Book Five, Chapter 19: A Party Divided

Book Five, Chapter 19: A Party Divided

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.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

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.

"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."