This wasn’t a heist movie. There would be no rappelling down from the ceiling to get past a laser beam security system. We weren’t going to grift our way past the five or so police officers in the building. We wouldn’t replace Isaac with a holographic replica.

But we weren’t without options. The jail was small. There was an office of sorts with a uniformed officer at reception. There were desks for the officers, an interrogation room, and an entire room devoted to phone banks and vending machines. Downstairs, the cells were lined up one by one, with each of them getting their little window. Isaac said there were a lot of cells and some of them were behind a large steel door that no one walked through.

Everything in the place had a fresh coat of white, rubbery-looking paint. Without that, the place looked old both inside and out, and it smelled old. If I had seen this place back in the real world, I would have thought it was in some sparsely populated panhandle town.

That’s just what we could see through the windows. Knowing how Carousel worked, this place had probably come from the historic downtown of some sinister little haunted world. It fit in the patchwork of the Carousel downtown well enough from the outside.

We had to get through a door with an electric lock that the receptionist would buzz you through, find the keys to Isaac’s cell, and get him up the stairs and out.

And that was just the first set of problems. This wasn’t a heist movie or a crime thriller. It was a horror movie, and as we took our last few moments to prepare, the horror showed up.

It started with a man screaming.

The Die Cast must have gotten powerful enough that it was targeting anyone and everyone.

The barista from across the street who had just recently closed the shop down, came out of his shop followed by a waft of steam. His face was boiled red. He clutched at it as he screamed. It looked like there had been a terrible accident.

“It’s almost here,” I said. “We have to move.”

And that was about as far as we got.

----------------------------------------

Whoever said failure wasn’t an option had never been to Carousel.

We had a plan. It never even got off the ground.

Carousel had a plan too. I had to admit, it wasn’t bad. It used us. I couldn’t even say whether things would have happened this way had we not tried to break Isaac out.

The first thing I did was go to the station’s entrance. The others stayed back. We didn’t need lots of people. I had good Hustle and Moxie, and that was what was needed to make this work.

I noticed that Moonlight Morrow was standing in the waiting room, giving a rousing speech to the officers. There wasn’t much room, so they propped open the electric locked door, and a couple of officers were standing behind it, hanging on Moonlight’s words. They really did seem to like him. His tropes and high Moxie probably had something to do with it, but more than that, Moonlight had a captivating way of speaking.

It was so captivating that when the alarm started going off on the electric door because they had held it open too long, one of the officers on the other side of it reached up and unplugged a small wire at the top of the door.

That was where the problems started.

Moonlight ended his speech with a wave and told them to keep doing their jobs to keep Carousel safe. Even in character, he knew how much irony was in that statement. Carousel was never safe.

The officers waved him goodbye, and he left.

He moved Off-Screen as he walked out the door. He reached out and grabbed my shoulder. Before I could question why he didn’t make the distraction we were expecting him to, he said, “It just isn’t in the cards today, my friend. They wouldn’t even let me in the room. Carousel is putting its foot down and we best not be under it.”

“Isaac’s still in there,” I said. “His death should not be guaranteed. This isn’t Second Blood yet.”

“Come on now, you’re lying to yourself,” Moonlight said. “Nothing guaranteed about it. Young Mr. Hughes sealed his own fate already. He had every choice, and there ain’t nothing you can do about that.”

In the back of my mind, I heard the barista still crying. A car crash had happened in the distance, but all I could focus on was my own heartbeat.

I felt the dark aura of the Die Cast. I didn’t care. I should have prepared Isaac better. He punched a guy On-Screen? He had to have known there would be consequences even if the guy he punched was a debt collector. Spoiled rich heirs like his character were on a tight leash in a story like this. They were below debt collectors in the pecking order. I was enraged. How was he supposed to recover from that on top of all the other marks against his character? The audience was going to enjoy watching Isaac get his comeuppance. I was an idiot to think I could prevent it.

Maybe if we had hidden him away instead of serving him up to the police to try to take the initiative from Carousel… I couldn’t think about it. If we weren’t going to save Isaac, there was still something else we could do.

“You said the battle continues after death?” I asked.

“I did,” Moonlight said. “I’ll be there late. You think Mr. Hughes is ready to see the other side and help win the day?”

I didn’t.

“I will see you in the finale one way or the other, my friend,” Moonlight said. He started to walk away, but then he turned around and said, “Remember, dying ain’t the worst part, Mr. Lawrence. It’s the waiting around that really kills you.”

He gave a wink and walked off into the descending night.

As he did, I heard banging coming from inside the building.

I looked in through the glass door and saw what Carousel was up to. The plug that the police officer had unhooked had gotten caught in the door when it closed and was hanging out the other side. The officer in the reception area was desperately smashing the unlock button, but, of course, it couldn’t work because someone on the inside had unplugged it.

The officers rammed the electric door, but it held firm.

Somewhere inside, I heard sloshing. I heard water coming down the stairs.

I ran around to the side of the building where Isaac’s cell window was.

“What the fuck is going on!” he screamed. He was spooked. “The idiot cop handcuffed a guy to the water pipe for some reason, and he broke the damn thing. It’s flooding in here!”

