Page 38 of The Shade of Things
“Mir?” Eli beckoned me over.
Moonlight filtered through spiny branches of naked spindly trees that dotted the cemetery, illuminating glowing ground fog. If there was a ceiling to this false reality, it wasn’t visible.
Light slanted down on a wrought-iron fence with spiky finials, but it was too far off to see between the gaps to what lay beyond. Behind me was the wall that had contained the entrance, and to either side, all fell away to impenetrable night.
The lighting was a cue to the players. Head for the fence.
Other than the “Welcome” on the ground there was no evident signage. This was a race, a competition. Ian had said they were given instructions, but I didn’t see any speakers for announcements.
I joined my team, avoiding the one other fallen abductee who’d been player eleven.
Eli had holstered his gun, surveying the cemetery with a frown, while the golem poked his cane into one of two piles of ash, looking faintly nauseated.
“I hate vamps,” Emmett said.
“You think that all these graves contained vampires?” Eli toed at some overturned dirt. “Because that’s a hell of a greeting committee.”
Emmett wandered off.
“Don’t go far,” I said.
“Just looking at the grave markers.” The golem bent over to read one.
“Ian said there were also shifters. I don’t know if they were here in the graveyard.” I scrubbed my hands over my face like could I wash my sorrow and disgust away, leaving only cold logic. “Some of this must have been for show. Think about it. Twelve Sapiens in shock from their kidnapping blink into a cemetery and have their perception filters ripped away with an onslaught of vampires and shifters?” I shook my head. “They’d have been sitting ducks. We’d have a pile of corpses, not just the two.”
“Their production design is crap.” Emmett returned. “The tombstones don’t say anything. They look like they have writing, but it’s just an abstract design. And why start a race in a cemetery? Talk about a bummer.”
“He’s got a point,” Eli said. “This entire game world is designed, which means everything has a purpose.”
“Maybe the purpose of the graveyard was specifically to break the players’ perception filter.” I glanced over my shoulder at the woman by the start line. “Could be why there aren’t more dead. Just pick off a few to scare the others,” I said bitterly.
“That makes sense in terms of the purpose,” Eli said. “However, if the people behind this game took the human race to literally mean humanity and our journey, then I’d expect a graveyard to be the last stop.”
“Ian said the race took place in a city,” I said. “Could they have switched up the design since he played?”
Eli frowned. “Wouldn’t that require a lot of magic?”
“Big-time, but probably still less than the cost of setting up this place initially,” I said. “First things first, let’s get out of here and look around.” I adjusted the straps on my small backpack.
Eli gave one last searching glance around, his gaze resting briefly on each of the deceased Sapiens. He pulled a tiny notebook and golf pencil from his pocket and jotted down the numbers of the fallen players. “Two down, ten to find,” he said grimly and headed off.
Emmett trailed behind us, whacking everything within cane reach: gravestones, dirt, patchy grass, and trees.
“Why leave the bodies?” I matched my strides to Eli’s longer ones. “It can’t be that they’re short-staffed and only clean up between games.”
He sidestepped some rubble. “It’s a good psychological deterrent if anyone thinks to hide out here. A way to clear the rest of the players out and keep them moving. We weren’t greeted by anyone or anything.”
“We don’t have trackers and we’re not expected,” I said.
“True.” Eli tensed at a sudden cracking sound, but it was just Emmett stepping on a twig. “In a lot of video games, if you go back to an area you’ve already played, there’s nothing there. That could be baked into the design of this place and explain why there’s no sound here. Did you notice? There’s nothing, no birds, no mice. They might not waste magic to fully enhance an environment when no one’s there.”
“They’d have to create animal life in the first place. There weren’t flies or maggots on the body I examined either.” Grateful as I was for that, it was still chilling and sad having these people decay in this soundless fake world. “Conserving magic makes sense, but why not just find some deserted island out of cell range? Why bother with a hidden space at all?”
“Lots of reasons,” Eli said. “Chief among them, weather and time of day.” He gestured to the night sky. “Not too hot, not too cold, good vampire conditions. I’m sure those elements are all controllable here. Then there’s the risk of discovery. If Ian is right and there is a city up ahead, it had to have been built. More threat of exposure if it’s being done in the open, even on a supposedly deserted island. If I were the game designers, I wouldn’t want to gamble on the place showing up on Google Earth.”
He fell silent after that, and other than Emmett, who kept banging the stupid cane, there was only our breathing and footfalls.
In the end, that near silence was what saved us. I’d never have heard the faint whisper of wind and rustling from a nearby grave otherwise since it all happened so fast. But something alerted me. Maybe it was just a sound or a shift in the light. Maybe it was just luck. Or maybe it really was magic, guarding me when my back was turned.
