As Ash led his group to the muted glow of the open door, his senses were on high alert, and the weight of the Mauser in his virtual hand felt as real as anything he had ever picked up.

From behind him Anastasia said, “That is Delphine’s room.”

“Madame Delacroix?” Ash called down the hallway, but no response returned. The glow from inside the room was steady, unobstructed by anyone moving within.

Reaching the doorway, he peered inside. The lamp revealed a well-appointed room of gnarled, lacquered furniture and yellowed, tattered lace, but no sign of Delphine Delacroix. The baroque, four-poster bed lay undisturbed, the covers still made.

“Where would she be?” Ash asked Anastasia.

“Usually she is abed by this hour,” she said.

“Ivy,” he said, “let’s you and I look for clues.”

Anastasia stiffened, “Now see here, sir—“

“We’re not going to steal anything, but we are going to get to the bottom of what’s happening here. You three, stay out here and warn us if Delphine comes back. Maybe she’s just gone to brush her teeth or something.” He meant Elwood, James, and Anastasia, but he was looking at Elwood. The antiquarian nodded.

Ivy followed him into the chamber.

On the nightstand stood a crystal decanter of amber liquid and a half-full glass. Ash sniffed the glass, and the tang of brandy tickled his nose.

Near the large window sat a writing desk that looked like it had been shipped from pre-revolutionary France, beautifully ornate and delicate at the same time, an aristocratic lady’s writing desk with a fold-down writing surface. Opening the front, he found a small stack of leather-bound books with no titles on the spines.

“Now hold on,” Ivy said from across the room. She was examining a yellowed, frayed, whale-bone corset resting on a mannequin. Her brow wrinkled with confusion.

“What is it?” Ash asked. “I mean, it’s a corset, right?”

Ivy gave the mannequin a quarter turn so that he could see the strange pocket sewn into the back of the corset along the right rib cage. “Corsets are made to cinch in the waist, straighten the back, and boost the uh…bodice. Beauty in symmetry.”

“That looks decidedly asymmetrical.”

Ivy nodded.

The pocket was sewn in such an odd shape that he couldn’t imagine what might fit in there.

“Maybe Delphine is a hunchback?” Ash ventured.

“In this place, I think a hunchback would be too prosaic.”

Ash stared at her.

She caught his gaze. “What?”

“You just used the word ‘prosaic’ in a spoken sentence. I’ve never heard anyone do that before.”

Her cheeks flushed, and she gave him a shy smile. “I use big words sometimes. Sorry.”

“Don’t be!” He swallowed hard, and wondered if she could hear the rabbit-thumping of his heart.

Ash went back to the desk and picked up one of the leather bound books while Ivy poked around in the armoire. He flipped through one, which proved to be a journal filled with a mix of dated entries and…poetry, all written in crabbed, over-elaborate penmanship.

Successful Skill Check! Gain 2 points to increase your Investigate skill! You have discovered Delphine Delacroix’s personal journals.

He scanned the entries. Much of it was inane daily annoyances and family spats. Gilbert was an arrogant bastard again. Jean-Paul’s howling kept her up at night. The twins were fighting again. Renard’s experiments had caused a strange liminal, violet glow one night throughout the house. He had scoffed it away as “St. Elmo’s Fire.”

He read several of Delphine’s poems. They were flowery, over-wrought, some of them about the regrets of a mysterious lost love. But some of them spoke of…

“Hunting?” Ash said.

“Say again?” Ivy asked.

“I found some of Delphine’s poetry. Some of it is about hunting, but not with a weapon. Like she’s chasing down prey herself. ‘Dripping juices’ and ‘delectable viscera.’ The ‘delightful fear in their eyes, that they know their end is near.’ It doesn’t sound like hunting animals.”

“Maybe it’s just the vivid imagination of a sick and twisted mind.”

He gave her a withering look. “Really. Here?”

“No, you’re right. Creepy A-F.”

Then he had an idea, started riffling through the other books. Some were more journals, some were handwritten books written in French and Latin, which his character could not read.

Ash called out to the hallway. “Anybody speak French or Latin?”

“I speak Latin!” James said proudly, coming into the bedroom.

“Bien sûr, je parle français,” Anastasia said, following him.

“But will you?” Ash asked her pointedly.

She frowned. “I told you I would help you.”

He handed her an open book in handwritten French.

