Antoine put on a big smile this time as we walked along. He was still angling to show how confident he was, but the further we walked south, the more apparent it became that that would be a liability.

There were stretches of trees and fields similar to those in eastern Carousel, although there were quite a few more pine trees in this direction.

I didn’t say anything. I just hoped that if we could find a solution to his problem as fast as possible, we wouldn't have to make any hard decisions.

So, we moved forward at a faster pace than normal toward the nearest solution. Dr. Andrew Hughes was likely to have some psychiatrist tropes that would help with diagnosing and fixing whatever glitch had caused Antoine to dissociate On-Screen.

I had used this to justify why we would be rescuing Andrew Hughes first instead of searching for some low-level storylines to do rescues in.

The truth was a little more complicated than that.

We had agreed to go to the poster wall and find the easiest storylines we could use to practice rescues.

The logic was sound. Start with the easiest storylines and then work our way up.

Another consideration was what to do with the rescued players.

If players were very low-level, that meant they would be malleable and more likely to follow our lead. One of the biggest worries we had about rescuing players that we didn’t know was that they wouldn't respect us or that they would cause infighting.

Low-level players were less likely to be a threat, but I still didn’t want to rescue someone I didn’t know. At least we knew that Andrew’s team had been at Camp Dyer. We didn’t know them, but I thought our common experience would lead to cohesion.

If they had experienced Camp Dyer, then I was almost certain that they would work toward returning to that level of cohesion and peace.

So that’s who we were going to rescue, even though the storyline that had killed them was likely going to be a challenge for us.

It was worth investigating.

"Isn’t it really creepy that these players died less than a month before we got here, and no one at Camp Dyer wanted to talk about them?" Kimberly asked as she leafed through the missing posters that we had brought along with us.

In fact, it was a little creepy. Back before rescue tropes had returned, death was a taboo.

“I can’t blame them,” Antoine said. “What’s the point in scaring new players?”

What indeed.

It became apparent that we were headed in the right direction as power lines started to converge and become bigger the further we walked along. There weren’t a lot of omens on this road, perhaps because there wasn’t a lot of anything.

I doubted that it was because Carousel just didn’t have enough storylines; it was probably because the emptiness of a dusty back road offers a certain feeling of isolation. The further we went, the more isolated I felt.

We were just on a scouting mission. Everything would be fine.

As we traveled, the barren fields turned into rocky hills, and the trees grew taller and taller.

"Now that I think of it," I said, "I thought the dam on Dyer's Lake was hydroelectric. Why do we need another power plant?"

I didn't know how much energy one extra-dimensional town could consume.

No sooner had the words left my mouth than we turned a corner on the dirt road winding up the hills and saw the power plant in the distance, jutting off the side of a large mountain.

"Good question," Antoine said.

There were giant candy-cane-striped smokestacks and lots of barbed wire. Giant buildings large enough to house football stadiums loomed in the distance.

Powerworks.

Sure.

This was a haven of Omens, no doubt. It could act as a power plant, but looking at it, I could see many movies being set there. Because of the large building built into the mountain, it had an industrial look but also a supervillain vibe.

"Stick to the road," I blurted out instinctively as some feeling in my gut kicked into gear.

I was feeling anxious. I kept my head on a swivel, looking for omens, but I didn’t find any other than the normal border omens that existed off in the distance to keep you from running into the woods.

We continued down the path. As we walked, we came across a large chain-link fence on the left of the road, but it was not for the power plant. The sign said, "Derelict Machinations Incorporated."

It was a sort of junkyard, but the items contained within it were not the usual kind of junk.

"That’s a roller coaster," Kimberly said, staring off into the yard.

In fact, it was. There was a dismantled roller coaster and an anti-gravity machine ride shaped like a UFO. There were also a bunch of those little machines that you used to be able to find out front of a supermarket, where you could put a quarter in and ride in a rocket ship—if you were eight years old at least.

"Is this where they keep all of the rides from the Centennial?" Kimberly asked.

"Maybe," I said.

But truthfully, I didn’t recognize a whole lot.