“I can’t get inside,” I said. “The door is jammed shut. The officers can’t bust it down.”

“What do we do?” Isaac asked desperately.

I looked around. I needed a plan. What was all of this Savvy for if I couldn’t come up with a plan to use it on?

Past Isaac, the water rose faster than it could in real life. That was movie magic.

“Keep your head out and keep breathing,” I said. As long as he had the window, he couldn’t drown unless he exhausted himself. “I’ll be right back.”

Maybe if I got a large pipe, I could pry the bars apart. No. That wasn’t a real “plan” in the sense that Savvy would help it work. That was something you needed Mettle for. Heck, that was something you needed a Bruiser for. Maybe two of them.

Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

I ran around the building as fast as I could. I kept my inner eye firmly planted on the POV of the Die Cast to make sure I wasn’t running into it. I had a pretty good idea of where it was. It wasn’t moving. My worry was that it could come up to Isaac and kill him if he was sticking his head out for breath, but the Die Cast was standing still, its view steady on the police station.

If it wasn’t going to kill him physically, then what was the plan?

I didn’t see anything that could help. I thought I might try to steal a police car and ram the building, but the cars were gone. They had been parked there previously on the side of the building opposite Isaac’s window, but they were gone now. Carousel really saw me coming.

I spotted the brown car with Antoine, Kimberly, and Cassie in the distance. Antoine flashed the lights at me.

I ran over to them. Since I was Off-Screen, I didn’t need to look cool or calm, and I certainly wasn’t going to look collected.

When I got to them, Cassie was already out of the car and looking at me. “Where’s Isaac?”

“Cassie,” I said. I couldn’t think of the right way to let her down easy.

“No!” she said. “Why didn’t you get him?”

“It’s not happening,” I said. “The door is locked down. Not even the cops could get out.”

There was no back door because, of course, there wasn’t.

“The Die Cast isn’t moving,” she said. “Does that mean there is something you are supposed to be doing?”

“The basement is flooding,” I said.

Her eyes widened. “I can breathe for him,” she said. She wanted to use her Anguish trope to share his injuries. That would work for a time, but only a time.

“No!” I said. Cassie, all you will do is kill yourself, too. This is bad luck. We have to get to the end of the story to help him.”

“We can’t just give up,” she said, crying.

“I’m not giving up,” I said. “You guys have to go. I’ll take things from here.”

Antoine and Kimberly had gotten out of the car and were trying to help Cassie.

I looked at them. I knew what I needed to do.

“Listen to everything I am about to say,” I said. “It’s not going to make much sense, just listen.”

They waited for me.

“You had better run. Hide now. Follow my voice. It’s time to fight. I’m here with you. Don’t be afraid. It’s coming,” I said. Each phrase, I said slowly and deliberately with pauses in between. They didn’t make sense all spoken together, but I needed to have said them for later.

I had been thinking about this for some time.

“What are you talking about?” Cassie asked.

I took a deep breath and looked back at Kimberly and Antoine. They understood what I was doing. “It’s all up to you now,” I said.

Then I ran back to Isaac. It wasn’t too late, but the water was already pouring out of the window. He was floundering in some impossible turbulence in the water.

“Did you get something?” he asked.

He was swimming now instead of standing.

“I’m good here,” he said. “I can hold to the bars. You just have to get inside and find the keys.”

On Screen.

I jumped down to the ground, splashing in the water. I grabbed Isaac’s hands and arms and held onto him firm.

“Don’t give up,” I said. “Keep swimming. I’ve got you. I know you’re tired. I'll hold you. Just keep going until help gets here.”

Isaac looked at me curiously. He wasn’t that tired. Not yet. He could hold himself to the bars for a while longer, or at least he thought.

I had realized Carousel’s plans, however, and I knew what was actually going on. He wasn’t going to hang in there for much longer.

I pulled at the bars pathetically but with as much desperation as I could convey. The water surged, covering much of the window and pouring all over me.

Carousel had accepted my small contribution.

Isaac began spitting water.

“Go,” he said. “Get help!”

But there was no help to get. Isaac was going to die. He wasn’t going to drown, though. I had figured that out already. I held him up so he could get little sips of air despite the surging water.

He was going fry.

I looked past him at the light in the center of the room. It was wet and almost submerged.

In movies, water is the perfect conductor of electricity, even more so than in real life.

I reached back over Isaac’s arms and said, “I got you; just breathe.”

“I’m ok—”

“Oh, god!” I screamed.

The water hit the light fixture, and the room got bright.

----------------------------------------

Suddenly I was watching myself convulse on the ground. The electricity killed me so quickly that I was on Deathwatch in the mysterious theater before my body stopped twitching. Isaac was dead, too, of course.

The POV of the Die Cast took over as it turned to leave.

Next, the scene changed to Antoine, Kimberly, and Cassie driving away from the jailhouse. Antoine looked intense. From the angle of the shot, they had just seen Roderick Gray, so their characters could realize he was behind the attack, and it wasn't just the Die Cast going awol. Cassie was sobbing. Kimberly was in the back seat with her, comforting her.

