Chương 56: Book Two - Chapter 6: Split Ends

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ZONE TWO INCINERATION: 0 5: 44: 53"It was kind of cute, right?" Liam had to turn his neck at a weird angle to look at Tre on his shoulder.

"What was?"

"The spider-phone." I laughed.

"Says the guy with the pet tarantula."

"Ugh." Tre slumped against Liam's head, his curls drooping over his eyes.

"Poor Biggie. I hope he's been eating those mind-larvae." Isabel shuddered, quickening her pace.

"Let's get to the work light." We funneled after her. A dry metallic click sounded behind me as Liam flicked his lighter and cupped his hand around the front, so the tiny flame stopped wavering. The yellow glow didn't even reach the metal walls. The remaining fuel was too precious to waste on walking, better saved for when we needed fire.

"Save it for the joints, my man," Tre said.

"True true." Liam pocketed the Bic; like the joints, it didn't count as an inventory item. He glanced at Tre.

"Hey, so, you said the real world's all infested with those mind-maggots, right?"" Mind-larvae," Tre corrected.

"But yeah. That's the gist of it."

"You were in Chicago, though. How do you know it got the whole world?"

"Plaxx," Tre replied.

"Then our real bodies are what? Just lying on the floor drooling with these things in our brains?"

"Nailed it, big dog," Tre said.

"But you didn't see the rest of the world for yourselves," Liam pressed.

"Like on TikTok or something?"

"No," I snapped.

"We were too preoccupied running for our lives to check our FYP. Why?"

"What if I'm also from Chicago? Maybe we're all from Illinois," Liam theorized.

"Maybe only Illinois got hit, and the rest of the world is working on a rescue." It was a nice thought, and no one wanted to step on his fingers as he clutched this ledge. So, no one responded. Kind of its own answer, I guess. Without our voices, every sound became a potential threat: a slow drip somewhere ahead, the scuff of our shoes and boots on the damp cement, another muffled scream in the distance.

I'd been holding my shoulders at ear level since we left the antechamber, bracing for something to come speeding out of the dark, howling. Not that anything ever did. The corridor just stretched on and on. When Tre finally cut in, I was relieved twice over.

"Forget this Grindhouse shit." He flicked his wrist.

"What's the first thing we're listening to when we're out of here?" Liam's eyebrows shot up.

"What?"

"Music. What's your go-to ' I'm out of hell' celebration song?" Tre said.

"Aaand: go!"

"Something by Kendrick. Either off GNX or Mr. Morale." Liam hadn't even taken a beat to think about it.

"Both are goated." Tre clutched his chest.

"No To Pimp a Butterfly? What're you, the Pulitzer Board?"

"Oh sick! You like Kendrick?"

"Nah. Hate the guy," Tre smirked. Their discussion confirmed a thing I'd been turning over since we'd stepped into the cul-de-sac in Whisperwood. NPC or not, we were all pulling from the same cultural pool. Same music, same movies, same references—not counting the ones Maltheris removed or blocked. But nobody had fake memories of things that didn't exist in the real world. Did that mean something? Or was it just easier for Maltheris to plagiarize the real world rather than create his own?

The industrial cleaning chemicals got stronger the further we walked; my throat tightened, as non-sad tears collected in my eyes. It was too easy to imagine the fucked up shit that would have needed cleaning in a place like this. A worse thought followed: what was doing the cleaning? And was it, or they, still here with us? I resisted the urge to look over my shoulder, desperately trying to convince myself that if I didn't look, whatever was back there couldn't get us.

"My eyes are crying on their own," Liam said. Tre leaned around from Liam's broad back and wiped a tear off the big guy's left cheek.

"It's the chemicals they're using to poorly mask the dog poo smell. And considering all this…" He pointed to the space above the walls where a ceiling should be.

"It should dissipate eventually."

"Word." Liam walked another few steps.

"Can I ask you something, bro? No offense."

"What's up?"

"Why do you think you can smell the chemicals, but they don't bother you?" Support the creativity of authors by visiting the original site for this novel and more.

"How come everything he eats tastes bad, but he can smoke weed and get drunk?" Isabel's voice from ahead actually startled me; she'd been so quiet.

"It's because this place is a stupid pervert's fucking joke!" A moment passed. Isabel walked faster.

"What she said," Tre joked, pausing to see if Isabel laughed. She didn't. He continued anyway.

"Things are possible or impossible at the will of one guy. Seeing me drunk and stoned was purely entertainment for him."

"Didn't you say you were, like, a science influencer or some shit?" Liam prodded.

"I was an entomology influencer," Tre replied.

"That doesn't mean I want to be some demon's unpaid talent on Survivor: Horror Edition." Liam kissed his two fingers and held them to the sky.

"On God." When we reached the hallway's midpoint, a thin film of sweat covered my entire body, which felt impossible after how cold the antechamber had been.

"You guys feeling the heat?" Liam grunted in agreement. He had taken off his navy flannel and tied it around his waist.

"Call me LL, cause I am cool…J," Tre said.

"Thanks to my new Fire Resistance buff!"

"Must be nice," I mumbled, quickening my pace to catch up with Isabel, who was practically power walking away.

"You planning to ditch us?"

"Yeah." She didn't slow down; eyes locked on the distant work light.

"Figured I'd have a better chance winning this thing without the superpowered girl and her giant hook to help." I grinned, unsure how to segue us into talking about her feelings, when she was walking so fast to avoid them. Leading with the apology was a therapy trick I'd picked up while learning to better communicate with Mom. We'd gone together for a few weeks, in a semi-successful attempt to curb our arguments.

"Hey, um, I just wanted to say… I'm sorry for not being straight with you about the age stuff. You deserved to know everything we knew. Although, to be fair, you didn't ask."

