by K.A. Rose
Stage 05:
The Shadows
Sora didn't like Moonstone.
Technically, he had never had much interraction
with the other Twin Blade. Because combining three PCs of the same character
class was generally perceived as a bad move, Sora had never been in the
same party with him (he only knew him through Kite); they did not hang
out on the same servers, did not visit the same fields, and were typically
not even on at the same time of day. Additionally, Moonstone, like most
of Kite's old allies, had just about disappeared following 'the Ordeal,'
so any opportunity for interraction as it had existed before was rendered
practically nonexistent.
Still, though.
Moonstone was a tall ninja-type Twin Blade, like
him. But his color palette was different, his clothes bore a different
style, and his hair was not the same length. He was no more a duplicate
of Sora than Terajima Ryoko was a duplicate of Subaru. Despite these factors,
Sora managed to feel cheated out of definition. Worse yet, by his own admission,
Moonstone had conceded that he had had Sora --or at least the rumors of
him-- in mind when he designed his character.
Not that this admission had come easily. In terms
of personality, the two Twin Blades were direct opposites; whereas Sora
went past talkative into the sunny valley of nonsensical streams of communication
that lay beyond, a party member might hear Moonstone utter all of three
syllables through an entire dungeon, and only if put to it by force.
This was, as it happened, precisely the characteristic
that had Kite seek Moonstone out. Asked about the selection by Sora (it
would be better to say he complained), Kite answered that Moonstone was
"completely unflappable."
"Ne. Ne," Sora prodded, watching Moonstone's unchanging
expression. "Ne," he insisted.
"...Yes?" came the reply, after a long delay.
They were in the corner of the higher level of Mac
Anu, by the Chaos Gate. By Sora's request they stood in the shadows of
a Roman pillar, where few eyes could find them. Kite was off in town saving
his game.
"You really as solid as Kite says? You still look
like a n00b."
"... Level 99."
"Sure, yeah. I'll bet you just mooched the EXP off
of other people. You're just all style. Think you're pretty funny with
your bandana over your eyes like that, huh?"
"... Vincent."
"N4n1 k4?"
"... Vincent Valentine."
"Heh, d4r3?"
"... Wore eyes like this."
"Don't give your whole dissertation just yet," Sora
said in exasperation. Officially washing his hands of the dead-end conversation,
Sora peered out from the shadow of the overhang and shouted: "Ne! Kite-kun!"
Past the stairs by the Recorder, Kite looked up.
"Just a second!"
"Haiyaku! This guy's getting boring!"
"All right, all right..." Kite mumbled. He typed
the last of his letter, and pressed the send key from his menu. The NPC
behind the counter thanked him in dry monotone, and bid him a good day.
In a steady jog, Kite took the stairs to the upper
level two at a time, and rejoined his party members along the back wall.
"Sanjuro says he can't make it until next week. We're all we've got for
right now." That had not been the letter to which he had written a lengthy
reply. The letter he had been writing was unsolicited. But the last thing
he needed now was for Sora to tell him he was behaving like a stalker
with this whole BlackRose thing.
"Joy," Sora said, in much the same voice as the
NPC downstairs. "You know I would give the world for the happy-fun team
we have right now."
"Have you filled him in at all?" Kite asked, indicating
to the purple-haired Twin Blade that seemed to have either paused his character
or taken an extreme interest in a cluster of pixels in the nearest pillar.
Either seemed equally likely.
"Mah, like he'd even absorb anything I had to say."
Sora shrugged.
"He ought to know something."
"...What is it?"
Kite appeared so startled by Moonstone's voice that
Sora wondered if Kite had forgotten the character had been standing right
there with them.
"The field that we're going to."
"... BBS post."
"Y- yeah."
"I know it."
At which point the player controlling Moonstone
seemed to have grown exhausted by the act of communication and fell silent
once more.
"And...?"
"..."
"Well?"
"..."
"Forget this," Sora grumbled. "Let's just go."
The second exploration of the house
seemed somehow streamlined in contrast to Kite and Sora's previous expedition.
This was due largely in part to the addition of a third member with Rig
Saem cast, the combined glow enabling a much broader field of vision.
There was something else as well, in that the many
corridors did not bother to change themselves around at random, and when
they did it was not to such a drastic degree as the first tour. The party
found the Great Hall within twenty minutes of entry. And this time, Kite
led his teammates straight out into the unadorned darkness.