Anastasia scanned the pages. “This is a passage about a man named Renee,” she said, then flushed. “Oh, that’s not... that was a very lurid fantasy about him. Some things cannot be unread, I guess. It seems that Delphine had a lover, but the passage makes it sound like they were in France at the time. He says the peasant need to be put down like wild dogs, and she admires him for his strength.” She read some more. “She worries that Renard’s experiments will disturb the natural order of things. He won’t let her in his chambers anymore, calling her ‘beyond saving.’”

“The natural order of what?” Ivy asked. “‘Beyond saving?’”

“The universe perhaps,” Anastasia said.

“So Uncle Renard is a mad scientist,” James said, “got it.”

“I believe Ivy already established that,” Ash said.

“I think Ash and I need to go talk to Uncle Renard,” Ivy said.

“Really?” he said, perking up. She wanted to go with him.

“I need somebody to snoop around while I’m talking to him,” she said. “Maybe you’ll find something we need. There are aspects of this case that just aren’t fitting together. Some things are just too weird.”

“I thought you said not to split up,” Elwood said.

“We’ve got a lot of ground to cover, and we’ll never be more than a few rooms away,” Ivy said.

They all exchanged glances as this cardinal rule of game survival stared them in the face.

Delphine’s journal fell to the floor with a thud, dropped from Anastasia’s fingers.

She had just turned sheet white, rubbing her wrist.

“Are you all right?” James asked.

“Yes… no, something’s wrong,” she said. Her aristocratic accent was gone. “I can’t explain it, but something is really wrong here.” Such terror filled her face that Ash had the chilling impression that it was real.

“Don’t worry, we’ll protect you,” James said.

Anastasia’s voice dropped to a whisper. “I don’t think you can.”

#

Julius Himura waited in the substation nearest the Ruby Ticket game session, tapping his foot. The air smelled of hot electronics and the particular musk that resonance eels generated whenever they were near.

Himura paced and fumed.

If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

First Eddie had gone off script and physically attacked one of the players and now one of the other actors had stumbled into the Resonator core, thanks to the ineptitude of one of the maintenance workers. Unprotected humans did not belong in the Resonator core. Besides, her presence there might have disrupted the resonance flux sufficiently to delay their plans. The numbers still looked good, but now her gamesuit telemetry suggested she was unstable, that perhaps some part of the Others had been in physical contact with her while she was in the core.

It was Savannah, that new girl. He made a mental note to hire less intelligent, less curious actors henceforth. He needed more like Eddie, no-talent hacks.

At that thought, the service hatch opened and Eddie entered the chamber. His gamesuit made him look reptilian, especially the goggles, which conveyed something like a gecko or a fly. Himura nodded with satisfaction when he saw the goggles had melded with Eddie’s flesh.

The gamesuits were little more than a vast network of millions of microscopic transistors. The invention of transistors had changed the fabric of human civilization. They were tiny, rune-like plates of rock and metal that could channel and direct the flow of energy—in the mundane sense, electricity—and human intellect had harnessed that capability to invent computers and other electronics, make incredibly complex calculations, go to space, create television and internet videos to dull the senses of the mindless masses. But certain esoteric substances, similar in concept to transistors, shaped into structures not unlike transistors, could channel other forms of energy, the kinds that flowed through the Resonator. The gamesuits were nothing more than tapestries of runes.

And the talismans that Himura distributed to his minions were the keystones, the catalysts, to actualizing the gamesuits’ full capabilities.

“Master,” Eddie said.

“You’ve shown remarkable restraint, Eddie. Good work.” Himura tossed him a strip of raw meat, he wasn’t sure from what sort of creature.

Eddie caught it in one hand and stuffed it into his mouth, chewing juicily. “Thanks, Master,” he said with his mouth full. “What are your instructions?”

“Don’t alert the players, but neutralize the actor playing Anastasia. She’s gone full glitch. I need you to pull her out so we can evaluate how she’s integrating with the suit. Subdue her if you can. If you can’t…” Himura let that sentence trail off and hang in the air. “Think you can handle that?”

“Sure thing, Master. Can I…taste her?”

“Only if she doesn’t cooperate, and most importantly, if you won’t alert the players.”

“But what if I can’t get her without tipping off the players?” he asked, a little too eagerly. “Is it…time?”

“Almost. But not yet. When it’s time, you’ll know.”

“I can feel it coming, Master.” Eddie shuddered visibly. “So good…”

“So can I.”