Something that stood out to me was that all of the rides and other machines in the yard were themed around sci-fi. There were spaceships and battle mechs as well as aircraft and robots. All of it was apparently related to some sort of carnival rides or similar, but I didn’t get a close look.

"Let’s stay out of there," I said. "Omens are lighting up like the Fourth of July."

We continued on past the junkyard, the second one we had seen in Carousel.

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We went on further until, eventually, we found the entrance to the power plant. There was a small shack at the gate with a sign that said, "Power Plant Tours $5."

We would have considered paying that price, except there was no one there to give our money to. Besides, the gate was open. Suckers.

"This is as far as we go, right?" Antoine said as he looked around.

I nodded. According to the Atlas, no matter which direction we walked from there, we would run right into an omen.

This area was called the Pavilion because it was built like some sort of "Age of Tomorrow" sci-fi proselytizing area for the press to take pictures of when a CEO gave a speech. KRSL was advertising its amazing technology in murals on the walls. It could have been beautiful if it wasn't abandoned.

As far as I could tell, all of the buildings were locked and secured, but several paths led into the compound.

"There’s no one around," Kimberly said.

"If we trigger an omen, there will be," I said.

"Here, you each take two," she replied, handing us the missing posters.

"According to the Atlas, we just have to look at the omen, and we’ll be able to see if our rescue tropes will work," Antoine said.

"That’s the theory," I replied.

"I only see one," he said after a few moments of concentration. "Over there, the loose cable."

He pointed in the direction of a set of stairs that would lead to a metal walkway that reminded me of something out of Jurassic Park. The walkway moved out over a large ravine of some sort, but I couldn’t say what was inside the ravine because I didn’t want to move close enough to look.

The loose wire swung gently as if something was hiding there, trying to get our attention. The omen was for a storyline called Apex. It was a very difficult storyline, and my scouting trope told me next to nothing about it.

I couldn’t even see the poster for it.

"I’m not getting anything," I said. "My rescue trope doesn’t seem to be triggering."

"Mine neither," Kimberly said.

"Mine does," Antoine said. "It’s a big plaque that says 'rescue.'"

My rescue trope worked on the premise that the enemy of a storyline where players had been killed would have somehow been filmed themselves doing the evil deed, and then somehow I found those tapes.

The enemy would then attack my base, and I would have to survive until morning. Whatever the enemy of the Apex storyline was, it was not the kind that would film itself committing its crimes or care if those tapes got out.

Kimberly’s rescue trope was for things like serial killers. She would mourn the death of her friends (aka the players we were trying to rescue), and the killer would show up at the funeral.

Antoine’s rescue trope was a little different; he turned the storyline into a race of some kind. Whatever the enemy of the Apex storyline was, it was ready for a race.

"Where are the other Omens?" Antoine asked. “I only see the one.”

If you didn’t have a scouting trope, it could be pretty challenging to find omens, especially to the untrained eye. When we walked into The Final Straw II storyline upon first arriving in Carousel, I didn't see the poster on the red wallpaper until the storyline was almost already triggered and that was with the Vets telling us it was there.

"Look to the left of the Apex omen," I said. "Do you see the building with the dirty windows that have a smiley face drawn into the dust of the glass?"

"Yep," Antoine said, following my instructions.

"Oh," Kimberly said. Suddenly, she was able to see that omen, too. All it took was to focus and know what to look for—that plus a few free moments to stare into danger.

It was difficult to spot Omens walking down the street, but we had all the time in the world.

"That one works for me," Kimberly said.

"I still can’t see it at all," Antoine said.

"It works for me too," I said. "But it’s really high level. I can’t even tell what the title is."

That wasn't the only problem. We weren’t finding the storyline that Andrew Hughes and his team had died in. That was the entire reason we had come. We knew that the posters were supposed to allow us to see which storyline it was when we stared at its omen.

We would have to keep looking.

"Alright, I’m not seeing any more. I’m going to take a few steps forward," I said.

I could almost feel them take a gasp of air as I said that. A few more steps later, I looked around at all the empty buildings.

"OK, look over there. Do you see that poster that says, 'This facility is restricted by section 14 of the Carousel Health Code'?"

They stepped forward.

"That one works for my rescue trope," Antoine said.