>>What do we seek? Moonstone asked. It was
in a PM; the group had decided unanimously not to risk disorienting echoes
if it could be helped.
>>The high ambition is to find something that
would answer all our questions, Kite replied. >>Failing that, an
answer to anything at all.
>>And if no answer?
>>The universe functions on the principle of
the equal sign. Anything that defies mathematical logic proves a universal
improbability.
>>So, what, Sora cut in, >>if something's
impossible, it's only superficial?
>>Big word from you, Sora.
>>Can it.
Which was about the time that the three heard the
growl.
It did not start low and build up. It did not sneak
up upon the senses. It was sudden, abrupt, and LOUD.
All three Twin Blades spun around.
>>What was that? Kite cried.
>>...Something's here with us, said Moonstone,
eyes narrowing.
>>B4k4 n4, Sora said dismissively. >>We
never triggered any portals.
Kite, however, looked apprehensive. >>Given everything
else about here, would it be so strange to find roamers?
Silence. No other sounds persisted in the darkness.
Sora recast the Rig Saem spells, not wishing to wait until they had run
out on their own. He had plenty of SP to go around.
>>...Well, whatever it was, it's gone, Sora
stated, after a long pause. >>Monster AI is programmed to head straight
at us. Maybe it was just a piece of botched BGM.
>>Maybe...
Processing speeds on a rocket internet line are
virtually instantaneous. So if one could possibly imagine, given that context,
the speed at which, in the space between Kite's finger compressing the
enter key and just before it arrived in the other two's respective inboxes,
the growl that ripped through the air just a foot behind Kite's back and
sped away, leaving Kite to utter a very audible "SHIT!"
"What was that?!" Sora cried, the vow of
silence momentarily forgotten.
"It was right here, it was right next to me...!"
>>...I saw nothing.
Sora and Kite turned as one toward their third party
member.
>>Nothing? Kite repeated, stablizing enough
to start PMs again.
>>There was nothing.
>>But you heard it... Didn't you?
>>Glitch, Moonstone reminded.
Kite shook his head. >>No... I don't think...
In front of his console, Kite was shivering. It
was cold again. That damn weather forecast, all that highs and lows stuff
was nothing but bull...
...The hairs on the back of his neck were standing
on end. Tingling. He had thought that was a myth.
>>Let's keep moving, he said at last.
They hit a wall much sooner than expected. There
was a hollowness to the air that suggested this might not have been the
end of the Great Hall so much as a small partition within it, but the scope
of their sight was too limited to verify one way or another. After facing
a decision on right or left, Kite used the edge of his dagger to etch an
arrow pointing in the direction of the party's choice.
>>We can't find it in the dark, but if we make
our way back to it, we'll at least have something to go on.
>>Hold on, said Sora. >>Let me recast
spells first.
Both actions in place, the trio began their trek
southward along the partition.
The growl seemed to have left them behind. Once,
as they entered a side door into a long corridor, Kitw swore he heard it
again, but it was far-off, so dim and distant it was possible it had been
nothing but static in his headset. He wondered again about what Moonstone
had said about glitches.
>>...Long, Moonstone said tiredly, after
they had explored a series of connecting rooms and hallways. >>No battles.
>>You nuts? Sora shot back. >>Jinxing
us like that here? You really wanna find out what the monsters in this
place are like?
>>Powerful player, nothing to worry about.
>>...Well, yeah, so?
A low rumble as they passed through a doorway. Did
Kite imagine it? He stopped for a moment by a wall and etched another arrow
into the black stone. These would be gone the next time they reentered
the dungeon, but until then they shouldn't disappear.
"...elp..."
He stopped.
>>One of you say something?
>>...No.
>>Nuh-uh.
Kite frowned. >>Weird...
>>Hey, can we pause for a sec? Sora requested.
>>I
need to go shut the windows.
Kite had a sense that if Sora had spoken those words
aloud, they would have been filled with apprehension. Even in the sparseness
of the statement there was implication that Sora really didn't wish to
make mention of his real life situation.
He said, >>Yeah. Don't take too long.
By the glow of the green regeneration spell, he
could just barely see the figure of the tall Twin Blade go stiff and cease
moving entirely. He resembled Moonstone's natural state.
>>Moonstone, Kite said, watching the darkness
out before them. >>Your thoughts on this place?
>>...
Who the hell actually writes out silences?