“May Th’zai open.”

“May Th’zai open.”

#

Ivy let Ash go first while she watched their rear. The house had gone dark, silent, and creepy as hell while the tempest raged just outside the walls. The wind howled like a nor’easter. The surf hammered the island, booming all around them. Flitting shadows and stealthy scratchings filled the dark halls. Only a spare candle here and there kept pitch blackness at bay, feeble flames flickering in the grip of invisible drafts.

Ivy and Ash found Renard’s door on the ground floor shut, but light seeped from beneath. She knocked and called his name. When no response came, she knocked sharply with the butt of her pistol.

“You all right?” Ash asked while they waited for a response.

“It’s all a bit much, isn’t it,” she said. In that moment, she found herself grateful that he was here with her. She didn’t remotely consider herself a damsel in distress, but with him she felt safer. And he cut a dashing figure in his “costume,” like a Victorian era hero.

He nodded. “One minute I’m having the time of my life, and the next…”

“You think something is really wrong with Anastasia? Like, something deeper than the game scenario?”

“I don’t know. Maybe. If it’s all part of the script, that actress is incredible. Still—”

A shadow passing through the light under the door stopped him. A lock clicked. The door swung inward.

“Ah, Miss Holliday, Mr. Blackburn,” Renard said. “I’ve been expecting you. Come in.”

As they stepped into his chambers, he shut the door behind them—and locked it. She tamped down a pang of worry. James and Ellie could no longer reach them.

“My family has grown troublesome,” he said. “I cannot have them meddling now that I am so close to a breakthrough to true understanding. Besides, Delphine sometimes practices her music at this time of night, and the sound waves sometimes disrupt my experiments. But come. Come. You must have so many questions by now, and our time grows short.”

“Short?” Ash asked, glancing at Ivy, perhaps wondering if the game was going to shut down before they could finish.

“There are…forces at work. Come, come, come.” Renard led them up the stairs toward the laboratory.

“Can you please explain that?” Ivy said. “If time is short, vagueness doesn’t help. Besides, you need us to find the diamond, right?”

“Indeed, indeed.” They emerged into the laboratory with its profusion of tuning forks of many sizes and materials and other arcane, incomprehensible equipment, diagrams on the walls and scribblings on the floor in chalk.

Renard’s voice grew darker. “You have seen things, yes? Some of my…kin.”

“We have,” Ivy said. “What are they?”

He waved the question away. “What they are matters less than why they exist. You see, I fear the days of the Delacroix family are coming to an end. Old Jean-Paul has seen to that.”

“Your great-uncle, or grand-father, or whatever he is,” Ivy said, probing for some clarification.

Renard gave her a weak smile, then flipped two knife switches that looked straight out of a Frankenstein movie.

“And he’s still alive?” Ash asked.

“In a manner of speaking,” Renard said. Then he turned to Ivy. “You recall our conversation about resonance, yes? Let me show you something. This is the heart of my research. I didn’t know if I could trust you before, but I fear now I must enlist your aid.” He pointed at a chalk line on the floor. “Come to this side of the line with me. You will not like to stand within the triangle.”

She saw then that three of the chalk lines on the floor created an acute, asymmetrical triangle, with other marks and glyphs along the lengths of the sides. At each corner stood a metal tripod supporting a vertical copper pole, along which were situated several devices that resembled tuning forks, but only some of them were made of metal. Others were metals and substances she didn’t recognize. The color or the luster was wrong. She and Ash joined Renard outside the bounds of the triangle.

All around them, fluid bubbled in glass pipes and wires hummed. She felt her hair starting to stand on end—her real hair—or was it the suit?—as if she was collecting a static charge.

Renard threw another knife switch. The lights dimmed. For a split second, a high-pitched squeal raked her eardrums but then shot to a frequency beyond human hearing. Within the triangle, the air itself began to glow with a strange, blue light, like an old style television coming on but without a visible source. The edges of the light were indistinct, like a vignette. The smell of something like ozone crawled up her nostrils, but sharper, more astringent—organic.

Then, like a fish darting into view in an aquarium, something about a foot long floated into the bluish light, like the love child of a moray eel and a deep-sea angler fish but with an asymmetrical face. A third eye out of place. An extra fin on one side, a fin with…clawed fingers?

Ivy drew back at the sight of it, her scalp prickling, stomach quivering.

