had lain, stretching to where Gerry had disappeared. At first I thought it had been stained by whatever effect Mask used, but then I realized the truth. Everywhere else, the floor was sticky with a layer of dust, old sweat, and spilled stale pop. This patch had been cleaned down to the tiles.

Which meant...

What?

I had no idea. Hell. I didn’t know how to begin figuring it out.

There was obviously no split in the tiles, no hydraulic mechanism like the one that had opened a pit in the maintenance corridors in imitation of a dungeon. This was a one hundred percent Third Eye phenomena.

I was, at least, sure it was something from Third Eye, not some other supernatural effect. As horrifying as it had been, as bizarre as it had seemed, it hadn’t been accompanied by the same gut-wrenching distortion as the creature we’d faced at the construction site.

What Mask had done was part of the game. He was just playing on a completely different level than the rest of us.

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

I met Erin’s eyes.

Hers were wide and teary, even before they were magnified by her thick glasses.

Zhizhi rushed up to us. “What the hell just happened?”

“I haven’t got a clue,” I said. “Whatever that was, it’s not anything we’ve seen before. I can’t even think what Mask could be using. Can you, Erin?”

She squeezed her eyes shut and started to shake her head. She hesitated. “I don’t know whether it counts as a Reactant or a Refinement, but I think I know what the resource is.”

“What?” I asked.

Erin glanced around, looking for immediate danger. Smart. I did the same, and so, despite her inability to respond to it, did Zhizhi. The arcade was full of shadows, uncomfortably close, and with our lights inside it, the concourse looked even worse.

None of them appeared to be creeping closer to us.

I had no idea if that mattered.

Mask and Gerry had disappeared through a solid floor. What kind of warning did we expect to get if the former resumed his attack?

Maybe Erin realized that scanning her surroundings was pointless. She tapped on her phone and showed it to me. She’d gone to the in-game store in the Third Eye app and scrolled down to one of the entries. Her thumb hovered above it.

Keys.

“For opening the way,” she said.

I found myself nodding. “I’d say we’ve found out what happened to the people Mask invaded.”

“Including Mr. Green,” Erin said. She shuddered. “And now Gerry. Cam, what are we going to do?”

I clasped her arm. “I don’t think Mask is hurting them, beyond beating them at PVP. It’s like you said, he’s better off farming them for XP than killing them. Then there’s what he said about Matt being somewhere he can put his talents to better use. We’re not seeing the whole picture.”

Erin blinked rapidly. “You’re right. You have to be.”

I sure as hell wanted to be.

I invented as much conviction as I could and squeezed her arm. “We’re going to find them.”

She reached up and clasped my hand. “I just hope it’s not because we get dragged in after them.”

I winced.

That was a good reminder, though. We had no reason to think we were safer then we’d been when Mask was actively fighting us. If anything, he represented a more grave danger now, when he could strike from any direction.

I pushed Erin’s hand away and swept the arcade again, with and without my phone. “We’ve got to keep our eyes open.”

“Great,” Zhizhi said. “Done. I don’t know how I’m ever going to get them to close again. What next?”

“We have to find Gerry,” Erin said.

“Have you got a Key and we’re just now hearing about it?” I asked. My words sounded harsher than I’d meant. “Sorry.”

“No, you’re right. I have no idea how to go about looking for him.” Erin sighed. “If we don’t find a Key, we may not be able to.”

I felt her back press up against mine. Probably the safest formation, unless Mask could use his Key to open something beneath both our feet and suck us in together. Then it was the most dangerous.

Lena and I hadn’t felt safe after facing the creature? What a load of crap. We’d only encountered it in an isolated place, and only after ignoring plenty of warnings both in and out of Third Eye, and whether Albie had killed it or not, it hadn’t pursued us off the site.

Mask could get to us anytime, anywhere, and he clearly intended to.

I flicked a glance around the arcade. Searching the darkness for some sign of Mask emerging, yeah, but also looking at the array of machines. He’d confirmed that we could use this place to get more Tickets. We needed the strength they offered more than ever.

There was no way in hell I was going to stand here playing Street Fighter 2 when Mask could surge out of the darkness and pull me in at any moment.

Worse, when for all I knew, he could already be outside, invading Lena and the others.

Someone would alert us over Discord if that happened, right? Even if Mask overwhelmed all of them before anyone could send a message, Joon Woo was watching our camera feeds from another city. Surely Mask couldn’t attack everyone at once.

I checked my phone. A ton of messages had come through, and they kept piling up. Not just from Joon Woo and the four outside, but from Salamancer, as well. We literally had eyes on us from around the world.

Best of all, Lena was still typing.

I tapped out as reassuring a message as my shaking hand and awful texting technique allowed. To Erin, I said, “We have to go. We have to link up with the others.”

“I am also in favor of this,” Zhizhi said.

I felt Erin’s shoulders slump against my back. Quietly, she said, “This... really sucks.”

“Yeah,” I said.

Erin stood, head bowed. But when Zhizhi and I started picking our way toward the doors of the arcade, she followed.

As we walked, I said, “At least it explains some things, doesn’t it?”

“What Mask does with people,” Erin said.

“And how he gets around.” I’d wondered about the way Mask seemed to pop up all over North America. His itinerary had stood out so much, even Benji asked about it.

Teleportation, it seemed, was on the table after all.

“And how Albie does,” Erin said.

My jaw tightened. I hated the comparison, but it fit the facts. Of course Albie would have Keys, alongside every other resource. She was a dev.

“Good point,” I said. “Good reminder.”

“Of what?” Erin asked.

“That this power is scary as hell,” I said, “but that’s because of the person who’s using it. Abusing it. The power itself is just a tool. It’s not good or bad.”

“Pretty bad,” Zhizhi said, “if it lets him kidnap people.”

“A car helps you kidnap people,” Erin said. She fiddled with the bridge of her glasses. “Well. Maybe that’s a bad example. I suppose cars do a lot of bad things.”

“And plenty of good,” I said. “They’re certainly useful. Which is what this is, too. Even more so now.”

“How do you figure?” Zhizhi asked.

“Once we get Keys of our own, then if Mask nabs us, we can just teleport right back out. Once we can do that, we can rescue our friends, too, and anyone else he’s captured.”

Erin managed a smile.

Zhizhi didn’t. If anything, her frown deepened.

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

“First,” she said, “you’re jumping about six steps ahead. Neither of you has one of these Keys. Until tonight, the only indication you had that they so much as existed was that they showed up in the in-game store that doesn’t work.”

I swallowed. “Point.”

“Second,” Zhizhi said, “let’s say you find your first Key. That helps all of one of you. I’d hate to know how you pick who gets it.”

“Point,” I repeated.

In truth, if I found it, I knew. Lena would, even if I had to push her into it with my Air.

The fairer thing, though, would be for us to take some kind of vote.

“But what the hell,” Zhizhi said. “Let’s say you both find one. And Lena. And Michelle, Joon Woo, and everyone else on the team. Every player, even! Awesome!”

It sure would be. Depending on how the gateways Mask could open worked, we might be able to summon the entire team with a phone call or a Discord message. We could crisscross the country, the world even, just by stepping through our own shadows. Or were the shadows part of Mask’s personal aesthetic, not necessary to a Key?

I noticed Zhizhi's tight eyes and lips. Her expression suggested that hers had been a sarcastic “Awesome!”

“What’s the downside?” I asked.

“A car can help you kidnap someone, and a car can help you escape,” she said. “But a car isn’t the only way to escape. And a car isn’t something only about fifty thousand people around the world are allowed even a chance to acquire.”