Kite wondered wildly in his head.
>>Well? he persisted.
>>...Windows.
An almost inperceptible shift in movement, and Moonstone's
character, too, was paused.
"Uuwaah!" Kite permitted himself to cry out, a short
but distressed echo coming back to him. He kept the rest of his remarks,
including cursing their names, confined to his own head, though he visibly
seethed. Didn't those two figure it was dangerous, leaving one guy alone
in a place like this?
Suddenly the darkness was looking a lot closer.
And his room was feeling a lot colder.
Sora Yanaka, age 12, knelt on his bed and peered
out through his open bedroom window. His breath crystalized in the air
before him and left faint smudges of fog around the edges of his glasses,
waiting for body heat to melt them away. It didn't.
Beyond him, the city was alive, a floating palace
aglow with a million twinkling lights, a whole heaven of stars to replace
the sky when the pollution had choked all light above from sight. An inverted
night sky.
The late hour had no influence on the sounds of
the city, no hindrance on the cacaphony of cars and street vendors and
the swarming, gabbling masses of people who didn't know him or would ever
care to know. It existed outside Sora's own scope of reality, some separate
shell now.
The breeze that wove its way in through his window,
over his skin, through scraggly strands of hair, was not as cold as the
air in his room, and even warmer than the air around his terminal. It seemed,
somehow, that the air shaft had repositioned itself directly over his computer
and had found a way to silently, inperceptively blow a constant stream
of freezing air on him. Except it didn't. It hadn't.
Then again, he wasn't so sure of the dimensions
of his room now. The shadows seemed somehow deeper than before, and all
the lights at his disposal seemed to do nothing to diminish them.
Tomorrow he would get a tape measurer.
Hadn't Kite said to hurry?
Sora flexed numb fingers, unsticking them from the
sides of the window. He reached out into the sticky warm night air, practically
feeling the grease of a thousand fast food restaurants assaulting his skin,
and drew the window pane back in. After closing it, he locked it too. And
shut the blinds.
He had maybe fourty-five minutes to an hour before
his mom would be screaming at him from beyond his door to get to sleep.
Maybe an hour and ten if he didn't mind getting grounded for a while. That
would probably mean no internet at all, forget playing The World.
A high-risk venture.
The problem was that right now, it seemed a greater
risk not to stick with Kite on this until the guy was satisfied.
No matter what it meant for him. Because whether he liked it or not, he
probably had fewer people to talk to than Kite did. If he lost him,
too, how much of a loser would that make him then?
He kept the lights on. But he took his glasses off.
Sora had never needed glasses before his encounter
with Morganna over two years ago, but after emerging from his coma, his
vision had blurred significantly. Additionally he couldn't perceive yellow
well in the left eye, though the right one was, to his knowledge, fine
in that regard. It was a slight myopia, the optometrist had said, just
enough to warrant glasses. Not enough, his mother had said, to warrant
contacts.
She did enjoy her petty torments, didn't she...
There was still a definite chill radiating from
the area of Sora's terminal when he approached it again. The chair that
should have been stinking hot from prolonged sitting was stiff almost to
the point of being frozen. An examination of his visor showed frost had
built up along the glass. He wiped it with the edge of a sleeve, running
over the angry vein of a crack imbedded deep in the glass, shabbily patched
over the residue of glue from two years' worth of scotch tape. The crack
had been lodged there from the time he had fallen into the coma, and his
uninhabited body had physically fallen to the floor. He hadn't been able
to afford a new headset, and his mother certainly wasn't going to buy it
for him.
"What are you getting into?" he wondered aloud,
voice barely above a murmur. A weak chest prohibited him from speaking
very loudly. "Why do you keep going back to this?"
The lengthening shadows of his room gave no answer.
When he reentered into The World, it was
to find Kite clinging desperately to his arm.
"S-sorry," Kite said shakily. "Your spell wore off
and I--"
Sora hesitated for a moment, seeming to hover between
possible responses. He seemed to settle on PMing, >>You're such a wimp.
"Y-yeah," the shorter Twin Blade stammered. "I guess
so."
>>You idiot. You're not supposed to admit to
things like that.
He activated Rig Saem from his spells list again
and cast it. Sensing that Kite's and Moonstone's protection would be wearing
out soon as well, he renewed it on them too.
"I don't care. Did you guys orchestrate that?" Kite's
tone was more than a little accusing. He seemed not even conscious that
he was speaking normally and not in PM.