Cassie was crying because her brother was dead. Why was her character crying? Perhaps having seen the consequences of selling black magic to creeps. That was good, even if these tears expressed the wrong kind of sadness for that.

I wanted to use Flashback Revelation to let them know that I was watching, but I didn’t. That trope had limited uses, and I didn’t know how limited. I needed to save my advice for when it really mattered. Before I died, I had given a few canned phrases to the others in anticipation of Deathwatch.

As before, I started straining my eyes to the left and then the right. I could see theater seats in front of me, but none of them had people in them. The people who had clapped at the conclusion of previous movies were never in my line of sight.

It was useless. I couldn’t will myself to look at anything but the screen.

Something strange happened as the scene of them driving away ended.

I saw everything go dark, not just on the screen but throughout my vision. Then, there was a white light, which dimmed like a light bulb bursting.

Then I could see again, but the theater screen was not showing the movie. It showed a dozen different shots of different exteriors, interiors, and sets from the story we were in, all laid out in separate squares on the screen. I saw the burned remains of the movie set. I saw the flooded jail that was being drained by NPCs at that moment. I saw Antoine and the others driving wordlessly from several angles.

Everyone was Off-Screen.

Usually, with Deathwatch, I couldn’t see anything but what might end up in the final movie. It was always On-Screen.

I was watching them and a dozen other camera angles Off-Screen, including the Die Cast POV.

And then I realized that I wasn’t restricted anymore. I could look around. I put my hand in front of my face out of reflex. I could move! I was free.

For the first time, I could see the people who had been with me in the theater. I just had to look.

The thought of it thrilled me and terrified me in equal parts. Who were those people in the theater with me?

I turned to look.

To my surprise, the thing I saw first was the last thing I could ever expect.

I saw my dead face. My eyes were open, but I was dead. My head was slumped over.

I stood up immediately and screamed.

What I saw was my own dead corpse sitting in a theater seat with a lanyard around its neck. I was so shocked to see it that I couldn’t look at anything else for a time. I backed away and found myself falling.

I didn’t hit the row of seats in front of me; I passed right through them and fell onto the ground in front of them.

I had phased through solid matter.

I stood up and looked at my body more. I looked at my hands again. They looked normal. I reached out and touched the seat I had just passed through. Sure enough, my hand went right through.

I was a spirit. My first thought was something about astral projection, but that was unlikely as my body was not asleep. It was dead.

I was dead.

It took longer than I would have liked to admit for me to remember why this was happening.

Moonlight Morrow. He had a trope that made every character who died turn into a ghost. It must have activated as soon as the scene at the jail ended.

I wasn’t just dead. I was a ghost.

Something about my Deathwatch trope, combined with his afterlife trope, had caused this. I knew that when I sat in the theater seat to watch the movie play out, it felt real. It felt like I was really there. I could never have anticipated how real it was.

The shock of my mundane afterlife distracted me enough that I didn’t notice something strange about the theater at first.

While it looked normal when you faced the front, looking back was odd. It wasn’t a full theater. The room was the right size, more or less, but the back half of the seating area wasn’t there. Instead, there was a large flat floor with a door in the back.

This was a mock-up, a set designed for the Film Buff’s version of Deathwatch, nothing more. It was built for me to watch the movie when I died—or maybe it was built for more than just Film Buffs.

The floor was empty. No one was there watching, but as I looked around, the door in the back of the room opened, and a woman walked through.

She was dressed fancy, but I couldn’t place the style. It looked old, professional, odd. If she could see me, she didn’t show it.

She walked down the aisle my body was on and stopped, leaning over me.

With a hand, she brushed my hair out of my face and closed my eyes. She was sad, tired, and stressed.

The red wallpaper was off. I couldn’t even see it.

The woman grabbed a ticket attached to the lanyard around my neck and produced a small, silver object out of nowhere.

As she held the object toward the ticket, I realized it was one of those hole punchers that ticket inspectors used on trains.

I tried reading the ticket, but the only thing I could read was the word “Disillusion,” which would later assume was a pun.

She placed the hole punch over the word and clicked it, causing a small hole to appear in the ticket.

As it did, my body disappeared. No explosion. Not dust. Nothing at all. It was just gone.

Soon, so was I.

I was floating, picking up speed. I rose so fast I was out of the room in the blink of an eye. I saw a blur of violet light, a lake at sunset, trees zooming by, and I heard children singing.

In an instant, I was lying on the ground next to my body, my real body. EMTs were walking around surveying the damage. They couldn’t see me.

Luckily, I could see myself on the red wallpaper again. Dead, as expected.

I sat there for a while before I went to find Isaac, digesting what I had just seen.

That was the first time I would see one, the special little workers who helped administer so much pain to us players. I knew they existed, the people who worked behind the scenes. I had seen signs, strange phrasings in trope text, and odd comments on the script that were clearly written by and for someone other than the players.

I had wondered who the people had been to clap at the end of a storyline somewhere just out of my view. I thought it might have been the audience, that they were there to watch the show. Instead, it must have been more people like her, people who were only clapping to congratulate themselves.

It was Them.