She was the Researcher Paragon, a Scholar who focused on study and learning. She had been that in real life once too, apparently, and paid the price.

“Who is the Insider,” Kimberly asked.

As usual, when Constance answered, she took a moment. At first, I thought she was thinking, but that wasn’t it. She was reading her script. Deciding what she could or should say.

“Someone who has gone through painstaking effort to ensure their identity never gets brought to light,” she answered. She checked her watch. “We should arrive soon. We can speak again after for a time, assuming I survive, just remember that Paragons can only speak to you candidly when we are in a player role.”

“Wait,” I said. “Can’t we just take a minute to debrief? I have so many questions.”

“And the pursuit of the answers to those questions will take you down the path you are meant to go. Carousel delights in your confusion but it also delights watching you solve its mysteries. Remember that this entity collected thousands of souls and enslaved them as actors to tell its story for whatever purpose. Every thread in Carousel’s history is laced with intrigue both real and manufactured. Don’t shortchange it, Film Buff. It wants you to experience its story firsthand and it has laid all manner of traps for those unwilling to play along.”

As she spoke, it was with an intensity far greater than the words themselves relayed. This was a deeply personal warning.

“Normally at this point,” she said as we turned onto a side street that ran up a hill, “Players would have very little knowledge of what is in store. We would have spent this walk talking about the time capsule, or the events that happened thirty years ago, events that my script has strangely little information about. I also have scant information about the events that are about to transpire, which is not ordinary. Be prepared.”

“Why do you all keep talking like we are marching toward our deaths?” Isaac said. “Is that what we’re doing?”

No one answered him because he was right.

“Already?” he asked. “Wait. You’re not serious, right? About what you said back at the B&B. We don’t die. We have to…”

He was panicking. We had been under the calming effects of some unnamed tropes while we were at the Celebration, but now they were wearing off. This was a potential issue. If he refused to enter the location of the upcoming storyline, that spelled disaster. New players had to play through a storyline.

None of my friends had any tropes that might calm him down.

“You can’t really expect us to walk into a place where we… where we are going to die,” he said, pressing his temples like he was trying to force the red wallpaper out of his mind and make everything normal again.

“Isaac,” Cassie said. “Isaac. We will be okay. Please calm down. We only have each other. We have to do this to get Andrew back. We can get through this like everything else. Family.”

“Cassie,” he answered, “They’re talking about dying. I just can’t…”

Kimberly pulled my arm, and we left them and walked up the road to let Cassie try to calm Isaac down.

“Let her talk him down,” Kimberly said.

I nodded. As inconvenient as his emotions were, I understood them. He was definitely going to die. We all were. Over and over.

In the distance, I could see lights on a large building at the peak of the hill we were climbing. It was obscured by trees, but the glow of the lights showed through.

Then I saw something.

It wasn’t with my eyes, it was on the red wallpaper. It was an Omen. I hadn’t seen one since Carousel reset, but there it was.

My I don’t like it here… trope didn’t let me down. I saw a poster of an old board game sitting on a table. It was viewed from a low angle. In the distance, there was a window out of focus with something on the other side, something humanoid. The title was spread out over the top.

The Ten-Second Game

The poster was modern. My trope told me that the difficulty was “This is scaring me.” That was one of the harder levels.

“Constance?” I asked, “This part of the story is like the Tutorial, right? That’s what the Vets called it. Does it rise to our level?”

She glanced in the direction I was, and then back at me, “The entire Throughline, both canon and otherwise, is difficult. And on top of that… Carousel may have taken your little maneuver as a challenge.”

The high difficulty wasn’t the only concerning part. The other thing I noticed was that the Omen trigger was, “Playing the Ten Second Game” but then it read, “Overridden by Player Trope.”

I didn’t know what that meant exactly, but I pieced it out as Cassie finally got Isaac to climb the hill with us and someone jumped out of the woods at us.

The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

I couldn’t describe him, but I recognized him. It was the Stranger.

Earlier, he had not shown up on the red wallpaper at all, but suddenly, there was something there. No player poster or stat information. All I saw were two player tropes.

He was acting as a player now too. Like Constance, he only had two tropes equipped.

??? is The Stranger

> “An Early Warning” allows him to activate an Omen early from a distance by acting as the Omen himself. This guarantees that whatever events are required to trigger the Omen will transpire, but gives the player and his allies more time to look around the setting before the storyline begins. This period is treated as the Party Phase.

>

> “A Dark Secret” gives him insight into the enemy, but also makes his character canonically complicit in some way. Upon revealing the secret, the player’s Plot Armor drops to zero until he and his allies have played out the shock (at the dark secret) and reconciliation beats of his character arc and resolve to work against the common enemy.

“Don’t go any further,” he said. “This hotel, if you could call it a hotel… it’s a death trap.”

“A death trap?” Constance asked.

He paused as if considering his next words.

“Oh yeah, I can’t believe what they’re charging. Most of the rooms are still torn up from the renovation. There’s dust in the air. Could be asbestos or mold. You should just find somewhere else.”

He spoke in a rushed, nervous voice. We weren’t meant to take him at his word. He was hiding something.