"Orchestrate what?" Sora asked, switching modes
of communication with exasperation.
"After you left, Moonstone left too."
"He's gone?" Sora looked over at the darkened shape
of their third team member, frozen in place. "You can't even tell."
"He said he was gonna go shut his windows too. You
assholes. You think my room's not cold? This fucking weather. But you don't
expect me to duck out on a whim to do something." Kite seemed to shiver
for a moment. "And then I started hearing something."
"That creature?"
"No. It was different. Someone's voice."
Sora frowned. "Let's not jump to any stupid conclusions.
For all we know, it could be a kind of Lorelei."
"A what?"
"A Lorelei. A siren on the Rhine river in Germany,
lured sailors with her voice and made them crash their ships against the
cliffs."
"...You do watch that show."
"Shut UP."
He didn't realize until too late that he had spoken
too loudly. The hallway around them clanged with sharp echoes. Kite flinched.
>>Let's just drop it, okay? Kite requested,
finally regaining the presence of mind to switch to silent communication.
>>Here,
come listen to this. Motioning with his hand, he sidled up to the right-hand
wall, and pressed one ear against the stone.
Hesitantly, Sora followed suit.
>>There, Kite said. >>Hear it?
Very faintly, on the cusp of human hearing that
it might have been mistaken for an errant metallic twang in the headphones,
was the distinct patterned sound of someone crying. Judging by the timbre
and
irregular pause for ragged breaths, Sora could guess the subject had been
at it for a while.
>>I wonder... Sora murmured. It was seeming
increasingly unlikely that this was just another feature of the
house. Whoever was beyond this wall had to be a human player.
>>...Interrupting?
Sora and Kite glanced up to see the eyeless Moonstone
peering down at them. Not that the Twin Blade ever exhibited anything close
to emotion, but if he had, this would probably have ranked as amusement.
The two stood up abruptly. If the chipset had been
enabled, they'd be blushing right now.
>>Someone's here with us, Kite explained.
>>Probably
trapped.
>>...Find?
>>If we can.
>>Don't suppose we could just tunnel through...
Sora suggested, testing the edge of his blade against the wall. Small flecks
of rock like bits of ash filtered down to the floor. >>I mean, so far
we haven't run into any loading screens, have we? It's basically all one
consecutive space. So it should work.
>>Maybe, but we don't know exactly what the game
physics here are anymore.
>>...Minotaur,
Moonstone pointed out.
>>Oh, here we go again, Sora cried. >>Look,
guy, if you expect us to always fill in the gaps for you, you're gonna
be shit outta luck.
>>He means the labyrinth, Kite said, the
more patient of the three.
>>David Bowie dancing with muppets?
>>More like Greek mythology. You and your sirens,
I'd've expected you to know more. The Minotaur
was a creature trapped at the center of a huge labyrinth by his stepfather,
Minos II. Every year the people of Athens were forced to send warriors
into the labyrinth to serve as sacrifices to the Minotaur.
Then one year one of the sacrifices, Theseus, came up with the idea to
mark his passage through the labyrinth with a ball of string. He found
and killed the Minotaur, then made his way
back out, married Ariadne and became king of Athens.
>>Okay. So? Sora spread his arms. >>No
string.
>>I'm getting there. If I recall, the sacrifices
were ordered to obey certain rules in navigating the labyrinth. Obviously,
it'd be the easiest way to just plow through the hedges in one straight
path, unless measures were taken against that.
>>So you're figuring this is no go, said
Sora, tapping the wall with a blade.
>>I don't, no.
>>It's gonna be a long trek. That voice sounded
pretty far away.
>>Distance has a funny way of measuring itself
here, you notice that?
As if on cue, a rumble rose up from the hallway
behind them, not quite faint enough to be dismissed.
>>In any event, Kite said abruptly, >>let's
keep moving.
Agreement was unanimous. Fighting down a quickening
pace, the three travelled down the corridor until coming to a branch of
three doors, and tried the right one-- closest to where Kite and Sora had
heard the voice. The hallway beyond pushed forward for about three meters,
then turned abruptly right; how far, the three could only guess.
They walked the rightward way of the path for about
fifty feet, before being led off to the right again. This process continued
at random intervals, a centrepidal spiral that couldn't realistically function.