Kimberly shook her head. “Doesn’t work.”

"Doesn’t work for me either," I said.

I kept looking around, trying to find the omen that had led to Isaac and Cassie’s brother's demise.

Finally, I found it.

I was holding Andrew Hughes' missing poster and one of his teammates, Michael. As soon as I saw a distant building with graffiti on it, I saw the omen.

"There it is," I said.

"Itch," I read. That was the title of the storyline.

"My rescue trope does… not work with that storyline,” I said.

Despite that, I could still see copies of the missing posters in my hands placed on the red wallpaper underneath the poster for Itch, which showed some kind of 80s tech control panel.

"My rescue trope doesn’t work with that one," Kimberly said, "and I don’t see a missing poster on it."

"Well, my rescue trope does work," Antoine said, "and I only see one missing poster."

That was troublesome because he was holding two.

"Wait, what?" I said.

"It’s what I’m telling you. I’ve got Logan and Lila, but Logan's poster isn't showing up on the red wallpaper," he said. He handed it over to me.

Sure enough, nothing changed on the red wallpaper. I stared more intently until I could finally read the graffiti: "Death to scabs."

Great.

"Hand them here," I said, gesturing for them to give me all of the posters.

Once they were all in my hands, only one more appeared on the red wallpaper.

"Lila, Michael, Andrew... they're all here, but these other two, Logan and Avery, don’t register."

"What does that mean?" Kimberly asked.

"It means they got separated," Antoine said.

I agreed. That was the only logical explanation.

It was our understanding that you could rescue as many people as you had posters for. The fact that only three showed up in this Itch storyline meant that only three had died there.

"The other two are in a different storyline," Kimberly said.

I shrugged my shoulders and continued looking around. That was the best explanation.

It took 15 or so minutes, but I eventually spotted every single omen that the Carousel Atlas told us was in this area. Yet, I never found any storyline that contained Avery or Logan.

"This doesn’t make any sense," Antoine said. "Their posters say that they died in this area, right?"

"Right," I said, double-checking.

"So there must be some sort of omen that doesn't show up all the time," he said. "Like a mobile omen, like at the bowling alley."

That was one explanation.

I kept my head on a swivel, looking from omen to omen. Then my eyes caught something.

It was not an omen but a road. It was in the forest behind us, and we had passed by it on our way to the power station.

I noticed that in the distance, in the deep part of the forest, there was a flat plane where gravel had been run up in a line like it often does at the edge of a dirt road.

"There’s something back there," I said.

I almost felt my heart stop beating.

A fear rose up that I was familiar with.

My I don’t like it here… trope didn't just give me information on the red wallpaper; it also made me feel anxious and afraid. In this case, those aspects were a feature, not a bug. It made it easier to spot omens and kept me on high alert.

The last time I had felt anxiety this strong was when the black snow had appeared, and the apocalypse had almost killed us all.

"What is it?" Antoine said, staring off into the woods, a slight twitch in his eye.

"Is it an omen?" Kimberly asked.

"No," I said. "Yes. Wait, I don’t know."

I started to back away from the power plant entrance and walked slowly toward the woods we had passed.

There was a small field between us and the thick grove of trees. Beyond that was the road I had seen going up the mountain, and yet something in the back of my neck was on edge.

Was that my hysteric trope, or was it something else? After all, my grandmother did have the gift, or so my background trope said.

Slowly, the three of us walked toward the woods, and as we walked, I saw something move in the shadows in the distance.

"Stop," I said.

"What?" Antoine asked. "Do you see an omen?"

"No," I said. "There’s no omen there, but I feel an omen. I don’t know if that makes any sense."

I wasn’t used to the feeling of an omen being near without being able to see it on the red wallpaper, yet that's exactly what was happening.

Then, an idea dawned on me.

"I think I know what happened," I said. "I think that those other two members of Andrew’s team did die here, but they didn’t die from an omen or in a storyline."

Antoine immediately put together what I was saying. "There's a monster's lair out there," he said.

I didn’t have the right tropes to confirm it, but all the facts added up, and my gut loudly sang to me that something dangerous was watching us from those woods.

"Let’s get out of here," I said. "We have some research to do."