"Aahhh. So that's what a Nora apology sounds like." Isabel stared straight ahead, impenetrable.

"Surprisingly defensive. You sure you're not secretly a guy?" I burst out laughing.

"Ouch."

"Could've just told me you were older," Isabel said, finally slowing down.

"Whatever."

"Fair," I conceded.

"I knew something was up," she quickly added.

"I'm not stupid."

"You mean I didn't fully pass as a fellow teen?"

"Yeah. What's with the old references?" Isabel cocked her head, appraising me.

"Why does a twenty-eight-year-old woman pull from 70s and 80s pop culture?"

"Thank my mom for that," I said.

"So… we're cool?"

"Yeah." Isabel stopped, turning to face me.

"That can't happen again. No more secrets."

"I promise."

"My Dad always said, 'Promises are like glass; you only get to break'em once.'" Isabel's fingers picked at the hem of her skirt.

"At least I think that's what he always said." There was no honest way to respond to that. I pulled her into an awkward hug, arms around her shoulders. She was stiff for a moment, then relaxed and squeezed back. My gut told me that the quote was something her dad said. Just like with the references, Maltheris wasn't making up idioms; all that had to come from her actual memories. At least, that was my running theory. I had zero proof, so I kept it to myself. Liam and Tre caught up as we ended our embrace.

"We're stopping for hugs?" Tre asked.

"I want one!"

"Always, buddy." I scooped him up into my arms. Isabel locked eyes with Liam.

"We're not hugging."

"Whatever." Liam kicked a stray pebble into the dark. When we finally reached the work light, it was nice to be able to see more than a few inches in front of me. Not that there was anything of note to look at beyond more darkness ahead. I took the moment, stopped beneath the struggling yellow bulb, to give everyone a quick once-over. Isabel offered a tired grin. Tre had returned to his perch on Liam's shoulder, and they were deep into listing their favorite MF DOOM songs.

Tre could get heavy after a while, so I was relieved to hand him off, and it was a bonus that he and Liam were making each other smile. Once we'd had enough "standing in the light" time, we continued ahead, and I let myself fall to the back of the group. I slipped the LifeLine out of my pocket, tapping the Companions app, and scrolled to Isabel's digital icon. ISABEL HOYOS HEALTH: 100% FEAR: 48% (Nervous) LOYALTY: 69% (Uncertain) Her loyalty had been eighty-seven at the end of Zone One.

The lie-by-omission I'd made cost me eighteen points. She didn't hate me, but she was eighteen points less sure I was worth following. It would have been nice to have thought about checking before I apologized to her. There was no way to know if sixty-nine was a bounce back from somewhere lower, or the bottom of the crater. I hadn't fully explored all of the statuses in the last zone, so I took the time to click on each one.

Tapping on the word expanded a small text box beside it with the meaning and accompanying effects. As it turned out, "Uncertain" companions would "comply but may hesitate or push back." That's not so bad. At least she doesn't instantly hate me or anything. I could handle some resistance. In fact, I welcomed it. Pushback meant I wasn't the only person making the hard calls, and I could share the blame when everything eventually got all fucked up. I didn't want to be that girl anyway.

Shouldering the loss of thirty-nine people was already nearly too much to bear; I wasn't sure I could stomach more people dying as a result of my dumb ideas. That whole line of thinking led to a bad place, so I shoved the thought into my mind palace's junk drawer. The hallway finally ended in a big metal wall, branching off to the left and right. Both directions were poorly lit.

"Which way?" Tre asked from Liam's shoulder.

"Check the map." It didn't reveal much, other than that the right path kept us closer to the outside wall of the warehouse. A pull on my jacket, then the full weight of Tre as he transferred from Liam's back to mine.

"Super helpful map," he said.

"Is it?" Liam asked hopefully. I shook my head.

"No. No, it is not. See for yourself." Isabel and Liam gathered around so I could show everyone the fog-covered map. They had to lean in to see the iPhone-sized screen.

"Hold up." Tre stared at nothing with the same glazed-over eyes we all got when we looked at our inventories, then refocused on me.

"How come it don't come up on my HUD?"

"I think it's players only. No companions," I said.

"Sorry, bud." Tre readjusted on my shoulder.

"At least I get a good view of all the nothing up here." I looked both ways. Nothing obvious set either direction apart, so I stalled, hoping Isabel's Uncertain status would kick in, and she'd push back with an actual opinion. She looked at me expectantly.

"Nora?"

"Hmm…" I bought myself time to weigh it. Warmer air drifted in from the left, along with a nauseatingly strong smell of copper.

"We should go right." Tre climbed down my back and started to the right.

"Off we go."

"Hang on." Isabel hadn't budged.

"Why're we avoiding the heat? Does it mean something you're not telling us?" Ooof. I suppose that was deserved.

"You know everything I do." My back teeth clamped the inside of my right cheek.

"I'm just hot."

"I'm with Nora. Got mad swamp ass right now," Liam offered, wiping his forehead on his shirt sleeve.

"I'm a little curious what's causing the heat." Isabel stepped closer to the warm air.

"Nothing good," I said, joining her. We looked long and hard into the darkness, as if waiting to gain some night-sight ability suddenly. The Grindhouse wasn't generous then or ever.

"Can we go? Even my ball sweat is sweating balls." Liam moved towards Tre.

"Also, I read somewhere that if you keep one hand on the right wall of a maze, you'll eventually find an exit." He extended his right hand to the wall, quickly recoiling.

"Gah! Sticky!" Tre gently patted Liam's leg.

"Let's follow the wall without touching it, dude."

"We can always double back," I offered as a concession to Isabel. Her gaze lingered down the warmer corridor a moment longer.

"You're the boss." Then she fell in behind Liam and Tre without another word.