Kite even tried to estimate whether an incline in the floor could be judged
responsible, but by all means available to him the floor seemed perfectly
level. Finally the three arrived at a door, and beyond it, an empty room.
Kite tilted his head for a moment, then said,
>>Do you hear it? It's louder here.
Etching an arrow into the door frame, they proceeded
through to the opposite wall, where another door awaited. True to Sora's
observation, there was no load time necessary in entering any of these
small compartmented spaces, leaving only the improbability of a single
continuous map. If map was even really the right word anymore.
A whole sequence of rooms followed one after another,
with the sobbing growing louder in steady increments. It was still indiscernable
what kind of person might own the voice. Something in the nature of tears
rendered all humans synonymous.
At last Kite, Sora and Moonstone stood before a
door beyond which the crying was inarguably originating. A quick exchange
of nods and a final reapplication of Rig Saem, and Kite reached for the
handle.
Thick shadows and nothing else lay beyond. The glow
of the spell penetrated nothing but a few feet of floor. Even more than
that, the crying had abruptly ceased.
What came next was very much akin to a fire flaring
up in an airtight space, a sudden growling rush and a massive burst of
light. Suddenly all three were shielding their eyes from a blinding white
glare that had ripped itself from the darkness, burning the shadows into
blistering smoke.
"WHO'S THERE?!" someone was screaming, with nothing
but shrieking echoes for reply. "Don't come any closer!"
"We come in peace!" Kite tried shouting, his words
somehow drowned out by the roar of that flare. "We heard you crying and
we came to find you! We don't mean you any harm!"
The flare settled somewhat in the darkness, ceasing
in its desperate stabs at an invisible foe. Its user tilting the light
a little, Kite could just make out the pale highlights of an even paler
face.
"...Kite?" the figure said.
And suddenly, Elk dissolved into tears.
Kite just barely managed to cross the space between
them in time to catch the Wavemaster from collapsing to the floor. The
light burning from Elk's staff illuminated bruised and bleeding skin, clothes
shredded to mere tatters. His eyes were sunken in his face, and his lips
were blue from the onset of frostbite. He shivered horribly in Kite's arms.
"Elk," Kite managed, "How--"
"I'm out of SP," Elk stammered. "I've used up all
my items. My HP is in the red. No items for that either. I... Sprite Ocarinas
aren't any good here, I got lost and I was weak and I... the monster..."
A chill ran down Kite's spine. So his group hadn't
been the only ones to have experienced the monster.
"Sora," Kite said tersely, "I'm joining Elk's party
for a second."
A few seconds later, after Sora's and Moonstone's
status bars had disappeared from his screen, Elk's popped up in their place.
He had been right. His SP was completely depleted, and he was but a few
health points from death. Shunning spells in favor of faster-acting items,
Kite worked to steadily restore his status bars. Even when he was done
it did little to improve Elk's emotional condition, the real weakening
factor.
"I couldn't log out," Elk sobbed, voice scratched
and stuffed up from a cold that even the mic could not translate away.
"Not even through keypress. Even the power button. My console wasn't responding
at all. For a second I thought about pulling the power, but... what if
something went wrong? So I just... I put my console on standby overnight
and came back after school the next day and I was... it... I wasn't where
I was before. And no matter where I went the monster kept... I..."
"Were you attacked?"
"N-no. It was just following. Like it was waiting
for something."
"But then, how did your HP..."
"Doesn't it for you?" Elk burst out. "Drop, I mean?"
Kite froze. He glanced at his health bar.
It was virtually imperceptible, but it was there.
His HP, somehow, had dropped over 20 points. Even with Rig Saem cast.
"Sora? Moonstone?"
"Same," came the voice of one comrade, sounding
very suddenly disturbed. "Moonstone says yeah too."
"How is that possible? We're not poisoned or anything."
"I don't think," Elk whispered, "it needs that here."
"Come on," Kite said to the mage, standing up. He
pulled Elk to his feet as well. "We're getting out of here. This is going
past morbid curiosity now."
"...Can you really make it out?" Elk asked, eyes
wide. It was the first time Kite detected hope in the Wavemaster's voice.
Kite nodded. "We've done it before. It should be
even easier with four. If that thing out there feels like preying on people,
it'll have a tougher time taking us all down instead of just one."
This didn't have the positive effect he'd hoped
to instill. Rather, Elk's eyes were drawn to the floor. "I'm not sure that's
how it likes to work..."
Kite forced a smile anyway. "Don't worry, everything'll
be fine."