“Move out of the way,” Constance said as if she were summoning bravery. “This hotel has all of the permits and inspections or the City would not be sending visitors here attending the Centennial.”

She then sidestepped him and continued moving along the road toward the hotel.

As we passed him, I saw a look of deep concern on his face.

He was acting as an Omen, using his An Early Warning trope to activate the Omen inside. Logistically, he was there to ensure our team triggered the Omen. This was supposed to give us some advantage.

The needle on the Plot Cycle flicked from to Omen, then Choice, to Party. Then it turned gray. If I understood his trope right, it would start moving forward once someone activated the real Omen, which was guaranteed to happen now.

We were On-Screen too.

“That was weird,” I said, trying to stay in character. “Wonder what his problem was.”

“Didn’t you hear?” Antoine asked. “There’s dust everywhere.”

I forced a laugh. I looked back to where Cassie and Isaac were. They were scared but kept quiet. I wondered if Cassie’s We are not abandoned… trope had played a role in getting him to go along with things. Calling on the message of Family and sticking together might have worked for that trope.

“All I know is I want to shower and fall into bed,” Kimberly said. She sounded just like the carefree young woman she was pretending to be. She laughed and pulled Antoine forward. It was almost like she didn’t know her death was all but guaranteed in the coming hours. If she could really get over her fears, she could be a real contender.

The hotel had a large main building and lots of small individual buildings spread out around the property on the hillside. There were lit paths leading off every which way and trees separating the individual buildings.

It was nice. It had “Scandinavian Resort” vibes, somehow both minimalist and cozy. Many of the buildings were being renovated to get in line with the modern aesthetic.

It was cold, much colder than it had been on the walk here. Colder than it should have been that time of year. This set was zoned for sweater weather, apparently.

We found the main building and got inside quickly.

“Welcome,” the woman at the front desk, called Mandy on the red wallpaper, said politely. “What can we do for you? Oh, hey Constance! What are you doing up here?”

There was a large sign behind her that said, “Northern Haven Resort & Spa.” Carousel had more hotels per capita than any place in the real world.

“Checking in some guests from out of town,” Constance said with a rosy smile. “I’m just the delivery woman. It’s getting cold out there. Is there snow on the horizon?”

“No,” Mandy said. “Supposed to rain in a few days though.”

She began clicking through things on her computer. A frown grew on her face. “I’m sorry to say, we just got booked up. Just now. I guess there was a miscommunication somewhere.”

“We walked all the way out here and you don’t even have a room?” Kimberly asked.

“I’m sorry, but that’s the case,” the woman said.

“Don’t worry babe,” Antoine said to Kimberly with a laugh, “I can carry you. I run twice that distance on the football field and there I carried the whole team.”

His Mettle and Hustle jumped a couple of points due to Gym Rat.

“Well try growing a human in your own body,” Kimberly responded, with her hands cradling her stomach. “Then we can compare who’s tougher.”

Her Grit rose by one point. She didn’t have a lot of time to set up Pregnancy Reveal when she used Looks Don’t Last to guarantee her early death. She was getting a head start.

“Are you sure there isn’t anywhere for us to stay?” Dina asked. I had half expected her to wander off already.

“I can ask the other clerk,” Mandy said, “But I don’t think so.”

She got on the phone and pressed some buttons to turn on some kind of speakerphone. The phone began to ring.

“Umm… Office, “the voice on the other end said. I recognized the voice. It was Bobby. His Last-Minute Casting trope had assigned him a role as an employee of the hotel.

“Hey, Bobby,” Mandy said. “I just wanted to know if all of the guests had checked in yet. The computer’s on the fritz.”

“Yep. All checked in,” Bobby responded.

“That’s what I thought,” Mandy said. “Looks like we overbooked. We have a group here without a place to stay.”

“Huh,” Bobby said. “That’s a different question. All of our guests showed, that’s what I thought you were asking, but one group did check out early. Barely even had time to touch the room. The old Geist Suite. Whatever the new owner is calling it now that it’s renovated.”

“Oh,” Mandy said. She looked at the board behind her, “The keys are right here. Thank you, Bobby. Has housekeeping turned it out yet?”

“I think they’re doing it soon,” Bobby answered. “Lupita's out, I’ll do it myself. With Cindy. Cindy and I will do it.”

“Thanks,” Mandy said. “I’ll just go ahead and change the room on your reservation. You can head on out there.”

She pulled out a laminated map and showed us where our suite was. I could see that there were lots of rooms connected to it. It would have been expensive if we had to pay in money instead of blood.

It was a distance away, on the far side of the hill away from the other rooms. It was also markedly larger than the others.

As we left, Constance handed Antoine a business card. “My number is on the back. Call if you need anything at all. I’m a bit of a night owl. I’m going to head home, light my fireplace, and read a chapter before bed. I hope to see you at the Centennial tomorrow.”

I thought about asking if she wanted someone to walk her home out of instinct, but I knew that wouldn’t work out.

She trudged back down the hill toward her house.

Off-Screen.

“So what now?” Cassie asked.

“Party Phase. Or a modified version of it,” I said, thinking of how the Stranger’s trope had extended that part of the story.

It was time to figure out why we had been brought there.