Then another one cruised into view, this one longer than her leg, its jaws filled with two-inch teeth. The bioluminescent patterns on its body flickered and pulsed. The smaller one’s lights fell into synchrony with the larger one.

“Magnificent are they not?” Renard asked.

“What are they?” Ivy and Ash asked simultaneously.

“What you are seeing a window into other dimensions of existence. My Resonator has brought their reality into harmony with ours. They are all around us all the time, like ghosts, but we are unable to perceive or interact with each other.”

Then a shadow loomed at the edge of the blue light along the floor. Something big. In the shadow, blueish-purple lights flickered, half-seen. A shadow too large to enter the triangle. Ivy had the sudden sensation that the floor inside the triangle had disappeared.

“In that realm,” Renard explained, “are only predators. At least so far as I’ve been able to observe.”

Small shapes appeared in the light, the size of minnows or tadpoles, darting and pausing. The first one rushed forward and devoured several with a single gulp, in which its mouth opened shockingly wide and lightning fast.

“Their size has no limit,” Renard said with an odd emphasis.

“How big do they get?” Ivy asked.

“The largest can devour entire worlds like that one there just did,” Renard said.

“You mean planets?” Ivy asked.

“They have consumed most of the resources in their realm, so they seek out other realms on which to feed. All they need is an opening, a toehold.”

“How do you know all this?” Ash asked, eyes narrowing.

Renard looked away, hesitating. “I am unsure you are ready to know this.”

“Lay it on us,” Ash said.

Renard rolled up his trouser leg.

There under the skin of his knee, embedded in bone and cartilage and flesh, bioluminescent patterns flickered—in time and substance with those inside the triangular “tank.”

Ivy’s vision swam and her throat tightened. Dizziness washed over her.

You have failed a Stability check! Stability loss: 2 points. Frightening experiences can shake your mental and emotional well-being, and the effects are cumulative. Failing Stability checks can affect what you perceive, as well as your available actions.

She grabbed onto Ash, who stepped in quickly to support her, wrapping an arm around her waist. It felt good, that arm. He was stronger than he looked.

“On my first successful experiment, I was foolish enough to enter the triangle,” Renard said, rolling his trouser leg back down. “I know all this because it speaks to me. Or rather, I am in contact with something through it. One of the oldest of them, I suspect. A being that has devoured entire worlds and whatever lived upon them.”

Feeling steadier now, Ivy gathered herself, but Ash kept hold. She patted his hand reassuringly and he released her. She said to Renard, “So you went into the triangle—”

“And one of them swam into me, yes. I brought it back out with me. And now it lives within me.”

“Why would you do all this?” Ash asked, gesturing around the laboratory, at Renard’s knee.

Renard’s face hardened. “It is the only way that I can destroy Jean-Paul for good, or rather, what he has become. To prevent what he will become.”

Ash frowned. “What on earth does this have to do with a missing jewel?” They were so far beyond the mere jewel heist case now.

Renard said, “The diamond is a fragment of one of the old ones’ nucleus, compressed by the forces of its digestion into…let’s call it a diamond, but it’s not entirely. An earthly diamond’s crystalline structure exists in only three dimensions, but this one exists in at least six. The Delacroix diamond is but a tiny fragment of a much larger whole, a diamond the size of Earth itself.”

They stared at him.

Ivy struggled to imagine a diamond the size of a planet, much less the forces that could create such a thing.

Renard went on, “As they grow, they metamorphose. How many stages exist I do not know. I have identified at least four, each with different shapes and capabilities. And hungers.”

Suddenly an eye the size of a Volkswagen Beetle appeared at the fringe of the “tank”.

It saw them, and in that moment, Ivy felt like a worm on a fishing hook.

Renard drew in and released a deep sigh.

“This is all pretty insane,” Ash said.

“You’ll get no disagreement from me. I spent my whole life thinking Jean-Paul’s affliction was normal. When I discovered otherwise…” He sighed again and reached for a thick, handwritten journal that lay open on a workbench. He paged through it, revealing tables, diagrams, sketches, and paragraphs of tiny, crabbed writing that went all the way to the edge of the page. He closed it with a snap and offered it to Ivy. “The entirety of my research. You must help me.”

Ivy hesitated. This felt more real than she had been prepared for.

“Take the book,” Renard said earnestly. “But don’t come back. You will not be able to trust me for much longer.”

Ivy took it.

“Now go.”