He led the small Wavemaster to the doorway where
the other two Twin Blades still stood. Elk's character class was even more
diminuitive than Kite, so the tall Sora and Moonstone literally towered
over him. He clutched at his glowing wand like a security blanket.
"I'll stick in Elk's party," Kite told them. "Best
to keep even in that way. You have Rig Saem, right?" he added to the mage.
"Huh? Yeah, but, um... Why? It doesn't work."
"We use it for light."
Elk cocked his head to one side. "It's a good idea,
but... why a regenerative? They run out too quickly. You'd have been better
using one of the element-up spells. That way you're not recasting so much."
"You know what?" Kite said, permitting himself a
little laugh. "We needed a mage a lot earlier."
True to Elk's predictions, the growl followed them
as they emerged back into the Great Hall and started finding their way
back to the entrance. Sometimes it would seem very far-off, too remote
to matter. Other times it would come up right behind them, only to rush
off again before Elk's illuminated staff could discern its shape.
They found one of the markers they had etched into
a wall, but it was not as they had left it. Some enormous claw had gouged
huge chunks of rock from the wall and left the marking as nothing but an
ugly gash.
There was a time-delay in PMs to PCs not of the
same party, a side-effect of an outdated routing system, so silent remarks
were made between the members of the two parties, Sora and Moonstone, Kite
and Elk, and important information was verbalized by the two self-designated
party leaders, Sora and Kite. Even this they kept to an absolute minimum;
the echoes in the Great Hall were worse than anywhere else in the house.
After what seemed like a literal eternity, in the
span of which a bird might've reduced a mountain down to a hillside with
its beak, the four PCs found themselves at the edge of a corridor, on the
other side of which lay the faint glow of the dead-end room's light.
"You're so amazing, Kite," Elk sniffled, wiping
his eyes. "I don't know what I would have done..."
"Oi...!"
This came from Sora, bringing the other three to
attention on the hallway before them, as it began to stretch and elongate
itself before their very eyes.
"Oh my god."
"No way," Kite murmured.
It was growing fast. The light at the other end
continued to stretch farther and farther away, an impossible accordian
trick. A rubber band that would not snap back.
"There's no time," Sora said hastily. "Come on!"
Without waiting for a confirmation from his partymate,
Kite clamped his hand down on Elk's wrist and pulled him forward into the
hallway, sprinting at full gallop after Sora, with Moonstone just behind
them.
"Kite..." Elk wheezed, eyes on the floor below them
that seemed to be moving like a conveyer belt under their feet.
"Don't look down!" Kite snapped. He didn't have
to ask what it was that Elk saw.
The small rectangle of light edged closer only minimally,
threatened to pull completely out of sight with each pause for a footfall.
Ahead of them, Sora ran almost in continuous leaps, an impossible speed
of movement for which he had once been famous for, a run so fast it was
a step away from flight. And even he didn't seem to be gaining.
"Come on! Come on!" he was shouting, swinging his
entire body into the motion. An edge, finally, was grasped under a gloved
hand, a faulty inertia program throwing him skidding and tumbling into
the opposite wall.
Kite and Elk emerged moments later, the latter hyperventilating
so much that it simulated panting, and then Moonstone. They glanced back
at the long corridor just in time to see it shrinking down, defeated, but
didn't stop to watch.
In the dead-end room, the four PCs stood and said
nothing.
In front of his terminal, Kite was sweating heavily.
The cold air made him shiver in huge convulsions, as if experiencing a
minor seizure.
Beyond the four, the ten-meter black hallway that
connected them to the not-so-great hall lay motionless. Nothing leapt out
from its depths. Nothing wavered in its shadows.
They just all thought it did.
They took the other path.
Outside, the house was
no different from before. It had gone past eerie now; Kite thought its
normality was mocking him.
"I don't think I'll save my game," Elk said weakly.
"I've lost so many items."
"How did you even learn about this place?" Kite
asked, dredging up the question that had nagged at him since their encounter
inside.
Elk looked at Kite as if he'd just confessed to
not knowing air was for breathing.
"Well, on the BBS, of course," he said. "Wasn't
that how you found it?"
Kite's jaw dropped. "Someone's posted the keywords?
Out for everyone to see? This place?"
"Not just that," Elk said nervously. "Have you seen...
the journal?"
"What?"
"The Holloway Journal."
End Stage 05.